Johnny Marr and PF Flyers raise money for charity with a limited edition sneaker
By: Arthur Javier
Signature footwear has been all the rage amongst the Indie elite. Just look at the name-dropping parade of “designers” that Nike assembled to make The Swoosh a legitimate member of skater culture: De La Soul, MF Doom, Dinosaur Jr. and Lily Allen, the confirmed heroes of a demographic that (unlike Nike’s other clientele) has never seen a basketball game. And so, at first, the headline, Johnny Marr Designs a Sneaker, smacked of Et tu, Brute. Thankfully, the story beyond the bold type thoroughly dispelled the scent of perfidy. PF Flyers, one of the original shoe giants now resurfacing as the pinnacle of cool, didn’t need Marr to legitimize them, and Marr, ethically and financially beyond an endorsement deal payday, was forwarding all proceeds to his favorite charity. To see if the shoe would also come with a limited edition Rockstar’s Guide to Not Selling Out, The Rockit contacted the man behind the collaboration: Doug Perkul, the managing director of Schatzi Marketing.
“A friend of mine is the drummer for the band Earlimart,” Perkul says, recalling the friend-of-a-friend circumstance by which he met Marr, “He stepped in as one of the drum techs on the Modest Mouse tour. When the band rolled through NY, [he] introduced me to Johnny Marr, who it turns out was already a big fan of PF Flyers. We discussed him designing a pair of shoes, and 2 minutes later I was writing down Johnny’s design ideas.” PF Flyers have been a staple of Marr’s onstage uniform, and the guitarist knew exactly what he wanted. The Johnny Marr Center Lo has a simple dark blue and black colorway, and instead of the Mr. Potatohead-logo-pasting found on most musician-sponsored shoes, only Marr’s signature, laser etched into the tongue, appears on the sneaker.
PF Flyers and its parent company New Balance limited the shoe’s production to 108 pairs in the US and 108 pairs in the UK. “We wanted to keep it small and really make sure that the folks that purchased the shoes got something really special and unique,” comments Perkul. However, production size is where the similarities end between the Johnny Marr Center Lo and all other limited edition shoes. Collectible footwear traditionally draws long lines and a 300% markup at small retailers, but Marr’s sneaker sale, which commenced on July 10th at midnight, was managed by the charities themselves in an online-only system, with each pair selling for $80 plus $20 shipping.
“All of the [money] is going directly to the charity – we are not even covering our hard costs, and Johnny is making no money off of this project,” says Perkul. Marr personally selected the charities involved. The Pictor School in Manchester is a special needs academy that Marr has been involved with for some time. The school serves around 100 pupils through individually tailored curriculums. The stateside charity is Cure Autism Now, which recently merged with Autism Speaks and now leads the funding for biomedical research into autism. The sale was an absolute success for both shores of the Atlantic, with every pair sold out before the week’s end.
The popularity of the shoe is a testament to Marr’s iconic status, which has never diminished though the guitarist has completed only one solo album in his prolific career. “Johnny is indie rock royalty,” Perkul replies when asked why he thought Marr was a good fit, “Getting involved with him was a no-brainer, and it turns out that Johnny can not only jam on a guitar, but he’s a great designer and a sweet guy that cares about special causes and making a difference. He’s the real deal.” Yes, he is.
For more examples of sponsorship done correctly, check out the premiere of the “Evil Bee” video by Menomena which was produced by PF Flyers and will premiere exclusively on their website from September 1st to November 1st. The video was directed by Stefan Nadelman and will, get this, not feature any brand name or product placement by the shoe company.
The Decemberists Get Called Up to the Majors
By: Arthur Javier
The Decmberists are the anachronous and uberliterate kings of the indie scene. So, when they signed to Capitol, many suspected abdication. After all, what would Capitol, whose stable of thoroughbreds includes everyone from The Beatles to Radiohead, want with artists so far removed from the mainstream, if not to remake them into something more “accessible.” To the surprise of fans and foes alike, the band emerged, souls unsold, with a contract that may prove to be a treaty between the indie and major label fiefdoms, implying serious changes in the nature of music scenes, the recording industry and the very idea of marketability.
Though The Decemberists sing about a land of crooked French-Canadians and Royal ubiquitous handycams, they hail from Portland. “Portland has been a great climate for creative types in general,” says John Moen, a twenty-year staple of the Portland scene and the newest member of the band. “I think it’s just that we’re living in a time where you don’t have to live in LA to make a name for yourself . . . It’s an easier time to promote yourself and live wherever.” Today’s music scene is one where the label can come to you, if you play your cards right.
The Decemberists certainly did. Don’t let the nineteenth-century sack suits fool you. No indie band uses the Web more effectively, “[The Internet] is second nature to them. It’s part of their world.” BitTorrent, MySpace, eBay, Pitchfork, and a plethora of internet contests and exclusives. Nielsen’s got nothing on download figures and Web participation data. Surely a label can’t deny a band’s success when they have 83,514 friends (including the all too well-connected Tom), but someone in charge still has to say the music is good.
“[One of the A&R reps] came from a metal background, like he worked for Megadeth and all these other bands back in the day and [the other] just had really eclectic taste, and I think they were both really excited to hear something that suited them, maybe personally. So they went to bat for us.” At a time when A&R has grown more Madison Avenue than Carnegie Hall, two reps pitched Capitol nothing more than their love of fifteen-minute songs, concept albums and artists who wore their obscurity on their sleeves. The Decemberists didn’t sell out; Capitol bought in.
The Crane Wife proved to be the longest recording process the band had experienced, and if the Capitol money bought anything, it was time. “[On Picaresque] they didn’t use a real studio, and they kind of built a studio in a church . . . this time it was a lot more considered and obviously there was more of a budget for everybody. So we basically got to go to a real studio with enough money to do it how we wanted to do it, and gave ourselves plenty of time . . . and didn’t make any quick decisions basically.” While Colin Meloy has progressed into a complex songwriter, this recording session was the first time the band’s own complexity was given time to flourish.
“We also didn’t learn all the songs before we went in. We knew a couple of them, but [on] most of them we all made up parts to a demo that Colin had built. It was just kind of a more considered process of hanging out together and saying, ‘well that doesn’t feel like it’s working’ [or] ‘maybe we need to be not so busy there’ and you kind of just chip away . . . but also no one felt panicked which was real nice.” The band, long unnoticed behind Colin’s dreamy blue eyes, asserts itself in a 13-minute prog-rock assault. Not that the album doesn’t also feature Colin at his full and muted acoustic best, but rather that the band’s self-editing delivered the most thought-out and thus fully realized version of The Decemberists. One that, while a bit unexpected, is unmistakably them.
Recent concert-goers are quite sure the new record deal hasn’t changed the band. “Colin just came up with this thing [one night] wherein we are The Decemberists Players.” The players perform History Channel (thus only semi-accurate) dramatizations of events like The Boston Massacre. “In a way, The Decemberists still play a little bit of a pub gig . . . We go out. We have a set list, and we figure out what the audience is feeling like . . . you make a couple of crummy jokes in between songs, and it’s not all that scripted . . . I think it’s good. It keeps it human. It’s not just the same songs every night.”
However, the band is well-aware of ticket prices, and before you write your ‘Where is all this Capitol money going?!?!’ hate mail, you should see them this Spring. “The last tour we did in the states we had a backdrop and some lanterns on stage. It looked real pretty, but they’re still just stationary objects . . . [On the Spring tour] we’re going to have a fantastic backdrop . . . and there’s gonna be someone who actually knows the songs doing the lights . . . [It will be] a visual experience as well as an aural one.” One wonders if The Decemberists even know how to sell out.
The most anticipated show of the tour is here at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a far cry from a Portland pub and proof positive that The Decemberists have successfully taken the major label step forward which has so classically brought bands two steps back.
by Arthur Javier
After Seattle-based indie rock outfit Carissa’s Wierd broke up, Ben Bridwell recalls wandering into the band’s old practice space.
“We were all living together still, but [weren’t] a band anymore," says Bridwell. "It was just more of a way to get out of the house and get some more alone time, but I just started messing around and trying to write some songs.”
The resulting album, a Phil Ek-produced requiem that rivals the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in bittersweet grandeur, softened the typefaces of music’s toughest critics. A year and a half later, Band of Horses has changed its lineup, seen the world, returned to Bridwell's native South Carolina and finished its second album. But for his sophomore effort, the Seattle veteran isn’t trying to live up to his first album’s success. He is just taking a second crack at this whole singing, songwriting and front man thing.
“I never thought that [singer/songwriter] would be my job in a band. I never thought that I was talented enough to be in a band at all,” Bridwell says. “[When I first started writing songs], there weren’t people patting me on the back and being like, ‘This is amazing.’ Nothing like that. It was just that I liked [writing and recording songs]. That’s what kept me going, and then other people started to perk up their ears, and I got more confident in translating it to stage. And that’s when we opened for Iron and Wine and I just knew that we had to, you know, fake it till you make it.”
The ‘faking it’ resulted in an album that often resorts to experimental tunings and cryptic lyrics that Bridwell refers to as smoke and mirrors. Critics didn’t seem to notice, praising the sound and going so far as to quote the album’s more intelligible lines.
“Who can even tell what I’m saying on that first record?” Bridwell laughs. “Maybe [the critics hear] their own words in their head, and that way they feel like we’re great poets and they don’t need to understand what I’m saying anyways.” For the second album, the band has put together a more straightforward and less smoky experience. “There are still some garbage phrases in [the new album],” Bridwell warns. “But I guess I just felt like I knew more what I was talking about [this time]. I feel like the stories contained within [the songs], I did them justice, lyrically.” The story on the band’s sophomore album is the end of Bridwell's 10-year love affair with Seattle, and his return to his hometown in South Carolina.
“On this record, probably around half of the songs were written when I was living in Seattle and half were written during the time I was living in South Carolina and I think there’s a lot of influence of just being home and being happier and of falling in love,” Bridwell explains. “In Seattle, things were going a bit dark at the end. [I was] falling into the same old traps: going to bars every night or getting affected by the weather sometimes . . . I like being [in Seattle] for the most part, it was just more about wanting to be near my family.” The return home gave the new album, as returning producer Phil Ek puts it, a more South Eastern sound.
“There're more keyboards on this album, more piano, more organ. We used some strings and some synth, but it all comes from the same place,” says Bridwell, remarking that he felt much more comfortable in his second tour as a front man in the studio. “Having a little bit of experience behind me helped out considerably, just knowing what to expect from Phil and what he expects from us helped out a lot. I think that was the major factor in why this has been so smooth. I wouldn’t say I’ve gotten that much better as a guitar player or a singer, but I definitely understood the studio a lot better this time, and knew if I was under the note singing, how to get to that note [Ek] was looking for or just phrasing things correctly. And not being afraid to say lyrics and stuff like that, and just growing more as that dude.”
Of course, Bridwell’s first major act as a front man dude was to hire some new blood after longtime friend and fellow Carissa’s Wierd refugee, Mat Brooke, left Band of Horses following the first album.
“Well, I think [the band on the new record] sounds great. I think we have a closer connection than the band on the first record. I love those guys on the first record, but I didn’t know them as well as the guys in the band now. They’re all more ‘bros’ or whatever,” Bridwell says. “We have confidence with the group that we have for sure, so much so that we [don’t] practice, and just show up and practice at sound check and start a tour.”
Ben Bridwell records and tours with his friends, he lives happily-ever-after in his hometown, and he can do no wrong with critics. It sounds like a golden ticket tour of Willy Wonka’s Rockstar Factory. It’s nice work if you can wander into it.
Spaceland launches a label to bring Silver Lake to the masses
by Arthur Javier
When asked about their favorite albums, the original hipsters proudly rattle off names that end in venues, like “at the Village Vanguard” or “at Newport,” but rock’s live catalog is of a much more maligned pedigree, tainted by various black sheep, from overdub-happy producers (Alive!) to thirsty bootleggers (“Go get me a double Pernod”). Of course, rock has occasionally unleashed its ya-yas and kicked out the jams, but today’s live album has regressed to little more than an over-rehearsed performance at an oversized venue brought to you in the form of an overpriced CD/DVD combo. That, of course, is when it doesn’t completely regress into a makeshift album, mixed on-site, and handed to you as you leave. Spaceland Recordings aims to change all that.
“[Spaceland owner Mitchell Frank] had been contemplating a label like this for years, and I had the experience, plan and intent to execute,” states KamranV, who paired his marketing/production company CyKiK with Frank's Spaceland Productions to form Spaceland Recordings. This new label enters the supposed future of the recording industry with live and exclusive content. It is big business, populated by media moguls and an abundance of money-making upstarts. But Spaceland isn’t driven by the almighty dollar. If it were, then it would have the worst business model ever: record fledgling artists whose current fan base is composed entirely of penniless hipsters.
Instead, the label’s focus is on documenting and disseminating the Silver Lake scene, hipster cries of “Judas” be damned. The label’s first releases were titled Mondays in Spaceland and showcased the bands serving weekly residencies. These included bands like Darker My Love, who were still retooling their live shows but had "I saw them when" written all over them. In time, recordings spread to other nights of the week, and the decision of which artists were making the scene wasn’t hard. Booking a club is the original A&R and the artists represented on this label can count Spaceland Productions bookers Liz Garo and Jennifer Tefft as supporters. After about a dozen releases, the quality of the output is undeniable.
In February, Fox Network closed out its habitual shark-jumper of a show The OC with Patrick Park’s “Life’s a Song,” a ditty first discovered on his Spaceland album. “Most of the Patrick Park record was unreleased material. It is a beautiful album,” says KamranV. It was the sort of new material that could only be attempted at a show where the artist and the audience are a few feet away from each other. The sound quality was so good that its live aspect comes across as simply intimate. It is this quality where Spaceland Recordings sets itself apart from the herd of indie record labels.
“We work very closely with the artists to ensure that their intention is kept on target,” says KamranV. Essentially, artists don't leave the process when they leave the stage. The label and band must agree that the final mix is one that actually represents the band's live sound. So, folk artists sound like folk artists, shoegazers sound like shoegazers and the snozzberries taste like snozzberries. It may seem subtle, but a reverence for live music and the artists who perform it is something conspicuously missing from Spaceland’s competitors, who rarely understand the acoustics of the venue much less those of the band. Yet quality goes hand-in-hand with Spaceland’s documentary mission. “I’m just as proud of the album that sells only 100 copies as I am the one that sells 100,000," KamranV states. "There is something real happening in this area in this time. We’re fortunate enough to be able to document some of it.”
They set out to save Silver Lake for posterity, but Spaceland Recordings may be saving the live album itself. Spaceland is providing lasting and definitive images of the artists that grace its stage, and that is the sort of thing that will put more bootleggers out of business than the 21st Amendment. It is downright inspirational. So, dig Live at the Harlem Square Club or Band of Gypsys out of your collection because the live album may be back and you are going to need something for comparison.
To browse, listen to, and buy the full catalog of Spaceland Recordings, visit the gurus of live music and Spaceland’s partner-in-crime at KUFALA (www.kufala.com). Also keep an eye out for upcoming releases as Spaceland has accrued a bounty of unreleased video.
By: Arthur Javier
“Vinyl survived CD and it will probably survive mp3,” declares Patrick Amory, the general manager of Matador Records. It’s a bold statement considering the fact that CDs themselves may not survive online distribution. The 2006 RIAA Year-End report accounts for only three types of physical music sales: CD, Music Video and Other, with a continuing decline in each and vinyl falling into the Other category. So why isn’t Amory fazed? Well, first of all, Matador and most Indie labels are not members of the RIAA, and second, vinyl still has a few tricks up its sleeve. Enter the mp3 coupon.
The process is pretty simple. When you buy a new album on vinyl, you get an mp3 coupon. You go to the record label’s website, put in your coupon code and download the album in mp3 form. The files are free of DRM (digital rights management) and encoded at 128 kb/s, pretty much the way they would be if you ripped the album yourself. It’s simple. It’s genius. It’s enough to make you change the lock on your diary.
“Our art director had heard of the idea from one of her friends, and we just jumped on it!” says Christina Rentz of Merge Records, the first label to really push the mp3 coupon. Merge emphasizes that they adopted the idea because it made sense for the fans and they had no real marketing scheme behind it. “Vinyl is rarely if ever profitable,” continues Rentz, “We just wanted to possibly encourage fans of vinyl to buy it and feel safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t have to buy the CD, too.”
Of course the coupon has its benefits for the record label as well. Matador’s Patrick Amory explains, “The expense of making vinyl goes up constantly – jacket printing especially, but also pressing,” says Amory “The more copies we can sell, the better we amortize the high fixed costs.” The low cost of implementing the mp3 coupon is also attractive. “It’s more time consuming than expensive – generate the codes, print them out on coupons, have your plant insert them in every LP. That’s a few extra cents. Bandwith and customer service are the bigger problem I’d guess.”
The enticing bottom line has helped the smaller labels embrace the coupon quickly. Dangerbird Records offers downloads for the bonus 7” disc on the Silversun Pickups debut. Sub Pop plans to include coupons on all of its future releases, including downloads for vinyl-only tracks. However, even bigger labels are getting in on the act. Sony promised ‘digital versions’ to anyone who pre-ordered the vinyl for the new Modest Mouse album. These digital versions turned out to be an actual copy of the CD thrown in with the record. Buy-one-get-one digital is clearly the new trend in vinyl, but will it work?
Well, don’t think that vinyl sales are limited to turntablists, hipsters or even people with record players. On the Merge Records message boards, many fans of the mp3 coupon quaintly refer to vinyl as a collector’s item. This sort of speculation kept vinyl on life support during the mid-90s, as evidenced by the unplayed copies of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness making the rounds on eBay. The mp3 coupon may never motivate anyone to buy a record player, but it has lasting appeal for casual and die-hard collectors. And maybe that’s all vinyl needs.
Vinyl has never been easy to buy. Its price point is in an economic vacuum, like airports and movie theaters. Vinyl delays are egregious; it’s the paperback of the music world. Yet vinyl survived CD promising nothing more than a few extra tracks, a warmer sound and a scratchable surface. It’s not impossible to believe that it will survive the fall of physical retail with a coupon, a warmer sound and the sheer impossibility of sending polyvinyl chloride through a data cable.
by Arthur Javier
In hindsight, they were freedom fighters. They pioneered peer-to-peer networks through record conventions, want ads in music magazines and judicious use of the postal service. Music's bootlegging community was born in the 1970s, a time when prudence demanded cautious disrespect of intellectual property laws, but like any subversive element, their ethos has become fashionable. Today's music "pirates" believe that the greatest treasures are bobbing along on the Internet's seven seas, waiting to be looted at the click of a mouse. In reality, the most coveted contraband remains in the bootlegging community, a group that is still as secretive, still as intimate and you still need to barter or buy your way into it.
"When I first started, [buying bootlegs] was the only way to get into trading," recalls Howdo, a well-known Britpop bootlegger, "After contacting a few [eBay members who were selling bootlegs], one of them gave me a link of a bootleg trading community website and [another] sold me some DVDs, and slowly but surely I started trading and increasing my collection." Trading on these websites is pretty faithful to the classic process. Traders meet on a series of band or genre specific message boards. They contact each other off-site and exchange lists, which are just inventories of the traders' libraries in the form of Word or Excel files. The trade is usually initiated by the newer, thus less trustworthy, member, who has to send a bootleg before he can get one back.
"Trading was mostly done by postal trading when I first started," says Howdo, who traded between 10 and 20 CDs and DVDs each week through the mail, "The availability was mainly audio bootlegs, as DVD bootlegs were just becoming available [but] when I got in touch with the 'big traders' I found out there was a lot more out there still to be put onto DVD from VHS." Howdo purchased a DVD recorder to convert VHS bootlegs and to make bootlegs of his own. His collection is now fully digital and he makes most of his trades online.
"There is a massive increase in traders using BitTorrent sites now," Howdo claims. BitTorrent is a popular file-sharing program that communities use for both public distribution and private trading. However, postal trading still has its advantages, as Howdo explains, "A lot of trading communities still prefer [mail], especially when doing a big trade [because it can take] about two to three days to send [a DVD] over the Internet." Many website communities share newer bootlegs, but the online boom has done very little to increase the availability of rare bootlegs.
"I have traded with some of the 'biggest' traders, [and they will only trade] rare bootlegs for rare bootlegs," laments Howdo. This standard protects the big traders from an uneven exchange, but it also acts as a safeguard against the communities' cardinal sinners: sellers. Most traders feel that selling bootlegs is wrong or that it undermines the rarity of their own collection. Howdo regularly has sellers banned from trading websites, and he publicly shames them, "The way a bad trade gets all around [to the entire community] makes it difficult for a bad trader to trade again." So, the most successful sellers do their business where the community is not likely to notice: physical retail.
"You can only tell with certain artists, like our Prince section or our Beatles section. It has [all the classic albums], but you say 'Whoa, what's all this other stuff? Why's this section so big?'" says Barry*, a clerk at a small record store where around 15% of the inventory and business is bootlegs. "The last record store I worked at had been busted before, and it was a chain store so we got secret shoppers. We had to keep the bootlegs in the used section and call them 'collector's items,' but there's no need for that here." Indeed, Barry's current workplace has stayed blissfully under the radar for the past decade, while establishing itself as a bootleg mecca.
The store orders its bootlegs from a single seller through a printed list, which they call "the catalog." At least three times a year, they order $2,000 in bootlegs, a hefty shipment for a store that spends only $500 a week to restock inventory. "He keeps calling. He always wants to know if we're ready to make another order. We have to be like, 'Dude, we'll order when we're ready.' He probably likes us because we're small and reliable," Barry estimates. "If he dealt with a lot of shops, he'd probably be in jail." The business relationship is quite lucrative; between orders the shop sells over half of each shipment.
"We stock them for the fanatical, and only a handful of guys get to order out of the catalog. Like, there's this guy in his 40s or 50s, huge Led Zeppelin fan." But are there still new Led Zeppelin bootlegs surfacing? "You'd be surprised," Barry answers. "Every time I ring this guy up or look in the catalog, there's something new. He's probably put together a whole tour by now." These middle-aged completists keep the store afloat. Almost three-quarters of the shop's business is vinyl and bootlegs, and with the standard vinyl markup and a 25% markup on each bootleg, the shop doesn't really need to sell a single kosher CD.
Bootlegging began as a business, from early opera recordings to the bootleg record labels of the late-'60s, but the fans took it over. They taped their own shows, and built a black market that was open to anyone with a cassette recorder and stamps. So, if you are sitting at home, laughing at copyright warnings and overestimating your own importance (as the MP3 generation tends to do), The Rockit recommends you tip your hat to those who did it first and still do it best.
* not his real name
by Arthur Javier
Zach Condon is to blogosphere as Paris Hilton is to Thirty Mile Zone. He is obsessively covered, interviewed and reviewed as a homegrown weblog rock star. His first show in New York drew 200 people who expected to witness history. Condon didn't deliver the Beatles on Ed Sullivan that night or any other night. How could he? He didn't know how to put on a live show. He was just a kid from Santa Fe who dropped out of high school to see Europe and record songs in his bedroom. But still, the shows and the crowds continued until, finally, on a tour designed to take him within spitting distance of every blogger in the world, he collapsed from exhaustion, sending him back home to Santa Fe and the bedroom that made him a star.
Condon had recorded music before, but it wasn't until he made an album under the moniker Beirut that he actually had to tour. "I almost never played shows," Condon recalls of his first experience on the road. "And this constant blur of audiences and cities and 8 o'clock mornings and flights and stuff like that was new to me. It kind of crushed me at first. I couldn't even believe that humans could put themselves through that."
It was the length of the tour that shocked him the most, causing him to complain that indie artists were being subjected to the kind of tours that were once reserved for the Backstreet Boys. "The distance, traveling, the amount of time just out on the road and working, working constantly," he sighs. "The whole thing was just very surreal to me. Because music to me-- it was two different worlds. It was me alone in my bedroom recording and writing songs and the pure joy of that. And then there's the live show which is just a completely different world for me and something I've had to grow into, something I've had to get used to and something I've grown to enjoy. But, my God, at first I was so naive with it."
His approach was to say yes to everything that the record company suggested, not because he assumed he could handle it but because he honestly didn't want to let anyone down. "I didn't really know how to say no at the time. I still have trouble saying no," Condon admits. "If somebody wants me to play in Iceland then I really want to play in Iceland. It's just the fact that they asked. It's hard to say no to something like that for your own sanity or health or whatever." The decision would put both his health and sanity to the test.
"It was after the U.S. tour," Condon recalls. "[But] this was all one continuous, long tour. I think it was like two and a half months in, and we had flown to Europe and I don't know. It was like serious jet lag and some other stuff [that] all came together to the point where I just didn't feel right at first. And then it was like weird anxiety problems that I've never had before in my life. Then that actually kind of went away because I was like, 'Well, I'm just gonna keep going. I'm just gonna get over it.' But something else started happening, which was kind of like a mental thing. I remember actually, I wouldn't see cars [while I was] crossing the street . . . My vision was going haywire. I would walk around the street and suddenly get such a horrible case of vertigo that I would just kind of like stumble to the ground. That's actually when I went to the hospital."
He canceled the rest of the tour and went home, where he could work on his own schedule and with his own equipment. The return to Santa Fe would mold the shape of the second Beirut album, almost immediately.
"When I went back [home] from the tour," says Condon. "My little brother had just [moved out] and he had left behind all these photography books and that's where I found the photo." The photo, by Leon Gimpel, captured Paris' hot air balloon festival in 1910 as a number of balloons prepared to launch from the middle of the French capital. It would inspire not just the album's title, The Flying Club Cup, but the album's obsession with chanson and baroque pop.
"It's something I've always been obsessed with," Condon explains. "[Then] all of the sudden it was like all roads led to France. The obsession just overwhelmed me. I just remembered how much time I spent there and how much I loved the place and the people there. And all the movies I'd seen as a kid and all the songs I'd listened to over the years suddenly started to make so much more sense to me." The album is distinctively French in its themes and settings, its audio sampling of Brigitte Bardot in the film Le Mépris and its melodramatic orchestration, which is immediately reminiscent of the melodies that played behind Belgian crooner (and David Bowie favorite) Jacques Brel.
The album is a return to the music that Condon grew up with, the music that made him want to leave his bedroom and see Paris. And while a rattle of keystrokes and mouse clicks may have made him a star, he is still most comfortable hanging out in his bedroom and writing songs. "I haven't come to terms with being considered a professional at what I do. Y'know what I mean? It still feels like a hobby that I do."
by Arthur Javier
It was an early morning in Rome, where Morrissey and legendary glam producer Tony Visconti were finishing work on Ringleader of the Tormentors. Visconti came into the studio early to review concert footage of another client, the perennially unsigned Kristeen Young, for whom he was producing a third album on spec. He sat quietly, taking notes as Young mounted a sonic siege on the Delancey in New York. He assumed he was alone, as no one, especially Morrissey, came in early.
Then suddenly and quite ominously, "Who's that?" came a voice from the back of the room. The band had finished the piston pounding "London Cry," and the Mozzer, who had just arrived, was mesmerized, not just by the song but by the girl on the screen. He would later refer to what he saw as "dangerous." Her eye makeup stretched down to her cheeks like war paint, her early '60s cocktail dress was adorned with six-pack rings and she teetered atop a pair of shiny plastic boots. Morrissey promptly notified his opening acts that they had left the tour, and he brought KRISTEENYOUNG, the duo consisting of Young and drummer "Baby" Jeff White, on board.
Young has made a career of this, unintentionally transforming rock's deities into her devotees. And with both major and indie labels refusing to sign her, she can't make a career doing much else. "I'm completely shut out by every aspect of the industry. I can't get a manager. I can't get a booking agent. I can't get a label," says Young. "The indie [label]s hate me almost more than the major [label]s. I must just fall completely between the cracks. A lot of times, the indies think I'm mainstream. I can't even understand that perception because all [the major labels say] that I'm strange."
Young complains that indie has become "very soft." In contrast, she adds, "I'm aggressive and hard-hitting, but in a different way [from mainstream]. And there's just no place for that."
The current musical model is a bit confusing. Indie has become synonymous with the gentrification of new wave, alt-country and acoustic alternative (the holy trinity of twenty-something adult-contemporary). Meanwhile, specialized indie labels have fortified their positions, refusing to sign anyone that doesn't fit in with their stable, be it hardcore, hip-hop or electronic. And, of course, major labels are going wherever the money is. But Young isn't worried.
"It's all crumbling and falling apart," Young says of the music industry's label system. "I feel like I have a head start in that I'm used to not having that crutch [of being on a label]. I'm used to being on my own. I kind of view it [like] the old Hollywood studio system falling apart. Everybody used to be [part of] a stable of artists with a particular Hollywood studio. And when that all fell apart, everybody went freelance . . . I think it's going that way, anyway. I think we're in a transitional period. Still some agents won't even deal with you unless you're on a label. Some festivals won't even deal with you unless you're on a label. And I think that's such archaic thinking because I think in two years it's not even going to be an issue. They need to give that up because artists are gonna have to do all that stuff for themselves and hire their own PR."
PR has become a necessity for Young. The devout followers of the man who put the M in Manchester have already started turning the rumor mill on Young, refusing to believe that their idol has an idol of his own. But how do you discount the résumé of someone who has recorded with David Bowie and opened for Frank Black? Well, if that someone is a woman- "I think it's pitiful that people have to always go to that," Young says of accusations that she slept her way to success. She vehemently denies the rumors that she is romantically involved with Visconti or, more ridiculously, Morrissey, but she sympathizes with the jealousy. "It is very puzzling, I will give them that. It's completely puzzling how I can get [to work with] these people who love my music, people who are very respected like Tony [Visconti], like Bowie, like Morrissey, like Brian Molko from Placebo, like Frank Black. All these people who are very loved people. I think that's it, too. They're very loved, and a lot of people would like to be close to them."
Young claims that this sort of attention was never part of her plan. "This was never how I thought my career would go," she says. "I always thought it would be the traditional way, y'know? I would get on an indie label, and then I would get on a major label, but it never went that way. For some reason, artists really like my music, and industry people despise me."
So, how could anyone who is both unmanaged and unsigned get this far in the music business? It wasn't just hard work, though Young works very hard, so much that she lacks any kind of social life. But that's true of a lot of DIY bands. It wasn't just luck because getting rejected by labels and managers is not lucky. The simple answer is talent. She has talent that the industry can't see, but the most talented artists of our time can't deny. She is the softcore trend's greatest casualty and proof positive that the music industry has lost touch. If the system does crumble, she's also a revolutionary. It's been a while since we had one of those.
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