diary of a record label

This is where I recount my tales of confusion, excitement and woe as I try and figure out how to release records. Who knows what might happen? Certainly not me.

The final weekend

I had a moment of horror at band practice on Friday. No, not the moment when I realised just how appalling bad a set we had just played (it seems we practice badly so we can play well when it matters) but just before I left I was saying how the zines should be at my house and everything was ready to go except for the paper sleeves to go round the boxes. "And unless there's no printers open tomorrow or there's a problem with the printout everything should be fine, otherwise ALL IS DOOM", I said in mock horror. And then real horror flitted across my brain as I realised I had FORGOTTEN TO PRINT OUT THE SLEEVE DESIGN for photocopying. What a div.

Luckily when I got home I was able to hook up my flatmate's printer to my mac and print a cleverly cropped version on to A4 that I could then get photocopied on to A3. I was well pleased with my ability to cope under crisis. Next morning I got up at 9am and went out in the pouring rain, a mental list of 3 printer/copy shops in my mind. And none of them was open. And neither were any of the copy shops I could think of. I did find one place but they were charging TWENTY PENCE for an A3 copy. So instead I hopped on a bus and went to trusty old Office World. There a nice man showed me the self service photocopiers but pointed out they didn't normally photocopy on to coloured A3 so I'd have to buy a ream there and print on to that. Okay, no problem although I had planned on having different coloured sleeves for promos etc. So he led me to the huge choice of THREE colours of paper - Ivory, Pastel Yellow and Light Blue. I didn't look impressed so he started hunting out a variety pack of dayglo paper. I quickly went for the blue.

70 copies (and a very reasonable bill) later, I was back in the rain, again feeling pleased with my crisis capabilities. Until I got home and realised my paper cutter only does up to A4. But no problem, look, here I have a stanley knife and the edge of a picture frame and a pair of scissors...

Have you ever spent an afternoon measuring fifths of an A3 page by eye and cutting them by hand? And doing that over and over again until you have enough for 100odd records? Well, it's not fun.

Luckily Sunnyvale turned up about 7pm which was fun. Great to see Simon and Stu again, two of my favouritest people ever who were suitably overjoyed to see the finished records and made me start to think of it as a fantastic looking achievement again instead of Those Stupid Boxes. All record making business was ditched for the evening for drinking and Mario Party.

The next morning I had them upstairs folding and stapling zines until the stapler broke and then stapling zines with a staple gun until we ran out of staples on the final copy. Someone out there will have a copy of the record with an unstapled zine, some free staples and a handwritten apology!

After that was done it was off for a jaunt round Glasgow and then THE LAUNCH GIG. The gig went pretty well. A bit under-attended but Hex and Sunnyvale were fantastic and we seemed to go down pretty well too. I had lots of fun even if I didn't get to sit down or eat all evening. Didn't sell too many records either but everyone who did buy one (or get their free copy) seemed suitably impressed/surprised at how it turned out.

And then it was all over. Except for the utter pain of hefting equipment downstairs in the scorching sun the next morning (and driving all the way to Oxford if you're Sunnyvale). I feel slightly lost without a record launch to organise for (and utterly exhausted) but there's all the orders to post (from Norway and Texas and everywhere!) and the press copies to organise so it's a long way from over.

posted by marceline on Thursday, July 22, 2004

TROUBLE zine

I am starting to wish I never thought of the stupid Troublezine, or at least never thought of calling it the Troublezine. That really was asking for, er trouble...

I'm also dearly wishing I had chosen a different font for the asking for trouble logo since the one I use does not have a mac version meaning I can only do half the label documents at work. Still, I thought I would easily manage to put the zine together in a couple of lunch hours since it wasn't going to be anything complicated, just some interviews and a couple of articles. But no, it has been a nightmare. First I got all the content together minus D&D's answers and then when I got them I realised I'd done the zine as A5 instead of A6 which wouldn't fit in the boxes, DUR. Cue me on Wednesday afternoon frantically trying to finish the thing. I got it printed off eventually, checked it and breathed a sigh of relief. Had another quick glance at 5pm and ARGH I had printed one of the pages twice without noticing. Jeez. Rushed home and gave them to ChrisH who had kindly offered to take them to Clydeside Press and then ran off to band practice. Friday night I rushed from work to band practice to home and there was ChrisH with my zines, having had a lucky escape when Clydeside Press told him they were shutting at lunchtime for a 2 week holiday! It doesn't bear thinking about if he'd missed that.

Sadly the zines are only cut and not folded or stapled. More fun work! And only 2 days to get enough boxes together for the gig.

posted by marceline on Friday, July 16, 2004

THE RECORDS ARE HERE

How excited was I? I think you can probably imagine. I was pretty sure they would be arriving that day so I opened the door slowly hoping to see them sitting in the hallway but no, until I opened the door completely and there they were!

I hoiked them upstairs and opened the boxes. The first record I saw had been put in the wrong way round and I immediately panicked and thought they'd put the labels on the wrong way round but a quick check of the run out groove showed things were fine. HA HA GZ, very funny.

They look amazing with the printed labels and sound great too. Woo!

A few hours later I had developed a bad headache (from too much excitement no doubt) and had to retire to my bed, with zine drafts and a highlighter pen though, not to sleep obviously.

posted by marceline on Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Office World

Today I went to Office World where I had a long discussion with a salesperson about padded envelopes. Man, I feel so grown up. They had these perfect square envelopes that would have fitted the boxes beautifully but sadly they only had one of these and no bulk boxes. I even got her to check with the other Glasgow shop and their distribution centre but no luck. So I just bough the next size up which is completely fine, But SQUARE envelopes! This is what I have come to in my final week. I also bought a guillotine (well, a paper trimmer, the guillotines were £45!) and some FRAGILE parcel tape.

The guillotine is so I can cut the fanzines what go in the boxes as I'm not going to have the time to get them properly printed at the sort of place that would cut them for you. And this is because Denim and Diamonds haven't answered their interview questions yet. This is sending me into a complete panic. I may have to send some more frenzied worried emails to them: YOU'RE DELAYING THE RECORD! EVERYTHING IS RUINED! THE LAUNCH IS OFF! etc. This is typical though as I was sure this was what Sunnyvale were going to do to me and they were no trouble at all. Gah.

All this random spending has sent the record budget way way way out of control. I don't really want to think about it. Thank goodness for overdrafts...

Oh yes, and GZ emailed me on Thursday to tell me the records had been dispatched ("we sent the records today from GZ, by you till 14.7.04.") by which I estimate I will get them on Monday! or maybe Tuesday! Woo!!

posted by marceline on Saturday, July 10, 2004

Printing pt2

Well, if I can forget Thursday then Clydeside Press are indeed wonderful. If I remember Thursday (and it's difficult not to as my legs still hurt) I am less happy.

Let me tell you a story.

When I took the files in to be printed I was told it would be done by Thursday so I could just come in past to pick them up but maybe best to phone first and check. So on Thursday I gave them a call: "Oh, it's not done yet but it's on our schedule for today so give us a call later". At 3:30pm I call back: "Yes, it's done but it needs to dry so come in at 5pm?". So I begged leave to run off from work an hour early and was on a bus at 4:30. Make that the slowest bus ever, complete with 700 schoolchildren who all traipsed off at one stop in a seemingly neverending stream. I'm sure there were more children leaving the bus than could possibly have fitted inside. Anyway, by the time I got into town it was 5:05 which gave me 10 minutes to get to the other side of town. Not liking the rush hour city centre traffic I got off the bus and sprinted the rest of the way. With my body still recovering from Death Flu and having not run more than 200 yards for a long time, this nine block run was a bit too much for me. Nevertheless I arrived with minutes to spare to be told, "oh yes, it's finished but it should really dry overnight before we cut them". You'll not be surprised at my response of, "you're joking?!" But no, there they were all nicely printed but sitting in a big stack, uncut. Not really what I wanted to see.

So, come next morning I had to ask to leave early again and even earlier to avoid having to run again (although the slightly shamefaced staff did mention they might actually stay open til 5:30 if that would help). This time the bus went much quicker (partly due to not having to pick up anyone since there was another 40 right in front...) and I got there in plenty time and the inserts looked twice as nice all cut into 7" squares. And so I lugged my box of inserts on to the bus and all was well.

Until I sat down with one of each to have a good look and realised to my horror that I had never bothered to proofread my insert or even check it was the final completed version before I burned it to CD. Cue horrified checking of every detail.......and everything was fine. I'm sure my heart stopped beating.

posted by marceline on Friday, July 09, 2004

Printing

After a number of failed attempts I have finally managed to get the printing of the inserts underway. Everyone recommended Clydeside Press and I made Declan go get me a quote from them which was very cheap and I then just had to get all the stuff together and take it in. Except I've been ill with the flu (boo hoo) and when I did struggle down there on Saturday it was discover they weren't open at the weekend and there was a crowd of rowdy football fans camped on the doorstep. Oh well. I had higher hopes yesterday though when someone offered me a free all day bus ticket as I waited at the bus stop and later found myself descending into a basement lined with reams of paper to find a man sitting at a desk in a small office full of printers and photocopiers. He just typed my order into an Outlook Task Manager and told me to come back Thursday. I love them already but I guess I should wait til I see how the work turns out. Certainly makes a change from the snotty women in photocopy shops who always treat me like I'm insane.

I'm now quite afeared to be in the last 2 weeks of production. Everything is practically ready and soon it will all be sitting in my house. 700 records, 330 boxes, 1750 inserts, 350 fanzines and a box of things. eep.

posted by marceline on Tuesday, July 06, 2004

A BOX OF THINGS!

I thought getting the test pressings was exciting but not nearly as exciting as getting a heavy shoebox in the mail crammed full of random things from Sunnyvale to put in the boxes. There's some fantastic stuff in here so you never know what you might get. At some point I will put up a list of the things I had to discard because they wouldn't fit in the boxes.

Everything else is going pretty much to plan. I'm going to organise the printing of the inserts tomorrow and then it's really just the zine to finish off (and the press release, review copies etc etc...).

posted by marceline on Friday, July 02, 2004