Your New Favorite Book: Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records
There is no greater testament to the power of the indie record label than Merge Records. Born out of a love for music with little regard for trends and ‘the next big thing’, Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance are the masterminds that brought us bands like Spoon and Arcade Fire while churning out the brilliance of their own band, Superchunk. In his new book, John Cook compiles interviews with Mac, Laura and everyone who has ever crossed paths with Merge to create a book that is entertaining and informative. Toss in a collection of photos that will keep you oohing and ahhing for hours and you have the perfect excuse to use that gift card that’s burning a hole in your pocket.
John took a few moments to give us some background on the book and to share a few stories.
TDOA: Tell us how you came to write the book and how you hooked up with Mac for this project
JC: I’ve been a really fanatic Superchunk fan since 1994 when I saw them in Madison, Wisconsin on the Foolish tour. I was in school and I hadn’t ever heard of them before. I’m not really sure why I was there. It was a student union show and I think I just randomly showed up. It was one of those rare moments where you fall in love with a band while watching them. I went out the next day and literally bought every one of their records. That led me to learn about Merge and start buying all the Merge records. I was a huge follower for a long time and I used to be a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. In 2003 Mac released a Portastatic record called Summer of the Shark that I found special, noteworthy and moving because it addressed September 11th. I decided to write a story about how artists try to work through something like that and comparing it to Springsteen’s The Rising. I interviewed Mac for that article which was the first time I met him. I guess he liked the article because a year later he asked me to write the press bio for the next Portastatic record, ‘Bright Ideas’. So that’s how I got to know Merge. Separately, I used to work for a magazine editor named David Kuhn, who knew Mac and his wife Laura. He had always been trying to get the two of them to write a book, because they’re story is such a good one. In the midst of those discussions, they suggested my name to work on the book which is how is came to be.
TDOA: Let’s talk a little bit about Spoon, who you devote some of the book to. There’s a great chapter in the book in which you talk about their time on a major label and the episode with Ron Laffitte who was the A&R guy with the label. There’s a quote in the book where Laffitte says that he think that Britt Daniel (lead singer of Spoon) had a better sense of what was going to happen once Spoon joined a major label than he did. Do you think he was really that naive or was he just trying to make himself look better?
JC: I’m not sure. It took a lot of work to get a chance to talk to him because in his world that episode was a pretty public thing. When Spoon came up with the Agony of Laffitte single it was really embarrassing for him and it hurt because he was mocked musically. He also really felt badly about it. He wasn’t cavalier about it and he really acknowledged that some mistakes were made. This was the first time he has spoken about it publicly and it took some work to get him to talk to me. I tend to believe him. He was earnest in what he was trying to do and he acknowledged that he over-promised and eventually stopped returning their phone calls.
Steve Albini addressed the structural problems of the major label business in his famous essay in 1994 or 1995. You get your million dollar contract, sell a lot of records and still end up owing the label hundreds of thousands of dollars in three years. You get these people who delude themselves into thinking they can sign a band that will make a ton of money. I think that’s what happened here, but they don’t have to live with the consequences of what happens to these bands.
TDOA: Is he still in the business?
JC: Yeah, I think he’s a manager.
TDOA: As much as it could have killed Spoon’s career, it could have killed his (Laffitte’s) career as well. At the end of the chapter on Spoon in your book you tell the story of Laffitte courting an Austin band named The Faint and his reputation has proceeded him when he meets them for lunch.
JC: It was a great coda to the story. He was with Capitol and he and his boss met the band for lunch and the band showed up with a copy of Agony of Laffitte and set it on the table. His boss didn’t know the story and so he had to listen to the band recite the story to him.
Frankly, everyone’s A&R career died in the last four or five years along with the record industry.
TDOA: Is there a band apart from Superchunk that you came out with a new-found respect for?
JC: Lambchop. I was never a huge fan, not that I disliked them but I never really paid as much attention to them as I did some of the other bands. In the course of talking to Kurt for the book and in talking to people for the book, everyone kept talking about what a great story they were. That led me to go back and listen to the records and gain a new admiration for the band. I was never aware that they don’t sell a lot of records and they’ve been around for a long time. They were the first or second band that signed with Merge. They’re huge in Europe and with the press, but they don’t have a terribly big base here in America. Merge stuck with them even though they had really high output too. They’re an example of the Merge model, making art possible by approaching it without trying to force it to be something bigger than it is. Instead, just letting them be what they are and letting them grow on their own. The bookend was at the Merge 20th Anniversary show last summer where Lamchop tore the roof off at the Cat’s Cradle. I think anyone that was there will say it was one of the greatest shows that they’ve ever seen.
TDOA: As you discuss in the book, Mac and Laura aren’t in it for the hits, but are just concerned with putting out great music. Do you think they would have been as successful if they’d tried to sign bigger bands? Isn’t their ‘indie cred’ critical to their success, because the music snobs would turn their back on them if they changed their aesthetic?
JC: Merge wouldn’t have been as successful not because of the music snobs but because of the economics of the record business. The thing you can point to in tracing their success is their fundamental conservatism regarding money. They just never spend money they don’t have. There were moments when they could have gone into debt to finance advances to bands that they thought could be big. The odds were that those debts wouldn’t pay off and like Sub Pop they would have declared bankruptcy multiple times. Mac and Laura do have integrity in spades and live their life in an anti-corporate way, but they also run their business in a very brass tacks, smart way. They don’t get deluded by the brass ring because they don’t really want it. The reason Poneman and Pavitt (owners of Sub Pop) had to declare bankruptcy wasn’t because they wanted to promote great music (which they did) but because they saw themselves as impresarios. They wanted to create something meaningful and lasting and huge. Their desire to do that got ahead of the finances and the spreadsheets. Mac and Laura never did that.
TDOA: Speaking of Sub Pop, it seems like they’ve constantly reinvented themselves, while Merge has maintained a certain sameness in their approach. What do you think is the common thread with all of these Merge bands?
JC: That’s a question that I asked a lot of people and the best answer I got is that it’s music made by people that Mac and Laura like, because they don’t work with people that they don’t like. The ambitions are kept in check and the people are making the music because they want to make music, not because they want to be rock stars.
TDOA: In the book you talk about the band …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and their switch from Merge to Interscope. The defection led to a change of philosophy within Merge, in that they started doing written contracts afterwards. There’s a great story at the end of the book where Mac does to the Grammy’s with Arcade Fire and runs into the people from Interscope. Given the opportunity to go after them or say how he feels, he turned the other cheek and walked away. Do you get the sense that he’s bitter or holds a grudge or is he really that kind of guy that he’s able to move past it?
JC: He’s really that kind of guy. He moves on. When they would talk about the efforts of major labels to sign Superchunk, they wouldn’t compare it to signing with the devil or something like that. They would say that the people from the majors were nice, but it just didn’t feel like the right thing to do. So when Seymour Stein calls Mac about The Arcade Fire to say let’s get together, Mac knows that he’s probably trying to steal them for Sire or something. But he also knows that Seymour Stein is the guy that signed The Ramones and Talking Heads and he wants to go have lunch with him because he’s kind of a hero. That’s the way they look at people, but they don’t personalize it.
TDOA: Is there one section of the book that you’re particularly proud of?
JC: It’s an oral history, so the great thing about it was being able to turn it over to other people. It’s just interviews with their words and their stories. I’m also really proud of the cover shot which is a picture Mac and Laura’s legs. As anyone who’s a fan of Superchunk knows, Mac and Laura like to pogo while they’re playing and the picture captures them in mid-air. I was at that show and it was a benefit concert for the Obama campaign prior to the North Carolina primary. I think it says a lot about the energy and buoyancy of Merge and Superchunk. Plus Mac found the picture on Flickr! So, here’s some fan who took a picture at a Superchunk show who gets an email from Mac asking if he can use the picture for the cover of a book. It’s just another example of how they work there.
TDOA: Within the book Mac and Laura talk about the changing landscape of music and the impact of the internet. First, do you think Merge will eventually get absorbed by a major? Second, do you think a label can be successful without being “singles” oriented in the age of the death of the album?
JC: I don’t think they will get absorbed by a major because it’s not something that interests them at all. I also don’t think that, economically any major would take that risk because it’s not the time to be buying up record labels.
I think that records like Merge can still exist because of their aesthetic. They’re starting to view themselves in a ’boutique’ sense. As Mac puts it, their target is people who love music as opposed to Sony’s target which is, people who live near a Best Buy. They’re trying to create music for people who’ve they’ve developed relationships with over the past 20 years and hopefully bring people into the fold. They’re going to make records for people who care about the physicality of listening to a record, who care about art, songs, vinyl and as long as that community is out there, they’ll be just fine.
To purchase this book from Amazon, click on the link below:
Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small
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