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The boom continued into 1980, with some ninety independent labels forming in the first six months of that year. Not mentioned in the piece but important: Industrial, Throbbing Gristle’s label, and Crass’s self-releases. and is still happening." By this point the key independents, according to the article, included Factory, Fast Product, Rough Trade, Good Vibrations (Belfast), Object (Manchester), Small Wonder (London), Zoo (Liverpool), along with many, many small one-band labels. The true concerted, subversive revolution, happened in late '78, early '79. By 1979, in a September 1st NME feature special on the indie label revolution, Paul Morley and Adrian Thrills could conclude: "Punk of 1976 was almost a false start. Quality control returned and the labels got more business-like and long-term oriented the distribution network began to fall into place to enable them to achieve a turnover sufficient to achieve sustainability as businesses.

stuff that would never find a home on major labels. Then things gradually built back up again as the music culture got stronger and more diverse and turned into a home for all kinds of eccentricity and misfit/mis-shapen music, i.e. By December of 1977, the independent punk/new wave business had dropped by about half from their highpoint, and in 1978 settled around an average of 4000 sales per release.

Then the buzz and business dropped away quite sharply owing to a flood of inferior product, literally punk-Xerox music, and also the novelty of it all fading the best punk bands meanwhile signed to major labels. The independent label movement initially exploded as a post-Spiral Scratch fad-craze in 1977, with such key independents emerging as Small Wonder in London, Rabid in Manchester, Raw Records of Cambridge, and the Step Forward/Illegal/Deptford Fun City cluster of labels (all under the umbrella of Faulty Products, and funded by Miles Copeland, manager of the Police and later founder of IRS Records), as well innumerable tiny operations across the UK. Boon says it’s more to do with the whole Wilhelm Reich/sex-pol aspect as alluded to in the “orgone” catalog number joke. The label’s name suggests some kind of rad-feminist in-joke to do with the “third gender” or androgyny (as in the androgynous-looking Linder). A pun on the Tiller Girls I assume, although I also heard a story there was some kind of floppy-fringe subcult of that name in early Eighties Manchester One of New Hormones later releases by The Tiller Boys, which was Pete Shelley + Eric Random "Big Noise in the Jungle" was a John Peel favorite. And the song “Boredom” itself was almost like a Bonzo Dog Doodah Band take on punk, ‘oh god it’s another bloody song all about boredom so let’s do a really boring guitar solo’.”įor more on the New Hormones story check out this very detailed website created by Justin Toland. And the Walter Benjamin joke of the polaroid on the cover related to that, the polaroid photo being an instant picture, but then when it comes to being on the cover it goes through all the reproduction processes the same as something more expensive would go through. But it did seem important to stress the regionalism, and the opening up of possibility, and opening up of activity…. We didn’t think it was some entry into history. Richard Boon: “The motive for Spiral Scratch was to make a record that recorded that moment, literally made a record of it, because it might never happen again. Chapter 6 AUTONOMY IN THE UK Independent Labels and the DIY movement