This is an interview extract with Masha and Phil from The Drellas talking about the emergence of Antipop with a few choice words from Tommy. The rest of the interview was lost.
Masha (M), Phil (P) and Tommy (T) from The Drellas take about new alternative record label Antipop. Interview conducted by Andy Johnson of Click Liverpool (Click).
(M) We're just not going to count on money from banks, it's a bit unrealistic. For companies that have been around for a while, they may have some capital. We have to push the record company sales and make some releases happen without any financial help, so the only way for us to do it is DIY. The only people we can rely on are young, they're not professionals, they're working without any new contacts.
You know how Woolworths collapsed, and 73,000 bands got dropped within months as a result of it by major record labels, because they were easy (to get rid of) and were not selling enough records for the record companies to keep them. But where are all these people going? They don't know where...
Phil (P) If you've got music in your blood you have to keep on going whatever...
(M) So basically I think if we keep on going with this right, and do some internet promotion and make some small releases happen, and try to get as much out of it, we will meet people in exactly the same position as us.
(P) That's pretty much how it happened anyway, we had the idea of doing Antipop, obviously with The Drellas and other things we had, but a lot of the other bands that we were playing with in Liverpool, the likes of The Dead Class, Fraktures, and all of them. We all became friends because we were all playing together. The guys from The Dead Class came to us one day cos' they were releasing their own record themselves; making their own albums and putting them out. Everyone came together, literally one day, we all converged here, and everyone said why don't we all just club together? Because we've got a movement already, with all the same people going to the same gigs and seeing the same bands, we know everybody, it's like a movement. Why don't we club together and do it all under the banner of Antipop, do you know what I mean?
(Click) It's a collective is it not?
(P) Ye, it's a collective, and obviously all the people from all the different bands come together and everyone's got different skills to offer, Metro are really good at PR, there are people who are good with booking agents and have got all that type of stuff and can get gigs/shows, I can make records. So between us all, we just pooled our experience and made a solid movement and it seems to be working.
(M) It's about 12 people working on it, we have everybody doing it in their spare time, for now. But we have hope that one day we will be a fully staffed record company with people working as heads of departments, whatever the structure is going to be, we don't know that yet.
(Click) That's how a lot of the success stories of the past have started isn't it?
(M) Ye, it's old school isn't it, there's nothing new there.
(P) Labels like Alternative Tentacles, SST, Rough Trade, Stiff, they all started with a group of like-minded people coming together going "we wanna do this" It's really totally out of the norm cos it's really all about...if you look at Metro Manila Aide or look at The Drellas, Dead Class, it's very far removed from what's going on. What would normally get the light of day in the press, they don't really care, cos they don't sound like the Ting Tings, or Snow Patrol, or your Razorlight or whatever's big at the time, so it's kind of difficult to get people to take notice of you. Do you know what I mean? Unless you sort of make them take notice. I think with the collective consciousness, with everyone moving in one direction, it's a lot easier to get people to make things happen.
(T) And to push things forward.
(P) Ye, push it forward, move things, we've got a lot of really good people around, a brilliant lad called Andy Cooper whose the graphic designer, he's a great kid, who did our tour posters, brilliant, he doing all the record work, he's doing everything and he's doing it for nothing, but one of the things we are doing, which no other record company in the world has ever done, well apart from one that I know from the 70's, is we're putting all the musicians on what's called points, putting percentages on everything. We're putting the graphic designer on a point , so he's not getting any money from us, but if it sells he'll get a little percentage. It may be a pittance, the same as what everybody else is getting, but it gives him an incentive to move forward and do great work.
(Click) One interesting question is whether artwork is still important for record labels?
(P) I really think it's vital. As kids we used to buy records, we didn't even know who they were, you'd see the cover and go "that's brilliant, I'm gonna buy it." Ok 50% of the time you would get home and it would be crap, but you would still like the cover!
(T) We're still very much hands on...
End of tape...
