When you work in music, the wake-up call comes when you’re forced to give up your romantic notions about the nobility of the artistic process.
Art is a nasty business, just as nasty as highway construction, venture capital or any other pursuit that involves trading products or services for money.
I’m reminded of this by Alan McGee’s attack on My Bloody Valentine in a new Guardian article about the revival of shoegaze. Read it here.
Alan started Creation Records, the label that released MBV’s Loveless album. Here’s his quote from the article: “Bloody nonsense. My Bloody Valentine were my comedy band. Ride were different - they were a rock band, really, a fantastic rock band - but My Bloody Valentine were a joke, my way of seeing how far I could push hype.”
Alan has good reason to dislike MBV’s Kevin Shields. The band spent an enormous amount of time and money making Loveless, so much that they pushed Creation’s finances to the brink of label collapse. After the album failed to recoup its costs, Creation let the band move to Island Records. The press were appalled but, once Kevin had Chris Blackwell’s money, he returned to the studio and proceeded not to put out an album for the next fifteen years. If Axl was smarter, he’d point fingers at Kevin whenever anyone starts asking questions about when he’s going to release Chinese Democracy.
Maybe Alan’s just trying to amuse himself; his talents as a provocateur rival his abilities as one of the world’s great record men. But calling My Bloody Valentine a “joke” sounds like you’re calling Loveless a joke and questioning the judgment of anyone who fell for your scam in the first place.
My Bloody Valentine’s 1992 show at the Masquerade was one of the most epic I’ve ever seen, one that people in Atlanta talk about as much as the old folks go on about the Sex Pistols at the Great Southeast Music Hall or New Order’s first show at the 688. I’d even compare it to the first Jesus & Mary Chain show at the Channel in Boston; My Bloody Valentine may have been less confrontational during their set but the long-term impact was just as intense.
Loveless is a wonder. “Only Shallow” never fails to stop a room cold whenever it’s on a party tape. The album still acts like a secret signifier in your record collection; a copy of Loveless marks you as someone who knows where they keep the really good stuff.
And, make no mistake, Ride were an outstanding rock band. I saw for myself at the Cotton Club on the Going Blank Again tour. They showed up for work on time and cooperated with the local record company people. “Vapour Trail” and “Leave Them All Behind” are both classic songs that deserved a chance to be hits in America. But, at his best, Mark Gardener was a less charismatic version of The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess, plus everything had gone terribly wrong by the time Ride recorded their lifeless cover of The Creation’s “How Does It Feel to Feel” on their third album.
Here’s the problem: both Loveless and the 1992 My Bloody Valentine tour exist independently from the issue of what a jerk Kevin Shields might be. Once you put yourself behind the music, your own experiences can color how you hear the bands you’ve worked with.
I know this very well from my own experience. I’ve recently begun to make peace with one of my own nightmare projects from the early 90s. That record still has its flaws but so many people have testified to its virtues lately that I’ve started to separate the actual music from the experience of making it.
So, Alan: Ride was an outstanding band with two awesome albums that deserved a much better fate. But Loveless is lightning in a bottle. My Bloody Valentine changed lives, whether or not the individual band members deserved that privilege.
Sometimes I wish I knew a lot less about how the music gets made, but it’s the price you pay for working in the sausage factory. Attack Kevin all you want, but leave the music alone.
Here, watch some “Only Shallow.” It makes me forget all the bad parts:
When Girls Against Boys signed to DGC Records in 1995, people in the business believed it was the largest deal ever for an unproven rock band.
The legendary unpublished memoir Wasting Away: How the Major Labels Got Drunk on Punk Rock and Forgot Everything They Knew About the Record Business tells the story in grisly detail, but we’ll settle for the short version here.
GVSB waited three whole years to release Freak*On*ica on DGC in 1998. The album got lukewarm reviews and had weaker sales than their final album for Touch & Go.
Even though I was frustrated with the album (mostly because the band refused to take any A&R advice from me whatsoever), I didn’t distance myself from the band when it would have been a strong career move to let everyone forget that I spent a year following the band all over America and Europe.
Geffen/DGC got shut down, the artist contracts got transferred to Interscope and I was asked to leave the company shortly before Universal bought Girls Against Boys out of the balance of their contract.
You’d think I’d have more perspective on the foolishness after ten years, but watching this video convinces me that I’d do it all over again. This band should have saved alternative rock and spared us all the nü metal reign of terror. And they’re still the handsomest band in the history of rock.
“Bulletproof Cupid” is the best song from Venus Luxe, the album that started all the craziness. “My Night of Pleasure” has always been my favorite GVSB song. This performance was recorded just a few months before I first saw the band and it’s certainly $2 million worth of rock.
GVSB will perform Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby on July 20 in NYC at the Bowery Ballroom & July 22 in LA at the El Rey Theatre as part of All Tomorrow’s Parties “Don’t Look Back” Festival.
By 1993, there were at least 45 self-contained record companies that could offer full major-label funding and distribution to a new artist.* Hundreds of A&R reps were scouring the country to turn up bands that could make the next 5-million-selling alternative smash.
Things got a little crazy.
Motorolla were sold off in one of the weirdest auctions in music business history. Record companies decided that the Raleigh/Chapel Hill scene was a combination of Athens and Seattle and home of the next big thing.
Bo Taylor, formerly of Eight or Nine Feet, fronted Motorolla and also played guitar in Dish, a new band fronted by Dana Kletter of Blackgirls. Motorolla & Dish shared a manager and they all came up with a scheme where any label who wanted one band had to take the other.
The whole scenario was a extremely weird. Eight or Nine Feet were one of the thousands of Southern bands that bore a more than passing resemblance to R.E.M. They never got a record deal.
Bo tried again with Motorolla, a band who “played in the current style” that came into fashion in late 1991.
Dana quit blackgirls to form her own band. Quite a few folks thought the Dish sound bore a strong resemblance to the popular Little Earthquakes album.
The fact that these two bands had adopted new musical styles didn’t sit well with many on the local scene, but the record company A&Rs had seizures after they decided that either or both bands had that infinite alt-rock commercial potential.
I looked at it this way: in 1966, almost every band in America wanted to sound like the Rolling Stones. That turned out really well for everyone. When Bo decided to copy Seattle instead of Athens, he relaxed and found a style that gave some kick to his melodies. I liked Motorolla much more than Eight or Nine Feet and would have loved to sign the band. Unfortunately, I didn’t go for Dish and wouldn’t sign one band to get the other.
Interscope had no such hesitation. Interestingly, they wanted Dish and (unlike almost every other label) acted like Motorolla was just a throw-in to seal the deal.
Once the extremely large contract was signed, Motorolla had to change its name to Motocaster to satisfy the demands of corporate America.
Neither band had a real touring base before they made very expensive records. Interscope didn’t hear a hit on either album and both bands quickly became corporate writeoffs.
I really liked this single before the signing circus started and still like it more than ten years after Motorolla was erased from the corporate memory banks. I also like that the band did us the courtesy of releasing a 45; by the time the 90s rolled around, labels were scouring the country and lots of worthy bands skipped the vinyl stage in hopes they’d win the demo tape lottery.
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