The past doesn't haunt me so much as it makes me laugh and shake my head...
This is the first I'm hearing about this:
“As part of EMI's merger into Universal Music Group, the combined company had to divest some assets. Several EMI-owned labels and their catalogues were placed into the Parlophone Label Group, including I.R.S. Records. This group is now to be sold to Warner Music Group, a move that will bring the entire R.E.M. catalogue under common ownership, as WMG owns Warner Bros. Records, which was the band's home from 1988 until their 2011 break-up.”
This all went down in February, yet there was nary a word written about it; I certainly had no idea. Oh, how I loved the I.R.S. label - I wanted to record for them. I wanted to work for them... It didn't matter - to have been on I.R.S. with the likes of R.E.M., The Buzzcocks, The Cramps, etc. would have been more than a dream come true. It didn't happen, naturally, but hey - it's good to dream, nonetheless. But, of course, as one gets much older and has lived several different lives, it made me think back yet again...
When the band first started as Two Minutes Hate, in August '83, we were all teenagers. We lived with our parents in the suburbs and had no money. When we were able to scrape together the necessary funds, we went into a recording studio and recorded a four-song cassette - really, a demo, but you would call it "an e.p." so that it would sound convincing when you wanted to try to book a show. This was how you did it; this was the drill. Do a cassette, play some shows and try to make enough money to do a second e.p. of a higher studio quality that you could sell and send off to record labels - at the time there were plenty and it wasn't impossible to think you may get signed by someone. If you didn't get signed by virtue of your cassettes, at least you might make enough money to pool your collective resources to record a single. A 45 was a sure step towards a label deal.
In a nutshell, this is exactly the roadmap we followed. 2 cassette e.p.'s, a lot of gigs, more studio time and then... Two Minutes Hate disintegrated, with our drummer moving to New Jersey and our guitarist leaving to go to college. Of course, this is where we shifted direction and decided to "stop being English" and the formation of The Punch Line began to take root. Naturally, we picked up where we left off and when we were, indeed, The Punch Line, we went to the studio and recorded "The Wild Flowers" single. Admittedly, it took me well over 20 years to not hate the song but rather to be proud of it - it's good for what it was and great for the way it sounded; great for its time, especially from a band whose members still lived with their moms and dads. But we used that single to gain college radio airplay, more gigs and most importantly, trying to get a damn label deal. And I did the work, dutifully stuffing envelopes with Punch Line propaganda and a copy of the 45. Enigma showed a lot of interest - they had released one of my favorite albums, "Emergency Third Rail Power Trip" by The Rain Parade; they had The Del Lords and The Smithereens, who were locals from New Jersey, and a licensing deal to release Wire albums in the United States - this could be good. But they were having financial problems; that wasn't going to fly. So I made a full throttled attempt to get us on I.R.S. After all, they'd just lost R.E.M. to Warner Bros. anyway.
A few months after I'd gone on this promotion/label hunt blitz, The Punch Line quietly ceased to exist; this was around June, 1988. And in the first few days of '89, I'd finally gotten a letter from I.R.S. saying they liked what they heard - come back to them after we recorded and submitted something else. I can't remember the name of the woman who wrote/sent it, but that was one cruel irony...
Oh well. By that time, all the "cool" bands had long-departed I.R.S. anyway. So did it really matter?
Uh... I'll get back to you on that one.
“As part of EMI's merger into Universal Music Group, the combined company had to divest some assets. Several EMI-owned labels and their catalogues were placed into the Parlophone Label Group, including I.R.S. Records. This group is now to be sold to Warner Music Group, a move that will bring the entire R.E.M. catalogue under common ownership, as WMG owns Warner Bros. Records, which was the band's home from 1988 until their 2011 break-up.”
This all went down in February, yet there was nary a word written about it; I certainly had no idea. Oh, how I loved the I.R.S. label - I wanted to record for them. I wanted to work for them... It didn't matter - to have been on I.R.S. with the likes of R.E.M., The Buzzcocks, The Cramps, etc. would have been more than a dream come true. It didn't happen, naturally, but hey - it's good to dream, nonetheless. But, of course, as one gets much older and has lived several different lives, it made me think back yet again...
When the band first started as Two Minutes Hate, in August '83, we were all teenagers. We lived with our parents in the suburbs and had no money. When we were able to scrape together the necessary funds, we went into a recording studio and recorded a four-song cassette - really, a demo, but you would call it "an e.p." so that it would sound convincing when you wanted to try to book a show. This was how you did it; this was the drill. Do a cassette, play some shows and try to make enough money to do a second e.p. of a higher studio quality that you could sell and send off to record labels - at the time there were plenty and it wasn't impossible to think you may get signed by someone. If you didn't get signed by virtue of your cassettes, at least you might make enough money to pool your collective resources to record a single. A 45 was a sure step towards a label deal.
In a nutshell, this is exactly the roadmap we followed. 2 cassette e.p.'s, a lot of gigs, more studio time and then... Two Minutes Hate disintegrated, with our drummer moving to New Jersey and our guitarist leaving to go to college. Of course, this is where we shifted direction and decided to "stop being English" and the formation of The Punch Line began to take root. Naturally, we picked up where we left off and when we were, indeed, The Punch Line, we went to the studio and recorded "The Wild Flowers" single. Admittedly, it took me well over 20 years to not hate the song but rather to be proud of it - it's good for what it was and great for the way it sounded; great for its time, especially from a band whose members still lived with their moms and dads. But we used that single to gain college radio airplay, more gigs and most importantly, trying to get a damn label deal. And I did the work, dutifully stuffing envelopes with Punch Line propaganda and a copy of the 45. Enigma showed a lot of interest - they had released one of my favorite albums, "Emergency Third Rail Power Trip" by The Rain Parade; they had The Del Lords and The Smithereens, who were locals from New Jersey, and a licensing deal to release Wire albums in the United States - this could be good. But they were having financial problems; that wasn't going to fly. So I made a full throttled attempt to get us on I.R.S. After all, they'd just lost R.E.M. to Warner Bros. anyway.
A few months after I'd gone on this promotion/label hunt blitz, The Punch Line quietly ceased to exist; this was around June, 1988. And in the first few days of '89, I'd finally gotten a letter from I.R.S. saying they liked what they heard - come back to them after we recorded and submitted something else. I can't remember the name of the woman who wrote/sent it, but that was one cruel irony...
Oh well. By that time, all the "cool" bands had long-departed I.R.S. anyway. So did it really matter?
Uh... I'll get back to you on that one.
posted by R L Ross at
5:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home