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Pen Cap Chew Issue #2

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The world's unofficial noise and DIY newsletter
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Is the Internet
part of the DIY ethic? Plus lots more on DIY inside.......

Inside:
Special DIY issue
2: Is the Inetrnet going to help or hurt noise and punk?
3: Starting your own label: too many advantages
4: The lowdown on the labels and Maximum Rock nRoll's big scheme Blessing or Curse
The internet, is it going to help underground bands, maybe...

So you are sitting around your house or apartment, whatever the case may be and you are broke. The r your band just went on has wiped you out completly and you want to get signed. You are also sorto ired of playing in front of fourteen kids every night and a better turnout would be great. But ST as't written back yet, Dischord isn't sure they'd like to put your record out, Knitting factory hins yu suck. What do you do?
You could sign to a label that has no reputation or distribution and get totally screwed, or you wo dare to give your tape to a major label and risk being turned into poster boys? If you have any sr f integrity, you wouldn't. Green Day did, because they don't have any integrity. You could star yurown label. Bad Religion did that and look at them now. Look at Epitaph, second to Dischord andthid t SST in punk music. But they had to borrow several hundred dollars plus sell things to finane th firt EP. They printed up a respectable ten thousand copies. But, you are flat broke. What do ou do
Everywhere on America on-line and other networks, there are bands. They have songs ready and they h blurbs written too. It only costs a hundred dollars to put three minutes of music, plus an articl. or a thousand, you could put a whole CD on there. For that much, you could get fifteen hundred C'sprssed.
Well, lets say your average fan, you know the kid who saw you last night, spent his last six bucks the show. He wants to get your CD, but he can't find it or afford it. So he goes on-line and says Hy it's the Trash Cans" (your band) and whips out a disk. He downloads it and listens to it ten ims day.
So he makes a tape and passes it around the school. And the next show you play, a hundred kids areshing instead of thirteen who are just walking around. Guess what is in your E-mail box the next dy reg Ginn really likes you.



Charming as this story may be, it has a point. More people are on-line than ever. Every network has least ten people who vehemently discuss what is and isn't punk, noise bands and shows. So, if yousud like early Sonic Youth, chances are that guy I talked to last night, would love it. There is n lbe to screw you out of house and home, no distribution and no price gouging Camelot stores.
But after reading that, someone is thinking, who needs a label? Well, come to think of it, nobody. problems Mr. Unsigned band guy faced with SST, Dischord, and Knitting Factory, are null and void.Bt I guarantee you, some Republican moron will start one of these music networks and hike the priesupto a thousand dollars a song. So I guess we need some sort of regulation for prices.
DAT players have been out for a couple of years and have always been way overpriced. Now they seem be getting cheaper, so the average guy can get one. So, instead of a disk, why not go straight toDT Next, why don't we turn our printers on so we can print out a lyric sheet? Speaking of which, wy ont we print fan club letters on the net? I don't plan on printing this fanzine on there, I'd lie t kep it underground.
While we are on the subject, I guess that it would be quite an achievement to make it without MTV,thout major label scum, without radio. Not to make it, but to have a following. I don't want everyscnd grader into my music, Green Day. Speaking of which, this would be funny. A bunch of eight yea odscome to a Green Day show and go into the pit. I'd like to see that. But they're wusses, they on' lie to mosh.
But this new way of spreading your music might just be the thing to kill major labels and MTV. The things the world could do without. So, why not put one of your band's songs on there.
The bottom line is that no matter what Spin or Rolling Stone say, we have a revolution on our handsat could only advance noise, punk, and mixtures of the two.
 Ripped off
What you need to know about CDs
So you are just walking out of Camelot a CD in your pocket And you got it for a cheap price of twelbucks and you think," Cool, I got a great deal!" Actually, you got severely ripped off. Any one wh oks in the classifieds in magazines notices that you can get a thousand CDs for around one and a al gand. well, that means that they took around $1.50 to make, each. The band gets three dollars t qurre over, the store's cut varies and the label gets the rest. Not only did you get ripped off,but he bnd did too.
I can say this piece is about DIY as much as it's about CDs. So, Ian Mackaye himself said this. He ds Dischord records and has been in Missing Foundation, Minor Threat and Fugazi. So he also has a ite DIY experience. Greed is costing all the guys in signed bands money. But, let's say you hawk smestff and get some money form the old Mom and Dad savings and loan. You get the CDs, go to the sore clsest to the places you want to play, and work really hard. You get around $14,000 if you sel the all So your store takes two grand leaving you with 12,000. Mom and Dad make you pay them backso yor netpay is $10,500. You split that up and make a ton of cash compared to the guys on labels.They mke arond three grand for their trouble. And they deal with a lot of pressure. Bands on majorlabels ake eve less.
Around 15 years ago, Bad Religion did the same thing. Now Epitaph is home to Rancid, Total Chaos, N, and the Offspring. Who are the best selling indie band of all time. Oh, another thing. The Offspigare not sellouts. Every other band on Epitaph put out a CD in 1994, so it was sort of a lucky brakfo the Offspring. But that doesn't mean they didn't kill punk.
Another thing you should know about is how to properly market things. If your band's last show had ood turnout, say two hundred kids who moshed, you should call a nearby record store and let them sl our CDs and see if you can get a gig at the same club as soon as you can. The mid 80's hardcore hos ad shirts, fanzines, and CDs for sale. Do that too. It sometimes is really hard to find that bnd ou aw last week's CD , and what better place than the show to get it? But, don't overcharge at he sow. emember the kid in the pit might have spent all their money getting in, and anyway, cheap Ds ar an icentive to go.
I've given you plenty of reasons why labels rip bands off and why you should start your own label. will also be quite in the hole if you can't sell the CDs or market them correctly. I've also provnt some of the readers that labels are useless, especially majors. So, if you're in a band you sholdge some money start your own label.

Fair Warning:
The lowdown on the labels
After writing this zine for two issues and counting, I feel responsible for punk's obituary, helpinou with the D.I.Y. task, and telling who in it for the music/fun/principle, and
who's in it for the fame. So, after devoting the whole issue to labels and DIY, I need to tell you at the "fake" indie labels.
So, what do I mean by "fake"? I mean labels who have accepted money or have sold out to major labelMajor labels have been proven to have Mafia ties, not equally paying artists with equal contracts n onning young and impressionable bands into signing a deal which sells their souls. There are hororstries out there, I will divulge them over time. Conformity is abhorrent, faked it's even worse
First off, I'd like to clear something up. Thurston Moore's label, Ecstatic Peace, has no ties what-ever to Geffen records, and is disturbed by Moore himself. Lee Ranaldo's label, Smells like recors as no ties either.
On the other hand, Trent Reznor's label is tied to a major label. It's called Nothing for those whon't know. It's distrubted by Atlantic records and often subsidizes Reznor for the label's releases o know my feelings on labels.
Sub Pop, has sold itself to Warner Brothers for twenty million dollars. This was the label which hareen River, Nirvana, Mudhoney, and has put out Sonic Youth 45s. Sub Pop gets percentage points fro ivana's Nevermind, Insecticide, and In Utero albums. By those percentages alone, Sub Pop could sty n ndependent label and still have excellent distribution.
I.R.S has also sold much of it's company to A+M records. This was the label that brought R.E.M. frothe dignified task of playing bars to playing stadiums, where the front row is a far distance off. 'e said enough times that we don't need major labels. They have accomplished nothing except makin pstr boys out of human beings and making people flat-out miserable. Look at Kurt Cobain.
A little tidbit I need to add about Maximum Rock nRoll, the Berkeley, CA based fanzine which debatehe quality of bands, labels and ways people are getting screwed (Sort of like Pen Cap Chew). They aetried to maintain a readership by pointing out enemies. These easy to conceive of, but difficulttofiger enemies like government, and big business have their flaws. However, people make a busines ru, ad most huge businesses are quite corrupt in the higher levels. Same with the government. Butwe mst rmember that the people are immoral and unethical and not the businesses themselves. But whn I sy "maor labels," I mean the executives, not the label itself.




















































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