Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small
John Cook
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 1565126246
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In celebration of their twentieth anniversary, founders Mac and Laura offer first-person accounts―with the help of their colleagues and Merge artists―of their work, their lives, and the culture of making music. Our Noise also tells the behind-the-scenes stories of Arcade Fire, Spoon, the Magnetic Fields, Superchunk, Lambchop, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Butterglory. Hundreds of personal photos of the bands, along with album cover art, concert posters, and other memorabilia are included.
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stand it. Everyone had a label. That’s when I moved to New York. It’s much more interesting up there than some guy from Kernersville, N.C., trying to be a music mogul. Or living the rock’n’roll life. When I lived in New York, these fuckers were calling me from Chapel Hill, people I hardly knew, to ask me if I knew any managers. I guess they thought I’d moved up there and jumped into the music industry. The early nineties indie boom didn’t just take in bands. Hundreds of labels popped up, hoping
to see Cypress Hill (a juxtaposition that resulted in a show-ending hail of dirt clods for Steve Malkmus and his bandmates in West Virginia) – they had a blast. The machine rolled like clockwork, and Superchunk’s position as the last band before dark on the side stage (they called it the “kiddie stage,” but Lollapalooza called it the “Mind Field”) meant large and interested crowds and a good hour to play, whereas the Jesus Lizard, which had ostensibly better billing, had to play their dark and
first spot. Bob Lawton This is the whole difference between doing it yourself, and being on a major label with a bus and a road crew: It’s really taken out of your hands. How you want to be presented and how you want to present yourself, even to the opening act. Who are, allegedly, people you asked to come play with you. Jim Wilbur So we said, “If there’s no change by Denver, we’re going to leave the tour.” And we played the show, and afterwards, we went and sat down. And Tanya and the guitar
They were punk-rock scientists. It makes sense that, living in a small town, they really devoured zines like Maximum Rocknroll, and internalized all the information. They had to dig to find all this music; in Atlanta it was all right there and easy to access. Jim Wilbur I don’t think they would’ve ever been together without the band. I think they got together because Mac was like, “I’m going to teach you how to play bass. And we’re going to start a band. And from there, I’m going to start dating
marries soaring, joyous, full-throated choral melodies to downbeat-heavy, danceable tunes that owe as much to the Supremes as to New Order. Ragged electric guitars clash with rustic folk instruments, and songs veer from German beer-hall chants to French torch songs to American punk rock with urgency. “As the members of the Arcade Fire emerged from the crowd in their standard Russian military garb,” wrote a reviewer for McGill’s college paper of an early show, “the eager crowd was immediately
