Indie in Spirit and Label

Greg Dulli had what he terms a front-row seat for the peak of independent rock a decade ago. His band, Afghan Whigs, was on the roster of Seattle’s Sub Pop Records just when Nirvana started to explode as a national phenomenon, and the Northwest rock scene was spotlighted as the ground zero of grunge.

“Consider this,” Dulli says. “Sub Pop had Nirvana before they went to Geffen Records, and they had just lost Soundgarden a year before. But they still had Mudhoney, L7, us, Tad, the Fluid--a pretty rockin’ roster. We’d all get together and play monster shows in Seattle and it was like mini-Woodstock.”

Selene Vigil, leader of 7 Year Bitch, was in the middle of it as well, with her band recording for tiny Olympia, Wash.-based C/Z Records.

“It was very exciting, so many bands doing so well,” she says. “That was the best time. That was the most fun.”

The fun ended when Nirvana, a trio from Aberdeen, Wash., signed with Geffen Records and hit the pop stratosphere. With “Nevermind,” and Seattle-based Pearl Jam’s Epic Records debut, “Ten,” right beside it, the new generation had its soundtrack, and the major labels smelled green in all that plaid flannel.

It was a grunge gold rush. Record executives flocked first to the Northwest and then to other indie-rock centers, offering unproven acts six-and sometimes seven-figure deals, and promising the kind of promotional muscle that was out of the indie labels’ reach. In some cases, majors swallowed up indie labels whole to get one key act or to have a “farm team” in the house.

It put a lot of money in the indie economy, but it also sucked that scene dry. Dulli’s Whigs and Vigil’s 7 Year Bitch, which both broke up after ill-fated relationships with major labels, were just two of the casualties.

“There are many ways to skin the cat, but whatever way you skin that cat, it’s skinned, and you destroy the culture,” says Douglas Mark, a music attorney who represents two L.A. independent labels, Vagrant and Epitaph. “You can sign one artist and hope he’s a hit. Or you can buy a label and hope one or more of their artists will be a hit.”

All this history is important to remember, because independent rock is back with a vengeance after a long, fallow decade.

The developments of the past year have been dizzying: The White Stripes made three strong albums in Detroit without major-label involvement. The Hives are leading a Swedish garage-rock invasion. Vagrant Records has become a focus for the rising tide of heartfelt rock known as emo, with Florida’s Dashboard Confessional, the Get Up Kids and the Alkaline Trio leading the way. Omaha has become an unlikely capital with Saddle Creek Records and its roster, including Bright Eyes and the Faint. And in New York, the electroclash movement is taking hold with such acts as Miss Kittin and Fischerspooner breaking out.

“Lots of exciting, dynamic music is challenging the norm,” says Craig Kallman, co-president of the major label Atlantic Records, which recently signed Palo Alto female punk-metal band the Donnas (see Pop Eye, Page 64). “As more young bands get inspired to blaze their own trails, we’ll have a more diverse spectrum of sounds on the radio, which we desperately need.”

In the beginning, all rock ‘n’ roll was indie rock: Elvis started out with the Memphis storefront operation Sun Records, Chuck Berry recorded for the Chicago blues label Chess, and Little Richard was with Specialty.

The majors--Columbia, RCA, Decca--were for old-folks music, but they couldn’t ignore rock forever. They stepped in, and for much of the ‘60s, creativity and corporate demands managed to coexist with memorable results.

But major-label pop and rock went stodgy in the ‘70s, triggering the punk rock revolution and a new explosion of independent labels--I.R.S., SST, Slash, Twin/Tone et al--that produced such essential bands as R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Husker Du and the Replacements.

In that era, thriving rock communities grew in Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago and other non-media capitals, away from the limelight and pressures of the mainstream, as well as in Los Angeles and New York. Encouraged by their peers and fans to be adventurous and relevant, musicians developed at a natural pace that wouldn’t be tolerated by clock-conscious, hit-hungry major labels. They also experimented, striving for individuality rather than trying to fit a format.

Today’s resurgence took root while the mainstream occupied itself with teen pop, cartoonish rock and over-the-top hip-hop. The new indies were able to sprout and develop almost unnoticed, and suddenly indie rock is once again where music fans--and, inevitably, major labels--are discovering energy and creativity.

So given the history, is there any way that the music business won’t mess it up this time too.

“Short answer?” says Dulli. “No. They’re going to [mess] it up. I just think it’s the natural course of things.

“I don’t think it’s any inherent evil on the majors’ part,” he adds. “Indies rise out of the ashes during times of bad music, and we’ve had bad music for the last few years. If we consider screwing it up to be coming and co-opting and changing it, then yeah. And it will happen again 10 years from now.”

That may be, but some of the key players in the current indie world say they have learned lessons from the past and are determined to do things differently.

“I think major labels can do wonderful things,” Saddle Creek owner Robb Nansel says. “It just doesn’t happen too often. Geffen and the other majors should have been happy with Nirvana and what they did for the music scene, but they just were not satisfied. They wanted more and more Nirvanas, and that just doesn’t exist in the real world, and eventually it all falls apart, as we saw in the ‘90s.”

Saddle Creek as a label and several individual acts on the roster have so far rebuffed all the major-label offers that have come their way.

“I don’t think any of the [indie] labels from the ‘90s found their major-label alliances to be too enticing,” Nansel says. “Most of them are out of those deals now or went under in the process. We are certainly aware of that and have tried to avoid those sorts of things. I am sure there is a deal that could benefit us and our artists, but I don’t think it has existed in the past and I certainly have not seen a proposal for one.”

Vagrant, though, has formed an alliance with Interscope that label owner Richard Egan believes does avoid most of the problems indies have encountered on this road. Earlier in the year, Interscope purchased a large stake in Vagrant (reportedly 49% for more than $10 million), but while the larger company has become involved in promoting and developing Dashboard Confessional, it isn’t even distributing any of the smaller label’s releases. Vagrant still has three years remaining on a distribution deal through New York independent TVT Records.

“Interscope has bought equity in us, and when we choose to use their marketing department, they help us by stepping in,” Egan says. “But all of the acts we had are still signed to Vagrant proper, and when their deals are up, they can do what they want. They’re not obligated to go to Interscope. We built in safeguards to address things that concern me. I don’t believe in long-term deals that lock up artists. Interscope, to their credit, came in and said that this is a different spin on the way they do things, but they were adaptable.”

V2 Records, technically an indie but in effect a major label, was also adaptable in making a deal with the White Stripes earlier this year. Rather than a conventional contract for three or more albums with the label advancing a large sum to the band to be recouped from royalties, the Stripes deal is a partnership for just two albums, with the band and label co-owning the recordings. In fact, V2 President Andy Gershon is resistant to proposals for standard deals.

“There’s a band we’re trying to sign, but the lawyer sent out a memo asking for a million dollars a record,” Gershon says. “This is a band that has never made a record, has no real following. But there are several labels interested. They should be in partnership with a label, not taking an ‘us versus them’ mentality. But people are scared of change.”

Dulli, Vigil and other veterans of the previous indie scene say that they made the move to majors with their eyes wide open and have few regrets, even if they failed to grow too far beyond their indie success.

“It turned out to be fine,” says Page Hamilton, whose band Helmet was plucked from the indie ranks by Interscope in 1992.

“We made money and bought houses. But that said, over the long haul, the relationship with major labels is not what it is with indie labels. Everybody wants to make money, but there are fewer people at major labels who have much passion for music or knowledge of underground music or a desire to do something that belongs specifically to you and not a mass-produced genre.”

And the veterans are encouraged by what they see as new opportunities for non-mainstream music.

Dulli, splitting his time between New Orleans and Los Angeles, is working on a solo album. Hamilton, also living in L.A. and New Orleans, spent time playing guitar in David Bowie’s band and working on movie scores, and has formed a new band called Gandhi.

Vigil has also been working on a project and is starting to shop a demo.

“I’m glad there’s a resurgence of indie labels,” she says. “It was really depressing to me when everything got scooped up by the majors. I think it will be better this time since people did learn. It’s not always better to go for what appears to be the golden ring. Now we have the hindsight of going through it once. Now we know.”

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Steve Hochman is a regular contributor to Calendar.