Where Do We Go From Here?
What’s in a word? Well, ‘indie’ music has become the stodgy staple of the charts, a generic for anodyne guitar-based music of middling pace with certain pre-defined characteristics; a flat-pack rhythm section, verse-chorus-verse mechanics, and an angsty vocal. In 2007 the NME conducted a poll on the Greatest Indie Anthems Ever. Only just over half of the selections were actually released on an independent label. Oasis were all over the shop. Buzzcocks, Scritti Politti and The Desperate Bicycles were predictably absent.
The concept of ‘indie’ has become almost meaningless beyond branding.
In the period under discussion, ‘independent’ meant The Cocteau Twins and Discharge, Big Flame and Yazoo, Annie Anxiety and The Durutti Column, The Marine Girls and The Birthday Party, Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel and Orange Juice, Test Department and Swell Maps. Pick your own exemplars.
Meanwhile, among the slurry of ‘indie’ comps released in 2005 (through BMG, natch) was one carrying the foreboding title Revolutions: Alternative Bands, Radical Music. Here comes the promo copy: “The 2CD Revolutions is an up-to-the-minute collection of the hottest cutting-edge sounds from the likes of the Kaiser Chiefs, the Bravery and Bloc Party. Join the revolution, or be first against the wall.” See you over at the wall then, chaps, and I’m packing heat (OK, a thermos flask).
It would not be too much of a stretch, although arguably a convenience, to lay this retrenchment at the door of the early 90s when major labels started to incorporate their own ‘indie’ dependents (tautology noted) such as Hut, Nude and Dedicated. It’s not the case that no two records from the original ‘independent era’ ever sounded alike. If all the Fall and Joy Division copyists had jumped up and down at once, tidal waves would doubtlessly have engulfed Japan. But there was also massive creative dissonance and variety; records not just influenced by the Pistols and Buzzcocks but by Zappa and girl groups and Stockhausen and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. The fact that the ‘indie’ diminutive now expresses a musical template highlights both artistic retreat and the final rite of homogenisation of this particular cultural cycle.
Many of the dramatis personae of the original independent label boom were record store employers and employees. A few came from within the mainstream record industry, but were by nature greater risk-takers than that environment could tolerate. Some were artists themselves, or philanthropists helping friends. Many emerged from the 60s counter-culture and others still were long-standing bootleggers. In short, there is no over-arching rationale or single determining characteristic to the leading players – even a ‘love’ of music is not universal (though in the case of best practice, it certainly is).
And yet the demographic is quite defined. The characters in this story are predominantly, but not exclusively, middle class. With the exception of Alan Erasmus at Factory, they are exclusively white. Until Jeanette Lee joined Rough Trade, and overlooking the part played by Pete Stennet’s wife Mari at Small Wonder and members of the Crass/Rough Trade co-ops, the independent boom was astonishingly male. Viewed kindly, that simply reflected an extension of the ‘record collecting nerd’ mentality. A more biting critique might be that it constituted one of the last dominant ‘boy’s clubs’ to survive 70s feminism (perversely, the likes of Ivo Watts-Russell, Daniel Miller, Geoff Travis and Mike Alway are among the least ‘blokey’ sorts you could wish to meet). The debate over whether punk truly provided a new space for women to express themselves in art is seemingly endless (and I’ve decided that it did, so y’all can stop now). There are just as many texts devoted to its attendant psychological and societal ramifications; the subtext being ‘punk changed everything’. Well, perhaps not everything after all.
Beyond that observation, the story here is of circumstances conspiring; what Watts-Russell equates as the ‘stars being aligned’ and Iain McNay characterises as a ‘window of opportunity’. As extolled earlier, the geography of the UK played no small part. So too the shift in musical culture from a hippy to a punk ethos, with many participants shipping sizeable philosophical baggage across the divide and back again. As with punk era musicians, there were few label heads who jumped straight into the melee without some kind of back-story in music (in a further blow to the repeatedly debunked ‘year zero’ theory). But all felt empowered and energised by punk’s DIY ethos. Others saw the potential for exploitation of same, and several had a foot in both camps. The subsequent giddy acceleration truly was an outstanding feature, however – like buses, you wait for one independent label to come along (let’s say Ace, 1975-6) and then two hundred arrive at once.
In almost every case, the men behind independent record labels (now we have satisfied ourselves on the gender business) had a thorough grounding in music and usually fully-formed tastes. Others, whose roots were in administration or business affairs, brought to the table their knowledge of the workings of the record industry; be it from retail, from bootlegging or from inside the heart of the beast itself. Most were in their late 20s or significantly older. Good Vibrations’ Terri Hooley’s assertion, that he’d ‘been ‘waiting for this all my life’, is not uncommon. The advent of cheaper technology and manufacturing capabilities, a ready audience primed by punk for almost anything released (particularly) on 7-inch vinyl by an independent record label and the majors’ sloth in responding are all contributory factors. And, while it’s always dangerous to talk about ‘auteur’ labels for want of dismissing the considerable labours undertaken backstage (this is a story with its fair share of credit-hoggers), to a certain extent the catalogue of those labels reflected the interests, personalities and tastes of a handful of individuals. Behind whom circle a thousand one-shot iconoclasts – which would have been Mute’s destiny had it not been for wholly unforeseen commercial approbation. Pure chance and timing also plays its part.
The legacy of independent retail and record shops such as Rough Trade, Beggars Banquet and the various Cartel members hangs heavy throughout. With that sector of the industry currently decimated, it’s hard to see how anything similar – in terms of the unifying, us against them esprit de corps of the independent heyday – could happen now.
In August 2006 it was announced that Beano’s, sited across three floors on Croydon’s Middle Street and probably the country’s most famous collector’s shop, was on the brink of extinction. There’s been an incremental thinning in the number of record shops on London’s former vinyl oasis Berwick Street, immortalised on the cover of Oasis’s What’s The Story Morning Glory. Sister Ray, which itself had taken over the ailing Selectadisc outlet, went into administration in the summer of 2008 (though original owner Phil Barton would buy it out). Cardiff’s Spillers Records, the oldest independent record shop in Britain, established in 1894, is still around – but only after intervention from the Welsh Assembly opposing the move to ‘clone cities’. Helical Bar, the property developers concerned, threatened rent hikes of up to 100% unless the store relocated. “If you walk down Oxford Street,” wrote investment director Michael Brown, “you do not see niche record stores among the chains. We warned [Nick Todd: Spillers’ owner for the last two decades] that he is standing in the way of progress.”
If you take record shops out of the picture, a vital conduit in terms of the community that underpinned the ‘golden years’ of independent music disappears from the equation. The distribution of end product is the most telling and obvious feature, but record stores like Spillers also served as a hub for the culture of independence – flyers for gigs, distribution of local fanzines, musicians’ wanted adverts – as well as a place where music fans congregated. That is not to suggest that music cannot thrive and prosper under altered conditions, but by its very nature it will be a different beast, not grounded in the spirit of mutual co-operation that governed the original independent ethos. MySpace is great ‘n’ all; in its own way democratising and empowering. And in many ways it’s ripped apart the old indie/major conundrum, offering an alternative means to distribute and market music (though ‘selling’ seems somewhat more problematic), and destroying any need for an infrastructure like the Cartel. But digital transactions, paid for or gratis, lack the layer of discovery and adventure that the traditional record shop once nurtured and which in turn fed the artistic diversity of the independent boom. It’s a remote process in contrast to the intimacy and community of old. It’s also legitimised soul-sapping insincerity.
By the time independent music begins its slide into ‘indie’ (1988 or thereabouts), the compact disc was well on its way to becoming king – with the consequent back catalogue gold rush taking some of the emphasis away from ‘new music’ at both the majors and the independents. Regardless of arguments about sonic fidelity, vinyl artwork was a crucial part of the aesthetic thrill of buying a record. Whether your poison was 4AD’s 23 Envelope designs, Saville’s work on Factory or even a particular denomination of punk (from Crass to Oi!), these were partisan, tribal choices. And, yes, habit-forming for collectors, who to a large extent underpinned the economics.
“The word ‘independent’ means a lot to me,” notes Gareth Main, who recently launched Bearded magazine, which goes so far as to exclude major label-affiliated acts from its pages. “To me it represents the underdog, the downtrodden and the under-appreciated. There is a lot of romanticism in the idea of somebody packaging 7-inch records in their bedroom despite the fact they know nobody will ever hear it. Of course the ‘independent’ record industry encompasses a lot more than that, but it is the very British idea of rooting for the underdog. Major labels have all the help they need to get noticed, it’s rewarding to only focus on helping those who don’t have the resources to get where they – arguably – deserve to be.”
Contemporary independents continue to thrive, of course, not least Domino, Bella Union, Shifty Disco, Damaged Goods and Fierce Panda. AIM (Association Of Independent Music), tangential philosophical heirs to the Desperate Bicycles’ less formalised ‘up and at ‘em’ credo, offers a leg-up to any potential combatants. Long may they all flourish, or at least survive independent music’s perennial distribution crises. All are doing something vital, even if it’s just rejecting Coldplay’s demos. Old-timers such as Beggars, Cherry Red and Rough Trade have faltered, prospered and evolved. But the likelihood of any return to the years of artistic glut and shared adventure that hallmark the period under discussion in this book seem remote, simply because the conditions of its creation have ceased.