Slumberland Stories: More From Mike Schulman

A little while back, I made a radio piece about Slumberland Records, the legendary indie-pop label that’s located in Oakland, CA. Sort of located in Oakland, I should say—label honcho Mike Schulman currently operates out of a couple rooms in West Berkeley. He’s got an office set up in one, and a “warehousey space” in the other, where he keeps inventory and runs Slumberland’s mail order.

The original story was on Oakland North, may eventually appear elsewhere. Schulman was very generous with his time, and spoke about a lot of interesting things that didn’t find a place in the radio story. I wanted to share a few of those here.

On how his band, Black Tambourine, got its start

It’s kind of a non-history. When we started the label, it was originally 7 or 8 people. We all pitched in work-wise and a little bit money-wise to put out he first handful of records. A few of us had picked up instruments before, but for the most part we were really beginners. We were really into punk rock and we were really into Lower East Side noise stuff like the Unsane and Sonic Youth and the Swans. But we were into pop and we were into Dada and we were into John Cage.

We just thought, let’s try this, let’s start some bands. Most of the bands were noise bands or kind of improv, and some of us wanted to make pop music. So Black Tambourine was a side project of really of a couple of the bands, for the songs that didn’t really fit in with the other bands because they were just a little too melodic.

Our singer [Pam Berry] actually lived in England, and she was just somebody we knew. We didn’t know she could sing, but she liked the right records and she was a friend of ours. So we just thought “we’ll have her sing.” We sent her some demo tapes and she said, “OK, I’ll figure some songs out.”

We did a handful of shows, four or five shows, put out a couple of singles, and then it sort of… It didn’t really fizzle out, but two of the guys were in Velocity Girl and they had just signed to Sub Pop, and they were busy. Then I moved away. So it kind of ended in late 91, early 92.

The single we put out was reasonably successful, it’s not like nobody ever heard it. But there was just some weird afterlife with the band, people always seemed to respond to those recordings.

On big moments in Slumberland's history

We’ve had some really great milestones. We put out the first Stereolab album in the U.S. And, you know, they went on to some amount of fame and repute, that was pretty exciting to be able to help them with that in some small way.

A couple bands—Velocity Girl and the Lilys—who went on to be better known, started out with us. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, who are fairly well-known now, they’re still on Slumberland. That was a big milestone for us when we put that album out. To have a record that sold, to the point that people who don’t follow that kind of music will have heard it. That’s pretty exciting.

We had our 20^th anniversary in 2009, and we did some shows on the East Coast and West Coast, and got some of the old bands to reform. It was just amazing to see some of that history laid out. And especially the San Francisco show, because I’ve been out here the most amount of time, people came out here who I haven’t seen at a show in ten years! It was really thrilling to have the old and the new bands together, they’re all fans of each other, and everyone was hi-fiving and hugging.

On what explains the label’s recent successes

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart! [Laughs] I mean, not totally, but there was kind of an interregnum between 2003 and 2006 where I didn’t really put out any new records. And I think there was something about going away and coming back, even though it was just for a few years. I was still filling mail orders, it’s not like we shut down, we just didn’t put out any new releases.

There were a lot of bands who were kind of bubbling under who were influenced by the stuff we did in the 90s, the bands that we had put out.  They were either bands who were directly inspired by them or at least conversant with it. When I started putting new stuff out again, I kind of found the Pains and Crystal Stilts and Cause Co-Motion! This group of Brooklyn bands—they didn’t sound like what we had done before, but they knew about it.

As it happened, the Brooklyn thing was kind of blowing up, and some of those bands got to be reasonably well-known. It was just good timing, I think.

I had a different outlook on promotion and radio and that kind of thing [before]. Back in the 90s when I would put a record out I would think “Fuck it. These are really good records and I shouldn’t need to pay some press guy a couple thousand dollars to go around and tell people how good they are. And I should have to mail out 800 free CDs, that most of them are just going to get sold used.” I was just very suspicious of the machinery of it.

When I started putting out new releases again, especially full-lengths, I felt it is a crowded market, maybe I should do the best I can to get people to hear the music. If that means spending out promos then I’ll send out promos.

On the economics of independent music

I hate to make it sound like it’s all about money, but at some point something has to earn back. You can’t lose money on every release and keep going. It’s hard now, it’s difficult.

The bottom line, I think, is that the finances of running a label are not going to get any easier. There’s going to be a day when you can go back to that physical artifact that you could make a 200% markup on. It’s just not there. There’s a lot of different pieces that you can put together, with sync licensing for TV or merch. But it’s hard for me to picture where it’s all heading.

On agression, masculinity and femininity in music

It seems like a lot of the indie labels that were around then [in the late 80's] were more aggressive, more male-dominated. It doesn’t seem like there were a lot of women managing the labels.

Not at that exact time, not a lot that I can think of. Over the next five years--with Bettina Gregory and Thrill Jockey and Mac and Laura doing Merge, Simple Machines started when we were starting, and that was obviously very female friendly, and K always had female involvement, for sure, and they were hugely inspirational to us.

Musically, our early records were pretty noisy and they were pretty agro, but we got poppy pretty quickly. The character of the releases changed. And most, a lot of the prevailing indie-rock of the 90’s was possibly more aggressive or noisier in a different way, like just less melodic. I don’t really know how to describe it.

I feel like our stuff is different, for sure. I don’t know if it’s like a masculine/feminine thing. If we were talking about indie-pop then there’s definitely an aspect of that. Indie-pop as a genre—which we’re associated with but I don’t think of us as an indie-pop label—that’s an aggressively anti-masculine or non-masculine or [laughs]. A not-afraid-to-be-feminine kind of genre.

On getting demos

It’s a source of great guilt for me. I’d like to say that I listen to every single one the minute I get it but it’s just not possible.

The success of the Pains kind of influenced some of the demos I get, I think. And it’s not so much bands that sound like them, but the idea that we have a fairly successful record beyond what we normally have, kind of attracted a certain class of band that wants to make music their career in a way that I find really distasteful. I don’t know how to describe it!

It’s kind of post-emo dudes, who kind of like making noisy pop. You see it and you know it, it’s like pornography or something. There’s something a little gross about it.

We get a lot of that stuff. Like, super aggressive managers that will somehow get my cell phone number and be like “Dude! You gotta listen to blah blah blahs demo and this is gonna blow your label up!” I just, I can’t deal with that kind of stuff. Usually if a band says they’re going to make your label famous, that's pretty much a red flag.

Rock & Taxes: A Treasury of the Whiny Rich

The tax man's taken all my dough,
And left me in my stately home,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
And I can't sail my yacht,
He's taken everything I've got,
All I've got's this sunny afternoon. 

So sang The Kinks' Ray Davies in 1966, in "Sunny Afternoon." That was the same year that George Harrison kvetched about the taxman taking 95% of his income. There was quite a bit of artistic license in these gripes from newly wealthy rock stars.

It turns out Davies and Harrison weren't the only classic rock legends with money on their mind. Indeed, nearly every British classic rock band of the 60's and 70's has tussled with taxes in song or in their lives. It's astounding, actually, the lengths to which these groups--all of these groups--went to complain about paying taxes and protect their assets.

For a genre that reveled in revolutions in consciousness, politics and sex, it was an unusually conservative stance. In more ways than one, these guys had regressive attitudes towards tax policy.

Many of these acts were happy to take on the mantle of the working man. They just didn't want to help pay for his health care, his children's education, or his public transit. And why would they, when there were mansions to buy. So who were these tax-averse Brits?

• The Beatles--George Harrison's "Taxman" has become an iconic song to American conservatives, and not for its richeous Paul McCartney guitar solo. Bob Dole used it in his 1996 campaign, and online you can find organizations like Americans for Tax Reform claiming that taxes broke up the Beatles. Harrison and Ringo Starr both chose to leave the UK in the 1970s as "tax exiles."
• The Rolling Stones--The Stones fled England in the early 70's, penniless, to escape onerous british taxes. That's the story Mick and Keith tell about how the Stones wound up recording their 1973 classic Exile On Main Street in a French Chateau. But, if the Stones ever had real problems with taxes, those days are long behind them. Between 1986 and 2006 they paid just 1.6 percent in tax on hundreds of millions of pounds in income.
• Rod Stewart--Probably the second most famous tax exile on this list. Stewart's "Atlantic crossing" to Los Angeles came as his solo success eclipsed The Faces' profile. According to Stewart, taxes had made it "not worth living in England any more." 
• Pink Floyd--The Floyd spent the entirety of 1978 abroad, for tax purposes. This seems to have been a more important concern than visiting Syd Barrett. Roger Waters has changed his tune on taxation since, and is currently promoting himself as a pro-Occupy musician.
• Led Zeppelin--Taking their accountants' advice, Led Zep left the UK for 1975 as tax exiles. During this time, Jimmy Page would screen his answers to questions in interviews, to make sure they didn't jepordize his tax status. And Robert Plant was whisked out of the country shortly after a serious car accident, so that Led Zep's tax status wasn't affected.
• The Who--The quartet went on their own 1970s tax exile. Bassist John Entwistle's song "Success Story" contained the lyrics: "Away for the weekend/I've gotta play some one-night stands/Six for the tax man and one for the band." Sounding a different note, Roger Daltry recently criticized U2's efforts to dodge taxes in Ireland.
• David Bowie--Bowie kicked off his "Berlin period" by moving to Switzerland--a decision motivated, in part, by the desire to avoid British tax rates.

This is hardly a complete list. The next generation, including Sting, Phil Collins, Ozzy Osbourne and Queen, carried on the tradition of tax-dodging. More recently, Adele claimed her tax bill made her want to "go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."

So what is it with Brits and taxes? American musicians haven't made a similar stink about taxes, and anti-tax sentiment is far higher in the US.* Of course, British tax rates are somewhat higher. But structuring your life to avoid paying taxes--as all the above artists have done--is about the least rock and roll thing you can do. Seriously, even Drake is cooler on the subject of taxes than Jagger, Bowie or Page.

In a definitive article on this subject, Simon Firth chides tax exiles for not taking advantage of a great number of options for reducing their tax bills in the UK. He also makes the point that taxes apparently don't pose a threat to artistic innovation, as free market fetishists might claim.

And let's talk about that term--tax exile. Exile is a strong word. Musicians have been exiles before: Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil had to leave their native Brazil for England, to escape political persecuption. Arnold Schoenberg was driven from Germany by the Nazis. These are not remotely similar to the situation that Led Zeppelin faced. Tax exile is a histrionic turn of phrase for millionaires who want to keep more money to themselves. These wealthy Brits haven't been persecuted or exiled out of principle. They were just greedy.

*American musicians do complain, sometimes. Take Big Boi's verse in "Gasoline Dreams," where he complains that even though he has the key to the city, "I still got to pay my taxes and they give us no pity."

Maybe They Will Shut Up If We Buy Them Happy Meals

Recently, a reader suggested that Kidz Bop would make for an interesting post. He didn't say what about it, and I don't know if Dave was kidding or not, but it's worth a try.

As of March 2009, 17 Kidz Bop compilations have been released, as well as 8 "special collections." The Kidz Bop albums' closest analogue is the U.S. Now That's What I Call Music! series. Beyond sharing individual tracks, which they often do, the two series have a similar M.O.: to rush out compilations, multiple times a year, of current hits. Kidz Bop albums have more PG song choices, understandably, and avoid the more risque hip-hop songs on the pop charts.

Despite that, the clear difference between the two series is that Kidz Bop feature interpretations of popular songs, rather than the tunes themselves, and if I were a betting man, I'd predict that the children's series will outlast Now That's What I Call Music, which merely repackages what I could have heard on the radio two months ago. It seems increasingly redundant in a world in which I can individually purchase, sequence, and listen to my favorite pop singles--often for less money than the cost of a CD.*

The near term future of Kidz Bop also seems assured given its sales: volumes 7-16 all debuted in the top 10, and the series has never debuted at less than number 2 on Billboard's humorously named Kid Albums chart. Strong opening weeks mean that either parents or children, probably both, are bombarded by Kidz Bop material and promos, and actually go out to purchase the albums the moment they become available. I'd love to know what percentage of purchases are by parents who assume their kids will shut up if they can bop, and what percentage are driven by kids who actually just love the music.

But what of the actual music? It is painful to listen to. The songs closely approximate the originals--in some cases they might use the same track--but always sound much chintzier. The vocals are identical on every song, regardless of lyrics, with tons of upbeat kids shouting, not always in tune. Oftentimes, an adult who sounds somewhat like the original vocalist takes the lead, though the kids will sort of answer him at the end his lines, and occasionally sing along with and overwhelm him. The videos are pretty weird, featuring presentable little kids acting like an eight year-old's idea of coolness. Surely there are pedophiles who enjoy Kidz Bop?

Kidz Bop covers completely drain pop of its element of danger. The chintzy arrangements don't help, but the children's choirs totally neuter the source material. And since sex is what makes the Top 40 tick, taking the sex out of Top 40 material makes for awful listening. Not that I'm arguing that children should listen to explicitly sexual music--they shouldn't--but desexed pop makes for awful listening for adults. Its like if you eliminated all traces of crime from any film noir: sure, you could still make a movie, but it'd be about an honest cop sitting at his desk.**

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the Kidz Bop phenomenon is its echoes of the Langley Schools Music Project. Still revered among fans of outsider music (and released in 2001 by Irwin Chusid, who compiled the bizarro Songs In the Key of Z albums), the LSMP was a choir of Canadian school kids in the 70's who sang disquieting takes on popular tunes of the time. The most famous are covers of Klaatu's "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" and David Bowie's "Space Oddity." Bowie was a fan of the LSMP's take on his song, and actually reenacted the project, calling it Langley Schools Revisited. He also, in an unguarded moment admitted

The backing arrangement is astounding. Coupled with the earnest if lugubrious vocal performance, you have a piece of art that I couldn't have conceived of, even with half of Colombia's finest export products in me.

Which he seems to have actually said (sources here and here). I bring up the LSMP because the obvious parallels suggest that society, not merely children, and perhaps even you, share a desire to hear scores of children's voices belting out the hit songs of the day. And that's pretty fucking weird.

*Now That's What I Call Music seems to be fairly cheap on iTunes--about $12 for 20 songs--so maybe it does have a future in the digital bargain bin.
**There probably wouldn't be any femme fatales either. If there were Venetian blinds, they would be of the chintziest variety imaginable.

Yo G Stick A Fucking Tape In It

Looks like Minneapolis' hip-hop/R&B radio station B96 has flipped formats, and is now a Top 40 station called 96.3 Now. I was listening to it this morning, and thought something sounded different. The impetus, apparently, was "market research showing music tastes have changed in the past year." The writing on the wall doesn't look good:

At noon Wednesday B96 became the new "96.3 Now", and played it's first song of the new format, Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" (link)

And you know how we feel about that one. It seems like a bizarre move, given that KDWB seems to have the Twin Cities Top 40 market on lockdown. 96.3's Program Director notes, with no apparent irony, that KDWB "play a lot of what I like to call 'Disney pop'." Like Miley Cyrus! Perhaps that first song was an insult on the airwaves, a negative statement of purpose? He continues: "We won't play that." Oh.

I wasn't a huge B96 partisan, but whenever I was in a car (I don't own one), that was my defualt station. The Hip-Hop/R&B charts have some terrible stuff on them, obviously, but they served a niche in the Twin Cities and at least their DJs had discernible personalities. DJ Peter Parker, Tony Fly, The Queen Bee, and Zany K the Minnesota Madman were characters. Occasionally, they gave exposure to local artists for an audience that doesn't listen to The Current (our NPR-run, indieish station). Mostly, I'll miss their Back In The Day Cafe, an hour-long afternoon block of older jams. They played a lot of G-Funk. Some bite size thoughts follow.

Possibly symbolic but I'm not sure how: B96 switched formats a day after the death of Carl Pohlad, who owns the Twins, used to own the Vikings, and owns Northern Lights Broadcasting, parent company of new 96.3 Now.

My now-abandoned thesis about B96: the station was an excellent example of the workings of contemporary culture and capitalism. The line between its content and advertising was thin when in existed at all, with lyrics and banter rife with allusions to record labels, brands, and other goods, and ads, in large part for night clubs and upcoming concerts, that mimiced the vocals and production of the station's programming. Hype men don't get much work on modern rap records, but they seem to be doing gangbusters in the world of commercial voice-overs. In a weird way there was something symbiotic about it, placing a music very much about product-pushing and salesmanship (i.e. Rick Ross, Young Jeezy) in a context where it was acknowledged as the commodity it is alongside hamburgers and the club experience.

Final two thoughts of a rambling post: Ice Cube's "Turn Off The Radio" is once again vindicated (though I remember B96 dutifully spinning his new singles, and they played "It Was A Good Day" all the time), and that there is a weird racial aspect to this, that what it came down to was that the certainly not-black suits at Northern Lights Broadcasting thought that reaching a whiter audience would be more profitable.

You Never Give Them Your Money

Today's Times op-ed by reliably readable "visual columnist" Charles M. Blow features a very interesting graph:The chart looks at the lifespan and profitability of various formats, and it's interesting to see how, as a new format gains dominance, it eats the sales of its predecessor. The chart indicates that, since the 1970s, these things have worked in ten year cycles. Notice that 8-track and Vinyl shipments both peaked in 1978, that cassette shipments saw their high watermark in 1988, and that CDs had their best year in 1999. Ten years later, digital downloads don't yet make nearly as much money as decimated CD sales, but that will change soon enough.

It speaks to capitalism's prerogative to constantly evolve as well as to the rate of technological change, I suppose. I suspect if you were to chart VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray sales/shipments as Blow did for music formats, you'd see a similar, perhaps slightly slower progression.

In any case, the graph also charts how American tastes are shifting. Currently, individual track downloads earn more than digital album sales. While factoring in CD sales would reverse this relationship, at least in the digital world track sales account for more revenue than albums. Historically, Americans have shunned singles in favor of albums, but the graph suggests we're inching closer to the singles-loving Brits.

This shift has much to do with modern media players, which allow users to shuffle and recombine songs in ways previously difficult or impossible. It may also speak to the scarcity of CD singles, formerly a boon for album sales.

There's a lot to tease out of the information Blow provides, but I'm not sure he always gets it right. Witness:

•He points his finger at streaming music, which " is poised to seal the deal" vis-a-vis "the music industry's deathwatch." To blame are "teens" streaming online. Fucking teens! While streaming surely accounts for a drop in sales, Blow doesn't note that streams (including free streams, YouTube views, and internet radio) actually earn money for the music industry, usually through ad revenue. Curious, as his own paper wrote online streams up as a potential savior of the music industry last Sunday.

•Blow closes with this parenthetical:

I wrote this column while listening to “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” the last truly great CD I ever bought. Every track is a gem. When did I buy it? 1999.

The implication is that truly great albums aren't being made any more, contributing to weak sales. It's a total fogey sentiment, and clearly not the opinion of a man who's listened to The Chemistry Of Common Life, Farm, Love Vs. Money, or any of the other gem-laden albums released just in the past year. I bet Blow would like New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War).

•Blow writes "Apple is working with the four largest labels to seduce people into buying more digital albums." While he's right that it's "too little, too late," he neglects to mention that the contents of the seduction--interactive booklets--are a joke.

In parting I'll note that, for me, the scariest part of the column is that "of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer." Guess the Long Tail theory is a joke too.