GENERIC LABEL INTERVIEWS, PART 2

At the end of last issue, I included two interviews where I asked two labels the exact same set of questions. I guess this is part two of that, featuring Zach of Fuck Music Productions and Hagamoto of Discos Al Pacino. Here are the questions (followed by the responses):

1) When did you first start releasing records? What made you decide to do that?

2) How would you describe the type of stuff you release?

3) How do you typically distribute your releases?

4) When you look at larger labels who release similar things, do you think about handling yourself the same way they do? How do you think you’d deal with it if there was suddenly a demand for tens of thousands of copies of your releases?

5) Has there been anything frustrating for you about releasing records?

6) Were there any releases you wanted to do that fell through?

7) Is there a release you’ve been happiest with?



NOT VERY NICE/FUCK MUSIC PRODUCTIONS


1) I first started my old label, Not Very Nice Tapes around 2004, and then another label called Fuck Music Productions about a year or so later, and eventually quit NVN Tapes around the end of 2007. I released about 20 tapes on NVN during this time. I now do CDRs on NVN, as well as 7”s and CDs when I have the money. I wanted to start a tape label because there weren’t too many left (still aren’t, really) and I was really inspired by labels like Wheelchair Full of Old Men, Cadaverizer Records, Chaotic Noise, Xenomorph, GWOP Recordings, Stupidity Records, etc etc. I eventually started releasing records and CDs when the finances for those became available aka I got a job.

2) With FMP, 90% noisecore, 10% other noisy types of stuff. With NVN, mostly hardcore/punk/thrash/grind type stuff.

3) Mostly by direct mailorder, which works OK. I really don’t trade anymore because I just want to run a label and not a distro so much.

4) I don’t really think about it too much cause I don’t think there are any bigger labels releasing noisecore anymore, hell, I don’t think there are even 500 noisecore fans left in the world, so it’s not something I worry about. It would be great if there was suddenly a demand for tens of thousands of copies of Earwigs records, but I don’t think it’ll be happening anytime soon unfortunately.

5) Just not having enough money to do everything I want to. I have a ton of ideas and not enough funds to do them, which is kind of frustrating.

6) Not really. For a brief period, there was plans for the upcoming Genital Masticator/Vaginal Disorder split 7” to actually be a Genital Masticator/Traci Lords Loves Noise split 7”, but Billy from TLLN didn’t really want the old TLLN stuff to be on vinyl, he said it was really just meant for tapes. I think a Genital Masticator/TLLN split 7” would have gone down in history as the noisiest piece of vinyl ever made (although Vaginal Disorder isn’t anything to shake a stick at either!).

7) Well, I’m proud of all my releases really, but I’m still listening quite a bit to the Earwigs 7” I put out of their 1st demo tape from 1990, that one is pretty great. I still have a bunch of copies left for cheap if anyone is interested.



DISCOS AL PACINO

1) I started my label in 1997. To answer the why in a roundabout way, I've always thought that the purest way to do music is to do it all yourself, and that includes releasing it. Give stuff you've created to someone else and you give that other someone an amount of input into your work. Another label is going to market your music and band the way they see fit (by marketing, I also mean ads on myspace and message boards, and all other bedroom label tactics for getting the word out about their releases), which may or may not be fine depending on how sure you are that the label has the same understanding about what you're trying to get across with your work as you do. The vast majority of the time there will likely be differences, though many bands just put those differences aside in the name of getting their name out or getting scene points or whatever, and most bands probably don't even give such issues any thought at all. I always did give it a lot of thought though--maybe too much, but in any case, as cheesy as it looks when I type it, my label is sincerely about keeping music as pure as possible.

2) Nearly all of my releases have been of bands I'm in or am well acquainted with. All of those bands are either grindcore or death metal, and a good number of them are cheap, though a few have been big names. I would like to say I only put out heavy pure grind, but it just doesn't work out that way. To paraphrase a friend of mine who does a label, I'd rather put out records of my friends than of bands I like that I don't even know. Not to say that I don't like my friends' bands...Um...

3) All through either trading, wholesale, or direct sales through my website (i.e., people seeing my website and sending cash through the mail). I did a little bit of consignment in the past with Vacuum when they were around, but consignment was too big a hassle so I stopped that. It was never a goal to get my releases well distributed; actually I always thought the people who would dig in the underground to find my releases would be the ones who would appreciate them the most, and those are the people I want to have the records anyway, so it's in a way more satisfying *not* to distribute your releases so they are in every distro on the internet. Even the times when I sold or traded copies to some huge label like Relapse, they only got about 5 or 10 copies. Hypocritically, however, in Japan, where I live now, my releases are in a lot of stores because the scene here is much bigger than other places, and I sell my releases in bulk to Obliteration who then distros them as he sees fit to stores and elsewhere. So I guess that kind of negates what I typed in the first part of this paragraph. Guh.

4) I don't look to mimic larger labels because my goals are different from larger labels, as you can see from what I've written to the previous questions. Larger labels are working towards making some money, making some scene points, getting their releases widely distributed, etc.; none of those are concerns for me. The big difference I think is the viewpoint on the financial side. From the start I have made a concious effort to take money out of the picture when it comes to making decisions about my releases. Making my costs back is not even a consideration; not that it couldn't happen, but I just don't care either way. I want to put out records and so I pay the money to do it. It's just the cost of my hobby. Larger labels have an entirely different outlook.

5) The big thing is pricing. Records and CDs have the same unit cost and yet trade at a rate of 3 or 4 to 1 and are sold at about the same ratio. Frustrating about underground labels/distros in general is that stuff is jacked up so much above the unit cost. It seems stupid to me that a CD should sell for $10 when it costs $1.50 to make. People can make up all the rationalizations they want but the truth is it's unnecessary milking of customers, and if labels would just put as much thought into contributing to the underground as they do into internet marketing, prices could become more reasonable. Again, as with question #3, I sell CDs for $8 so I have done my share of milking and rationalization as well. I try to keep a lid on it as best I can, for what that's worth...

6) This is going to sound like a name dropping session...There was supposed to be a Pantalones/Captain Clean Off 7" around 2000 but CCO only sent me 3 minutes of songs, and I wasn't about to release a record with only 3 minutes for one of the bands, so I told them that and it kind of fell apart at that point. I was really into CCO at the time so that was disappointing. Also the Pantalones/Wadge part 2 and Pantalones/Dataclast part 2 splits never came about for unknown reasons, probably just people weren't too motivated to get the songs together. I was hoping for a Bodies Lay Broken/Sanitys Dawn split around 2002 but SD ended up sending songs they were going to put on a CD and when I asked them if they could send me unreleased stuff the drummer got angry and told me basically use what we gave you or fuck off. There was an example of why not to attempt releases with bands you don't know. I was a huge SD fan so I wrote to them to try to set up the record and my efforts blew up on me. And now I hate SD. Well, maybe that's a bit strong, but anyway.

7) They all have their own little stories behind them that give them their own meaning for me so I don't really prefer one over another. Maybe musically I like some more than others but just as releases I guess I'm happy with all of them. If I'm forced to cite one as particularly notable, I suppose I could say the last release I did, which was a CD actually, the Brob album, because it ended up as overall a pro-quality product, and I'd never ended up with a release like that before, so that was kind of neat.