The Popular Press

...or how to roll your own records.

-- Time Out, February 2-8, 1979

Steve Taylor reports on the kindest cut of all.

In his 1936 essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', the German critic Walter Benjamin had this to say: 'Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functionalist; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer." Now that such optimism about the democratic evolution of the press has soured, Benjamin's essay is most frequently quoted in contexts of visual arts, photography and film. But rock music has always seemed inexorably bound to corporate business and technology; it has never been a serious contender for the kind of progressive blurring of consumer into producer that Benjamin forecast.

Yet as long as there have been iconoclasts in popular music and musicians who knew damn well that the commercial record companies didn't care whether they played or starved, there have been small labels. Commodore and Blue Note were orignally put together by US jazz enthusiasts, Humphrey Lyttelton had his own label in the early '50s, and in 1970s small group of British avantists founded the Incus label, which has acted as a catalyst for numerous home-grown outlets since. Jazz has always been a natural for small-scale production, because of its low recording costs. '90% of jazz recording,' a critic once informed me, 'is sticking a microphone in front of somebody -- recording a performance.' On the other hand, the technology and costs for rock recording have escalated sharply. One band currently casting about for a contract to cut a debut album told me they wanted to spend £20,000 in the studio alone.

But things may be changing now, following the example of the group most often cited as the origial rock DIYers, The Desperate Bicycles. The Bikes made their first single two years ago. 'Smokescreen' cost them a grand total of £153.15 for 500 copies, which was enough to get them an airing on John Peel's radio programme.

One of the many groups that took heart from the Bikes were Scritti Politti, whose single on their own St Pancras label made a brief appearance in Time Out's Other Singles Chart late last year. They're not a band in the usual sense (more a loose collective that can number 15, not all of them musicians).

They left Leeds nine months ago with little to their name save an idealism fuelled by the energies of the punk bands -- notably the Clash and the Pistols -- they'd witnessed up north. 'We came down to London and kept coming across things which changed our ideas -- we discovered Pere Ubu then, for instance.' They picked up on that undercurrent, the broadening of the New Wave to accommodate a variety of sound and experiment, and on the practical idealism being invested in DIY record making. Equipped with a couple of guitars, one amplifier and a domestic tape recorder they decided 'to make some music, do it quickly, make it accessible and get it out so that people could talk about it'.

Armed with £500 borrowed from somebody's brother, Scritti Politti decided to make a single using the four songs they'd actually written and rehearsed. An 18 hour day in a small Cambridge studio resulted in a master tape of four songs, two of which were selected to be 'mastered', the next stage in the process. But the budget meant a pressing of only about 500, so to determine whether it was worth going ahead, they legged it around several small record distributors to see if they could get any takers.

They found one in Rough Trade, who operated from a record shop off Portobello Road, had started to issue singles on their own label and liked the cassette of the master tape. That was a pivotal point in two ways: firstly it enabled them to get financial support to have 2,500 copies pressed on a 50/50 costs and profits basis and secondly it marked the point at which their music was heard by strangers: 'It came out of the speakers in the shop, the first time anyone else had heard it; all these people were standing around. It was a bit strange because all of a sudden your music takes that leap into being public.'

But for Scritti Politti, and for many other bands who have collaborated with small labels, the public exposure of their music did not mark the end of their control over it. As Simon Frith says in 'The Sociology of Rock', 'The standard recording contract makes it clear that record companies, who are the legal owners of the finished product, expect to exercise their rights of ownership, controlling what music is issued, how it is produced, when it is released.' DIY has significantly shifted that balance.

Their finding assured, Scritti were able to see their master tape through the subsequent stages themselves. It took a three day wait to have it mastered and three weeks for processing and pressing. Meanwhile they printed their own labels with rubber stamps made up to their own design. Finally the band folded and stapled the covers (offset-lithoed at a member's workplace) in their kitchen.

While they'd been waiting around for the delivery from the pressing plant the band had found themselves with a couple of spare 'laquers', acetate master discs that can be played on any normal turntable. These they left at the Beeb addressed to John Peel, by then a well-known champion of independent record production. Unannounced, the single was given its first airplay the following night and the band rushed to the studios where, lurking outside after Peel's programme, they were offered a 'live' studio session. Three weeks later 'Skank Bloc Bologna'/'Is and Ought The Western World' (St Pancras Record) hit the racks and the music paper journalists started turning up at Scritti Politti's house. Albeit on a small scale, their music had become well and truly public.

Scritti decided to keep their distribution with Rough Trade, whose chain had grown out of contacts with sympathetic record shops throughout the country, because of their attitude of 'constructive opposition to the music biz' and because 'they seemed to have a much better idea of what we wanted to do.' But the means of record production remain out of independent control. Pressing, for instance, is often a big problem for those on small budgets because even independently owned plants are booked up with massive 'custom' orders from the big companies. Small runs get low priority, firms are reluctant to consider orders for less than 1,000 discs and, once accepted, records may languish for months before delivery. But setting up an independent pressing plant would cost, estimates Pete Walmsley at Rough Trade, £20-30,000.

So producers in Walmsley's position still have to farm work out to established concerns because the specialised processes are still entrenched in the 'biz'. But Walmsley's sure that 'there's a living to be made by everyone' in DIY recording.

It's certainly easier than it looks, and the pioneers' desire to demystify it for others has resulted in, for instance, Scritti Politti producing a handout on their experience; Rough Trade collecting information for a more comprehensive guide; Attrix Records in Brighton doing the same for LP production; and ZigZag magzine expanding their Small Labels Catalogue, which already lists labels, releases and distributors. They want to go on to include technical information.

The strategies are as varied as the music. In the words of David Marlow, compiler of the ZigZag catalogue: 'As to whether it should be done inside or outside the industry, my attitude is that it doesn't matter whichever way. There's room for people who've found it necessary to sign a deal -- because otherwise they're going to be out of a job -- and there's room for pure idealism.'