ANALOG EDITION

ISSUE NO. 1

EDITED BY MATT CARR

ANALOGEDITION.COM

© ANALOG EDITION MAY 2011

�‘LAKE TOWERS�’ BENJI SCHNEIDER OF LORD HURON

CONTENTS

COVER ARTWORK KAITLIN VAN PELT

LAKE TOWERS BENJI SCHNEIDER OF LORD HURON

INTRODUCTION: LET�’S GET PHYSICAL 1MATT CARR

INTERVIEW: JAKE ORRALL OF INFINITY CAT RECORDS 3

THE ROLE OF THE 7-INCH IN THE LO-FI ROCK MOVEMENT OF THE 7 EARLY 90S JASON DEAN

INTERVIEW: ROLLO GRADY�’S CARTER SMITH TALKS WITH AQUARIUM 15 DRUNKARD�’S JUSTIN GAGE

LIMITED EDITIONS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE EBAY 18JESSE CROOM

SPECKTONES 22SONNY SMITH OF SONNY & THE SUNSETS

INTERVIEW: ERIC ISAACSON OF MISSISSIPPI RECORDS 24

FRANK SINATRA AND TOM WAITS: OUT ALL NIGHT 37HUGH WILLETT

INTERVIEW: JESSI HECTOR OF FATHER / DAUGHTER RECORDS 43

OMANIWOMAN 46DAVID LEVESQUE OF LEVEK

GETTING LUCKY ON THE INTERNET 48ANDY KLINGENBERGER

BEER, BON IVER, AND THE BIBLE BELT 52SAMANTHA KRAMER

ANALOG EDITION RELEASES 57

INTRODUCTION:LET�’S GET PHYSICAL

What was the rst album you ever bought? Do you remem-ber? Sure you do. Maybe it was on a cassette tape or CD. Or maybe it was even on vinyl. And yes, it was probably embarrassing. My rst music purchase was a Naughty By Nature tape: 19 Naughty III. When CDs became the rage, I started with the horrendous soundtrack to the Street Fighter movie (my taste was clouded by a Jean-Claude Van Damme obsession). Later, after discovering boxes of my dad�’s vinyl, I bought my rst piece of wax: a used copy of Tom Petty�’s Damn The Torpedoes for $5. I remember each purchase vividly. I even remember how the Petty LP looked, sitting in a box in a corner of the thrift store: dusty, forgotten, and smelling of old people.

What about the rst mp3 you ever downloaded? Can you picture it? What about the rst album you purchased on iTunes? Personally, I have no clue. iTunes is an extraordinary technological advancement and an incredible organiza-tional tool, but it has about as

much personality as a calcula-tor. And unfortunately, so does much of the music it holds. Sure, when you play a song it becomes vibrant and turns on the sensory reworks. But what about when a song�’s not on? It�’s stored information�—a formula of 1s and 0s. Modern technology is wonderful be-cause it works so ef ciently: it�’s easy and it�’s fast.

In contrast, books and vinyl re-cords are inef cient. They take up space, weigh a ton in large numbers, and require manual operation�—turning the page, dropping the needle. But there are connections made with the experience of owning a physical object that can never be replicated by technol-ogy. The smell of a book after you�’ve taken it to the beach; the crinkly coffee stain that seeped through all of chap-ter 10; your friend�’s copy of Moby Dick that has whale dicks scribbled throughout its margins. Unlike an MP3, when you play a vinyl record you�’re seeing and hearing music living in real time. Whether it�’s the dust from your apartment that�’s popping in the record�’s grooves or simply the different spots you place the needle, in nitesimal changes make

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every spin unique.

It�’s quick and easy to buy e-books and MP3s. There�’s even an app that mimics the warm sound of vinyl. But we don�’t fall in love with books and records because they were easy to procure. In fact, we love them more when they�’re hard to nd�—we love the hunt; we love the treasure. And once we nd the object of our desire, we love being able to hold that piece of art in our hands and call it our own. We can organize them any we want, not just by artist or genre, but by something as abstract as the mood it puts us in when we play it. What�’s more fun: scrolling through uniform le names in an iTunes library or perusing a shelf of colorful records? When I go through my vinyl collection, it�’s like reacquainting myself with old friends�—I admire the artwork, read the liner notes, recall the concert where I bought it, and an awkward conversation I had with the band member selling their swag.

The goal of this zine is to recre-ate the fun and intimacy of the physical object. So please, take our rst issue to the

beach with you, spill coffee on it, get out a lawn chair, crack open a six-pack, and read it in the sunny park across the street. I�’m not saying there�’s anything wrong with MP3s or reading on a computer; I�’m saying there�’s something truly wonderful, and irreplaceable, about the way a book feels in your hands and the sound a needle makes when it rst hits that vinyl groove.

�—MATT CARREVERYBODYTASTE.COM

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In nity Cat is a Nashville based record label started by JEFF The Brotherhood�’s Jake and Jamin Orrall and their father, Robert. While the proli c young duo utilize In nity Cat to release their own cassettes, CDs, and vinyl, they�’ve also developed an impressive young roster of up and com-ing Nashville acts like Heavy Cream, Natural Child, and Denney & The Jets.

Big news broke on May 2nd�—a few weeks after I spoke with Jake�— when the Orralls con rmed JEFF The Brotherhood had inked a deal with Warner Music Group. The agreement gives the band global distribution and In nity Cat a spot on Warner�’s Inde-pendent Label Group. While Warner and In nity Cat will share ownership of the band�’s masters, brothers JEFF will still retain complete creative control.

�“In nity Cat is still a completely independent record label,�” said Robert Orrall in a state-ment. �“We are in our 9th year as a label, and the Green-hornes/JEFF tour split 7�” is our 63rd release. We are grateful for the support the Nashville community has shown us, and we couldn�’t be more excited about the future.�”

Suddenly these brash young do-it-yourself upstarts have turned into savvy industry veterans with their chubby Stimpy-looking cat in tow. With JEFF�’s strongest LP to date, We Are The Champions, due out in June, there appears to be no stopping the Orrall family.

Tell me about the Nashville scene. My outsider perspec-tive pictures a lot of blues and country western, not so much the punk and driving rock of a Heavy Cream or Natural Child. Where do those bands and JEFF The Brotherhood t in?

INTERVIEW: JAKE ORRALL OF INFINITY CAT RECORDS IN NASHVILLE, TN

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We�’ve got a good tight-knit rock scene here. It�’s very community oriented and fun oriented. All the bands are our friends and we play in base-ments and warehouses and lthy rock clubs. Some of our friends are in country bands too!

When did you get the idea to start your own label? What prompted the move, as op-posed to signing somewhere else?

Well, there never was a move. We released our rst record in 2001 when I was a sophomore in high school, and Jamin was still in middle school. We wanted to start our own label, because we didn�’t know any-body who had an indie label in Nashville. If there was one at the time, we didnt know it existed. So it seemed natural: let�’s start a label so we and our friends can put out music. It was a hobby, something to do.

Was vinyl always a part of the picture? Is that In nity Cat's most important medium?

No, vinyl wasn�’t always in the picture. At rst it was just CD-R and cassette�—that�’s all we

could afford. Vinyl is very ex-pensive you know. I dont think any one format is more impor-tant than the other, we just sell more vinyl I think because it�’s more fun to collect.

Your roster really meshes beautifully. The bands all have sort of a hard and unique edge, but with a foundation of classic rock & roll. Is there a certain aesthetic or sound you're looking for when you sign bands to In nity Cat?

All the bands on In nity Cat are our friends, and I think we are all into and in uenced by a lot of the same stuff. Not necessarily other bands, but also just ideas and our lives. We dont look for an aesthetic as much as an attitude.

JEFF The Brotherhood was sort of like my gateway drug to In nity Cat. After listening to you, I began to check out the rest of In nity Cat's roster. Is that sort of the idea, to draw people in under the JTB um-brella?

Absolutely, JTB has been at it a lot longer than any of the other bands on the roster.We�’ve had more exposure, played more shows, etc. It

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started that way for sure. We expect people to check out what else the label has to offer knowing that we (JTB) run the label. We are super excited that some of our other artists are starting to bring attention to the label on their own!

It's obviously hard to make a living in music these days with everything so readily available on the internet, but you can�’t illegally download a piece of vinyl. Do you think vinyl may be a blueprint for bands and labels to become more pro t-able again? Or is still just a niche market?

I believe that anyone who wants to buy a copy of a record on vinyl is going to do it, no matter what. Even if that person has had the MP3s for weeks before they buy the vinyl. If they want it on vinyl, they will buy it regardless. Vinyl is not just having the music, its owning an object. The people who are going to actually pay for music are more and more often than not going to buy it on vinyl I think.

What's your own vinyl back-ground: do you remember when you rst got into vinyl and what your rst record

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was?

I rst got into vinyl as a fresh-man in high school going to punk shows in people�’s base-ments. I remember what my rst vinyl record was: it was a punk band called Shackles Await. They had pressed a 7" and made jackets out of card-board stapled together and silk screened. I don�’t remem-ber what they sounded like, they were very young kids. It was very inspiring for me to see them travelling around in a van selling handmade records and playing punk music. I should dig that record out and listen to it again. I remember it being really bad though...

I might be Natural Child's number one fan. Where did you nd those guys?

Funny question: Wes was in Meemaw, Seth was our friend, and Zack was an In nity Cat intern. Then Wes and Zack were Jamin�’s roommates, and Seth worked at the bike shop with Jamin, and then Wes and Zack were my roommates.

What's your approach to han-dling bands as they grow. For example, with Natural Child,

does the label have a hands off approach or do you try and provide some direction? Obvi-ously you're not telling them to record a radio-friendly single, but is there a general ow you try to curate: like, let's release two 7"s and then work towards a full-length?

Yeah, we try and set up release schedules, come up with plans for what comes out when and what�’s the next step, but it�’s not really us tell-ing them what�’s best for their careers. We try and keep an open dialog with our bands about what they want to do and what we would like to see from them and just work from there. We try and all agree on everything and make sure everyones happy and com-fortable.

1,000 4.75�” golden records with your new single �“Shred-der�” were given away at SXSW. Willy Wonka-style, one of the records comes with a prize: the opportunity to press 500 7�”s for free at United Re-cord Pressing. That�’s a pretty amazing and creative idea. How did that transpire?

That was all Jay's idea at URP. We had some fun recording

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the secret messages. Good idea Jay!

Did you nd a winner at SXSW?

We don't know, haven't heard anything yet! Maybe because you have to actually listen to the record to see if you won or not...

I imagine the majority of In n-ity Cat's customers and fan base are Nashville-based. Do you think you'll try to expand at all in the future to a more national and international audience? Or maybe that Nashville home-base is what makes it work so well?

Actually most of our fans and customers are not Nashville-based. Surprisingly, Nashville is kind of a small market for us. We do considerably bet-ter in most major markets and a large portion of our mail order goes to England and Europe. We are always try-ing to expand our reach and expand our capabilities as a label. World domination is de -nitely our ultimate goal!

INFINITYCAT.COM

THE ROLE OF THE 7-INCH IN THE LO-FI ROCK MOVEMENT OF THE EARLY 90�’S or: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE HISS.

The Lo- era from 1990 to 1995 was a pivotal time for alterna-tive rock. Not only for creating great music, but in the way that music was recorded�—with inferior equipment. Lo- was a reaction against the overproduced commercial rock that otherwise dominated popular music at the time, and it proved to audiences that recorded music can make just as important a statement with-out the resources of a studio. Fighting against obscurity and the practices of major labels, for many artists, home record-ing offered an opportunity otherwise unavailable. For edgling alt-bands, the format that allowed for the most ex-perimentation was the 7-inch.

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Lo- �—as it came to be coined by William Berger on his home recording cassette show on WFMU�—owes its existence to the introduction of the rst consumer 4-track: the Tascam 144, released in 1979. Up to this point, recording music was an expensive prospect that was nancially impossible for an individual not backed by a re-cord label. If you were record-ing at all, it was in a sound-proofed studio, far from home, with huge mixing consoles, isolation booths, and two-inch reel to reel tape. The equip-ment itself was giant and ex-pensive, let alone the full-time manpower required to keep it in working order and oper-ate it. Of course, this expense meant that the powers that be at the labels wanted a role in the nal product, because at the end of the day, the record companies were counting on sales. Up to the early 1990s, that in uence was felt in subtle and not so subtle ways. Every band was dependent on re-cording money from the label, even though they were forced to pay it back before they received a penny from record sales.

The home 4-track, like all technology, was rapidly made

smaller and more affordable for amateur musicians. A couple hundred dollars would allow you to play along with yourself on 3 additional tracks, or if you were really ambitious, the 4 could be �“bounced�” down to 2 stereo tracks on another cassette deck, giving you 2 more to play with, into in nity. However, the quality after every bounce was a little less clear than the last. The artists that came to de ne the Lo- sound embraced these limitations. Their songs were great in spite of the technol-ogy used to capture them. Instead of relying on tricks and post-production that could only be achieved in a studio, they had to rely on the live performance and songwriting. Lo- is arguably an acquired taste at its most challenging, but it also proves that no mat-ter how a song is recorded, it can be just as moving or heartbreaking�—and perhaps even more so�—when buried under these imperfections.

By no means is this a de nitive history: it�’s based on a few personal 7-inch purchases during this ve year period and is merely a rough jumping off point for further research in the genre. There are plenty

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of important artists that are sadly not represented here: Jim Shepard, Daniel Johnston, Mike Rep & the Quotas, R. Stevie Moore, and Jandek, among others. These records are a few touchstones of the most important releases of the early �‘90s and what is echoed today in bands like Ariel Pink, Blank Dogs, Times New Viking, and Wavves.

This is also an attempt to clear-ly de ne the term and put it to bed. As much as a lot of con-temporary artists owe massive debts to the textures of this period, it should by no means be termed �“Lo- �” today, when the technology that�’s pack-aged with every laptop makes it easier than ever to record only the sounds you want to turn into 1�’s and 0�’s. The lay-ers of imperfect sound today are very much a choice and not out of necessity, which is why many of the artists from this period have since moved on to record in professional studios as their music gained wider appeal and releases on major indie labels.

Though recorded in a make-shift studio, Pavement�’s 1989 EP Slay Tracks (1933-1969) probably stands as the most

recognizable and critically acclaimed landmark for the genre, packing 5 songs onto their debut 33 RPM 7-inch. The name itself could be a refer-ence to the audio delity of the rst track, �“You�’re Killing Me.�” Recorded without per-cussion, the song starts with a huge tape-like hiss, the static alternating against Steve�’s vocals, with the actual sound of the recording becoming another musical element. In Rob Jovanovic�’s book, Perfect Sound Forever: The Story of Pavement, Malkmus says of the opening track: �“We de-cided to use static as the third instrument... It was pretty excit-ing to be so experimental.�” Pavement were just beginning to popularize the sound, which would more or less go on to represent indie rock during the period. Although they quickly moved past their fascination with Lo- , the experimentation with static and unorthodox songwriting remained with the band throughout their career.

Lou Barlow and his band Se-badoh were also spearhead-ing the Lo- sound. The Mysteri-ous Sentridoh EP, released in 1993 on Little Brother Records, features 6 home recorded tracks and the A-Side, �“Good

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in Others�”, is a perfect ex-ample of the de nitive home recorded sound. On one of the tracks we have a drum machine recorded with the in-put level turned up, the sound peaking heavily into distor-tion, essentially breaking all the rules of studio recording. The effect creates a paranoid feeling: a sonic manifestation of the torment described in the vocals. Another aspect that de nes Lo- is that the song can only exist in this form with its imperfections. There�’s a reason you�’ll never hear �“Good in Others�” performed live. Not only would it be dif cult to recreate the over-lapping vocal, but the setup required to recreate the sound would inhibit the rest of the performance. Appropriately, to this day, the only format you�’ll nd �“Good in Others�” on is the 7-inch.

Smog�’s rst EP, Floating, was released on Drag City in 1991 following the full-length Sewn to the Sky. The Xerox insert lists Floating as #DC6, the sixth Drag City release! The track �“Turb�” in particular is charac-teristic of another important element in Lo- : making the re-cording process as obvious as possible. You can hear Bill Cal-lahan physically pressing the start button on the cassette over the sound of a direct input distorted electric guitar. This immediate and improvi-sational approach makes the song all that more intimate.

The draw of live music is often to get physically closer to an artist, and that happens in a new way with home re-cording. You literally enter the artist�’s personal space: you�’re in that bedroom in the middle of the night, listening to a song being recorded from beginning to end. �“Red Apples�” on the B-side would not have been possible in its early version if not for the cassette 4-track. Callahan had to press his nger down on the cassette spindle in time with the rhythm, resulting in the accordion and vocal becoming amazingly warbled and ghostly sounding�—an ef-

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fect that both illuminates the process and the technology�’s potential for experimentation. It�’s a perfect example of the kind of creativity that the re-cording format allowed a new generation of artists. In the same way DJ�’s in the South Bronx manipulated a turntable stylus to create a new sound, the tool itself can become an instrument.

The Mountain Goats�’ John Darnielle was another art-ist taking advantage of the ability to record outside a studio. Many of John�’s early releases were actually made without the use of a 4-track. Instead, he�’d record vocals over an already playing tape of guitar�—a setup used on his Tropical Depression EP, re-corded in 1994 and released on Little Ma a Records. The B-side�’s �“Song For John Davis�” is typical of The Mountain Goats songwriting �—they didn�’t need to play with the tool itself, so much as have the ability to capture a eeting moment. John uses nothing more than a cassette recorder to cap-ture his acoustic guitar and a cheap microphone for his vo-cals, yet the best studio in the world couldn�’t have recorded the track�’s immediacy and

rawness any better. John�’s trademark narrative and con-fessional storytelling style lends his side of the split EP a diary-like intimacy. On the belting chorus of �“Going to Hungary,�” the limitations of the cassette cause a peak�—a aw in most recording scenarios�— and it makes the vocals that much more real, as if to say there aren�’t any second takes in life: you get each moment with all it�’s genius and imper-fections. Honest and pure, Tropical Depression plays like a found, discarded document of heartbreak, and it�’s a sound that would be lost in a perfect recording environment.

Tape warble is distinctly au-dible on Palace�’s �“Gezund-heit,�” a 1995 7-inch single off German label Hausmusik. Will Oldham, aka Bonnie �‘Prince�’ Billy, recorded �“Gezundheit�” on a discarded mixtape of religious sermons, which he

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features in the opening. At the end of the song, he fades in a track previously recorded on the opposite side, so it plays in reverse: Julie Cruise�’s Twin Peaks theme �“Falling.�” Will illustrates the mode of production here by allowing for those kinds of accidents to happen. �“Gezundheit�” is the one Palace song that was actually done on a four-track. �“I think I used a cassette that was lying around that wasn�’t my cassette,�” Will told Index Magazine in 1996. �“The other side had Julie Cruise on it, so I mixed it and it just came in.�” The B-side, �“Let the Wires Ring,�” is an impossibly sparse, intimate recording of Will in a quiet room that captures every quiet vocal peak and guitar dynamic, complete with tape hiss and the click of pressing the stop button. Never meant to be heard by anyone but other musicians in preparation for his rst album, it�’s the personal nature of the performance that makes it so powerful.

Named after a Sonic Youth song, Eric�’s Trip released �“Songs about Chris�” in 1993 on Seattle grunge label, Sub Pop. The Canadian band combined equal parts fuzzy

distortion and melodic acous-tic songwriting on its numer-ous cassettes and singles. This single has a sticker for $2.49 from a long closed music store around the corner from where I lived in the East Village. It reminds me why I ended up buying these singles in the rst place: no matter how poor I was at the time, I could usu-ally nd a couple of dollars to pick up a single like this at a show or the dangerously local shop. The single was a cheap gateway drug for new music�—one that I�’ve never gotten over. �“Hurt�”, the rst track on the A-side, has a blown out, distortion guitar signal almost completely clipped off�—an extreme that would never have been attempted in a professional studio setting. The contrast against the melodic acoustic guitar in the right channel also speaks to the title, where the heavy distor-tion becomes an unsettling undercurrent for this otherwise sweet folk song. �“Hurt�” is a great example of another lo- characteristic: layered and slightly out of sync vocals from Rick White, which reveal the multi-track recording process.

Unlike commercial recordings, which routinely layer vocals to

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create a fuller sound as well as mask imperfections, here there wasn�’t any attempt to hide the process. It gives the vocal an exposed sound and the content reinforces that emotional feeling. When the track ends with the high hiss of an ampli er�’s gain turned all the way up, there�’s a hint of another song happening underneath. Like Palace�’s �“Gezundheit,�” it could be the song on the other side of the cassette, revealed only because that track volume happened to still be up when this was transferred for master-ing. Or more likely, this was a tape that had been used for multiple projects and ended in the middle of a previous piece�—a homemade DIY touch that wouldn�’t have oth-erwise existed.

The Yips recorded �“1000% Fox�” on Siltbreeze Records with Mike Rep, whose own

home recorded output paved the way for many of these raw sounds. He let the Yips truly shine on both sides of this single. Most likely recorded live on one mic in the middle of the space at full broken volume, Gilmore Tamny deliv-ers her vocals in an endearing, lackadaisical style: loud and right up close to the mic. It�’s a simple and instinctive setup that picks up the blown out energy of Jon�’s drums and the guitar�’s distorted amp. In another time these might have been mere demo�’s, but here the sound of the room and the recording�’s rough edges give it a distinctive punk quality. The vocals at times overpower the instrumentation, but that�’s the charm. It�’s deceptively naive: the band and Mike recognized the power in this unconventional recording, which was in fact the only way to accurately capture the band�’s raw energy.

Space Needle was on a friend of a friend�’s label, Zero Hour. The band consisted of Jud Ehrbar and Jeff Gatland from Providence. The sound quali-ties of Lo- I was hearing at this time were probably never tak-en quite so far as the band�’s cover of Neil Young�’s �“Sugar

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Mountain,�” the B-side to �“Sun Doesn�’t Love Me,�” recorded in 1995. The track starts out with a puzzling battle hymn parody mentioning Moun-tain Dew, as if this was a Civil War-era 4-track cassette. This quickly devolves into layers of what can only be described as howling, with the wailing overlapping and fading in and out of sync. The track is completely overdriven, the waveform peaking in the red the entire length of the song. The melody and vocals are all there, but it�’s as if the original was some ancient artifact that had been buried in the engine room of a ship, sunk at sea, and rediscovered hundreds of years later.

This extreme approach proved that ignoring recording prin-ciples could be just as exciting as following them. When you start with a classic, proven song like this, and then add so much noise and imperfection, is it just as good? It becomes an exercise in careful listen-ing to catch the subtleties of their take on Young�’s song. As much an homage to the song-writer as a statement rejecting the past, as if the only way to move forward is to completely obliterate your idols in the

process.

The in uence of these record-ings is impossible to measure today. Many important labels still going strong were founded on the recordings of Lo- art-ists, like Matador and Merge Records. It�’s hard to describe what it was like to hear music like this coming from some-thing as concrete as a 7-inch single, but recorded with tech-nology readily available to anyone. Suddenly the sound of these groundbreaking musi-cians were the same as re-cordings anyone could make in their own bedroom. It was liberating to have the same tools as these untouchable idols and every single was an education in what was pos-sible. Lou Barlow maybe says it best on the �“Gimme Indie Rock�” 7-inch: �“Breaking down the barriers like Sonic Youth / They got what they wanted, maybe I can get what I want too.�” Lo- democratized the music of the time, a musical revolution as important as the psychedelic evolution of The Beatles or The Ramones�’ invention of punk rock.

�—JASON DEAN 7INCHES.BLOGSPOT.COM

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INTERVIEW: ROLLO GRADY�’S CART-ER SMITH TALKS WITH AQUARIUM DRUNKARD�’S JUSTIN GAGE

Justin Gage, the founder of Aquarium Drunkard, is the Don Corleone of music blogs �—the Godfather. He�’s been blog-ging about music longer and better than most and with the classiest and most balanced of palettes, equally spotlight-ing dusty and forgotten crate-dug records and promising young contemporary artists, always with one idea at the forefront�—timelessness. In ad-dition to blogging, Gage hosts his own weekly radio show on Sirius/XMU, runs his Autumn Tone label, has written a book about the Memphis & the Delta Blues Trail, and worked as a music supervisor for the award-winning lm Natural Selection.

Carter Smith has turned Rollo Grady into the quintessential stop for discovering young unsigned rock acts, break-ing and championing bands like The Soft Pack, JEFF The Brotherhood, and Warpaint long before the rest of the blogosphere has had time to wake up and eat their Wheat-ies. Smith�’s reach also extends into lm and television, where he�’s worked as a music consul-tant on the Ed Helms feature Cedar Rapids and American Dad, where he helped with My Morning Jacket�’s transforma-tion into cartoon form.

Carter: What inspired you to start your music blog, Aquar-ium Drunkard? What year did you launch the site?

Justin: AD launched in the spring of 2005. It was initially an inexpensive and effective way to organize and share my thoughts on various interests with friends scattered around the country. The blog very quickly morphed into a place solely to discuss music and then expanded, becoming a sort of dialog with the com-menters and the small pool of others doing a similar thing (blogging about music).

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When did you realize that your blog was reaching a wider au-dience than just your friends?

Very quickly, actually, as there were only a handful of other music blogs going at the time. Because of this we would link to each other�’s content on the regular, share thoughts, recommendations, etc. It was all very organic growth.

Do you consider yourself a tastemaker?

Sure, if you like my taste.

What are your thoughts on blog aggregators, such as Elbows and Hype Machine?

Same as my thoughts per RSS. I see their point, and don�’t begrudge them, but, person-ally, I try and craft a reader experience with AD. An atmo-sphere, if you will, with the ow of the posts, the layout, and the images. I have no inter-est in catering to the quick- x MP3 crowd. I�’m a publisher. If I wasn�’t doing this via a blog platform, it would be some-thing else.

You were one of the rst bloggers to launch a record label (Autumn Tone Records).

Several other bloggers have launched their own labels since. Can you discuss the positive and negatives of run-ning a record label?

I started the label six months after Aquarium Drunkard and the label was not contingent to the blog�’s success or failure. It was and is a labor of love. It�’s grown over the years. I�’ve brought on a couple of part-ners, but the aim has stayed true: simply to expose and pro-mote artists that I believe in.

The most glaring negative is obvious�—no one is buying re-cords like they were a decade ago. Actually, no one is even buying records like they were in 2006 when Autumn Tone started. The positives are hav-ing a direct line to the legacy of great music that I�’ve been a fan of my whole life. I�’m not interested in sitting on the side-lines as a spectator. I�’m proud to have given back and been a part of something that has given me so much over the years, on so many levels.

What�’s the best advice that you could give to a blogger who�’s thinking of starting his or her own label?

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Back when I was still duking it out in the corporate world I opened a savings account speci cally for the creation of the label. I told myself this is what I have to spend and if I lose it, then I at least learned something�—even if that something is just how to lose a bunch of money. Thank-fully things didn�’t turn out that way. But going in you need to know, nancially, how much you are willing to spend, and quite possibly lose, to get things rolling and how much blood and sweat you are will-ing to expend to see your proj-ect succeed. Also, you have to know what your goals are. Meaning, are you looking at the endeavor as a �“hobby,�” or are you genuinely looking to grow it into a viable business.

In a recent New York Times article, Elektra founder, Jac Holzman said he was con-cerned about the �“absence of �‘ rst lters�’�”: the online equiva-lent of radio stations and disc jockeys. This makes me won-der if he�’s familiar with music blogs. In my opinion, we are lters, albeit niche lters. What are your thoughts?

Elektra was a great label, but I have no idea how tapped

into the �“now�” someone like Holzman is. The music industry has changed in just about every way since Elektra was having radio hits with tunes like �“Light My Fire;�” a track that just wouldn�’t make it onto the radio in 2011. I get where he is coming from per his �“absence of lters�” remark, but I think the lters have just inherently changed. Yes, blogs are lters, but niche lters. Now the lters seem, at least on a mainstream level, to be more geared toward placement and licensing, be it lms, com-mercials, televisions shows, etc.

Do you think music blogs are good for the music industry?

I think any platform that raises awareness of artists is great for the industry. Music will always be important to the human condition, but the more I read, the more it seems music, in general, is losing ground to the Internet, video games, DVDs, whatever.

The music industry is slowly moving towards adopting a cloud-based streaming sub-scription model. In several years, downloading will be a thing of the past. How do you think this will affect music

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blogs?

I�’ve been following this pretty closely the past few years as the idea of having the majority of my music collec-tion literally at my ngertips, via cloud technology and a smartphone, is fascinating. The idea that I could peruse and listen to my library just as easily in Los Angeles or Hong King is exciting. Having said that, I am very into having my own care-fully curated library. I have no real interest in a subscription model. I don�’t need access to every record ever released. I know my collection like I know the different pairs of shoes sitting in my closest�–very well. I seek out and hunt down the records I want. It�’s part of the fun.

How would a subscription model affect blogs?

I suppose it could be a positive thing in that a reader could have instantaneous access to whatever record they were just reading about.

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LIMITED EDITIONS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE EBAY

Record Store Day 2011 is in the books, and in terms of sales, it was the most successful to date. The annual April cele-bration of independent record stores with its myriad of exclu-sive releases increased total sales for the holiday by 13% from 2010 and vinyl sales by 220% at the average indepen-dent store. However, the day is not without its frustrations. After everyone has run out to their nearby participating shops, a different sort of cul-ture takes over on the Internet. Within a few hours of return-ing from my Record Store Day shopping extravaganza, there were over 250 Record Store Day exclusive releases listed on eBay. Five days after RSD, there were thousands of items listed. The Foo Fighters�’ Me-dium Rare�—an RSD exclusive

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