Beneath The Surface #1

Robin Pecknold, Fleet Foxes / Photograph by Rich Thane

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What a strange year it’s been. A few months before I signed Fleet Foxes to Bella Union in late 2007, I was all of a muddle…

*Cue swirly time-warp visuals*

Our european licensing partners (who distributed our records in Europe), suddenly went bust without warning leaving us without much lead in our pencils. Our office, which was a whole railway arch that vibrated noisily every time a Tube train went overhead (the vibrations would also curiously make the light in the toilets go off if you were sat in there reading the Beano), became overrun with friendly (they just walked slowly and most casually across the floor while we were chatting or listening to music) though rank-smelling, mice. They were way too nice (“nice mice”) to kill, but way too prolific to control.

Similarly-sized Fionn Regan decided to leave the label and sign with a Major just after we got a Mercury Prize nomination, the Howling Bells’ manager (now no longer encumbent) was driving us all mental (even the mice seemed charming by comparison), and all the while I was driving around in a huge splitter band bus with a hole in the roof as my only mode of transport.

I should add, as reading it back that wasn’t entirely clear, that the hole in the roof wasn’t Standard Factory Fitted. This was a rusty hole that may have been worsened when I tried to go under a bridge that was lower than my bus but it may have just been a rusty hole. Having a “rusty hole” (I don’t know why, and call me sick if you like, but I am thinking of some hoary old crone right now, like my old sow of a downstairs neighbour who used to bang on the ceiling if we coughed after 11pm), meant that if I started the bus after a night of rain, as I moved off, not realising that todays beautiful blue skies were yesterdays dark grey ones, I would be drenched with at least a bucket load of grey dirty water. It felt a little like being under the green slime bucket on Tiswas (for the non-geriatric among you, this was a pioneering Channel 4 kids show on Saturday mornings in the mid 70s).

Yes ma’am. It was a strange time. There were moments when I thought, “I’ve been running this label for ten years and I am going to visit my Mum in a huge splitter bus with a rusty hole. Am I in the Young Ones?”. I think my kids loved it, being taken to football practice in a double decker bus can be quite a winner I suppose, and it did help with those tricky questions like ‘Dad can you take me and 15 friends to Thorpe Park?’. But nipping out to the shops to get some milk and cheese in a double decker bus always seemed slightly absurd and not even remotely cool.

So yeah, where was I? (Sorry I just started thinking about Sally James….and got sidetracked.)

Ok, yes. My year had been a bit of a mess and in the darker moments, yes I’ll admit to staying late at the office just to talk to the mice, and yes I’ll admit that using blu-tack to plug the rusty hole wasn’t as successful as hoped, but as is always the way in this uniquely odd business, there’s always a light in the distance that keeps you from chucking in the towel. Or alternatively, becoming David Icke.

And that light is always the hope of discovery. Of unearthing a gem like Fleet Foxes or The Acorn (if any of the other bands on the label are reading this and feeling hurt that your name isn’t here, it WAS but it was edited out by those very right-wing censors at TLOBF) (Hey! – Ed).

I understand better now why an archaeologist would choose to spend an entire lifetime sifting through tons of dirt with a tiny teaspoon in the hope of finding a small fragment of a roman pot. You know those cool ‘behind the scenes’ bits at the end of David Attenborough’s amazing series Nature’s Great Events, when the cameraman reveals he’s been driving around the Serengeti for 4 months every day hoping to see some lions he filmed the year before? Well ….no….hold on… I was about to say I feel a bit like him. But that’s patently ludicrous. Sitting about listening to and talking about music all day long and going to gigs at night is hardly comparable to years of lonely dedication in an extreme and hostile environment is it? Thats not really what i meant. But there is a parallel. I can watch that show and understand ‘why would anyone want to do that?’. The joy of discovery is only one part of the capture of a new artist. And I use the word ‘capture’ NOT as in sentencing the band to a lifetime of captivity (though I DO know how that feels), more as in ‘capturing a great photo’. Being involved in all aspects of a band’s development is something I feel is important. As a label we do whatever it takes – book shows, help manage a band, drive them around on tour if we have to – and we love it. Cocteau Twins may have seemed like a beautifully conceived child, but everything that could have gone wrong in our band life and our personal lives, did. I suppose when I find a new band, part of me wants to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes we did. Mistakes like, if you’re an introverted dreamy ambient pop band, DON’T support Metallica in Kansas.

But if you are as stupid as you look and if you are going to support Metallica in Kansas, don’t go on AFTER the Ramones and Rancid and before Soundgarden. Yes, believe me, we really DID do that.

I get to this point in this piece where I feel I should be concluding with ‘…and the moral of this tale, kids, is THIS…..’ but that would be stoopid.

I don’t have anything…..nah. That’s it.

I’ll write some other words with no point to them next time too. Maybe in a year when we thread them all together and it will be an ‘Eureka!’ moment. Or maybe it will just be a very, very long ramble of little or no consequence. That’s fine though. I do think rambling is a dying art. Let’s rekindle it here. Starting right now with those little comments you guys do so well!