Basquiat

1996

Benicio del Toro explains the business of art to Jeffrey Wright.

I received this package in today’s mail. Except it’s not really a package; it’s a glow stick shoved into a 1st Class Royal Mail prepaid letter envelope and mailed (awkwardly) from Manchester to Los Angeles. It’s a miracle that it arrived in one piece.

The glow stick is supposed to promote Tony Wilson’s In the City conference, coming up again this October.

What an outrageous and probably futile gesture, poorly executed (where are the padded mailers?) with absolutely no concern for what things actually cost. Yet it’s totally awesome and extremely punk rock.

That could be the epitaph for both Factory Records and the Haçienda night club. When word came that Tony Wilson had died this evening in Manchester, I thought today’s package could serve as an epitaph for him as well.

Tony wanted everyone to believe that Peter Saville’s original die-cut sleeve design for New Order’s “Blue Monday” 12″ was so expensive to produce that Factory actually lost money on each copy sold.

Whether it was true was irrelevant, the story made a point: art trumps commerce and business is just another venue for situationist spectacle. We should be so lucky that it were.

Here’s an interview from 1988:

THE EASYBEATS

“Something Wrong”

The longer version of this commercial doesn’t make their future look any better. I did remember that the song is by the Easybeats, a band that managed to be both the Beatles & the Stones for Australians.

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:

PLAN 9

“I Can’t Stand This Love, Goodbye”

(Rhode Island 1981)

Plan 9 seemed like the Peoples Temple of the psychdelic revival bands.

The band was led by couple of 60s survivors who herded an army of young boys, teaching them the lost folk arts of the garage band.

I love this 45 because the band was savvy enough to cover an Others song from Pebbles volume 10. That led (either directly or indirectly) to a deal with Greg Shaw’s Voxx Records. Since Pebbles compilations were technically bootlegs, Greg claimed they were “Australian imports” but pretty much everyone knew he put them out.

Unfortunately for Plan 9, Voxx declined to make picture sleeves for “I Can’t Stand This Love, Goodbye.”

In 1981, this was a disaster on the level of being signed to a major label and not getting to make a video for MTV. A 45 sleeve was your most important advertising tool and usually the first impression a band made on the word. No picture sleeve = not important to your label.

Plan 9 took matters into their own hands. They designed their own sleeve (or took the sleeve design that Voxx declined to use) and made their own picture sleeves with a color photocopier.

In 1981, an odd size copy like this one cost about $2.00. Singles sold for maybe $3.00. I don’t know what the band paid Greg for each record but I think they might have been losing money on each one they sold just so they didn’t face the shame of going sleeveless.

• Download “I Can’t Stand This Love, Goodbye”

(Voxx Records 45-1005)

GIRLS AGAINST BOYS

“Bulletproof Cupid” & “My Night of Pleasure”

Live at JC Dobbs, Philadelphia 1993

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.