Wax Archaeology 101
Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Bill Murphy
Call it a glimpse of nirvana, the Holy Grail or just the forces of sheer mad luck, but anyone who has ever taken it upon himself to commit to the art of hunting for records knows the feeling. Whether it's an obscure '70s cartoon theme that no one else has or a pristine shrink-wrapped copy of an album your mom grew up with, when you finally have it in your hands, a quasi-conspiratorial wave of ecstasy washes over you.
They aren't called “rare grooves” for nothing, and with all the hours of self-sacrifice and borderline unhealthy obsessions that go into digging for them, it's understandable why many DJs and producers are so fiercely protective of their sources. For a growing number, though, the standard routine of dropping an unknown break into a live set just to sit back and watch the trainspotters scratch their heads is no longer the point. These days, the real challenge is in tracking down the original creators of these vinyl relics in the hopes of saving their music for future generations.
It's an undertaking that Eothen “Egon” Alapatt, general manager at Peanut Butter Wolf's Stones Throw label in L.A. and founder of its Now-Again imprint, first pondered back in the late 1990s when he was making a name for himself as a deeply knowledgeable DJ with a passion for obscure funk sides. “I think that in a lot of cases — mine included — we all started just as collectors for one reason or another,” he observes. “But to me, it was obvious real early on that the only way that I was going to achieve my ultimate goal was to put forward the music and let these artists see some light again. The people like me who are out there sifting through the mire trying to find the good music, we're just filters, but these guys are the true progenitors so they deserve to get all the accolades.”
DJ Food's Strictly Kev (né Kevin Foakes), who has been involved in curating some of Ninja Tune's more adventurous reissue and remix projects through the label's Solid Steel series, reached a similar conclusion after years of DJing on London's hypercompetitive club scene. “It's one of those great rushes when you do find that golden nugget in the crates,” he says. “You almost want to run around telling people, but you know there's virtually no one in the whole world who's even gonna give a shit about what you're talking about. [Laughs]. But when you know that it's something old, and you know there's not a chance in hell of anyone else having it, you're thinking, ‘What do I do with this now?’ It means something to so few people, but given time and a bit of energy you can bring it out for the world to hear.”
Motivated to draw attention to one forgotten Texas funk band in particular, DJ Shadow founded the Cali-Tex imprint (a subset of Quannum Projects) as a vehicle for Mickey and the Soul Generation's Iron Leg compilation (Cali-Tex/Quannum, 2003), but the label's vision soon grew in scope. “As [Shadow] and I began tracking down more artists,” recalls Cali-Tex partner and Chicago-based archivist Dante Carfagna, “a wealth of unreleased material began piling up, so we decided to stick with Cali-Tex as a label and use it as an outlet to issue previously unheard sounds that we felt needed to be magnified beyond their footnote status.”
For these and other like-minded indie operations (see sidebar “Rescue Missions”), it isn't always easy, but it's a labor of love that keeps on giving. With the reissue market today still providing a steady flow of repackaged or rediscovered material for hungry fans — as well as a not-insubstantial source of revenue for labels and artists — what was once the single-minded and solitary pursuit of crate digging has morphed into a full-blown A&R enterprise.
MAKING CONTACT
Naturally, assuming you have a label to back you or at least the finances to get one airborne, the first step — once you've found that elusive wax classic that no one has thought to reissue — is to begin searching for the original artist. Ten years ago, this would have meant making a guess as to where the person was from (based on the label address, if there was one printed) or calling the BMI or ASCAP performing rights societies to find out where their publishing was located. Chances are most of these addresses would be a dead end, but it might narrow it down to a region, which meant ordering local telephone books and then cold-calling whoever could be found listed — a real nightmare if their last name happened to be “Smith” or “Jones.”
With such a grueling process ahead of them, many labels would have chosen to bootleg the material rather than go the extra mile. Today, the Internet makes the search much easier, and although there's still plenty of illegal biting going on (especially online), it's in a label's best interests to go legit rather than invite a potential lawsuit — not to mention the ire of serious collectors.
The real fun begins when your search finally yields results. “This is a totally different kettle of fish than releasing new music,” Egon explains. “Nine times out of 10, the records that people like myself are trying to discover and reissue weren't huge commercial successes. So you have to be psychologically equipped to deal with the person on the other end of the phone who might believe that they recorded an incredible piece of music and might be carrying an incredible amount of baggage along with it. This is someone who thought that they could be successful, or maybe they were fucked over on the way, so you just have to put everything on the table. But I'm not trying to lay it on thick. I'd like to give the guy a chance to check out some CDs and LPs that I've reissued and maybe realize that there's an attention to detail here if nothing else, and a genuine passion and love for the music.”
As an example of an initial contact that went about as smoothly as could ever be expected, Strictly Kev refers to the recently released Dragons album, Blue Forces Intelligence (Solid Steel/Ninja Tune, 2007), a long-shelved gem of psychedelic surf rock originally recorded in 1970 that would have disappeared into the void if not for a track called “Food for My Soul,” which had seen the light of day on a limited pressing for the soundtrack of a '70s surf film called A Sea for Yourself. Kev came across the album at a record fair, and he was hooked immediately.
“I really wanted the track for a Solid Steel album,” he says, citing the mix compilation Now, Listen Again! released earlier this year. “I was really lucky in that Dennis Dragon, the drummer from The Dragons, actually had his own site, which wasn't completely up-to-date, but there was a contact there, and I got in touch with him and he e-mailed me back reasonably quickly.”
What Kev didn't know was that “Food for My Soul” had been the centerpiece to an entire session that had never been released. “Dennis asked if I'd be interested in hearing it,” he recalls. “He sent me some MP3s, and it was just knockout stuff, so we went from there, really. It had been sitting on a shelf for 30-odd years, but Ninja was ready to put it out.”
MASTER OF YOUR DOMAIN
When most major labels consider the prospect of reissuing a portion of their back catalog, they usually enjoy the luxury of having access to a tape vault where most or all of the original master reels have been kept intact. When it comes to a Now-Again release like The Funky 16 Corners (Now-Again/Stones Throw, 2001), very often the only artifact that even closely resembles a master is whatever piece of vinyl turns out to be the cleanest.
“In a lot of cases, the records that we've reissued all came off of vinyl,” Egon reveals. “But you have to make sure you have something you can work from first before you approach a person, and then if they have a master tape, even better. I never go into it assuming that they're gonna have master tapes. Or let me put it this way: I've never let somebody telling me they don't have their masters ever discourage me from reissuing their music.”
Fortunately, thanks to his relationship with Stones Throw, Egon has access to state-of-the-art mastering facilities at the studio of engineer Dave Cooley, who has worked on numerous projects with Madlib, Jay Dee, Peanut Butter Wolf and more, and has remastered virtually all of the Now-Again catalog. “Things have worked out really well with Dave,” Egon says. “A lot of mastering engineers who clean up these records using Pro Tools plug-ins just do a horrible job. There's a certain finesse that comes with using these plug-ins, and if you just crank them on automatic so that the thresholds are all maxed out, you end up with a record that doesn't sound like a record anymore. It's like hearing a bad MP3 through computer speakers. We would rather leave in some of the imperfections. We want the sound that was recorded on that piece of wax or that master tape — not something that sounds like all the high end was thrown into a blender.”
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
