STARPOLISH: Another interesting thing is that you each run your own labels, and the band has its own label, which means that sometimes you have to act as label heads. Has that changed the way you relate to Geffen? Are you smarter about certain things now, or do you understand things differently?
SHELLEY: Just sometimes when they say "no", you know that may not be the final "no" (laughing). Sometimes we know that we actually can do this if we can persuade the right person, so that's one aspect of it.
RANALDO: We've always been kind of involved enough in the business of making records and how it all operates; we've always been interested in it, so maybe we know more about that stuff as a group then your average musician does. And certainly having gone through all the labels that we've gone through, we've always kept on top of how they operate and what's possible and what's not possible and how that works.
Sonic Youth Records
STARPOLISH: What's the idea behind having your own label? Many times artists' labels are regarded as vanity labels, and other times the reasons are quite different. For example, some bands I've talked to say that there are a lot of great bands who can't get signed to a deal and it's a way to help get their music out, while for other artists it's that they have so much creative output that they couldn't feed it through the normal distribution pipeline. Can you talk about your label?
RANALDO: All of the above makes sense for what we do. The SYR label is a label that's run by the band as a collective, and it's mostly recordings that we wouldn't want to make Geffen have to deal with. And it's for those times when you don't want to put out an album a year or an album every nine months with a major label. So we can slip something out on an independent label, and not overtax the major label system that you have working for you. And it's also usually recordings that maybe they wouldn't understand or that they wouldn't know how to market or sell, while we can kind of just slip it out, and fans who like the band and want to have that stuff, they know how to get it.
STARPOLISH: Do you have distribution?
RANALDO: Yeah. We have excellent distribution. It goes through a company called Revolver USA out of San Francisco and they distribute thousands of independent record labels. So that's one aspect of what our record label is. We haven't gotten too into putting out other artists, but it's always a possibility. We really haven't done much with a label in the last year or so because we've been working on our new album for Geffen. But probably in the next year we'll do a number of releases and put some things out.
Article comments
1 - dave
the closing song on Washing Machine is Diamond SEA!!! not STAR!!! if your going to write a review get your facts straight!!!!!!
2 - POO
UR BAND IS THE BEST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3 - _sheccid_
is my favourite band!! it's great i love them, kim gordon you are so fucking pretty, i lover her xD
4 - HW Saxton
Never heard of the band:"Fuck You All!".
Are they a punk band or what?
5 - sydney
they're a post-punk band... garage-rock sort of experimental indie band. Almost leaders of the indie rock movement in America over the late 80's and early 90's.
They mix alot of experimental noise and soundscapes, sometimes, with catchy melodies.
6 - HW Saxton
Sydney, I was responding in jest to the
way the comment above mine was phrased.
I'm aware of who Sonic Youth are,as well
as Wasted Youth,Reagan Youth & Big Youth
as well.Sarcasm,does not carry well over
the Internet sometimes.Thanx.
7 - Jon Bob
Dave told you, and this is serious, really. If you do intend to redeem yourself or cover this mistake up, you should fix the whole damn paragraph, because it was Moore who did the vocals on DIAMOND SEA. Gordon (Kim) is a female, and for the 19 minutes of this spectacular track you obviously never heard, its easy to tell that thurston is not a female singing. Kim plays great bass on this track by the way, you should know (sarcasm). You dissed my favorite band, now i'm gonna find you like jay and silent bob and kick your ass!
8 - Jon Bob
Thanks for doing the SY piece, though. They're totally cool, and barring that 3rd paragraph i have no complaint. I can forgive, but we can only hope that they will be so merciful and not destroy you, thats right becuz they buy and sell people like you all the time, they'll probably cook you for breakfast and let the leftovers spoil in the fridge when they're not even thinking about you cuz theyre too busy on the road rocking and being totally cool. I'll leave you alone now, i'm sure you've got some homework and studying to do .