Hot Press, August 24, 1984: Difference between revisions
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Mind you, a glance at the catalogue for his labels Demon and Edsel might tell you the same thing. Here are records lovingly selected and presented; artists like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, The Merseybeats, Julie London, Yardbirds, Del Shannon, Dr John, Mobey Grape, Loudon Wainright, James Booker, Lamont Dozier, Vivian Stanshall, not to mention Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Titles like ''Let's Stomp'', ''Frenzy'', ''Get Down With It'', ''Surfin' Craze'', ''Soul Deep'', ''Five Cool Cats'', ''Get A Buzz'', ''Fame And Wealth'', ''Classified'', ''Drop Down And Get Me'', ''Bigger Than Life'', ''Check This Action'', ''Six Of One And ... Half Dozen Of The Other''. Covers that look like they have a life of their own. Notes that use the words and phrases "rare," "classic," "legendary," "long-overdue," "Underrated," "never before," "ultimate," "unique," "collectors item," "acclaimed" and "undiscovered" in great abundance. They are everything labels should be; witty, stylish, sincere with good taste and lots of personality. | Mind you, a glance at the catalogue for his labels Demon and Edsel might tell you the same thing. Here are records lovingly selected and presented; artists like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, The Merseybeats, Julie London, Yardbirds, Del Shannon, Dr John, Mobey Grape, Loudon Wainright, James Booker, Lamont Dozier, Vivian Stanshall, not to mention Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Titles like ''Let's Stomp'', ''Frenzy'', ''Get Down With It'', ''Surfin' Craze'', ''Soul Deep'', ''Five Cool Cats'', ''Get A Buzz'', ''Fame And Wealth'', ''Classified'', ''Drop Down And Get Me'', ''Bigger Than Life'', ''Check This Action'', ''Six Of One And ... Half Dozen Of The Other''. Covers that look like they have a life of their own. Notes that use the words and phrases "rare," "classic," "legendary," "long-overdue," "Underrated," "never before," "ultimate," "unique," "collectors item," "acclaimed" and "undiscovered" in great abundance. They are everything labels should be; witty, stylish, sincere with good taste and lots of personality. | ||
Andrew Lauder is arguably everything a record company head should be. Not what you'd expect admittedly -- his walls aren't covered in gold discs. His intercom doesn't cackle with constant interruptions, he doesn't hold everything to place a long distance call to David Bowie in New York. He's tubby and balding, drinks tea (two sugars), wears a rock 'n' roll bootlace tie and is genuinely pleasant, friendly and enthusiastic. | Andrew Lauder is arguably everything a record company head should be. Not what you'd expect admittedly -- his walls aren't covered in gold discs. His intercom doesn't cackle with constant interruptions, he doesn't hold everything to place a long distance call to David Bowie in New York. He's tubby and balding, drinks tea (two sugars), wears a rock 'n' roll bootlace tie and is genuinely pleasant, friendly and enthusiastic. | ||
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"Some people are still going, of course. Del Shannon is still very good — he's in great shape and his voice is great and he's pretty much on the ball, he's invested his money and owns his own tapes. He's in Nashville at the moment recording country stuff 'cause he's always had a yen to do that. And Holland-Dozier-Holland — we've got the H-D-H label which is recordings from Invictus and Hot Wax, two labels they had from the late 60's to the mid-70's after they left Motown. They contactually had a hard time 'cause they got into a position where they couldn't write or produce under their own names for a spell. In fact they wrote a lot of material that came out with other credits on. In the mid-70's they did a Jackson 5 album, and they've done the 4-Tops for Motown and recently started working with Lamont again. We've got a new production they sent us 'cause they're pleased with the way we're doing it, so they said here's a new record if you're interested in putting it out!". | "Some people are still going, of course. Del Shannon is still very good — he's in great shape and his voice is great and he's pretty much on the ball, he's invested his money and owns his own tapes. He's in Nashville at the moment recording country stuff 'cause he's always had a yen to do that. And Holland-Dozier-Holland — we've got the H-D-H label which is recordings from Invictus and Hot Wax, two labels they had from the late 60's to the mid-70's after they left Motown. They contactually had a hard time 'cause they got into a position where they couldn't write or produce under their own names for a spell. In fact they wrote a lot of material that came out with other credits on. In the mid-70's they did a Jackson 5 album, and they've done the 4-Tops for Motown and recently started working with Lamont again. We've got a new production they sent us 'cause they're pleased with the way we're doing it, so they said here's a new record if you're interested in putting it out!". | ||
Imp records, a subsidiary of Demon is Elvis' baby, comprising his back catalogue from ''This Years Model'' to ''Imperial Bedroom'' (which he owns) and things he wants to do or that are of interest to him, So far other projects have included Elvis impersonator The Imposter and Ireland's lost ex-Radiator son [[Philip Chevron]]'s unique Elvis-produced interpretation of Brendan Behan's "[[The Captains And The Kings]]." | Imp records, a subsidiary of Demon is Elvis' baby, comprising his back catalogue from ''This Years Model'' to ''Imperial Bedroom'' (which he owns) and things he wants to do or that are of interest to him, So far other projects have included Elvis impersonator The Imposter and Ireland's lost ex-Radiator son [[Philip Chevron]]'s unique Elvis-produced interpretation of Brendan Behan's "[[The Captains And The Kings]]." | ||
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The wonder of it all is it really does make sense, sound economic as well as musical sense. When major companies constantly drop acts who don't make mega-sales with a too often disheartening disregard for the fact that they are dealing in people not just units, labels like Demon and Edsel, as well as the similarly structured Charlie, Ace, and Big Beat, survive and flourish on what the majors would probably consider far from worthwhile sales. | |||
"Charlie, Ace and us, we've all got the same thing really. Firstly you run it very tightly, you don't really risk getting thousands of records and hoping they'll sell, we sometimes start with two or three thousand and then just press a thousand a time as we need them and just keep them in stock the whole time. Obviously sales vary because Demon now includes Elvis Costello's back catalogue and those sell in pretty large numbers. Some of the old stuff is in excess of 10,000 — The Action, The Yardbirds, Creation — you can probably figure out which ones sell the most. Some of the blues albums you put out only sell a couple of thousand, but that still makes sense for us 'cause they don't cost much to put out, most of the cost is in artwork and manufacturing 'cause we try and do very high quality sleeves. And they don't really stop, they just keep on ticking over. We've now got about 80 albums out and they all sell — we never get a month where one just doesn't sell at all. You find records two years after they've come out are still selling as much as they did when you put them out in the rust place, so it's a very different sort of pattern than a big company gets. Their computers tend to throw up the ones that don't sell quickly enough over a period of time, and they delete them. Whereas ours are always going to be available as long as we can and every month you sell quite a few thousand records from your catalogue. It's quite a healthy business and the bigger the catalogue gets, the healthier it gets." | |||
Costs are kept to a minimum. "There's only a few of us and we do so much of it ourselves. I compile records at home in the evenings. We've got somebody in-house who does artwork. There's very few people and we share things. We have a van on the road so the management company pays towards it and we do and F-Beat records does and Elvis Costello Ltd does. We share secretaries and accounts department and the office is paid for by all those companies so it makes it a lot easier. Plus also I don't take any money out of Demon records! I work for F-Beat records so I've never earned a penny out of Demon! We're still ambitious, our list of new releases is probably longer than most big companies, but we don't want to become a big company, we're quite happy doing what we're doing. | |||
"It's like having a hit record. Truthfully that's almost something you don't particularly want. As long as you keep it under control it's fine but one of the things that's affected small record companies over here. is trying to compete with large companies at their own games So you start taking on some promotions man to cover the shops and try and ram free records into the chart shops and you employ a radio plugger and fake ads and give loads of free records away, and if the record doesn't happen, you've probably waved goodbye to about five grand. And you can't afford to do that very often. And we don't do it at all, basically. It doesn't mean to say we won't get a hit but at the same time the company is not set up on the premise of being interested in the charts, at all. And I don't think it's right that we should be. The catalogue — we ''know'' these things are gonna sell, we know we're gonna sell a couple of thousand which probably means we're gonna break even at the very worst, which is more than most large companies can say. | |||
"I would never particularly want to go back and work with a big company again. There's a lot of good people there but I did it for long enough and ... it's really nice here! I really like records and I like being involved — like the warehouse is out there and you pack records up in the van and it ''feels'' a lot more like being in the record business! In the big companies you never used to go to the factory or the distribution plant. I think a lot of people who work there have no idea really what happens, they expect records come out and people go and buy them and there's lots of things they don't get involved with at all — manufacturing. dealing with printers and getting the sleeves to the pressing pb'nt on time. I love all that!" | |||
Who could refuse to buy a used record from this man? | |||
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{{Bibliography notes header}} | {{Bibliography notes header}} | ||
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<br><small>Page scans.</small> | <br><small>Page scans.</small> | ||
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<br><small>Photos.</small> | |||
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Revision as of 02:54, 10 July 2014
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