by Alex; Ogg
Barker regrouped with the Paperhouse label, a subsidiary of Fire Records, and an early home for Teenage Fanclub. Later he would be headhunted by Creation, to whom that band had gravitated alongside The Jazz Butcher. Alan McGee promptly branded Barker a ‘genius’ and promised to make him a millionaire, furnishing him with his own imprint, August, which released records by Shonen Knife, Eugenius (formerly Captain America who recorded for Paperhouse), Ween, Boyfriend and 18 Wheeler. The millions were not forthcoming. None of the acts were particularly successful, though Japanese cartoon-noiseniks Shonen Knife certainly earned acres of newsprint, and the label was closed in 1994 after substantial losses. However, McGee’s decision to drop in to see 18 Wheeler play live at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow on 31 May 1993 on Barker’s recommendation introduced him, and thereafter the world, to Oasis. Barker returned to Fire for three years thereafter, notably signing the Telstar Ponies, who included former members of both Teenage Fanclub and 18 Wheeler, before starting God Bless Records. Spanning nearly a dozen albums, God Bless was probably best known for Laptop’s epic ‘End Credits’ single (famously using extracts from a girlfriend’s answering machine), which secured creator Jesse Hartman a deal with Island. Thereafter Barker returned to graphic design.
Glass was one of several similarly inclined labels; Red Flame & Ink, Illuminated, Midnight and In Tape, who mined a seam of experimental post-punk pop that pre-dated the Creation-inspired labels of the late-80s and their overwhelming adherence to 60s pop sensibilities. Dave Kitson’s Red Flame and Ink labels, based in London, grew out of his activities promoting at the Moonlight Club in Hampstead, and between 1983 and 1985 were tied to Virgin’s ‘indie’ subsidiary, 10 Records. The roster featured The Room (whom Kitson also managed), The Moodists, C-Cat Trance (ex-Medium Medium), Anne Clarke, Severed Heads, Phillip Boa & The Voodoo Club and Artery. Alongside Cherry Red, it was one of the few independents to grasp the importance of publishing, building a substantial catalogue. Kitson was earlier tangentially involved in Armageddon Records (set up by Dave Loader and Richard Bishop, graduates of Caroline, Richard Branson’s export company). Kitson executive produced the 1981 various artists compilation Moonlight Radio that showcased some of his favourite bands from his Moonlight vigil, including both Artery and The Room, Red Flame’s two ‘most likely to’ groups.
Illuminated was run by Keith Bagley, shifting its focus from punk-orientated leftovers (Poison Girls, Destructors) to a slew of groups on the cutting edge of the marriage of industrial and dance music (400 Blows, Portion Control, 23 Skidoo). Among its core contributors was later soundtrack composer Simon Boswell (ex-Advertising), who produced several releases for the label (notably 23 Skidoo’s ‘Coup’, whose cover featured the artwork of Neville Brody, while its content was later sampled by the Chemical Brothers for ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’). “After producing Sex Gang Children’s ‘Dieche’,” remembers Boswell, “I got Andi Sex Gang [one of the label’s most prolific signings] involved in my first film soundtrack, with Italian horror director Dario Argento.”
Former Dining Out founder Dave Henderson also joined as in-house designer. “Anything but get a job,” he recalls. “I also did a couple of [compilation] albums called The Elephant Table Album and Three Minute Symphonies with the likes of Nurse With Wound, Nocturnal Emissions, Chris And Cosey and the like that went through Illuminated [via Xtract Records]. I worked at Illuminated from the early days when Keith also co-ran IKF Distribution. Then Keith brought in a guy called Angus Robertson from Island and his brother, Nigel Bagley. Keith lived in Hackney and his wife Caroline seemed to fund what he was doing from her day job in computing. I remember taking Last Few Days and 23 Skidoo around to his house and we were knocked out by his record collection. He was a huge music fan. I met Youth [Killing Joke etc] at a gig a couple of years ago and we were talking about him as Youth did an album as The Empty Quarter for Illuminated. He was saying how Keith was a true music man who spent everything he had to release music – proper indie. No idea what happened to him though, although I do remember after they released the Illuminati album by Robert Anton Wilson he reckoned that Wilson was furious and had threatened that he was going to put a curse on him. Stranger things have happened.”
Nick Ralph and Steve Burgess, veterans of Dark Star magazine, launched Midnight Music in 1982. “At the time we had a record shop in Crouch End,” recalls Ralph. “After a couple of years, Steve and I parted ways. He kept the shop, which was always his baby. I had only seen it as a stepping stone towards a label, and I took the label and kept the name.” His first signings were Sad Lovers & Giants, picked up from their own Last Movement imprint (Midnight’s roster later incorporated guitarist Tristan Garel-Funk’s subsequent band Snake Corps). The second artist to be signed to the label proved to their most consistent seller, however; Robyn Hitchcock had previously been a regular shop customer. “We released Robyn’s solo recordings after he left Armageddon and Albion,” Ralph confirms. “We coaxed him out of ‘retirement’ – he had got fed up with the record business.” After issuing some extant but unreleased ‘home’ recordings, they got him back in the studio and re-released much of the Soft Boys’ back catalogue, beginning with an outtakes album and EP. “Later Robyn had his own labels for solo and Soft Boys releases,” Ralph continues, “which were administered by us as if they were our own releases. We also administered Genesis P.Orridge’s Temple Records, including Psychic TV, towards the end.”
Midnight’s sister companies included a publishing arm and recording studios. “The studio was the greater part of our indebtedness to the bank,” Ralph confirms, “but we liked to ‘indulge’ our artists and we couldn’t afford to do that paying third-party recording costs. We were one of the first mixing to digital masters.” Perhaps uniquely among UK independents of its size, Midnight had a strong mainland European bias, its acts touring regularly, and proving most popular, in France, Spain and the Lowlands. In addition to signing The Essence from Rotterdam, Midnight opened an office in Paris, licensing albums by Billy Bragg, the Wedding Present and others for French distribution, and giving Chameleon Mark Burgess an outlet for his Sun And The Moon project. Initially intended for France only, it was also issued in the UK and became the label’s fastest selling release. Mark Burgess subsequently signed to the label and recorded tracks at Midnight’s ‘second’ studio in Rotterdam.
Later A&R decisions, borne out of circumstance, saw Midnight move away from its initial focus on cultured, cosmopolitan art-rock. Both The Wolfhounds and McCarthy joined the label when September Records ran aground. A similar exercise rescued Medium Cool’s roster of The Waltones, Corn Dollies and Popguns. “We took over the September and Medium Cool labels in their entirety, saving both from oblivion,” confirms Ralph. “Paul Sutton continued to manage the Wolfhounds and Andy Wake worked for Midnight for a while on promotion after we took over his label.” There was also folk-rock from Blyth Power and Hackney 5-0, former Monochrome Set member Lester Square’s The Invisible project and well received releases from Cindytalk, This Mortal Coil contributor Gordon Sharp’s ongoing solo project. But the label sundered in the early 90s. “The men in suits wanted it to make money,” complained Ralph, “which it didn’t. But all we wanted to make was music. Which we did, lots of it.”
Asked to spell out the gory details, Ralph acknowledges that the recession hit Midnight hard. “The bank had loaned us a lot of money with little financial input from ourselves. Then, as the recession took hold and we weren’t repaying any of it, they decided to cut their losses and get whatever they could out of it, the main assets being the recording studios and equipment. I think they were worried we would asset-strip it ourselves so moved in to prevent it. I suppose the reality was that we over-stretched ourselves, and were far too ambitious for our resources. We failed mainly due to insufficient sales and had built up a lot of unsold stock. We lost out through some distributor debts, but we also benefited from help from them as well. Red Rhino had helped us with licensing for France and Pinnacle (und
er Steve Mason) had helped us out of trouble nearer the end.
The last six to twelve months were very hard. We were hoping to trade out of it and might have done if the bank had been more patient, but we couldn’t get our new releases out at the right times. Some never came out at all, including a finished album by The Waltones – we had released just a single under their new name Candlestick Park. And on top of everything else, we had committed to large advance payments for Temple Records. Plus the idea of having our own studios didn’t work out as well as it might. We still ended up using other studios as well and that might have made a difference, but I wasn’t strict enough!”
In Tape, founded in 1983, dutifully exposed staple ‘indie’ journeymen of the period alongside some plainly more esoteric brands before floundering at the turn of the decade. Based in Sale, Manchester, it was set up by Marc Riley following his defection/ejection from The Fall, alongside Jim Khambatta, who also worked as a record plugger for Factory and later, 4AD.
The initial releases were two Marc Riley & The Creepers’ singles; ‘Favourite Sister’ and ‘Jumper Clown’, both of which drew on Riley’s Fall legacy. The latter was a self-evident dig at former employer Mark E Smith. Beyond the (justifiably cruel) titular reference to Smith’s sartorial inelegance, the impetus was Riley’s desire to set the record straight. “’Jumper Clown’ is self-explanatory,” Riley points out, before quoting the lyrics. “‘Dare to dance on an Aussie floor – bloody nose – bloody bore’. It was the tale of my exit from The Fall. The fight is well documented, except in Mark’s ‘autobiography’, which paints a completely different picture to what actually happened. Mark likes to portray himself as a hard man, not to be messed with on one hand, and a victim on the other. He made out I attacked him for no good reason, giving him a right beating, apparently. Ha. As Steve [Hanley], Paul [Hanley] and Craig [Scanlon] will tell you, Mark took umbrage at our dancing at a Sydney night-club after the first gig of the ’82 tour. He came on to the dancefloor, slapped the band one by one, till he got to me. I was the last to be approached so, unlike the other fellas, I knew what was coming. I stopped him and pushed him away. A couple of minutes later I confronted him and he hit me. And I hit him back; one punch each, both in the face. How can I put it? He came out of the trade-off much worse. We were both then thrown out of the club. A couple of months later, I was out.”
“I always say the second best thing that ever happened to me was being asked by Mark to join The Fall,” Riley continues, “the first best thing was getting the sack. I saw what it did to my best mates, Steve and Craig. The first In Tape single, ‘Favourite Sister’, was actually a song rejected by Mark that I recorded with Steve and Paul. Mark wasn’t best pleased. When I got shown the door, Steve offered to come with me – which was fantastically brave and loyal of him. We’d been best mates for 15 years at that point. I thanked him but told him he’d be mad to leave The Fall. I can’t imagine them having grown as they did without Steve in there. I think Mark owes me a drink for that. He owes Steve an awful lot more.”
In Tape thus became the bolthole for Riley and his Creepers, though he still doesn’t quite understand the provenance of the name, chosen by Khambatta. “It seemed to make sense to Jim, though. I remember getting a call from Alan McGee just after ‘Favourite Sister’ came out, asking me if I wanted to sign to his new label, Creation. As I had my ‘own’ label, I turned him down. We picked up a few bands; Yeah Yeah Noh!, The Janitors, Gaye Bykers on Acid, Membranes, Asphalt Ribbons (pre-Tindersticks), Frank Sidebottom, talk about eclectic! I think that was the main problem. The label had no ‘identity’. There was no such thing as an ‘In Tape Sound’. It was all over the place. Just as the title of the In Tape compilation points out, It’s A Mish-Mash. It certainly was.”
That’s something Derek Hammond of Yeah Yeah Noh! can attest to. “I’d seen the little news item in the NME which put In Tape forward as a whole new kind of label: they didn’t sign you, you signed them. Not sure how that was supposed to work! In the meantime I’d got together with my old barman chum John Grayland – head of entertainment at Leicester Poly and another Fall fan – and formed Yeah Yeah Noh! proper, having been using the name for bedroom tapes for long enough. By the time we came to making demos, it was just us and a crap little drum machine. The sound was incredibly tinny and fragile – pathetic clanks and bonks, John’s play-in-a-day twangy guitar and my gruff talk-overs. I remember the letter we got back from In Tape, saying we probably weren’t expecting anyone to get back to us on the strength of such a shite demo, but they wanted to sign us and do a single. I remember going to Manchester and meeting Marc, who wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought someone out of The Fall might be. As we all now know, of course, he’s a lovely eccentric with a very gentle sense of humour. He lived with Jim Khambatta in a big student-ish house with ceilings 12-feet high. We were blown away seeing our crap little demo by the cassette player, and being told Craig Scanlon liked it, too.” “Generally speaking,” interjects Riley, “I’m not a complete arsehole. Perhaps that should be written on my tombstone? Here lies Marc Riley – He wasn’t a Complete Arsehole.”
“Those In Tape ‘mansion’ days from 1983 to 1987 were great,” he continues. “We lived in a big house in Sale. Me and [his wife] Trace in one room. Jim ran the label and lived in another. Eddie [Fenn; Creepers drummer] lived in one room. Craig Scanlon lived upstairs. We all played a lot of football, drank lots of ale and went to a lot of gigs. Most of my memories of that time are happy ones.”
Many of the subsequent additions to In Tape’s roster led directly from Yeah Yeah Noh! “John [Grayland] was a natural ‘player manager’,” Hammond recalls. “He was a natural politician, a contact builder, talking to the bands, a fanzine graduate, arranging swap gigs and helping to build a network; The Membranes. Three Johns, Redskins, etc. Incredibly friendly, generous people. I chipped in with my Brum connections, cos now I was at university there; Hippo Hippo. Ted Chippington. Terry and Gerry, Mighty Mighty, etc. We felt like we were part of something at the time, though it was never given a name by the inky press – provincial indie? And it didn’t last too long; just 1984 to 1986. The miners’ strike gave us all something in common, as there were hundreds of benefit gigs going at the time. A sense of right and wrong and purpose, maybe – though of course it was nothing to do with the music in most cases.”
Some examples of the link-up included the “sarky skiffle” of Terry & Gerry, which followed a discussion with Hammond at the Barrel Organ in Birmingham. The Janitors’ guitarist had guested on Yeah Yeah Noh!’s second John Peel session, while another Leicester group, Gaye Bykers On Acid, like The June Brides, were friends from gigs. “In retrospect,” notes Hammond, “we were responsible for quite a few early signings. Even though Marc had been on the scene for ages, The Fall connection was a bit of a hindrance when it came to meeting new bands, as most would assume he’d be a bit of a terror! The only band signed before us was local Mancunians, Implied Consent.”
“Jim’s philosophy was that he wanted to run it like a major label,” notes Riley, “release all kinds of different music, run expensive fly-poster campaigns, etc. And in the end I had very little to do with the label. So I left Jim to it, taking The Creepers’ back-catalogue with me and leaving Jim the rest. We were selling something like 8-9,000 records [each release] by the time we quit. I think the Gaye Bykers were our biggest sellers at around 20,000. I never really took much notice and I don’t think some of the bands got the money they were owed. Not because Jim was taking it – he was as poor as a church mouse. Jim was really hard working and determined, but the whole label was ‘cross collateralised’ – which meant that a band that lost money would be propped up by a band that made a profit. That was the deal we had with our distributors Red Rhino. Not good.” Red Rhino’s collapse would prove a dagger to In Tape’s heart as with so many other labels.
Abstract Sounds was one of the early 80s independent labels founded by an industry insider. Proprietor Edward Christie had enjoyed q
uite an apprenticeship. “I was very interested in trying to write songs, but it was hard to get anything into the big publishers or major record companies,” he recalls. “Looking back, they were all rubbish, so I can understand. Through a girl I met I got into a music management company, GTO, looking after David Bowie, Gary Glitter and the New Seekers. I could drive a Rolls-Royce and the management company wanted a driver. One of the first jobs I did was take paperwork round to David Bowie’s management, the first time I’d ever seen men in make-up and weirdly designed clothes. Through Laurence Myers, who was one of the first managers to lease masters to record labels, there was a connection to Bell Records. He put a production company together, paid for the recording and subsequently licensed them to a label. Afterwards I did regional promotion at GTO, working with the Walker Brothers, Billy Ocean and Heatwave. When they were sold to CBS I went to CBS’s promotion department, working with Abba and Bruce Springsteen. Then Laurence decided to form another record company, Gem, which was one of the first ‘independent’ labels financed by a major, RCA. He asked me to come over, start the publishing and do a little A&R. We signed the UK Subs and VIPs, and we had a number one hit with Patrick Hernandez. But it was a bit of a doomed venture. That closed, and I decided to start my own indie label, because that was the thing that was happening; the market was there, singles were selling well. And that’s how Abstract came about.”