My Labor Day? So kind of you to ask. Filled with hot dogs and Prince, a few art shows here and there, Helado Negro and Inglourious Basterds. And, in the moments spent at home, I tore through the first half of Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, which gets its official release in roughly a week.
Merge Records may be best known at present for releasing records from the likes of Arcade Fire, Spoon, The Magnetic Fields and M. Ward. At present, however, I’m still reading about the label’s locally grown salad days, when it began rolling out cassettes and 7" records from Chapel Hill, North Carolina acts that were familiar or friendly with label founders Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance, also the founding members of Superchunk. In the first chapter, musician Jenny Toomey quotes a Destroyer song ("Formative years wasted/ In love with our peers, we tasted/ Life with the stars") and describes the difference between "professional culture" and "outsider culture." In her words: "Our antennae were tuned very specifically for like minds, as opposed to sending out a signal to convert people."
Conversions happen, of course—this severely underattended show at Satellite Ballroom in 2006 was enough to make me a fan of the Merge act Portastatic. (Thanks for bringing me, Dan.) But, reading Our Noise, one realizes that many conversions are impossible without some initial collision of like minds.
Which makes me think of local record labels. And given the trajectory of Merge, I jump first to Jagjaguwar, which first released albums by local and regional acts (including our own Sarah White; complete Jag discography here). But I’d like to hear your thoughts on others you know and/or love. We can even cast wider nets—engineers and studios that recorded local acts? Jeff Romano and Greenwood Studios comes to mind, as does Roderick Coles. Which labels and locals are responsible for some of the more explosive musical movements in Charlottesville’s history? Leave it below.
Oh, and enjoy this photo from Portastatic’s Satellite Ballroom gig, which featured about a dozen folks in the crowd and a cover of The Pogues’ "A Pair of Brown Eyes":
Mac McCaughan, co-founder of Superchunk and Merge Records, during a gig with his band Portastatic at Satellite Ballroom in 2006.
