Fitzgerald said his bit about “no second acts in American lives,” but F. Scott didn’t see Superchunk at the 9:30 Club in 2002. Turns out there are more than second or even third acts; there are also opening acts. Which might explain why, on that particular tour, bandleader Mac McCaughan and his band warmed up the floors every night for fans of The Get Up Kids who were still in diapers the first time the ’Chunk played “Slack Motherfucker.”
“They’re all 13 years old and literally just waiting for The Get Up Kids,” says McCaughan in Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records. “But that’s cool.”
Who’s to say that a band born in 1989 can’t win over a fan born the same year? Or, for that matter, that a scrawny North Carolina indie operation can’t move 62,000-plus copies of a box set titled 69 Love Songs? McCaughan and bandmate/Merge co-founder Laura Ballance learn plenty of hard lessons throughout the course of Our Noise, John Cook’s hookable oral history of Chapel Hill’s 20-year-old record label. The two that stick? There’s always another act, and there’s no accounting for the taste of fans.
Our Noise divides its chapters among the swimmers, sinkers and splashers of the Merge talent pool—all equally baffling to the label founders in success as in failure. There’s the Texas band that bailed out of a Merge contract then got screwed by the major labels (…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead), and the Texas band that got screwed by the majors and then salvaged by Merge (Spoon). There’s the band that made enormous critical waves after its demise (the near-mythical Neutral Milk Hotel) and the band that’s only big in Europe (Lambchop). And there’s Superchunk, slowly taking a back seat to its members’ day job.
“At this point, Superchunk is the band that’s led by the two people that put out the Arcade Fire records,” shares drummer John Wurster as the band approaches hiatus. “And that’s fine.”
“The story of Merge,” reads the jacket to Our Noise, “is the story of what happens when the good guys win.” But the good guys make a few memorable accounting errors, earnestly champion a few flops (Butterglory, anyone?) and watch while other “good guys” like indie distributor Touch & Go disappear faster than Third Eye Blind. What makes Our Noise a pleasure to read is the series of second (and third, and fourth) acts that make good when fans are fickle enough to pursue a few good things on their own terms.
