ANALOG EDITION

ISSUE NO. 1

EDITED BY MATT CARR

ANALOGEDITION.COM

© ANALOG EDITION MAY 2011

�‘LAKE TOWERS�’ BENJI SCHNEIDER OF LORD HURON

CONTENTS

COVER ARTWORK KAITLIN VAN PELT

LAKE TOWERS BENJI SCHNEIDER OF LORD HURON

INTRODUCTION: LET�’S GET PHYSICAL 1MATT CARR

INTERVIEW: JAKE ORRALL OF INFINITY CAT RECORDS 3

THE ROLE OF THE 7-INCH IN THE LO-FI ROCK MOVEMENT OF THE 7 EARLY 90S JASON DEAN

INTERVIEW: ROLLO GRADY�’S CARTER SMITH TALKS WITH AQUARIUM 15 DRUNKARD�’S JUSTIN GAGE

LIMITED EDITIONS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE EBAY 18JESSE CROOM

SPECKTONES 22SONNY SMITH OF SONNY & THE SUNSETS

INTERVIEW: ERIC ISAACSON OF MISSISSIPPI RECORDS 24

FRANK SINATRA AND TOM WAITS: OUT ALL NIGHT 37HUGH WILLETT

INTERVIEW: JESSI HECTOR OF FATHER / DAUGHTER RECORDS 43

OMANIWOMAN 46DAVID LEVESQUE OF LEVEK

GETTING LUCKY ON THE INTERNET 48ANDY KLINGENBERGER

BEER, BON IVER, AND THE BIBLE BELT 52SAMANTHA KRAMER

ANALOG EDITION RELEASES 57

INTRODUCTION:LET�’S GET PHYSICAL

What was the rst album you ever bought? Do you remem-ber? Sure you do. Maybe it was on a cassette tape or CD. Or maybe it was even on vinyl. And yes, it was probably embarrassing. My rst music purchase was a Naughty By Nature tape: 19 Naughty III. When CDs became the rage, I started with the horrendous soundtrack to the Street Fighter movie (my taste was clouded by a Jean-Claude Van Damme obsession). Later, after discovering boxes of my dad�’s vinyl, I bought my rst piece of wax: a used copy of Tom Petty�’s Damn The Torpedoes for $5. I remember each purchase vividly. I even remember how the Petty LP looked, sitting in a box in a corner of the thrift store: dusty, forgotten, and smelling of old people.

What about the rst mp3 you ever downloaded? Can you picture it? What about the rst album you purchased on iTunes? Personally, I have no clue. iTunes is an extraordinary technological advancement and an incredible organiza-tional tool, but it has about as

much personality as a calcula-tor. And unfortunately, so does much of the music it holds. Sure, when you play a song it becomes vibrant and turns on the sensory reworks. But what about when a song�’s not on? It�’s stored information�—a formula of 1s and 0s. Modern technology is wonderful be-cause it works so ef ciently: it�’s easy and it�’s fast.

In contrast, books and vinyl re-cords are inef cient. They take up space, weigh a ton in large numbers, and require manual operation�—turning the page, dropping the needle. But there are connections made with the experience of owning a physical object that can never be replicated by technol-ogy. The smell of a book after you�’ve taken it to the beach; the crinkly coffee stain that seeped through all of chap-ter 10; your friend�’s copy of Moby Dick that has whale dicks scribbled throughout its margins. Unlike an MP3, when you play a vinyl record you�’re seeing and hearing music living in real time. Whether it�’s the dust from your apartment that�’s popping in the record�’s grooves or simply the different spots you place the needle, in nitesimal changes make

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every spin unique.

It�’s quick and easy to buy e-books and MP3s. There�’s even an app that mimics the warm sound of vinyl. But we don�’t fall in love with books and records because they were easy to procure. In fact, we love them more when they�’re hard to nd�—we love the hunt; we love the treasure. And once we nd the object of our desire, we love being able to hold that piece of art in our hands and call it our own. We can organize them any we want, not just by artist or genre, but by something as abstract as the mood it puts us in when we play it. What�’s more fun: scrolling through uniform le names in an iTunes library or perusing a shelf of colorful records? When I go through my vinyl collection, it�’s like reacquainting myself with old friends�—I admire the artwork, read the liner notes, recall the concert where I bought it, and an awkward conversation I had with the band member selling their swag.

The goal of this zine is to recre-ate the fun and intimacy of the physical object. So please, take our rst issue to the

beach with you, spill coffee on it, get out a lawn chair, crack open a six-pack, and read it in the sunny park across the street. I�’m not saying there�’s anything wrong with MP3s or reading on a computer; I�’m saying there�’s something truly wonderful, and irreplaceable, about the way a book feels in your hands and the sound a needle makes when it rst hits that vinyl groove.

�—MATT CARREVERYBODYTASTE.COM

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In nity Cat is a Nashville based record label started by JEFF The Brotherhood�’s Jake and Jamin Orrall and their father, Robert. While the proli c young duo utilize In nity Cat to release their own cassettes, CDs, and vinyl, they�’ve also developed an impressive young roster of up and com-ing Nashville acts like Heavy Cream, Natural Child, and Denney & The Jets.

Big news broke on May 2nd�—a few weeks after I spoke with Jake�— when the Orralls con rmed JEFF The Brotherhood had inked a deal with Warner Music Group. The agreement gives the band global distribution and In nity Cat a spot on Warner�’s Inde-pendent Label Group. While Warner and In nity Cat will share ownership of the band�’s masters, brothers JEFF will still retain complete creative control.

�“In nity Cat is still a completely independent record label,�” said Robert Orrall in a state-ment. �“We are in our 9th year as a label, and the Green-hornes/JEFF tour split 7�” is our 63rd release. We are grateful for the support the Nashville community has shown us, and we couldn�’t be more excited about the future.�”

Suddenly these brash young do-it-yourself upstarts have turned into savvy industry veterans with their chubby Stimpy-looking cat in tow. With JEFF�’s strongest LP to date, We Are The Champions, due out in June, there appears to be no stopping the Orrall family.

Tell me about the Nashville scene. My outsider perspec-tive pictures a lot of blues and country western, not so much the punk and driving rock of a Heavy Cream or Natural Child. Where do those bands and JEFF The Brotherhood t in?

INTERVIEW: JAKE ORRALL OF INFINITY CAT RECORDS IN NASHVILLE, TN

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We�’ve got a good tight-knit rock scene here. It�’s very community oriented and fun oriented. All the bands are our friends and we play in base-ments and warehouses and lthy rock clubs. Some of our friends are in country bands too!

When did you get the idea to start your own label? What prompted the move, as op-posed to signing somewhere else?

Well, there never was a move. We released our rst record in 2001 when I was a sophomore in high school, and Jamin was still in middle school. We wanted to start our own label, because we didn�’t know any-body who had an indie label in Nashville. If there was one at the time, we didnt know it existed. So it seemed natural: let�’s start a label so we and our friends can put out music. It was a hobby, something to do.

Was vinyl always a part of the picture? Is that In nity Cat's most important medium?

No, vinyl wasn�’t always in the picture. At rst it was just CD-R and cassette�—that�’s all we

could afford. Vinyl is very ex-pensive you know. I dont think any one format is more impor-tant than the other, we just sell more vinyl I think because it�’s more fun to collect.

Your roster really meshes beautifully. The bands all have sort of a hard and unique edge, but with a foundation of classic rock & roll. Is there a certain aesthetic or sound you're looking for when you sign bands to In nity Cat?

All the bands on In nity Cat are our friends, and I think we are all into and in uenced by a lot of the same stuff. Not necessarily other bands, but also just ideas and our lives. We dont look for an aesthetic as much as an attitude.

JEFF The Brotherhood was sort of like my gateway drug to In nity Cat. After listening to you, I began to check out the rest of In nity Cat's roster. Is that sort of the idea, to draw people in under the JTB um-brella?

Absolutely, JTB has been at it a lot longer than any of the other bands on the roster.We�’ve had more exposure, played more shows, etc. It

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started that way for sure. We expect people to check out what else the label has to offer knowing that we (JTB) run the label. We are super excited that some of our other artists are starting to bring attention to the label on their own!

It's obviously hard to make a living in music these days with everything so readily available on the internet, but you can�’t illegally download a piece of vinyl. Do you think vinyl may be a blueprint for bands and labels to become more pro t-able again? Or is still just a niche market?

I believe that anyone who wants to buy a copy of a record on vinyl is going to do it, no matter what. Even if that person has had the MP3s for weeks before they buy the vinyl. If they want it on vinyl, they will buy it regardless. Vinyl is not just having the music, its owning an object. The people who are going to actually pay for music are more and more often than not going to buy it on vinyl I think.

What's your own vinyl back-ground: do you remember when you rst got into vinyl and what your rst record

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was?

I rst got into vinyl as a fresh-man in high school going to punk shows in people�’s base-ments. I remember what my rst vinyl record was: it was a punk band called Shackles Await. They had pressed a 7" and made jackets out of card-board stapled together and silk screened. I don�’t remem-ber what they sounded like, they were very young kids. It was very inspiring for me to see them travelling around in a van selling handmade records and playing punk music. I should dig that record out and listen to it again. I remember it being really bad though...

I might be Natural Child's number one fan. Where did you nd those guys?

Funny question: Wes was in Meemaw, Seth was our friend, and Zack was an In nity Cat intern. Then Wes and Zack were Jamin�’s roommates, and Seth worked at the bike shop with Jamin, and then Wes and Zack were my roommates.

What's your approach to han-dling bands as they grow. For example, with Natural Child,

does the label have a hands off approach or do you try and provide some direction? Obvi-ously you're not telling them to record a radio-friendly single, but is there a general ow you try to curate: like, let's release two 7"s and then work towards a full-length?

Yeah, we try and set up release schedules, come up with plans for what comes out when and what�’s the next step, but it�’s not really us tell-ing them what�’s best for their careers. We try and keep an open dialog with our bands about what they want to do and what we would like to see from them and just work from there. We try and all agree on everything and make sure everyones happy and com-fortable.

1,000 4.75�” golden records with your new single �“Shred-der�” were given away at SXSW. Willy Wonka-style, one of the records comes with a prize: the opportunity to press 500 7�”s for free at United Re-cord Pressing. That�’s a pretty amazing and creative idea. How did that transpire?

That was all Jay's idea at URP. We had some fun recording

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the secret messages. Good idea Jay!

Did you nd a winner at SXSW?

We don't know, haven't heard anything yet! Maybe because you have to actually listen to the record to see if you won or not...

I imagine the majority of In n-ity Cat's customers and fan base are Nashville-based. Do you think you'll try to expand at all in the future to a more national and international audience? Or maybe that Nashville home-base is what makes it work so well?

Actually most of our fans and customers are not Nashville-based. Surprisingly, Nashville is kind of a small market for us. We do considerably bet-ter in most major markets and a large portion of our mail order goes to England and Europe. We are always try-ing to expand our reach and expand our capabilities as a label. World domination is de -nitely our ultimate goal!

INFINITYCAT.COM

THE ROLE OF THE 7-INCH IN THE LO-FI ROCK MOVEMENT OF THE EARLY 90�’S or: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE HISS.

The Lo- era from 1990 to 1995 was a pivotal time for alterna-tive rock. Not only for creating great music, but in the way that music was recorded�—with inferior equipment. Lo- was a reaction against the overproduced commercial rock that otherwise dominated popular music at the time, and it proved to audiences that recorded music can make just as important a statement with-out the resources of a studio. Fighting against obscurity and the practices of major labels, for many artists, home record-ing offered an opportunity otherwise unavailable. For edgling alt-bands, the format that allowed for the most ex-perimentation was the 7-inch.

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Lo- �—as it came to be coined by William Berger on his home recording cassette show on WFMU�—owes its existence to the introduction of the rst consumer 4-track: the Tascam 144, released in 1979. Up to this point, recording music was an expensive prospect that was nancially impossible for an individual not backed by a re-cord label. If you were record-ing at all, it was in a sound-proofed studio, far from home, with huge mixing consoles, isolation booths, and two-inch reel to reel tape. The equip-ment itself was giant and ex-pensive, let alone the full-time manpower required to keep it in working order and oper-ate it. Of course, this expense meant that the powers that be at the labels wanted a role in the nal product, because at the end of the day, the record companies were counting on sales. Up to the early 1990s, that in uence was felt in subtle and not so subtle ways. Every band was dependent on re-cording money from the label, even though they were forced to pay it back before they received a penny from record sales.

The home 4-track, like all technology, was rapidly made

smaller and more affordable for amateur musicians. A couple hundred dollars would allow you to play along with yourself on 3 additional tracks, or if you were really ambitious, the 4 could be �“bounced�” down to 2 stereo tracks on another cassette deck, giving you 2 more to play with, into in nity. However, the quality after every bounce was a little less clear than the last. The artists that came to de ne the Lo- sound embraced these limitations. Their songs were great in spite of the technol-ogy used to capture them. Instead of relying on tricks and post-production that could only be achieved in a studio, they had to rely on the live performance and songwriting. Lo- is arguably an acquired taste at its most challenging, but it also proves that no mat-ter how a song is recorded, it can be just as moving or heartbreaking�—and perhaps even more so�—when buried under these imperfections.

By no means is this a de nitive history: it�’s based on a few personal 7-inch purchases during this ve year period and is merely a rough jumping off point for further research in the genre. There are plenty

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of important artists that are sadly not represented here: Jim Shepard, Daniel Johnston, Mike Rep & the Quotas, R. Stevie Moore, and Jandek, among others. These records are a few touchstones of the most important releases of the early �‘90s and what is echoed today in bands like Ariel Pink, Blank Dogs, Times New Viking, and Wavves.

This is also an attempt to clear-ly de ne the term and put it to bed. As much as a lot of con-temporary artists owe massive debts to the textures of this period, it should by no means be termed �“Lo- �” today, when the technology that�’s pack-aged with every laptop makes it easier than ever to record only the sounds you want to turn into 1�’s and 0�’s. The lay-ers of imperfect sound today are very much a choice and not out of necessity, which is why many of the artists from this period have since moved on to record in professional studios as their music gained wider appeal and releases on major indie labels.

Though recorded in a make-shift studio, Pavement�’s 1989 EP Slay Tracks (1933-1969) probably stands as the most

recognizable and critically acclaimed landmark for the genre, packing 5 songs onto their debut 33 RPM 7-inch. The name itself could be a refer-ence to the audio delity of the rst track, �“You�’re Killing Me.�” Recorded without per-cussion, the song starts with a huge tape-like hiss, the static alternating against Steve�’s vocals, with the actual sound of the recording becoming another musical element. In Rob Jovanovic�’s book, Perfect Sound Forever: The Story of Pavement, Malkmus says of the opening track: �“We de-cided to use static as the third instrument... It was pretty excit-ing to be so experimental.�” Pavement were just beginning to popularize the sound, which would more or less go on to represent indie rock during the period. Although they quickly moved past their fascination with Lo- , the experimentation with static and unorthodox songwriting remained with the band throughout their career.

Lou Barlow and his band Se-badoh were also spearhead-ing the Lo- sound. The Mysteri-ous Sentridoh EP, released in 1993 on Little Brother Records, features 6 home recorded tracks and the A-Side, �“Good

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in Others�”, is a perfect ex-ample of the de nitive home recorded sound. On one of the tracks we have a drum machine recorded with the in-put level turned up, the sound peaking heavily into distor-tion, essentially breaking all the rules of studio recording. The effect creates a paranoid feeling: a sonic manifestation of the torment described in the vocals. Another aspect that de nes Lo- is that the song can only exist in this form with its imperfections. There�’s a reason you�’ll never hear �“Good in Others�” performed live. Not only would it be dif cult to recreate the over-lapping vocal, but the setup required to recreate the sound would inhibit the rest of the performance. Appropriately, to this day, the only format you�’ll nd �“Good in Others�” on is the 7-inch.

Smog�’s rst EP, Floating, was released on Drag City in 1991 following the full-length Sewn to the Sky. The Xerox insert lists Floating as #DC6, the sixth Drag City release! The track �“Turb�” in particular is charac-teristic of another important element in Lo- : making the re-cording process as obvious as possible. You can hear Bill Cal-lahan physically pressing the start button on the cassette over the sound of a direct input distorted electric guitar. This immediate and improvi-sational approach makes the song all that more intimate.

The draw of live music is often to get physically closer to an artist, and that happens in a new way with home re-cording. You literally enter the artist�’s personal space: you�’re in that bedroom in the middle of the night, listening to a song being recorded from beginning to end. �“Red Apples�” on the B-side would not have been possible in its early version if not for the cassette 4-track. Callahan had to press his nger down on the cassette spindle in time with the rhythm, resulting in the accordion and vocal becoming amazingly warbled and ghostly sounding�—an ef-

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fect that both illuminates the process and the technology�’s potential for experimentation. It�’s a perfect example of the kind of creativity that the re-cording format allowed a new generation of artists. In the same way DJ�’s in the South Bronx manipulated a turntable stylus to create a new sound, the tool itself can become an instrument.

The Mountain Goats�’ John Darnielle was another art-ist taking advantage of the ability to record outside a studio. Many of John�’s early releases were actually made without the use of a 4-track. Instead, he�’d record vocals over an already playing tape of guitar�—a setup used on his Tropical Depression EP, re-corded in 1994 and released on Little Ma a Records. The B-side�’s �“Song For John Davis�” is typical of The Mountain Goats songwriting �—they didn�’t need to play with the tool itself, so much as have the ability to capture a eeting moment. John uses nothing more than a cassette recorder to cap-ture his acoustic guitar and a cheap microphone for his vo-cals, yet the best studio in the world couldn�’t have recorded the track�’s immediacy and

rawness any better. John�’s trademark narrative and con-fessional storytelling style lends his side of the split EP a diary-like intimacy. On the belting chorus of �“Going to Hungary,�” the limitations of the cassette cause a peak�—a aw in most recording scenarios�— and it makes the vocals that much more real, as if to say there aren�’t any second takes in life: you get each moment with all it�’s genius and imper-fections. Honest and pure, Tropical Depression plays like a found, discarded document of heartbreak, and it�’s a sound that would be lost in a perfect recording environment.

Tape warble is distinctly au-dible on Palace�’s �“Gezund-heit,�” a 1995 7-inch single off German label Hausmusik. Will Oldham, aka Bonnie �‘Prince�’ Billy, recorded �“Gezundheit�” on a discarded mixtape of religious sermons, which he

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features in the opening. At the end of the song, he fades in a track previously recorded on the opposite side, so it plays in reverse: Julie Cruise�’s Twin Peaks theme �“Falling.�” Will illustrates the mode of production here by allowing for those kinds of accidents to happen. �“Gezundheit�” is the one Palace song that was actually done on a four-track. �“I think I used a cassette that was lying around that wasn�’t my cassette,�” Will told Index Magazine in 1996. �“The other side had Julie Cruise on it, so I mixed it and it just came in.�” The B-side, �“Let the Wires Ring,�” is an impossibly sparse, intimate recording of Will in a quiet room that captures every quiet vocal peak and guitar dynamic, complete with tape hiss and the click of pressing the stop button. Never meant to be heard by anyone but other musicians in preparation for his rst album, it�’s the personal nature of the performance that makes it so powerful.

Named after a Sonic Youth song, Eric�’s Trip released �“Songs about Chris�” in 1993 on Seattle grunge label, Sub Pop. The Canadian band combined equal parts fuzzy

distortion and melodic acous-tic songwriting on its numer-ous cassettes and singles. This single has a sticker for $2.49 from a long closed music store around the corner from where I lived in the East Village. It reminds me why I ended up buying these singles in the rst place: no matter how poor I was at the time, I could usu-ally nd a couple of dollars to pick up a single like this at a show or the dangerously local shop. The single was a cheap gateway drug for new music�—one that I�’ve never gotten over. �“Hurt�”, the rst track on the A-side, has a blown out, distortion guitar signal almost completely clipped off�—an extreme that would never have been attempted in a professional studio setting. The contrast against the melodic acoustic guitar in the right channel also speaks to the title, where the heavy distor-tion becomes an unsettling undercurrent for this otherwise sweet folk song. �“Hurt�” is a great example of another lo- characteristic: layered and slightly out of sync vocals from Rick White, which reveal the multi-track recording process.

Unlike commercial recordings, which routinely layer vocals to

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create a fuller sound as well as mask imperfections, here there wasn�’t any attempt to hide the process. It gives the vocal an exposed sound and the content reinforces that emotional feeling. When the track ends with the high hiss of an ampli er�’s gain turned all the way up, there�’s a hint of another song happening underneath. Like Palace�’s �“Gezundheit,�” it could be the song on the other side of the cassette, revealed only because that track volume happened to still be up when this was transferred for master-ing. Or more likely, this was a tape that had been used for multiple projects and ended in the middle of a previous piece�—a homemade DIY touch that wouldn�’t have oth-erwise existed.

The Yips recorded �“1000% Fox�” on Siltbreeze Records with Mike Rep, whose own

home recorded output paved the way for many of these raw sounds. He let the Yips truly shine on both sides of this single. Most likely recorded live on one mic in the middle of the space at full broken volume, Gilmore Tamny deliv-ers her vocals in an endearing, lackadaisical style: loud and right up close to the mic. It�’s a simple and instinctive setup that picks up the blown out energy of Jon�’s drums and the guitar�’s distorted amp. In another time these might have been mere demo�’s, but here the sound of the room and the recording�’s rough edges give it a distinctive punk quality. The vocals at times overpower the instrumentation, but that�’s the charm. It�’s deceptively naive: the band and Mike recognized the power in this unconventional recording, which was in fact the only way to accurately capture the band�’s raw energy.

Space Needle was on a friend of a friend�’s label, Zero Hour. The band consisted of Jud Ehrbar and Jeff Gatland from Providence. The sound quali-ties of Lo- I was hearing at this time were probably never tak-en quite so far as the band�’s cover of Neil Young�’s �“Sugar

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Mountain,�” the B-side to �“Sun Doesn�’t Love Me,�” recorded in 1995. The track starts out with a puzzling battle hymn parody mentioning Moun-tain Dew, as if this was a Civil War-era 4-track cassette. This quickly devolves into layers of what can only be described as howling, with the wailing overlapping and fading in and out of sync. The track is completely overdriven, the waveform peaking in the red the entire length of the song. The melody and vocals are all there, but it�’s as if the original was some ancient artifact that had been buried in the engine room of a ship, sunk at sea, and rediscovered hundreds of years later.

This extreme approach proved that ignoring recording prin-ciples could be just as exciting as following them. When you start with a classic, proven song like this, and then add so much noise and imperfection, is it just as good? It becomes an exercise in careful listen-ing to catch the subtleties of their take on Young�’s song. As much an homage to the song-writer as a statement rejecting the past, as if the only way to move forward is to completely obliterate your idols in the

process.

The in uence of these record-ings is impossible to measure today. Many important labels still going strong were founded on the recordings of Lo- art-ists, like Matador and Merge Records. It�’s hard to describe what it was like to hear music like this coming from some-thing as concrete as a 7-inch single, but recorded with tech-nology readily available to anyone. Suddenly the sound of these groundbreaking musi-cians were the same as re-cordings anyone could make in their own bedroom. It was liberating to have the same tools as these untouchable idols and every single was an education in what was pos-sible. Lou Barlow maybe says it best on the �“Gimme Indie Rock�” 7-inch: �“Breaking down the barriers like Sonic Youth / They got what they wanted, maybe I can get what I want too.�” Lo- democratized the music of the time, a musical revolution as important as the psychedelic evolution of The Beatles or The Ramones�’ invention of punk rock.

�—JASON DEAN 7INCHES.BLOGSPOT.COM

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INTERVIEW: ROLLO GRADY�’S CART-ER SMITH TALKS WITH AQUARIUM DRUNKARD�’S JUSTIN GAGE

Justin Gage, the founder of Aquarium Drunkard, is the Don Corleone of music blogs �—the Godfather. He�’s been blog-ging about music longer and better than most and with the classiest and most balanced of palettes, equally spotlight-ing dusty and forgotten crate-dug records and promising young contemporary artists, always with one idea at the forefront�—timelessness. In ad-dition to blogging, Gage hosts his own weekly radio show on Sirius/XMU, runs his Autumn Tone label, has written a book about the Memphis & the Delta Blues Trail, and worked as a music supervisor for the award-winning lm Natural Selection.

Carter Smith has turned Rollo Grady into the quintessential stop for discovering young unsigned rock acts, break-ing and championing bands like The Soft Pack, JEFF The Brotherhood, and Warpaint long before the rest of the blogosphere has had time to wake up and eat their Wheat-ies. Smith�’s reach also extends into lm and television, where he�’s worked as a music consul-tant on the Ed Helms feature Cedar Rapids and American Dad, where he helped with My Morning Jacket�’s transforma-tion into cartoon form.

Carter: What inspired you to start your music blog, Aquar-ium Drunkard? What year did you launch the site?

Justin: AD launched in the spring of 2005. It was initially an inexpensive and effective way to organize and share my thoughts on various interests with friends scattered around the country. The blog very quickly morphed into a place solely to discuss music and then expanded, becoming a sort of dialog with the com-menters and the small pool of others doing a similar thing (blogging about music).

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When did you realize that your blog was reaching a wider au-dience than just your friends?

Very quickly, actually, as there were only a handful of other music blogs going at the time. Because of this we would link to each other�’s content on the regular, share thoughts, recommendations, etc. It was all very organic growth.

Do you consider yourself a tastemaker?

Sure, if you like my taste.

What are your thoughts on blog aggregators, such as Elbows and Hype Machine?

Same as my thoughts per RSS. I see their point, and don�’t begrudge them, but, person-ally, I try and craft a reader experience with AD. An atmo-sphere, if you will, with the ow of the posts, the layout, and the images. I have no inter-est in catering to the quick- x MP3 crowd. I�’m a publisher. If I wasn�’t doing this via a blog platform, it would be some-thing else.

You were one of the rst bloggers to launch a record label (Autumn Tone Records).

Several other bloggers have launched their own labels since. Can you discuss the positive and negatives of run-ning a record label?

I started the label six months after Aquarium Drunkard and the label was not contingent to the blog�’s success or failure. It was and is a labor of love. It�’s grown over the years. I�’ve brought on a couple of part-ners, but the aim has stayed true: simply to expose and pro-mote artists that I believe in.

The most glaring negative is obvious�—no one is buying re-cords like they were a decade ago. Actually, no one is even buying records like they were in 2006 when Autumn Tone started. The positives are hav-ing a direct line to the legacy of great music that I�’ve been a fan of my whole life. I�’m not interested in sitting on the side-lines as a spectator. I�’m proud to have given back and been a part of something that has given me so much over the years, on so many levels.

What�’s the best advice that you could give to a blogger who�’s thinking of starting his or her own label?

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Back when I was still duking it out in the corporate world I opened a savings account speci cally for the creation of the label. I told myself this is what I have to spend and if I lose it, then I at least learned something�—even if that something is just how to lose a bunch of money. Thank-fully things didn�’t turn out that way. But going in you need to know, nancially, how much you are willing to spend, and quite possibly lose, to get things rolling and how much blood and sweat you are will-ing to expend to see your proj-ect succeed. Also, you have to know what your goals are. Meaning, are you looking at the endeavor as a �“hobby,�” or are you genuinely looking to grow it into a viable business.

In a recent New York Times article, Elektra founder, Jac Holzman said he was con-cerned about the �“absence of �‘ rst lters�’�”: the online equiva-lent of radio stations and disc jockeys. This makes me won-der if he�’s familiar with music blogs. In my opinion, we are lters, albeit niche lters. What are your thoughts?

Elektra was a great label, but I have no idea how tapped

into the �“now�” someone like Holzman is. The music industry has changed in just about every way since Elektra was having radio hits with tunes like �“Light My Fire;�” a track that just wouldn�’t make it onto the radio in 2011. I get where he is coming from per his �“absence of lters�” remark, but I think the lters have just inherently changed. Yes, blogs are lters, but niche lters. Now the lters seem, at least on a mainstream level, to be more geared toward placement and licensing, be it lms, com-mercials, televisions shows, etc.

Do you think music blogs are good for the music industry?

I think any platform that raises awareness of artists is great for the industry. Music will always be important to the human condition, but the more I read, the more it seems music, in general, is losing ground to the Internet, video games, DVDs, whatever.

The music industry is slowly moving towards adopting a cloud-based streaming sub-scription model. In several years, downloading will be a thing of the past. How do you think this will affect music

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blogs?

I�’ve been following this pretty closely the past few years as the idea of having the majority of my music collec-tion literally at my ngertips, via cloud technology and a smartphone, is fascinating. The idea that I could peruse and listen to my library just as easily in Los Angeles or Hong King is exciting. Having said that, I am very into having my own care-fully curated library. I have no real interest in a subscription model. I don�’t need access to every record ever released. I know my collection like I know the different pairs of shoes sitting in my closest�–very well. I seek out and hunt down the records I want. It�’s part of the fun.

How would a subscription model affect blogs?

I suppose it could be a positive thing in that a reader could have instantaneous access to whatever record they were just reading about.

AQUARIUMDRUNKARD.COMROLLOGRADY.COM

LIMITED EDITIONS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE EBAY

Record Store Day 2011 is in the books, and in terms of sales, it was the most successful to date. The annual April cele-bration of independent record stores with its myriad of exclu-sive releases increased total sales for the holiday by 13% from 2010 and vinyl sales by 220% at the average indepen-dent store. However, the day is not without its frustrations. After everyone has run out to their nearby participating shops, a different sort of cul-ture takes over on the Internet. Within a few hours of return-ing from my Record Store Day shopping extravaganza, there were over 250 Record Store Day exclusive releases listed on eBay. Five days after RSD, there were thousands of items listed. The Foo Fighters�’ Me-dium Rare�—an RSD exclusive

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LP of covers that sold 2,000 copies�—retailed at the two stores I shopped for between $16.99 and $19.99. In the 5 days after RSD, scalpers sold over 250 copies of Medium Rare on eBay, more than half of which sold for $50 or more. Then there�’s Ryan Adams�’ Class Mythology double-7�” EP. 171 copies sold in the 5 days following the holiday. I�’m not sure what these cost retail, as neither store I went to re-ceived a single copy. The cop-ies listed on eBay however sold for between $30 and $120. The ippers were out in force less than a week after Record Store Day. So what is a limited edition? And why make one in the rst place? If you�’re talking about a small artist like Grouper who self-releases her records, a limited pressing might run 200 copies compared to a normal pressing of around 1,000. If the Red Hot Chili Peppers put out a limited edition LP, they might press close to 5,000, as they could potentially sell ve times that worldwide. Then there are limited editions that comprise a portion of a larger pressing. For example, the rst 400 cop-ies of the Beach Fossils�’ What A Pleasure EP were pressed on

red vinyl with the rest on stan-dard black. The typical reason for pressing a limited edition is that the artist and label want to create something special for the fans. I imagine bands like to put together special editions and cool bonus items just as much as we, the fans, like to purchase them. There�’s the opportunity to release extra songs and live cuts that might never have found a place on a standard release. So, the limited edition is primar-ily a kind of thank you to the fans from the band: a sym-bolic, �“Hey, we appreciate your support, so here�’s a little something extra for you.�” The problem with limited edi-tions is that they are inherently exclusive. Inevitably, some fans are left out in the cold. Often times, local record stores either nd it too dif cult to procure rare releases or they simply sell out before fans can get to them. The only option then is to head to the Internet where fans will pay anywhere from three to ten times more for that limited item. If the fan does not have the means or desire to pay the new extor-tionate price, they are exclud-ed. Okay, I understand that not everyone can get a copy

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of something that�’s limited. That�’s ne. What�’s irritating is that some fans never get a ghting chance to get the record. It�’s one thing if your local record store orders 10 copies of a record, only gets 5 copies, and after you wait a week to buy it they�’re sold out. Boy, that sucks, but in all fair-ness, you had an opportunity. Unfortunately, with the current trends in limited editions, many fans don�’t even have the op-portunity to buy the record.

Internet. Now let�’s imagine the fan gets to his favorite retailer�’s site and strikes out. This record is so limited, the store had to hold back its online sales to give the customers in its brick and mortar location a fair shot. However, those custom-ers purchased the rest of the store�’s stock, so our hero is out of luck. In a ash of brilliance, he tries going direct to the re-cord label. After a moment of euphoric hope, it�’s discovered that the label took pre-orders for the LP and was sold out a week before the release date. The now disgruntled fan is shut down again, left with resellers as the last possibility. Refus-ing to pay $35 or more for a record that sold in stores a few days ago for $15, the fan gives up and buys the standard edition. As the LP spins around the disgruntled fan�’s turntable it sounds like a pretty good re-cord, but it�’s accompanied by lingering regrets about all the failed attempts and wasted effort he put into acquiring the limited version. Man, I bet that comic book was amazing too. This hypothetical LP is an example of a manufactured collectible: a limited edition that is produced in a quantity far smaller than what would

Consider the following scenar-io: a limited edition Radiohead LP is announced. The rst 3,000 copies of the new album will be pressed on silver vinyl and come with an exclusive comic book featuring the album lyr-ics. Our hero, a life-long Radio-head fan, is beyond excited. Determined not to miss out on the release, he skips his local store as their track record for getting limited editions is poor. Instead, his rst stop is an inde-pendent vinyl retailer on the

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be proportionate to the band�’s popularity. Radiohead could potentially sell tens of thousands of an LP like this. If a pressing of an album was set at 50,000 worldwide, making half of them limited would give the fans a fair shot at get-ting a copy. Pressing 3,000 of a 50,000 run guarantees it is an extremely rare record before it even comes off the press. These could sell out as a pre-order on the band�’s web site a month before the release date. I�’m not advocating pressing so many copies that it defeats the point of a limited edition, but there needs to be enough pressed to allow people a fair opportunity to buy the record at a reason-able retail price.

Now, let�’s think back to Re-cord Store Day. The holiday was conceived of by Chris Brown, a record store employ-ee at Bull Moose in Maine, and the objective is to get people into independent stores. The draw of Record Store Day for the average customer is the glut of releases unleashed that early Saturday morning. The popularity of these releases is dependent on their limited nature and the fact you can get them a month or so earlier

than from other outlets. Now, some will say people come out to buy these records because they love the bands and their music, not because they are limited. If that�’s true, why don�’t people ood stores every new release day during the year? Because they don�’t need to. If an album isn�’t limited, you can go to a retail shop at your convenience and know that if the new release isn�’t in stock, it can be ordered. The masses head to Record Store Day because for many of these releases, it�’s your one shot before you have to head to eBay. Here�’s one possible solution to the problem: if you want to produce a special limited release for Record Store Day, why not take pre-orders from participating stores when you announce it? Then press the number of records that are ordered and never press it again. This way stores get what they think or know they can sell, their customers get a chance at the records, and you still have an item that is unique to RSD.

People often argue that buy-ing limited editions are what passionate fans do to sup-

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�‘SPECKTONES�’ 45SONNY SMITH OF SONNY & THE SUNSETS, FROM 100 RECORDS

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port the bands and music they love. In an article I wrote about Record Store Day for the music blog Knox Road, I asked the question, in refer-ence to limited editions: �“Is it still about the music or is it about the object?�” I received a few comments stating, and I�’m paraphrasing here, that fans buy the limited editions, sometimes multiple copies on multiple colors of vinyl, because they love the music so much and want to ex-press that by owning its vari-ous physical forms. So, it�’s all about the music, right? I would argue that, in the case of my disgruntled fan and the ctional Radiohead LP, it is not about the music. It�’s about the object. If my disgruntled fan just wanted the music, a simple trip to the local record store would have produced the desired end. Instead, there were various fruitless stops on the web and the ensuing disappointment. Eventually, our disgruntled hero will move past it and enjoy the album for the music, but what happens the next time there�’s a similar release? The fan has already cut the local retailer out of the mix because they usu-ally can�’t get the limited stuff,

the web has become hit or miss, and eBay prices remain ridiculous, so what�’s left? The fan might decide he could save some money and just download the songs. Maybe some of his favorite bands will still warrant the occasional LP purchase, but disgruntled fan can get used to this download thing. So what�’s the answer? It�’s us. We as consumers can control this budding disaster before it boils over. Typically, rare records will increase in value over time, but think about a record that was released six weeks ago�—it may be out of print, but does it make sense that it�’s value has grown by 5 to 10 times in that period? If the answer is no, why pay that premium for it now, when a few months from now the cost will most likely be signi cantly lower? If more people refuse to pay the in ated prices of resellers, the prices will come down. More and more, small-er labels also seem happy to repress titles that sold out quickly. Also, how necessary is it to have multiple copies of the same record? Is it really that important to have a rst pressing of Neil Young�’s Har-vest LP as well as a white label

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promo, a remastered copy, and a different 70�’s pressing that you actually play? You have three copies of the same record, just to have them�—you don�’t even play them!

It�’s time to take some initia-tive as consumers: demand resellers charge fair prices and keep eBay auctions in check by refusing to pay in ated prices. Better yet, demand that record labels, particularly major labels, produce limited editions in such a way that gives more fans a ghting chance to buy them. The root of this problem is not the exis-tence of limited editions and it�’s certainly not Record Store Day. The root of the problem lies with those of us who buy records and collect them. We are the ones creating the demand, so let�’s use that power to alter the product, not exclude other fans from enjoying what the whole thing is about�—the music.

�—JESSE CROOMKNOXROAD.COM

INTERVIEW: ERIC ISAACSON, FOUNDER AND OWNER OF MISSIS-SIPPI RECORDS IN PORTLAND, OR

When did you open the store?

The record store opened 8 years ago.

What came rst, the record label or the store?

We had the store maybe 3 years before the label. The rst label release was by this guy Alex Yusimov, who worked in the store and at the time didn�’t have an address, so he used our store address and name to put out his own self-released record. So, the rst record had actually nothing to do with me. And actually, the guy sitting right over there, (points) that�’s the other co-owner of the label, Warren Hill. So Alex did that rst release and at that point, there was no real label. One friend of mine was making a tape�—an audio zine about police brutal-ity in Portland�—and she asked, �“Can I use the name of the

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store as an address?�” I said, �“Sure.�” And then a community of people put out a memo-rial record for a guy we liked. When my punk band put out 30 copies of a tape, it�’d be on the label. But eventually War-ren and I, we�’ve been friends since we were 14 years old, we talked about how there was a lack of certain types of records. He had a shop in Montreal and I had a shop and we just noticed there weren�’t a lot of cheap options for reissues of stuff we liked. There was a real gap at that time, so we threw together a couple of records out of the blue, and that�’s what started the label. It wasn�’t especially thought out.

Do you try to balance reissues with contemporary releases by artists like Mirah and Grou-per?

No, we honestly don�’t have a lot of luck with new records. We�’ve done really well with reissues, so that�’s our primary focus and our primary inter-est in general. It�’s what we know. We�’re not particularly hip to what�’s happening cur-rently. Most of the releases on the label from contemporary artists are more just friends of

ours that we want to support. But aesthetically, we�’re more geared towards older reissues. That�’s more where we bring something to the table.

We�’re really bad at promoting new artists. We don�’t have a publicity machine or tour sup-port. All we do is the physical object. There�’s no promotion. And so we�’ll do 500 copies of a contemporary artist�’s re-lease, but it will take us forever to sell. Whereas anything we do that�’s old will sell really well and that�’s just kind of the way of the world. Time does a really good job of validating music.

New artists have to hustle. When you�’re a contemporary artist trying to get your music out there, I honestly have no idea how people do that. The whole Grouper phenomenon is really fascinating to me, because Liz doesn�’t cede to formula, yet she�’s super popular and beloved. Her music is resonating with lots of people everywhere. But she doesn�’t promote herself at all. She has no interest in trying to grab people by the collar to get them to listen to her. And maybe that�’s part of the appeal. Her music has

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Another contemporary artist I wanted to mention is Marisa Anderson. Her new guitar record Golden Hour has really blown me away.

That record�’s great. It�’s an exceptional one in the canon of our new stuff. She�’s been around forever and I�’ve always been a huge fan of hers. She�’s also a friend. We�’ve been talking about doing a re-cord of just her playing solo for a while. She used to play with this band the Dolly Ranchers, a folk band, and the Evolution-ary Jazz Band, which was re-ally great, but I always wanted to hear just a guitar record, because I�‘ve seen her do so many amazing things.

She�’s the true consummate pro: plays three hours a day, everyday. She worked on that record for a year and a half and it was all recorded with

cut through all the bullshit and that�’s resonated with people. It�’s totally fascinating to me, because that rarely happens.

She�’s opened for some big groups. I remember seeing her open for Animal Collective at one point.

Yeah, and a lot of those big groups will hear her record and say, �“Wow, this is the real shit. �“ And just call her out of the blue and be like, �“Hey, open for us.�” It�’s purely about musical quality with someone like her. That�’s a rare thing. She has a rare thing going.

Do you only handle her vinyl?

We actually don�’t put out her records, we just distribute. She self-releases her records. She makes them and drops them off in boxes and we deal with all the distribution. And it works really well with both of our styles. Neither one of us want a big hype machine. We don�’t send promos to every distro, like, �“Check it out, it�’s the new Grouper!�” We just sit on our hands and phone calls start coming in. Her two new records sold out during pre-order. Like within a day, they were all gone.

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our friend Michael in a house. Out of all of our contemporary releases, it�’s probably the one I�’m most proud of. It�’s really special and she�’s really ex-cited about it and it�’s actually sold okay. She�’s somebody who�’s never toured. She also doesn�’t promote herself in any way. I could see her having a similar thing going as Liz with Grouper. I�’m hoping people start to realize she�’s a really special musician and catch on to her, because she�’s someone whose art I really want to support. I wish I was better at it. I feel guilty and bad that I don�’t know how to promote somebody like that. I feel like I�’m doing her a disservice because she�’s on our label, but that�’s how she wanted to do it.

And that was all recorded live, with no overdubs?

Yeah, no overdubs. It was re-corded and patched together over a year and a half almost like a diary. She would go down to our friend Michael�’s house in the living room and just hang up one condenser mic and play. It has a very confessional�—like you�’re in someone�’s house�—feel.

How did the Alan Lomax col-lection work? You transferred all of the recordings from ¼ inch tape?

The Lomax archives are actually still in existence and run by his daughter. This guy named Nathan Salsburg put us together. A lot of his re-cordings are in the Library of Congress on tape and a lot of the masters are still on shel-lac discs that he recorded in the eld. He�’d go out and cut everything directly with one or two mics. He�’d have a cut-ting machine right there on the porch with the people he was recording, and cut it right there.

The archives have been trans-ferring that material to digital les for years. They were origi-nally going to do that project themselves and were going to self-release, but they�’d never produced vinyl before. The conversation eventu-ally evolved, and because we have such an af nity for the material, they said, �“Why don�’t you guys just put it out?�” That material changed my life when I was young. Hearing all those eld recordings was a really big deal for me. So, I was really enthusiastic when I

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talked to them on the phone and when we met we just really hit it off. So now we�’re doing a bunch of projects with the archives.

It�’s really Top of the Pops for me�—just as good as it gets. It�’s just insane and intimidating how much work that guy did. How one person can record that much good material is beyond me. I feel embar-rassed about what I�’ve done with my life when I think about what he did in one or two years.

Michael Hurley�’s considered a legend by a lot of folks, but I�’d never actually heard him until stumbling across his records in your store. How did that rela-tionship get off the ground?

Hurley is great. He lives in Asto-ria, Oregon. He�’s an older guy, about 70, but we have friends in common and he wandered into the store one day and was like, �“Hey, I hear you have a record label. Maybe I should be on it.�” I�’d heard his name bandied about but had only heard Have Moicy! which is on Rounder Records and it�’s his most popular record, but I didn�’t like it. I still don�’t. It�’s the only record of his I don�’t like.

So I was like, �“Yeah, sure. Uh, maybe. Let me think about that.�” And then I investigated his catalogue and learned he�’d been recording since 1964. His rst album came out on Folkways and he has an incredible body of work. So it dawned on me that this nice guy I just met and hung out with turned out to be the best songwriter I�’d ever heard in my life. It was a really weird moment, like, �“What the hell?�” Then I got into his catalogue, his oeuvre, symbology. He re-ally created this whole uni-verse and I started to put him on par with Bob Dylan.

Hurley�’s the best. He�’s had opportunities throughout his life�—he won�’t say this because he�’s a modest guy�—but he�’s had opportunities at vari-ous points to become a big name, if that�’s the direction he wanted to go. But the reality is he�’s a very uncompromising and stubborn guy. Fortunately, his aesthetic vision and ours really match and so he sort of chose us, if you can believe that, as a label. It�’s a total honor to have a guy like that on your label. It was sort of this amazing synergy that just happened. I don�’t know if he�’ll agree with this, but I want to

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reissue everything he�’s ever done. I think it�’s amazing that the world hasn�’t paid more at-tention to him. He�’s just such a singular songwriter. We see him all the time and I love him. He plays in Portland once every two weeks on average, but he plays these low pro le shows. Once we promoted a show and got over 200 people, but he usually just plays in bars like Laurelthirst or Papa G�’s vegan deli for like 10 to 15 people. It�’s crazy and really incredible. People come in and out of paying attention to him, but he�’s been gigging and record-ing for a long time.

called Cornbread that he draws on a lot of albums. He has his own symbology that is pretty neat. He draws comics that are really good too. He�’s a great artist and it�’s no joke with him. It�’s not some crap or joke he�’s throwing on record covers to be funny. He�’s really haunted by werewolves and stuff like that. It�’s really hap-pening.

Do you have a stance against web sites? Is there a point you�’re trying to make by not having one?

It�’s funny you say that, be-cause we�’re probably going to have one very soon. It�’s going to be very bare bones, just to make ordering easier. We�’ve been person to person so far in how we distribute our records, but it�’s more been just a lifestyle thing, not a stance. It�’s not political or even aes-thetic at this point. The Internet is like any technology that�’s good and evil: it�’s just how you use it. Personally, I just nd it boring to deal with and there�’s nothing aesthetically reward-ing about a web page. Even labels that I love, when I go to their web page I�’m under-whelmed, but when I see the actual record, I�’m stoked.

He does his own artwork as well, right? Lots of dogs and creatures.

Oh yeah, has he his own uni-verse. Space aliens, or I don�’t know what he is: a creature that came out of the earth

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I feel it�’s a hollow mockery of the record, but that�’s just me and the limitations of my imagination. I�’m not cued into the language of the Internet. But that being said, we don�’t want our stuff to be rare or hard to nd. That�’s never been our goal. The only reason we�’ve done small pressings is because we can�’t afford to do big ones, and there�’s a lim-ited amount of people inter-ested in what we�’re doing.

Now we�’re nding that people treat us like we�’re this ob-scure, hidden in the shadows kind of thing. But in reality, you can walk into our record store any day and talk to us. We�’re easy to nd. Or you can call the store during business hours. You can call and talk to anybody about whatever, but that�’s not enough right now, because we�’re a worldwide business and we have to face that reality. So we�’ve been talking a lot about getting a bare bones site where some-one can just press a button and order a record. There�’s not going to be a blog with information or interviews or graphics, just a picture of the record cover and a price, because that�’s kind of what I think of the Internet as�—a

catalogue device. And I appreciate that as a record storeowner. When I want to order from certain labels, I don�’t have to call them or wait forever, I can just look on the Internet and write �“I need 10 of these, 5 of those�” and it�’s convenient. I�’ll admit it. I�’m not going to pretend like I�’m a total Luddite anymore. We�’re entering the early 90s now. We�’re getting there.

Will you have your full cata-logue there?

We�’ll never have our full catalogue in the sense that all of our stuff goes out of print eventually. We just can�’t af-ford to keep things in print. It�’s above our nancial means. Also, the nature of a lot of our releases and why artists want to work with us is because they�’re limited. We don�’t ask for any exclusivity, we don�’t�’ ask for any digital or down-loadable rights. An artist that�’s on Mississippi Records can do anything they want. They can make their own CD. Go to another label. Have digi-tal downloads on iTunes. We don�’t claim any jurisdiction on that kind of stuff. So the attrac-tiveness is that we�’re speci c to the item. We just want to

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older titles, but at the same time, the price of doing these projects is that the old titles go out of print. When that web site goes up, it will comprise what we have now, which is maybe 25 titles. Plus we have 14 new titles that we�’re go-ing to launch all at once. So hopefully we�’ll have almost 40 titles available. That�’s the goal.

There are a lot of blogs that rip your releases and cassette tape compilations to MP3s. Is that something you�’re aware of and okay with?

Yeah, I�’m totally cool with that. Even the records that people rip and put out. I can�’t judge that culture. The reason I was rst attracted to records over digital was because when I got into records in the 80s, they were the cheapest way to get music and they were

create a record that looks like this, sounds like this, has this many copies, we�’ll give you this much money, and it�’s a one-time deal. And that�’s really worked to our advan-tage. A lot of artists work with us who have never worked with anybody else. Hurley�’s a good example. He�’s had such bad experiences working with the mainstream music industry, that we�’re ideal for him. It�’s done in a handshake and our business meetings take less than a minute. It�’s very pure and simple. And he can do anything he wants. That being said though, we pay a pre-mium; we pay artists a lot of cash upfront for every release. As a result, it would be very dif cult for us to shell out a lot of money to get every release in print. We don�’t want to cre-ate rarities or create frustration with people who can�’t nd our

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the most available. It wasn�’t about sound quality or how they looked. It was about what was the cheapest and what was around. And now we�’re in this weird situation where suddenly records have become the boutique item and digital has become the cheapest way to get music. When we rst started the label, we felt vinyl was the cheap people�’s medium, but the re-ality is it�’s this boutiquey thing now and we�’re creating bou-tiquey art objects. Sitting with that is dif cult for us, because it�’s not really what we want to be doing. But at the same time, we have to be honest with who we are. We already have the turntables and all these attachments to the me-dium. But that being said, the fact that only 1 out of every 600 people in America has a turntable makes me feel like we�’re not servicing the other 599. And if they want that music and they don�’t want to go out and get a whole new rig or if they�’re poor and can�’t afford to buy records or a record player, who am I to be like, �“You don�’t get to listen to this.�” No, I mean, do what you want. As long as people support what they can of the arts where they can, it

doesn�’t have to go to me. I�’m sure everyone is doing what they can to support music. It�’s up to the individuals. I can�’t codify how everyone supports art and music in this world. That�’s not my job. They have to come to their own conclu-sion about what they do and how they contribute to the world. Just because you�’re rip-ping stuff doesn�’t mean your ripping people off necessarily. So I don�’t have a problem with it, especially with the mix-tapes. We don�’t make money off those anyways. They�’re the most podunk thing in the world. The fact that people are listening to those on MP3s all over the world makes me really happy actually, be-cause those are just personal mixtapes that we made for our customers. It�’s supposed to be this intimate music sharing experience. The fact that it�’s all over the web is really an honor. We get thank you let-ters from Russia, New Zealand, Singapore �—you name it.

There�’s been a lot of talk re-cently about whether vinyl is making a comeback or not. Is that something you think might happen?

Oh, it has made a comeback. 32

No question about that.

Have you noticed that in your own store?

The store�’s in this weird kind of bubble. We�’ve been do-ing consistent business for a long time, so we�’re not re-ally affected by the trends of the world too much. But in terms of the label�—it was total happenstance�—but when we started there was this new interest in vinyl. A lot of it was the download culture and the mainstream music industry try-ing to nd a way to still make money and they saw vinyl as something you can hype up. Now if you watch David Letterman, he holds up a record, not a CD. That�’s crazy. It�’s a big deal.

The industry is scrambling and trying to nd a way to make money, just like they did when CDs rst came out. Nobody wanted CDs. CDs were forced on people. There were two big advantages. First, they were cheaper to manufacture. The other was they could sell Sgt. Pepper�’s again to all the people that already owned it on vinyl on a new medium. So what they did was pretty conspiratorial. Every record la-

bel, they all had a clandestine meeting or two, and agreed that they were going to do the switch. And they agreed that all music retailers could now no longer return vinyl, but they could return CDs, which was a big deal for music retailers at that time.

Back then, the game of hav-ing a record store was all about ordering a bunch of things, and whatever doesn�’t sell, you return for credit to get whatever the new thing is and you keep it owing that way. If you couldn�’t return your vinyl, you were fucked. If you ordered 50 copies of the new Depeche Mode vinyl and you only sold 10, you were stuck with 40. Before that you could return whatever you didn�’t sell and get whatever the next craze was, like A Flock of Seagulls. So what they did was force record stores to carry CDs that way. It was against the interest of the record stores, but it was in the interest of the big corporate compa-nies. So that was very forced on people. People didn�’t choose CDs. Especially when they rst came out, the sound quality of CDs was crap. Now they�’re probably as good as vinyl and digital technology

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has caught up with itself, but back then CDs had horrible sound quality and horrible durability. These were the crappiest things imaginable and I really believe they were forced on people.

So now what we have is the corporate music industry try-ing to do the same thing with vinyl. Getting people to buy that copy of Sgt. Pepper�’s they have on CD again on vinyl. That�’s the mainstream industry working. But then you have people like us and other smaller labels that have just always liked vinyl better and are excited to have the op-portunity to produce it. I don�’t know any artist that�’s more ex-cited to get a CD than a vinyl record. In the early 90s, when records weren�’t produced by the majority of the industry, artists like Nirvana or Pearl Jam would be like, �“I know you�’re not going to sell any records, they�’re not nancially viable. But I, the artist, need to have a copy of my record on vinyl. So you need to make 2,000 cop-ies. Just so I can have one.�” And the record company would be like, �“Fuck, alright. Fine, we�’ll write it into the con-tract.�” And those records are really rare and valuable now

ironically because of that. That was artist-driven at that point. If the record companies had their way, there would be no Nirvana Nevermind on vinyl. It wasn�’t in their interest at the time. Even Sting would do stuff like that.

Vinyl has been around lon-ger than any other medium and as a result you�’re dealing with the weight of history. The weight of essentially 120 years of music and the cultural pow-er of that much stuff being in-vented through one medium. It�’s like books. They�’re trying to get rid of books with the iPad. That�’ll take 100 years, because we have all these physical arti-facts. In the last 100 years, vinyl has been a signi cant cultural force. And to just throw it all away and pretend you can get it all on a new medium re-ally fast is absurd. A 100 years of art production taken and put on a laptop computer. That�’s bullshit. I�’m a profes-sional nder of stuff that�’s not on the computer. What�’s on the computer is a very phony version of the world of culture. Maybe one-billionth of what�’s interesting about humanity and what makes it beautiful can be found on the Internet. You�’re dealing with thousands

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of years of human develop-ment. You can�’t just cram that into one new form. All I ask for of the current technological world is to be humble. And be like, �“Hey, you know our an-cestors�’ voices are embedded on vinyl.�” You don�’t have to collect the stuff. It�’s nancially dif cult and spatially dif cult and it may not be in your eld of interest, but don�’t�’ throw it in the dump. Don�’t just throw away something that�’s been used for a 100 years. That�’s a very modern problem. We have a culture that wants to throw away everything that�’s not made this year and that�’s absolutely bonkers. That�’s a really dangerous mindset and that�’s what I�’m really a warrior against in a lot of ways. Or at least trying to be.

Did you participate in Record Store Day?

Nope. We didn�’t really do any-thing. I have nothing against Record Store Day, it�’s just not really interesting to me.

What are your thoughts on all of the limited edition colored vinyl that comes with the holi-day?

Well, I hope I don�’t sound like

a shit talker here, but here it goes. My one problem with all that is a lot of people are trying to manufacture rarities. So it becomes a treasure hunt. Sure, a small company like us, we accidentally create rare records sometimes, because we can only do so many cop-ies. We have nancial limita-tions. Or an individual artist like Liz from Grouper, she doesn�’t know how many records she can sell necessarily and because the money is com-ing out of her own pocket, she doesn�’t want to risk making more than a 1,000. She just wants to make enough so that it exists. And that�’s cool. Okay, rarities happen. But to set out to make something rare and to make people dig...

I�’m really good friends with the guys from Sublime Frequen-cies, that�’s one of my favorite labels. But those guys, I think they take secret delight in watching people scramble. They�’re artifact creators. They create these amazingly beau-tiful art objects and they want people to appreciate them as such. I respect it. It�’s not crap when they do it. But on Record Store Day, when there�’s a lim-ited edition Bruce Springsteen red wax version of whatever,

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it�’s just trying to create hype. With Sublime Frequencies, I think they�’re just generally attached culturally�–they�’re vinyl collectors. They�’re just at-tached to this idea of a record as an art object and they�’re not going to let it go no matter how many people they piss off by making their stuff limited. Our mission is the opposite in a lot ways�–we�’re very populist driven. We want everything to be cheap and available. It�’s different philosophies and neither is right or wrong. Ultimately, history will probably reward them more, because they�’re stuff is de nitely going to resonate through time in a very signi cant way. Whereas our stuff will probably be in the dollar bins of the future, they�’re stuff will be on the wall at record stores for like 200 dollars. But that�’s okay. I don�’t mind creating tomorrow�’s dol-lar records today.

But that�’s my only problem with Record Store Day. Other-wise, I think it�’s awesome and adorable. It�’s really cool that there�’s an outpouring of sup-port. At my friend�’s store, they were talking about how they had their best day ever. I�’m really happy that people sup-port the stores they love.

I thought we could end by talking about a couple of your favorite labels.

Sublime Frequencies do some really unique work and they�’re really bringing stuff to the table that no one would hear if it wasn�’t for them. That�’s a big deal. That stuff is not nd-able otherwise. Norton Re-cords out of New York is one of my favorite labels. They keep everything in print, which is impressive. And they dig deep into R&B and rock and roll. It�’s a heavy-duty label and I don�’t think people appreciate them enough in America. They�’re the true American roots label: the true outsider and individu-alistic art that�’s the best part of American culture. And Nor-ton is at the forefront. I think they�’re one of the best labels going. I like a lot of other labels too, like Honest Jon�’s out of London. Most are reis-sue labels. I don�’t really know much about contemporary music. I�’m just not tuned into it unfortunately. And I don�’t say that like I�’m proud of it. I wish I was more tuned in, I just have yet to get really into it. But I�’m sure there�’s music being made now that�’s just as good as any older stuff, I just don�’t know how to connect with it yet. In

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terms of contemporary labels, K Records and Kill Rock Stars are just very ethical labels that have really equitable deals with their artists. They really take care of their people. They promote them and really be-lieve in them the way a small label should. They do 50/50 pro t splits with their artists and that�’s admirable. I like watch-ing how those labels operate. Musically, I don�’t know what�’s going on, (laughs) but I like they way they treat people.

4009 N. MISSISSIPPI AVE., PORTLAND, OR 97227

FRANK SINATRA AND TOM WAITS: OUT ALL NIGHT

Music�’s best when it�’s at its most inclusive: when it taps you on the shoulder as if to

say, �“I�’ve been there too.�” Better than any other medium, music teaches us how to love and how to express it, feel it, long for it, and miss it when it�’s gone. There�’s a reason why love continues to be the most popular subject in songwriting: it is one of the most essential building blocks of humanity�—a universal feeling.

Heartbreak, the loss of that love, also seems to bring out the best in musicians. At least it did for Frank Sinatra�’s In the Wee Small Hours and Tom Waits�’ The Heart of Saturday Night, where love casts a lingering darkness over the legendary musicians.

In The Wee Small Hours is a masterpiece in every sense of the word�—a record that found Frank Sinatra reinvigorated from his previously doomed career. Capitol Records had taken a chance on the no longer perfect voice of Ol�’ Blue Eyes and matched it with a dynamic young arranger in Nelson Riddle, who had previously won over Sinatra with his beautiful big band arrangement of �“I�’ve Got You Under My Skin.�” If Sinatra was Lennon, Riddle was his McCa-rtney. In The Wee Small Hours

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found Sinatra at a turbulent time in his life: his musical style no longer lled music halls nor dominated the charts, his once glorious tenor had deepened, his voice was no longer as smooth as it once was, and he had just lost the girl of his dreams�—actress Ava Gardener.

This wasn�’t Frank�’s rst love �—he�’d already divorced once and fathered three children. Yet Gardner proved to be a challenge, as she was a woman who already had everything. Sinatra wasn�’t accustomed to being in a re-lationship with someone who had equal power and thus less reason to need him. Being dumped found Sinatra feeling something he had perhaps never felt before�—lost. To ex-press his loss, Sinatra came out with what some regard as pop music�’s rst concept album: choosing songs that were connected thematically and kept a speci c overall mood and sound. The year was 1955, 12 years before Sgt. Pepper�’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Picture yourself in a world of dimly lit streets, a soft patter-ing rain, people slowly walking out of bars after last call, and

a lonely gure silently walk-ing aimlessly as if deep in a dream. If Sinatra�’s In The Wee Small Hours were a lm, this is the opening scene. Frank begins with the title song, a brooding cinematic ballad that washes the world away with its blue melody and sweeping strings, showing only the dimmest of streetlights as Frank sings with a weary sigh: �“In the wee small hours of the morning / While the whole wide world is fast asleep / You lie awake and think about the girl /And never ever think of counting sheep.�”

The album continues its story with fantastic scenes of those heartbroken blues; �“Mood Indigo�” (�“Always get that mood indigo, since my baby said goodbye�”), �“Glad To Be Unhappy�” (�“Do you still be-lieve the rumor that romance is simply grand�”), �“I Get Along Without You Very Well�” (�“Then I recall, The thrill of being sheltered in your arms / Of course I do, / But I get along without you very well�”). It�’s a startling moment when we realize that a relationship is truly gone for good, it almost doesn�’t seem real, the focus of which Frank puts front and center in �“Deep in a Dream,�”

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which features some of the albums most resonant lyrics: �“Then from the ceiling, sweet music comes stealing / We glide through a lover�’s refrain, you�’re so appealing / That I�’m soon revealing my love for you over again. / My cigarette burns me, I wake with a start / My hand isn�’t hurt, but there�’s pain in my heart.�”

The pain of heartbreak is knowing what you were once in the presence of is no more, and it�’s as simple as that. It�’s on this twinge, this desperate feeling that occupies the bro-kenhearted, that Frank contin-ues in �“I See Your Face Before Me�”: �“Would that my love could haunt you so / Knowing I want you so / I can�’t erase your beautiful face before me.�”

This is an album entirely de-voted to the night; to those lost hours between midnight and sunrise that only seem to exist when you�’re at your most unhappy, moody, and forlorn. Riddle and Sinatra combine to make a fantastic concept album where Frank�’s voice is the central character and his mind the plot. When he comes around to �“Dancing On The Ceiling,�” you�’re left wishing

that �“miracle�” that dances above him�—a mirage of love long gone�—is real. Musically, it would seem you couldn�’t nd two artists more dissimilar than Frank Sinatra and Tom Waits. Frank was the consummate professional: a polished performer who could interpret others�’ songs as if his own. Waits, however, was and still is anything but polished: a renowned and colorful lyricist and songwriter who favors songs about vagabonds and lushes. Despite the dissimi-larities, Waits once crowned In the Wee Small Hours his favor-ite album and ttingly mod-eled the cover artwork his own The Heart of Saturday Night after Sinatra�’s masterpiece.

Waits�’ debut, Closing Time, had garnered attention from fellow Californian songwrit-ers, (The Eagles found success with a faithful interpretation of �“Ol�’ 55�”), but it was on The Heart of Saturday Night that he reached his creative stride, creating a whiskey-soaked narrative for the weekend: introspective and beautiful, but never as melancholy as Frank�’s ruminations on the deep night. Whereas In The Wee Small Hours was coated

39

with blue strings and dimly lit streets, The Heart of Saturday Night still has signs of life in its twinkling lights and seedy underbelly.

an ode to not knowing what you have til it�’s gone in �“San Diego Serenade�” (�“I never saw the east coast �‘til I moved to the west / I never saw the moonlight until it shone off your breast.�”) �“Semi Suite�” happens to be my favorite on the album, featuring a slow swagger of jazzy arrangement bolstered by some brass. Waits seems at his most inspired mood here, his voice dangling and weaving with the feeling of the song, an ode to the for-gotten woman who�’s faithful to her truck driver partner. It�’s never clear how deep their relationship goes, but that�’s the beauty of it.

�“He tells you that you�’re on his mind / You�’re the only one he�’s ever gonna nd. / It�’s kind-a special, understands his complicated soul / But the only place a man can breathe / And collect his thoughts is / Midnight and yin�’ away on the road.�”

�“Shiver Me Timbers�” nds Waits returning the favor to the Eagles in this �“Desperado�” a-vored ballad, which features the beautiful intertwined play of a guitar and piano. Waits even includes two ctional characters from the works of

A bourbon-laced piano clutches the colorful opener �“New Coat of Paint�” with the charming feeling of being a few drinks into your night.

�“Let�’s put a new coat of paint on this lonesome old town / Set �‘em up, we�’ll be knockin�’ em down. / You wear a dress, baby, and I�’ll wear a tie. / We�’ll laugh at that old blood-shot moon in that burgundy sky.�”

Waits does a great job of con-trasting the opener with a slow mournful string backed ballad,

40

Jack London and Herman Melville in his tribute to losing oneself amongst the sea.

�“Diamonds on My Windshield turns the album on it�’s head. Waits stated it was �“...a com-prehensive study of a number of aspects of this search for the center of Saturday night, which Jack Kerouac relent-lessly chased from one end of this country to the other, and I�’ve attempted to scoop up a few diamonds of this magic that I see.�” Waits is certainly at his most beat-poetic here, with a upright bass and light drum work providing the only frame-work for his words, the main instrument on the track.

In �“(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night�”, complete with the sounds of movement and car horns, Waits turns a yearning search into heartfelt song, taking the listener bar-relin�’ down that ubiquitous boulevard with him: �“Well, you gassed her up, behind the wheel / With your arm around your sweet one in your Olds-mobile / Barrelin�’ down the boulevard / You�’re lookin�’ for the heart of Saturday night.�”

Waits brings things back to old time basics on �“Fumblin�’

With the Blues�”, a stylized 40�’s blues song complete with a beautiful clarinet and great jazz guitar as the night makes Waits�’ characters all the more desperate to nd someone to love. The narrator croons and broods: �“You know the ladies I�’ve been seeing off and on / Well they spend your love and then they�’re gone / You can�’t be lovin�’ someone who is sav-age and cruel / Take your love and then they leave on out of town.�”

Much like Frank Sinatra�’s narra-tors in In The Wee Small Hours, Waits too begins to ruminate on lost love with �“Please Call Me Baby.�” Waits, however, doesn�’t lament like a victim and instead recognizes there�’s a little bit of good and evil in all of us: �“I admit that I ain�’t no angel / I admit that I ain�’t no saint / I�’m sel sh and I�’m cruel but you�’re blind / If I exorcise my devils / Well, my angels may leave too.�” Waits next turns to an ode for those always in transit, �“Depot De-pot�” A simple song of sitting at the modern day crossroads, the Greyhound Bus Terminal.

About the next track, �“Drunk on the Moon�” Tom Waits would say �“Drunk On The

41

Moon, there�’s all different kinds of moons: silver slipper moons and there�’s cue ball moons and there�’s buttery cue ball moons and moons that are all melted off to one side and this is about a musca-tel moon...�”

�“Tight-slack clad girls on the graveyard shift / �‘Neath the cement stroll, catch the midnight drift / Cigar chew-ing Charlie in that newspaper nest / Grifting hot horse tips on who�’s running the best / And I�’m blinded by the neon, Don�’t try and change my tune / Cause I thought I heard a saxophone, I�’m drunk on the moon.�”

Waits closes out the album with �“The Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napo-leone�’s Pizza House),�” bring-ing the mundane aspects of humanity to life with visceral color, observing the loneliness of the people around him.

�“A cab combs the snake, tryin�’ to rake in that last night�’s fare / And a solitary sailor, who spends the facts of his life like small change on strangers... /Paws his inside P-coat pocket for a welcome twenty- ve cents, and the last bent butt

from a package of Kents / As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes.�”

Both Sinatra and Waits bring light to these forlorn hours of the night: the forgotten char-acters that parade the streets, the lament of knowing what you�’ve lost and can never nd again, the aimless search for meaning, for hope, and the strange cover the dark-ness provides. Cinematic and seedy, mournful and lustful, these albums belong in a category that few belong�—perfect portraits of humanity is at its most brooding. Sinatra chooses to focus on the emo-tional aspects of these feel-ings, letting his vocal weight delve into the nooks and crannies of the mind, while Waits creates characters to express these feelings, bringing those street creatures to life. These are albums that don�’t tell, but show the fundamental American character�—not the glamorized American Dream, but the gritty reality.

�—HUGH WILLETHUGHWILLET.COM

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INTERVIEW: JESSI HECTOR, FOUNDER OF FATHER / DAUGHTER RECORDS IN SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Do you remember your rst vinyl record?

Well, I remember the rst few vinyl records I got. When I was little, my parents bought me a Fisher Price record player with a case of 45s. It was a weird assortment of records: Chaka Kahn, Gloria Estefan (I�’m from Miami), Lionel Richie�’s Danc-ing on the Ceiling and Cam-eo�’s Word Up. Those are the ones that stick out most to me. I added records to the collec-tion as I got older. To this day my Madonna clear blue True Blue 45 is priceless.

When did you get your rst record player?

When I was a kid. Music was

pretty prevalent in my house when I was growing up. My Dad had a killer vinyl collec-tion. I de nitely wore it out!

You started Father/Daughter with your dad, correct? Is he a huge vinyl buff as well? What does he listen to?

That is correct! Father/Daugh-ter is run by a Father and his daughter. I�’m in my 30s now, but since I was young, music is something that my dad and I both loved. So it was only tting to start a label together. I�’m based in San Francisco and run the label pretty much myself. My dad is in Miami and he helps choose the artists we work with. He�’s always on the look out for new bands and spends a lot of time reading blogs and searching for that next undiscovered talent.

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When I was growing up, I was very envious of my dad�’s vinyl collection, hoping one day it would be mine. It�’s been scaled down a lot after mov-ing a few times, but I snagged some prized LPs. My dad is a big classic rock buff. I�’d have to say Jethro Tull is one of his favorites, but he�’s also into lots of world music, way into Wilco and alt-country, and then to-tally throws you for a loop with a mild Suzanne Vega obses-sion.

How and when did you two come up with the idea to start your own joint label?

I�’ve wanted to start a label for a very long time now. I�’ve spent time helping out with friends�’ labels and I always wanted to start something of my own. I don�’t know what exactly triggered it, but I think my dad was looking to get involved in something creative and he always had a lifelong dream of starting a label of his own as well. I started looking for bands to work with and came across Family Trees, sent it to my dad and he was like, �“We should put this out on our label.�” And so it began...

Our vision for this label is that

we want to consistently work with artists who are under the radar or developing, who are looking to be part of a family atmosphere. We very much want all of the bands past and present who have released music with F/D to get to know each other, play shows to-gether, and collaborate on music. I was fans of our two new bands, Holy Spirits and Mutual Bene t who we�’re re-leasing a split 12�” with, before a release was even a thought. Surreptitiously, they all met on the east coast and decided to do a few west coast shows together. We all sat down and talked when they got home and realized this split was just meant to be. Both bands have played shows with other F/D bands and they just t into our little puzzle perfectly.

I remember when being on a label meant you were part of a family who would take good care of you and your music. Some labels still operate like that today, but others are so disjointed that artists don�’t even know who else is on the roster. We want to continue growing our little community into something that both we and our bands can be proud to be a part of.

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What was the rst band you approached for Father/Daughter? How�’d that go?

I can�’t remember who I ap-proached rst�—it was either Family Trees or tooth ache. But both were super into the idea of releasing their music on vinyl and sharing it with the world through Father/Daughter. When I rst started the label I was living in Brook-lyn and myself, Family Trees, and my boyfriend all went to the Manhattan Inn in Green-point and we sat around for hours drinking and talking and laughing and realizing that we were all in it for the right reasons. It just clicked. Same with tooth ache, although we didn�’t meet until much later, pretty much depending upon email to get things done. Alex-andra is a true talent and she was so excited to be a part of the family.

Is your dad a fan of every-one on the roster? I bet he�’s a Levek fan.

My dad is indeed a fan of all the bands on our label. He is an integral part of the process because I fall in love with a new band every day, but he needs to listen to something

many times before deciding if he really likes it. Pretty sure my dad freaked when he rst heard Levek�—he�’s a magi-cal musician. My dad also sends me music to listen to and consider for the label. It�’s really cool because I�’ve got a very special bond with my dad now because of this and I think the bands who we in-volve with the label also share in it. We�’re willing to help our bands in whatever ways pos-sible, because we want the world to notice these good, truly talented people.

Vinyl�’s been growing lately, but obviously it�’s still very much a niche market. What have some of the ups and downs been in your rst year running the label? What�’s the hardest part of transfer-ring songs to vinyl? The most rewarding aspect?

Vinyl was always going to be our rst medium. I come from the age where you buy vinyl, not only because you like the music, but because you want to collect it as a piece of art. It also doesn�’t hurt that any mu-sic sounds better on wax. I�’ve found that a lot of kids in their late teens to early twenties are starting to embrace vinyl for

45

�‘OMANIWOMAN�’DAVID LEVESQUE OF LEVEK

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those exact same reasons, but obviously you have to cater to the market, because in the end, it is still a business and we need to sell music for both the label and artists to survive. At this stage in the game, we only press limited quantities of vinyl because the demand is still so small, but I�’m hoping one day record players will outnumber all other formats. We offer all our releases digi-tally as well, but that�’s about it for now.

The most rewarding aspect is holding that record in my hands the day it comes back from the plant and admiring how beautiful the jackets and vinyl look. Putting the vinyl on my record player and making an afternoon of it. Listening to vinyl really is an experience.

I sort of look at vinyl as a revolt against the impersonal na-ture of mp3s. Do you agree? Do you think the market for vinyl will continue to grow as a result? Now that you have a close eye on everything vinyl, are there any trends you�’ve noticed?

I can see where you�’re com-ing from, but I�’m not sure I agree completely. Collectors

and buyers do so because it�’s a way of life for them: some make a hobby of it and others just appreciate how much better music sounds on vinyl. I believe there has always been a market for vinyl and the people who buy it always will. Music has become extremely impersonal and overly ac-cessible, and it�’s not as much about creating and devel-oping music, as much as it�’s about quantity and how fast it can be churned out. Our way of life is much more fast paced now. I would have to partially blame the internet for that and of course vinyl is the complete OPPOSITE. You have to spend the time cleaning the vinyl, placing the needle oh so gently on the record, taking the time to listen to a side of an album all the way through before having to ip it over. For me, listening to vinyl is cathar-tic and allows me to forget about the daily goings on and just zone out and appreci-ate some good music. I guess some people like their music a little faster paced than that.

I�’ve de nitely noticed that people are buying more vinyl and I think most labels are taking note too. Not sure how much more it�’ll grow, but I

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hope that kids growing up to-day can appreciate different formats and take the time out to actually listen and enjoy the music they buy.

Have you made any vinyl converts based off Father/Daughter? Convinced any friends to buy a turntable?

All of my friends buy vinyl, and I can�’t really say which of our customers are recent vinyl converts, but I�’d hope that by offering our releases in only one physical format, we�’ve created some vinyl lovers.

You started out with a couple excellent 7�”s and now have a split 12�” in the works. Will you continue to experiment and expand with different formats? What lies ahead for Father/Daughter?

Well I�’m super excited about the 12�”. This is not only our rst split, but also our rst foray into the longer format. It�’s an amazing release and both Mutual Bene t and Holy Spirits are two groups you�’ll be hear-ing about a lot in the future. I�’m just excited they were game for it! I do have some ideas that I�’d love to expand upon, but only time will tell if

things work out. In the future, I�’m hoping to start throwing some Father/Daughter pre-sented shows out here in San Francisco and get some west coast bands involved with the label. We�’re always looking to hear new music and make new friends so please, get in touch and say hi!

FATHERDAUGHTERRECORDS.COM

GETTING LUCKY ON THE INTERNET

There has been a rash of con-versations recently about the state of music blogging. There are articles lamenting the pace of blogs, posts instructing bands how to properly and effectively solicit their music to blogs, and endless speculation on whether the blogosphere is becoming overcrowded. While those articles might be nice for reference, ultimately they�’re fairly useless, because really, what success in music

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and double our output of original content. We decided on a name, created a new Wordpress blog, and asked the people at Hype Machine to switch Social Oil�’s feed to tympanogram�’s. Having our new blog on the Hype Ma-chine from the start was a huge positive for us, because the work we put in generated almost immediate results in the form of web traf c.

Now, Hype Machine is merely one of the ways we were able to get readers to notice our blog. There are plenty of blogs that don�’t put as much into their writing portion that are on Hype Machine, and that�’s ne for them. We�’ve always tried to make an effort to say more than �“I like this�” about any band or song we talk about. Readers want to know what a song sounds like; they respond to personal anecdotes and stories. �‘Good�’ is a subjec-tive term. If I can explain to a reader why I believe a song is good, and they agree, they�’ll be more apt to trust what I have to say in the future. Even if they don�’t agree with my opinion, I hope they�’ll have enough information before listening to the song to realize what they�’re getting them-

and music blogging comes down to is luck.

Like many artists, there are blogs that will always be over-looked. Like many blogs, there are some artists that will never be heard by anyone other than their family and friends. Sometimes it doesn�’t matter how hard an artist or blog-ger works�—sometimes it just comes down to luck. We have been, and continue to be, lucky with tympanogram.

Back in November of 2008 I started my own blog: a Word-press hosted, one-post-a-day out t called Social Oil. I don�’t remember much of what I rst wrote about. I do know I did a Top 8 of 2008 with the Fleet Foxes taking home the top spot. Later in January of 2009, Social Oil was picked up by the MP3 blog aggregator Hype Machine�—a site that receives almost 2 million hits every month and includes roughly 1,500 blogs in its direc-tory.

Around the same time, my friend Dave started writing his own blog. Rather than have us both write about the same new band, it made sense for us to work with each other

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selves into.

Dave and I have to concen-trate on the writing, because we don�’t know anything about SEO, keywords, etc. We know good music, and we want to write about it. Smarter people have thankfully taken the guesswork out of the web end of things, meaning we can spend our time talking about what we love. Sure, it takes some knowledge of coding and design to get things done, but there were other bloggers who were will-ing to lend a hand when we needed it.

Since starting the blog, we�’ve come in contact with lots of people who share our passion for music, and we�’ve even been able to add a few as writers. They round the blog out and make it accessible to more readers. They make us a more complete place to dis-cover music, and I�’m grateful for their time.

We tried to center our search for new writers around New York, our area of the country: we have three writers who live in Rochester (plus me and Dave), another who lives just south of Buffalo, and two

students who live in the United Kingdom (we overshot a bit there). We have a journal-ist, a PR person, an engineer, and a guy with multiple music degrees. Every one of our writ-ers has different tastes, and almost all of us (except for the British counterparts) have full-time jobs. Some people have families. But whatever we are outside of the blog, we all share a passion for music, and I think that shows in our writers�’ ability to speak uently about what they nd exciting�—whether that�’s IDM or rap or prog-metal.

The most important way we�’ve been fortunate, however, is with our readers. I�’ve said quite often that people who read music blogs can get an MP3 most everywhere, but they return to read a blog because they connect with the writer. We�’re fortunate that people have connected with what we have to say. Maybe they don�’t comment very often, but we know they�’re there: clicking on links, post-ing on Facebook, retweeting. We�’re thrilled that they want to share what they�’ve found through our blog.

Through tympanogram, we�’ve 50

met great people, whether in bands or people in the Roch-ester community. We�’ve been given press passes to NxNE in Toronto, we�’ve done inter-views with bands we genuine-ly love like Best Coast, We Are Scientists, Blitzen Trapper, and Mayer Hawthorne. Dave and I both contribute to a local alternative newspaper, City Newspaper, where we write about music taking place at the local level�—and we actu-ally get paid to do it. Sure, that income�’s not going to pay the rent, but it�’s still rewarding, and it gives us more access to the industry we so enjoy.

We�’ve also been able to put together a handful of shows over the past year: two with our friends in These Electric Lives, one with The Static Jacks, another with Young Empires, and another with Big Hurry. Not unlike the blog, we�’re learning on the y, but everyone has been receptive and supportive of what we�’re doing both with the blog and in Rochester.

I don�’t know what we�’re going to do next. We have ideas, but nothing has really taken shape at this point. I think the most important thing I realized was

that the blog should never be viewed as an end, but always as a means. The way we han-dle the blog and its growth will allow us to expand into differ-ent arenas. Maybe we won�’t be successful at everything we try (we�’ve never made money on a show, for example), but the fact is that tympanogram has opened lots of doors for us, and I�’m excited to take advantage of everything that it brings our way.

Sometimes newer blogs ask us how we got to where we are, whether that�’s in terms of size, how we got on Hype Ma-chine, or how we were able to interview certain bands. The honest answer is that we were patient, we worked hard, and we got lucky. There�’s no formula to any of this. We can give some pointers on what we know helped us to grow (talk a lot on Twitter), but in the end it�’s really about being in the right place at the right time and being appreciative of the opportunities with which you�’re presented. And that holds true far beyond blog-ging.

�—ANDY KLINGENBERGERTYMPANOGRAM.COM

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BEER, BON IVER, AND THE BIBLE BELT

If you�’ll take that exit, we�’re right there off the highway. Just look for the two giant palm trees bookending the truck stop sign and you�’ll be to town in no time. Head over the bridge and don�’t turn by the tracks or you�’ll tack an-other 4 minutes onto your trip over here, worrying us all that you were stopped by one of our small town cops simply because you�’ve got out of state plates. Hit the stop light (you won�’t get confused, it�’s the only one we have) and just keep going straight. Round that corner and make a right by the supermarket, the one they just painted, but looked as if it had stepped off a post-card from 1964 just a week ago. I�’m down the road there. You won�’t get lost: It�’s tiny here and we live right in the middle of town.

In the front of the house is

my street, fairly well-traveled despite being a dead-end. Across from our house is the house I grew up in; the one that housed my mother for a time when she was younger. Behind the house, seen through the tiny kitchen win-dow that hasn�’t opened since the Kennedy administration, are woods.

The other day I found a baby possum in the yard. Last sum-mer we found baby raccoons and had to phone the con-servation guy�—call him Red. Over the winter, I made a pot of beans, burnt them because I do not excel at making pots of beans, and then decided I didn�’t wanna fuck with the pot because that might suck up a whole thirty minutes I could be using to...well, not wash a dirty pot because seriously, who fucking does that? The snow on the ground couldn�’t deter me and on the way out to dispose of my mess in the woods, I looked up and was face to face with three giant deer. Yes, that happened in the middle of town. Yes, that crock pot was biodegradable. Yes, I promise.

In this town, there are no con-cert venues. No concerted ef-

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fort by school administrators to put signi cant thought, work, or money into the arts, though you bet your ass we�’ll ght for some money for the Agricul-ture Soils team, man. There are three restaurants, none of which offer patrons an icy Budweiser with their meal, and at least one of which will likely close in the next few months only to be re-opened by someone looking to cash in on the tourists that end up in town for a whole of 18 seconds in the summer months.

I grew up here. I was raised running barefoot in the road and racing down the big hill at the supermarket up the street, well after dark. When I was young my mother was home with us everyday, and while for some reason I remember very little of my formative years, I remember music. My mother, the cleaner, the list-maker, the worrier, had, just behind the heavy front door, a record player. I remember it vaguely: I don�’t ever recall touching it, but I don�’t recall being told not to, either. In the mornings, she would get into the cabinet below the turntable and snag vinyl: Bob Seger, Willie Nelson, REO Speedwagon, Kris Kristoffer-

son, and The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, the of cial band of my family�—no shit. I remem-ber my dad, a truck driver (with a pretty fucking sweet driving record, mind you, not one of those guys who wears gloves to maneuver a steering wheel), washing his diesel on the weekends with the doors

wide open so he could hear the Allman Brothers or the Bee Gees. I remember standing in the gravel below him as he sat in the cab and urged me to listen to �“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.�” I recollect that it was the rst time I heard anything by a Beatle.

In my teen years, there were gravel roads. I swear to Christ, you have not lived until you�’ve driven 8 miles an hour for the last three, Busch Light can in between your legs, while you seriously groove on some Dwight Yoakam. You have not truly had a good time until you�’ve gathered by a creek with a bevy of friends, Wil-lie Nelson blasting, while you forced your little sister to drink

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all that goddamn Boone�’s Farm Wine (she appreciated it later, don�’t worry). Those times, those bits and pieces that I remember while my soul was learning to recognize and navigate the world, all have something in common�—and it�’s not the booze. It�’s the music. I was young once and I remember almost nothing, yet I remember all the words to the Daredevil�’s �“Road to Glory.�” Speaking of, Google that shit. You�’ll thank me.

I�’m grown now and I still don�’t remember shit. I couldn�’t tell you the last time I balanced my checkbook (Wednesday, maybe?) or the last time I got my oil changed, but I can re-count the exact feeling I had when I decided to name my kid after the Beatles song that, at one point in my life, had caused me to repeatedly lay an ear next to a tape player speaker on the oor while I wept. I can�’t tell you if that milk in the fridge is expired, but I can tell you where I rst kitchen danced with a man I love and who was singing in the background.

All of these things, these memories now rendered back in a dreamlike halcyon, are a

by-product, I believe, of where I�’m from. Without this street, there would be no years-long obsessions with Ryan Adams�—and really, how sad of a life is that? That year spent listening to nothing but Tori Amos, even as I dreamt away at night, wouldn�’t have come to pass. In short, I don�’t think I would be me. I�’d be a suckier more square me. And nobody likes squares.

You might not believe me, and that�’s your right I guess, but there is a direct correlation between the place that I live, the people who raised me, and how I feel about music and it�’s power. I�’m not say-ing that everybody doesn�’t have the same thing, those of us from here and those of you from way over there. In fact, I�’m saying that we all have this very same thing. Certainly where you lived, where you learned about life through break-ups and basketball game chants and prom, prob-ably shaped you a little. Yeah, high school and the years immediately after it blew for most of us, we band of merry music nerds, but there was also something good there. We�’ve come out on the other side, and if not for those ghts

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with your friends over whether or not a David Gray jam made an excellent Homecoming theme song, we might not all be fans and hardcore lov-ers of what we are fans and hardcore lovers of. And by the way, DAVID GRAY WAS A GREAT FUCKING CHOICE YOU GUYS.

I don�’t know what it�’s like where you lived when you were young or where you live now. I�’ve never been there...unless where you live happens to be on the cross country route we took during that family vacation my senior year to the east coast. Fuck, even then I would�’ve only been in your town for like, long enough to eat at your touristy lobster joint. But, I digress. How I feel about music is probably similar to the way you feel about it. EXCEPT! Except, that you didn�’t have to wade through Clint Black and Toby Keith to nd Middle Brother. You didn�’t have to endure Tracy Law-rence (DON�’T Google that shit) but instead, you lucked out when Arcade Fire played that venue around the cor-ner 6 years ago. If I walk into the local coffee joint (which also happens to sell various foodstuffs and shing licenses

and minnows and whatnot) and ask what the farmer at the table next to me thinks of the new Black Keys album, I�’m gonna get looked at as if I�’m Noam Chomsky crashing an NRA party. I bet you don�’t get that in your town. No, you get the Daytrotter tour within 100 miles of you. No big deal though, IT�’S NOT LIKE I�’M JEAL-OUS OR ANYTHING.

Unless. Unless you come from where I come from (which, coincidentally, sounds just like a fucking country song): the sticks, the Bible Belt as it�’s been called. And then you know what it�’s like. You know how utterly glorious it was to be alive on the day when you re-placed, in your head, the lyrics to a George Strait song with the lyrics of the most wonder-ful band you just discovered on a fellow friendly blogger�’s playlist. You know what it�’s like to turn one of your friends from here onto something, know-ing they�’d never have heard it without your sweet fucking mixtape. And you�’d know how utterly and all consum-ingly badass it is to enjoy a canned beverage of the Miller variety while slow jamming to �“Time of the Preacher.�” We like the same things as you,

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us smart ones anyway, yes. Maybe we feel it the same�—I can�’t say for sure�—but I tend to believe that we engrave it into our bones a little deeper than you might, because we had to earn our love for that shit.

So we�’ll let you keep that concert venue just a taxi�’s ride away. I�’ll let you keep your safe assumptions that Bon Iver�’s tour will stop within 30 minutes of your house this time around. I won�’t even give you hell for throwing away your ticket stub to the Railroad Revival Tour because, why the hell would you keep it? Us though? We�’d frame that shit, because we probably spent a grand and 12 hours in a car to see it. Over here, where I live, we�’re okay with the lack of anything remotely like Fleet Foxes playing on the radio. For now we�’ll be sitting in the back of the truck, down at the creek, jamming on some High-waymen while we talk about the next Megafaun record, the vinyl of which we�’ll have to procure via the internet due to our aforementioned geo-graphical location.

�—SAMANTHA KRAMERFOLKHIVE.COM

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