on 6/10/03 11:08 AM, Perfect Sound Forever at perfect-sound@furious.com wrote:
I think it was a little more complicated than that with UK punk and its ties to corporate culture.
Remember, the Pistols and the Clash were on major labels, not indies (unless you count Virgin at that time). Same with the Stranglers and the Jam. At the same time, these initial bands did have kindred spirits in many other bands who flocked to indies which were sprouting up all over the place. This had a snowball effect as this encouraged other subsequent indie labels to start up. By the time that Rough Trade went from a record shop to a record label (around '78), they had effectively established a network of distribution around the country as was starting to happen in the States.
Unfortunately, very few of the bands who started out on indies stayed in indie-land if they started to make some headway in the marketplace. Unfortunately, it was the very thing to which you point up -- the corpo-culture ties -- that defined punk rock's truer stance, which was that a new generation of rock stars had indeed arrived. I have it on really good authority that the Clash's management was in a bit of a bidding war with several labels and that it was largely based on if a Sex Pistols record was actually going to be released etc etc etc and that a lot of money and promotional consideration was revolving around whose record would come out first. Remember -- as great as the Sex Pistols' music was, their public presentation was designed and executed by Malcom McLaren, a fella whose artistic integrity is not on par with Tim berne's. sh