One label totally ignored at the Grammys was the indie label which won our award of best indie label of 2009, and for good reason. The label supplied no less than eight of our top albums of 2009. The label is forty years old and has built a fabulous artist roster through its hard work and the support it provides for musicians. The Cambridge, Massachusetts (recently moved location) label was started back in 1970 by three Yankee university friends inspired by radical campus politics and the revival of folk music.  Their aim was to ‘preserve their country’s musical heritage.’ “None of us was in it for the money,” says  co-founder Ken Irwin who still runs the label with his two friends. “We were basically just music fans,” Bill Nowlin adds. “It was a hobby,” third partner Marian Leighton sums up. Clubbing together $125, they pressed just 500 LPs by their first two signings. “We didn’t know anything about the record business, so we made it up as we went along,” says Nowlin. “We had a one-page contract, and somehow we knew that 25 cents an album was the standard royalty rate. We paid 50 cents becaue we didn’t want to be accused of being rapacious record company owners.” Forty years on, Rounder Records remains fiercely independent with an artist roster covering folk, blues, country and bluegrass, soul, jazz, reggae and much more. Nanci Griffith has worked with major labels and indies during a 32-year career but says Rounder is very different. “If you called the Rounder office, generally Ken would answer the phone himself. At the time I joined them in 1984, I was driving myself crazy around America, trying to make it on my own. I had no publicist and no booking agent, so I was doing all my own booking, driving and publicity, and they took the burden off my shoulders. If something was going on that I needed an answer to, I could personally call someone at the label and find out about it. They have remained very close to their artists.”

Béla Flek recently returned to Rounder, after a 20-year spell on major labels, to record a wonderful collaboration with African musicians called THROW DOWN YOUR HEART. “What impressed me most when I went back after 20 years was that all the people I remembered from the 70s were still there. They had grown up a lot, and had better distribution. What had been a small folk label had become a big player on the music scene.”

One of the keys to the label’s growth has been its ability to idetify new talent. Ken Irwin discovered Alison Krauss when she was just 13, singing on a demo tape by the group Classified Grass. The multi-million-selling Krauss is still with the label 25 years later, despite numerous big-money offers to move to bigger labels. Minnie Driver was signed in 2004. “People like Rounder are the kind of people I want to be in business with. They are very honest.”  If you’d like to check out some recent great records from Rounder click onto this link for those albums we rated so highly in 2009: http://www.shakenstir.co.uk/index.php/features/best-albums-2009-a-celebration/features/12753/

1 February 2010

Yes folks, she’s everywhere in typical PR blitz mode. Now while I think Corinne Bailey Rae one of the UK’s more interesting artists with a distinctive style, I dislike the way certain artists receive all the headlines, media coverage and amazing reviews when there are so many quality acts out there that are ignored.  The last notable example was Robbie Williams who it seems is re-joining Take That to further his career… Nuff said. I look forward to reviewing her new album which by all accounts is ‘amazing.’ During Sunday night’s radio show we were hit by a minor IED. I tried to play a genuine CD by a new artist and the pro Tascam CD player wouldn’t have it. My producer JJ couldn’t work it out but then observed that the CD was much thinner than others which could have accounted for it not registering with the player. It did play on my low-end player but not on the hyper-sensitive pro player. In fact it was so thin he nearly broke it by applying a small amount of pressure as he bent it. So what’s goin’ down? Simply put, cutting corners by indie artists and manufacturers may be to blame, and ain’t doing the client any favours - we wanted to gve it airplay but couldn’t. In sharp contrast, we also played tracks from some other ‘unsigned’ (going it alone without a major label) bands which blew me away with the quaity of music and production values (check out the play-list @ http://www.shakenstir.co.uk/index.php/features/calon-105-fm-shakenstir-session-playlists/features/5656/) . The bands included Furyon from Brighton (bloody amazing!), Like A Storm (New Zealand band now based in the USA), Sgt Wofbanger (Crewe UK), and Tenebrous Liar (a gut-wrenching album). Furyon are being sponsored by a wake-up drinks company who covered production and touring costs - it makes one wonder just how much the music industry business model is changing, just beneath the surface.

Did you watch last Friday’s ‘big event’? Tony Blair’s interview by the Iraq War Inquiry panel held no big surprises for me, with one exception. The media hailed him as the consumate performer, ‘an Oscar-winning performance’, but my view was in very sharp contrast (and I suspect many head doctors and body language readers would have thought the same). He looked totally unconvincing as he diverted questions, failed to look questioners in the eye, went off-topic and worked overtime on hand gestures. To me, he looked like a well-rehearsed sham, a truly busted flush - just like the newly appointed head of ITV, Adam Crozier. Now here’s a guy who fucked the FA, fucked the Royal Mail and in April 2010 will begin to fuck the ITV TV channel - for very big bucks. Crozier caused havoc at Royal Mail by alienating postmen, cutting services (which of course are now much more expensive) and introducing commission selling of financial services for ‘The People’s Post Office.’ Frankly, any idiot can cut costs and services, but it takes a creative, passionate and open manager to build a business. Crozier is not one of them.

There is one shining gem in BBC’s armoury and that’s Radio 4. It’s my only must-listen radio station and tonight reported on the fascinating ‘Open Source Community’ which is behind several exceptional free IT services such as Linux, Wikipedia, and Firefox. The concept is that anybody out there with the right expertise can contribute ideas and detail to solving problems and creating/improving new products. It’s an open forum with central reporting/control point, is democratic and works beautifully. The results speak for themselves and the more enlightened corporations are beginning to tune into it, like Microsoft. It got me to thinking how we at Shakenstir can apply the system to what we do…