Last week, venerable Bay Area label Absolutely Kosher announced that they would cease releasing new music this fall due to financial hardship and the inability to find a model that makes running an independent label viable. While not a mega-indie like Merge, Matador or Seattle’s own Sub Pop, Absolutely Kosher is no anonymous bedroom outfit – they caught the Mountain Goats on the start of their climb to indie royalty with the release of The Coroner’s Gambit in 2000 and delivered the musical coup of 2003 by giving to the world the Wren’s indisputable classic The Meadowlands. While reintroducing the Wrens to a Pitchfork-approved world may have marked the peak of their visibility, Absolutely Kosher has charged ahead releasing interesting, often challenging, and occasionally brilliant work by emerging artists, apparently in the face of their fiscal best interests. The roster is deep and eclectic, from Sunset Rubdown’s breakthrough LP to Rob Crow’s robed Goblin Cock project to early Xiu Xiu to a host of lesser known Bay Area acts like the Court and Spark and Virginia Dare. The label’s body of work speaks for itself.
Cory Brown, the founder and main dude at Absolutely Kosher, was the first label guy I ever met and up there with the nicest alongside Matthew Young of Song, By Toad and Jeff Walsh of similarly mothballed Turn Records (another heartbreaking story – go buy Thee More Shallows‘ More Deep Cuts right now. It’s better than 99% of the music in your collection. Guaranteed). Cory was manning the merch booth for the Swords Project, who were opening up for Stephen Malkmus at the Fillmore in San Francisco on Malkmus’s first solo tour. I had recently moved to San Francisco from my much less hip (at the time) hometown of Philadelphia. It was my first show at the Fillmore and I sported tragically uncool hair and clothes. In other words, he was within his God-given right to blow me off as the dorky, Sasquatchean greenhorn that I was. Instead, after asking him about Eltro, an unheralded electro-pop band from Philly from the early days of Absolutely Kosher, he chatted with me for seemingly 20 minutes and proved to be a sweet, approachable, and given my likely dearth of confidence and coolness, charitable guy. Over the years when I ran into him he was equally nice, even though I don’t think he ever remembered who I was exactly despite the fact that my old band had risen to the ranks of lower-mid tier on the local San Francisco scene and played a bunch of shows with the Ex Boyfriends, who were on his label. That’s OK – as opposed to the Seattle freeze where people who know you decide not to acknowledge you (I get it, the weather is dreary and you’re all descended from stern Scandinavian disaffected drifters – fine), Cory always greeted me warmly, disguising his probable lack of recognition with affable grace.
I suspect this is the character that has defined and driven Absolutely Kosher. Check out this list of unsung releases that Cory put together for the San Francisco Weekly – even at this juncture his focus is on bands who he feels deserved more recognition for their work rather than lamenting his own financial situation. His list is poignant and fascinating, though too brief to cover the topic. Withered Hand’s Good News (previously discussed in this Blog O’ Wax) is my favorite album of 2011 (I’m counting the US release) and Frog Eyes’ Tears of the Valedictorian is one of my favorite albums ever. Then there’s stuff like the self-titled Summer at Shatter Creek album which I love but most folks probably never heard of and Okay, whose songs are like diamonds growing in the ground for future generations to discover.
The notion of an independent music endeavor starving to death (or at least into some sort of coma) from lack of attention, promotion or just basic revenue should hit close to home to probably anyone reading this post (assuming you’re still reading). But as I wrote elsewhere and possibly more eloquently, the rise of the internet, digital music, piracy etc. and the death of the music industry obviously won’t stop people from making new music. With cheap recording gear and outlets like Facebook and Bandcamp, the world is jam packed with new songs from new bands that want to be heard. To me, the big tragedy is the loss of the broader music ecosystem – people who put out records, write thoughtful reviews and features, run record stores and recording studios, promote shows and do all the crucial, non-ego pumping things that helped musicians find people to discover, enjoy and buy their music. It’s a grown-up concept, but these folks need to make some sort of a living to keep on keeping on and without enough money flowing through the proverbial pipes they’re having to find other stuff to do.
I have no great conclusion or call to arms. Buy music rather than stealing it? Seek out and support small labels? Hug a record store clerk? This super long post (sorry Levi!) is just going to peter out – I’ve run thin on indignation. For now . . .