FM: Mike’s right. The press wasn’t positive. After the initial wave in ’76 or ’77, things tailed off. Underground music - punk rock - was pushed to the side and forgotten about. It wasn’t until the second wave that people really got interested in the whole thing.
Stuff like radio was really hard to deal with. College radio was just coming on strong at that point in time. Trying to get air play larger stations wasn’t actually possible. In Cleveland, that was kind of disappointing, because WMMS, the most popular and most hated station, was pretty cutting edge in the early ‘70s. They were playing a lot of crazy stuff – they were way out there. At a certain point, they really turned coarse and started playing arena rock, album rock, corporate rock. It was really disappointing to a lot of people in town at the time.
I wasn’t around then, but I’ve been told that WMMS used to play entire records. If there was a double album by Frank Zappa, for example, the station would play all four sides consecutively. They also did Coffee Break [a set of music recorded at a local venue and broadcast live during work-day business hours] and I think the station had Talking Heads amongst a few other higher profile ‘weird’ acts perform from time to time.
FM: Even Peter Laughner [Rocket from the Tombs’ guitarist and songwriter] played Coffee Break. They featured a lot of local and new artists. It was really cutting edge stuff for a station that big. But as I said, it just dropped off as fast as it blew up. The odds that they’d play anything remotely different in normal rotation – it just wasn’t going to happen.
Do your records get coverage now?
FM: We’re definitely widely covered. The rock and roll press today is different than it was even last year. To get magazine coverage today is pretty difficult. We haven’t come full circle to where we were 30 years ago, but it’s not because people don’t want to cover you in magazines. It’s because they don’t exist anymore – there’re very few.
There’s only one Ugly Things [a magazine focusing on psychedlic music from the ‘60s and ‘70s]. There’s only one Big Takeover [a magazine focusing on psychedelic music from the ‘60s and ‘70s] . Five years ago, there were lots of magazines like that. There’s a lot of reasons for that – the economy being one. Number two, the means of distribution for that stuff is just gone. The retailers that would carry that stuff aren’t there anymore. We still get lots of press, but some of it’s internet press. There’s blog coverage of the label, it seems, everyday. To me, that’s kind of cool. It’s just as vibrant as the fanzine thing was years ago.
I’m kinda sad that all these fanzines have just kind of dropped off. There are still plenty, but it’s just very hard to find them, pick them up and buy them. It’s unfortunate.