Record labels. Depending on your point of view, they’re either a hopelessly archaic method of music dissemination in this era of bedroom wizardry, or they’re stalwarts who’ve adapted to ten million new paradigms and have found a reinvented model for success. Well, some have anyway.
The successful ones have done so in a manner that’s almost gang-like in the sense that the smartest ones have chosen their niche and have run with it. They’ve gathered a family of like minds and set about recording and distributing the bands they love and know. Some of my favorite DC labels, Windian Records, Underwater Peoples, and of course Dischord, are all fine examples of this notion.
For the month of March, The Vinyl District’s going to visit with four labels, one a week, who are not just surviving but flourishing in a wholly different era under very new and different constructs. But the bottom line is the same—they’re promoting and producing and getting the music out there and putting physical product on the shelves of record stores into the bargain.
So, under the banner of Record Store Day 2010, we’ve chosen four diverse labels—new, classic, reinvented—to visit with and wouldn’t you know it, they all have an affinity for the aforementioned record stores and vinyl and the thing that brings you to this blog in general…a love of music. We’ll also have tons of free music and giveaways from each one to keep you coming back for more.
First up for the month and this week, indie upstarts, Sarathan Records.
Hi! We’re Sarathan Records and we’re excited and honored to be kicking off The Vinyl District’s March label spotlights.
Although we’re waving to you from our little bird’s nest in Seattle, WA, the artists you will enjoy from Sarathan Records this week are from all over our hemisphere. In honor of the upcoming Record Store Day, you’ll hear how they’ve all been inspired, changed and even created because of Record Stores! We like to say that Sarathan Records is sweet, its artists eclectic, its music infectious. Hope this week you find something here you love!
It’s the smell that really gets me off. I can walk in any record store and take one breath of the air within to know what kind of record store I’m about to get into. All that cardboard causing a flurry of dust to push past my nasal hairs and into the depths of my mind. The one record in the back, hiding, whispering to my senses to find it.
I get side tracked however, and start pushing my brain to think of the record that I must have. I knew what record it was 5 minutes before walking in, but with every step closer to the doors that record gets pushed aside by all the records I could have. All of them, so close together with equal wanting to be on my turntable, pleasuring my ears. It’s a sex that I can’t live without. The slow pulse of the built up dust on the needle crackling in the grooves of Swell Maps’ “Jane from Occupied Europe” or Suicide’s “Suicide”, lulling me into a trance that induces chemical reactions in my brain far greater than any drug.
I begin my journey into the depths of a land that has no soundtrack. It is silence, a meditation. I close my eyes and allow my nose to lead to a starting point. I ramble through zigzagging from Blues to Rock to Jazz then back again to Rock to World then back once more to Rock. What was that damn record called! Shit! I knew it before. I could see the cover in my head, a fish eye lens with the young band standing in what seems to be the frame of a building. English gents I believe, I can’t remember, I’m screwed. I decide to forget about it and see what treasures have arrived in the used section.
Thumbing through the J’s I find that Tommy James and The Shondells have been marked 20% off. Done. It’s mine… forever. It wasn’t the record I had in mind, but it was the record that came to mind. I push over a few more and find an out of place Captain Beefheart “Safe As Milk”. Hahahaha! There it is, the record, my record, calling for me. I smealt it upon arrival. It was expecting me, and it moved itself to where it knew I would find it. In the one place it didn’t belong. The J’s.
The record store is my pusher man, and one that I will always allow to bleed me, and my wallet. Fix me up, sedate me, that’s where I want to be anyway. Sedated, with a punk named Judy.
—Aaron Schroeder
