It's been a bit crazy to see the amount of posturing and politics going on these past couple months with the amount of labels mining the current Powerpop Reissue craze. I thought it was all good competitive fun, the above board equivalent of the KBD rush to market jobs of the mid-90s. Har Har.
But earlier today, I caught wind of an email from everybody's favorite "YOU'VE BEEN BOOTLEGGED" CDR compiler. Apparently the ante has been upped, here's an excerpt from an email, written to an artist on the new Numero comp no less:
I'm probably late to the dance again, but I have finally gotten my
act together to re-configure ... a much-expanded series of
regional compilation LPs with bonus CDs - and we're beginning with
Chicago. There's all kinds of great material, of course, but just as
I and my friend J**** got ready to launch, the news came that Numero had
contracted with a couple of record-collectors to assemble an Illinois
sampler. The bands for the latter have been announced and it's an
assortment of obvious "low-hanging fruit" - Shoes, Vertebrats, Names,
Jets, The Kind - plus a bunch of super-obscurities that seem chosen
more because the compilers had copies they wanted to sell than for
actual, consistent musical value. J**** and I conferred for all of
about 30 seconds before we decided that we'd do best to go
head-to-head with a superior Chicago [-only] volume.
Yes, you read correctly. The absolute
KING of compiling "low-hanging fruit" and "super-obscurities that seem chosen
more because the compiler has copies they wanted to sell than for actual, consistent musical value" has officially called the kettle black. Well C****, while your modus operandi may have served you well 15 years ago (esp. at your save a penny jar royalty rate), it hasn't gotten us very far in 2012. I'll tell y'all something about this Numero comp you probably won't see in any liner notes...
While our old compiler friend has spent the last 10 years counting, er, "retooling" the utter dregs of the stale store stock he bought out in the 90s, the "record collectors" in question have spent the last 10 years digging up unheard and overlooked records: specifically in Illinois. Literally Half the stuff on the Numero comp has been unearthed/championed within the last 3-4 years. As disappointing as it is from my own collecting standpoint, I have yet to see one "stock copy" let alone a "stack" of copies of any one of these releases. I have received nothing for my work. I don't yet own some of these records, the three of us have just 1 or 2 copies between us, all procured long before we caught wind of a Chicago comp. The records aren't out there in band members closets like they used to be.
I am friends with the folks at Numero, I asked frankie and the other guy to help out because, between the 3 of us, we've pretty much seen it all from Illinois. The goal was to give an overview of the Illinois powerpop scene, which, on a whole, was a commercial minded "let's make it big" bar scene. About half of it is obvious scene bands & classics, including a couple whose songs are arguably not total killers, because they were highly influential on all the other bands. The other half is made up of the strongest tracks culled from the 3 deepest Illinois powerpop collections you will find. Many of these were previously "secret" records that us collectors begrudgingly shared for the good of the comp. In the end, we didn't make the final selections, only provided the most comprehensive roster we could, Numero took it and ran with it. They licensed every track on there (do you know what that is?), and as such there were some difficult omissions because of contractual issues and deadlines. In the end, the Buttons series will likely be a break even endeavor, a labor of love, and a lot of fun for us involved.
I'm all for playful competition. Bad-mouthing the competition, unprompted, directly to an artist on their label is some petty shit. We're all curious what kind of "Superior" tracklist you're planning to serve up, hopefully you can do a bit better than BOHEMIA, especially since you'll have to do without all the "low-hanging fruit." Good luck, and remember, YOU SAID IT.
For the compilers out there, I imagine the manure flinging can only get worse, what, with another 50 states to fight over.
Show Posts
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
