Eight Out of Ten Cats Prefer…
As a record label, your relationships with your bands are a near infinite source of puzzlement, frustration, affection, admiration, and exhaustion.
What amazes me as much as anything is that no matter how well you think you know someone, when you offer to release their records you realise very quickly that you really were only just scratching the surface. Aspects to people’s characters come out so strongly when you effectively take their baby off them, and try your best to pimp it to the indifferent public and the scurrilous press.
Every band seems to secretly suspect that they might be shit at the same time they think they might have possibly made the best album ever. This polarised we’re awful/we’re awesome self-image is pretty standard for most artists I think, but it can make people somewhat challenging to actually work with efficiently.
One of the first things I try and do as soon as the possibility of working with a new artist arises is go through absolutely everything we do, and show them the entire process for releasing records, so there is as little mystery in it as possible. Then, to paraphrase Al from (the awesome) Armellodie Records, I tell them that all they can really expect from us in terms of PR results will be “quite a few blogs, probably The List and The Skinny, a few plays on 6Music and a review in Mojo if we’re lucky”. In my previous life as a design engineer expectation management was absolutely crucial to the client/consultant relationship and it’s something I have tried my best to bring with me into the world of music.
Nevertheless, people continue to make me laugh and cry in equal measure. Band A might want to approve every last aspect of every last item of their press pack, for example, but because Band B basically had no idea or interest in how that side of things worked I could easily have just gone ahead and done all sorts of things Band A might not want, just because I am used to being left to get on with it.
Band N might be so shy of talking about themselves that all I can get out of them for the press release is an awkward sentence or two about who in the band plays what instruments, whereas Band O might inundate me with reams of prose which I have to somehow hack down into a single page for easy journalistic consumption.
Because Band Y only signed with us in the first place because they liked the full roster of bands we worked with and were really pleased to be part of it, I might end up annoying Band X by talking about all our other projects all the time.
Because Band S didn’t really know anything about the process of releasing a record, I might slip into the habit of simply going away and doing everything by myself as soon as they hand over the finished album, but that might utterly infuriate Band R, who want to learn and make a contribution and feel like they are part of the whole process.
I might horrify Band A by taking liberties with their artwork, but often that’s because Bands B and C didn’t really care about the artwork as long as it looked nice – their job is simply the music, after all, isn’t it?
I have bands who have been quietly unimpressed with the results of their PR campaigns, and bands who have been thrilled with the same results. Bands who are always looking to achieve more, and bands who are happy enough simply pottering along and making some music as and when they feel like it without me putting them under pressure to be commercially successful.
I have bands who want to make a career out of it, bands who want to just show up every once in a while with some recordings and let me get on with releasing them, bands who would like to make a career out of it but aren’t even slightly willing to make any of the compromises needed in order to do so, bands who want to see the whole project as a work of art in itself and yet still want to sell it for less than a tenner, bands who want to play every gig going, bands who will never play, bands who want to play every festival one year and then realise they hate it and wonder why they’re being asked to play all these festivals, bands who secretly want to make pop music, and bands who delight in absolutely confounding their listeners.
You name it, we have pretty much one of everything here at Song, by Toad Records. It’s an often hilarious, and often utterly baffling game of cat-herding, and try as I might I can’t really find many unifying qualities between the bands or the people on our label. I suppose they’re almost all stubborn fuckers who are absolutely determined that they want to quietly and awkwardly go about things in their own way, and fuck everything else, but that might be the only thing that this motley crew of weird characters has in common at all.
So yes, whilst the practical side of being a label is relatively straighforward, and can be done well by more or less anyone who is organised, hard-working and persistent, the human side of it is hilariously chaotic. See that picture of Arnold in Kindergarten Cop up the top there? Pretty much like that, except at least there’s some hope the kids in that picture will grow up some day. As Mrs. Toad says whenever anyone asks us if, being in our mid-thirties and having been married for five years, we’re considering having children:
“Kids? Why would we need kids; we’ve got bands!”
“I suppose they’re almost all stubborn fuckers who are absolutely determined that they want to quietly and awkwardly go about things in their own way, and fuck everything else”
To me, this makes them all sound just like their, er, owner.
Yes, I think so. I think that’s why we all generally like working together and probably the only thing that gives the label’s roster and back catalogue any real coherence.
They’re lucky to have you Mr Toad. I hope they take you out for beers and curries at least occasionally, and send flowers and wine for Mrs Toad.
Oh aye they’re mostly pretty damn gracious in their own way.
“Kids? Why would we need kids; we’ve got bands!”
I’d love to hear a Toadcast with a wailing baby in the background. Floyd would approve.
It may yet happen, Tricia, but whether it’s an actual infant or a misunderstood banjo player we may never know!
Ha how very true this article is. I always say looking after bands is like babysitting grownups, but at least kids have an excuse for acting like, well kids.
You end up becoming a diplomat, trying to make sure all the bands are happy. Thats the hardest part of running a label.
That article would be so much better with band and band members names inserted at appropriate places….although the label may not last for long afterwards.
I’ll just imagine
if you did breed, do you reckon Baby Matthew’s first word would be ‘dadda’ or ‘fuck’….
I do recognise a lot of this, even if our operations are a whole lot smaller over at 17 Seconds.
With our first release, Aberfeldy’s ‘Claire’ we had a comparatively easy time of it, because they were -and are- well-known, and we were single of the week on the drivetime show on NME Radio, and got support from Jim Gellatly, Vic Galloway and Tom Robinson, which considering it was our first release, wasn’t bad going. And it was great to get so much support from the blogging community, particularly your good self! the 7″ eventually turned up, and it was a thrill to see it on sale in the shops. It wasn’t always this easy -and sometimes you weren’t really sure if you were even going to get any blogging coverage at all, never mind played on the radio.
Some folk have already put stuff out with other labels or as a part of another band; but you also get people who ask in puzzlement ‘what’s a pdf?’ when you ask for their artwork.
I’ve been fortunate to work with some awesome acts, who’ve become friends and it’s been a pleasure. Everytime I see one of our acts featured on a blog, or hear them on the radio it still makes me pleased. I’ve not enabled anyone to give up the day job yet, but if I’ve helped a few acts get out there, then that’s something.
And for a couple of acts -not on the label and who shall remain nameless, karma will get you…
Penko: don’t joke: we have a five month old and I worry that I am going to be summoned to the school when he’s five and demanding to know why he’s swearing like a trouper.
blame your good lady, that’s my plan!
I will be very disappointed if any of the little fuckers learn actual words before they learn to swear.
We’ve had our cats longer than our child – I guess if they could talk, they would be swearing.
In fact, sometimes the way they hold their claws, you’d think…
where the fuck is Friday Fives? I’m bored out of my mind here…
to keep me going here’s my Five:
1) what was the first swear you remember saying?
2) how many a times a day do you go to the toilet in work to read stuff on your smart phone?
3) what is the rudest sweard word(s) that you can think of?
4) are we allowed to say the ‘C’ word on here?
5) where the fuck is Friday Fives?
Done. Sorry. Get on with it.
you didn’t answer my fives
…and then there’s the outside chance that bands A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,UV,W,X,Y and Z will feel massively patronised by an article written on the labels blog which compares them all to clueless little kids who could barely wipe their arses without the help of a grown up.
Nah, no chance of that.
But, to be more serious, I dearly love every band we work with. It’s not just the music, they’re actually all incredibly sincere, lovely people – even the mad ones.
The amazing thing is just how incredibly different they all are. Every single band requires me to be a slightly different label, and just as I figure out how to be the kind of label one band expects, the next band needs something completely different.
It’s weird – no amount of experience, practise, or anything else really prepares you for quite what the next band you work with might want from you, and it’s really quite daft how many times I’ve found myself wrong-footed on the most simple of things.
And, without wishing to open a whole other can of worms, fucking hell it’s amazing how territorial you become. That’s the kids analogy, more than anything – not ineptitude, more that you end up being incredibly protective about grown men and women. And fucking good luck to anyone who tries to fuck ‘em over, no matter how much it isn’t really our business.
Hilarious read, simply hilarious.
write a novel about it in 5 years time.
“made me laugh out loud” 5 stars