Yale kids put the indie back in indie rock

About two years ago at the Calhoun Cabaret re-lease show for Geek Love's debut 7", the typically self-deprecating, agreeable banter between songs took a sudden, mock-serious turn. "So we have all these seven-inches for sale, and they're two dollars, so we expect you to buy them," lead singer and guitarist I-Huei Go, CC '97, told the crowd. "And I don't care if you don't have a record player. I don't even want to hear that crap. You just buy it. It looks good; you can tack it up on the wall and look at it."

It was a tongue-in-cheek outburst of aggressive salesmanship from the mild-mannered Go. "For Geek Love, putting the record out was at least 50 percent a vanity thing," Go recalled. "It was just to have something for us, or something to remember us by." These days, Go plays in the Brooklyn-based band Sea Ray, whose self-titled, self-released debut album came out last year. Now a veteran of two do-it-yourself album releases, Go has joined the many Yalies past and present who transform the live music blaring out of secondhand amps from butteries, common rooms, and dining halls on any given Saturday night into packaged recordings for posterity. Some simply press a few hundred seven-inches for family and friends; others go so far as to start their own record labels.

"For a small independent band starting out, if you decide to put out a CD by yourself, the major decision you'll face is about distribution," Go said. "Anybody can go into some crappy studio or into their bedroom with a four-track. But then you have to decide, do we want ads? Are we going to offer it to record stores to sell on consignment? Are we shooting for an official distribution agreement? If you don't think about this stuff, the whole thing will be a disappointment."

Go, with band-mates including Yale alums Greg Zin-man, BR '96, and Jordan War-ner, BR '95, formed the ad hoc Sea Ray Foundation to release and promote their CD, putting together press kits to send to clubs, labels, and college radio stations. "You have to be really aggressive, but we're just not like that," he said. "You end up just waiting for anybody to call you back. You feel great when one person calls."

"At the level we're at, word of mouth counts for a lot, and just having a CD makes a big difference," Hrishikesh Hirway, MC '00, said of his band, Pinstripe. "If you get shows outside your area, you can leave a little piece of yourself behind." Pinstripe released their debut CD, Astronomy, on the Yale-based Garbage Czar label in February; the band is now planning a two-week August tour. Hirway acknowledged that "it's kind of daunting where we're at right now. We'd been fueled by the momentum of getting the record out. Once that excitement wears off, you're left with financial realities, the business side of it."

Still, these labors of love are reaping tangible benefits; Pinstripe played well-attended shows at Vassar and Wesleyan last weekend, and Sea Ray are a fixture on the New York club scene. "Jordan's roommate was surfing the Web, and as it turns out, we made the CMJ charts," Go said, referring to the College Music Journal's influential monthly survey of radio playlists. "We were 197th or something in radio play. Some guy deejaying in Pomona really liked the record, and that put us over the top. He was playing two of the more depressing songs--he must have been some Goth."

David Slade, TC '01, also relies on the interest of college stations to aid releases from his fledgling Garbage Czar Records, which he runs out of his Trumbull dorm room with the aid of Hirway and Karl Tupper, BK '00, who also plays in Pinstripe. "WYBC is giving us airplay in heavy rotation," Slade said of Astronomy, Garbage Czar's first release. The label's second record, from defunct local band Leaves of Lothlorien, comes out this week. "Right now we're relying on places where we have friends at radio stations--Harvard, Wesleyan, Trinity, Amherst." Garbage Czar also advertises in prominent 'zines like Heart Attack and Punk Planet and is setting up a website for e-mail record orders.

A former member of No Evil Star, Slade is the solitary entrepreneur amidst Yale's increasingly crowded music scene. He went to high school in Little Rock, Ark. where he said that "a lot of kids were starting up their own record labels. I've wanted to do that for a couple of years now, something that would help the scene, where you're not just creating music but pressing it and transporting it across the country. When I got to Yale, no one was doing that."

Garbage Czar's name comes from "a hat that I tried to steal from my stepdad," Slade explained. "His friend was elected sanitation commissioner of Fayetteville, Ark., so he had this hat made that said `Friend of the Garbage Czar.' It had recycled cans embroidered on it. I thought the name was a nice satiric commentary on the stuff we're putting out; it takes the view of the stereotypical stodgy adult. Well, that's how I rationalize it--I just like the hat."

Slade also has no trouble rationalizing the financial risk he takes in the attempt to get new music to a larger audience. "Every single do-it-yourself guide says the same thing: expect to lose your shirt," he said. "And right now we're having a lot of fun losing a whole lot of money." The recording, pressing, and marketing of Astronomy cost $1500 all told, funded by a loan from a friend; Garbage Czar is counting on CD sales to pay it back. "It's worth taking the chance, but it's still scary," Hirway said. "You hear all the time that you can't do this for a living. And that's hard to hear, since this is what I would like to do for a living."

"Running a little independent label is full of headaches and frustrations," Justin Weyerhaeuser, TC '95, said. He should know, because he does it for a living: he's the founder of Turnbuckle Records, which boasts an international cast of indie bands including New Zealand's Bailter Space, Toronto's South Pacific, Kansas's Be/Non, and former Yale scenesters Sunday Puncher.

"Turnbuckle started the year after I graduated, while I was dissatisfied with a major-label job," Weyerhaeuser explained. "I was living with some of the guys in Sunday Puncher in a big old place in Brooklyn and it suddenly seemed like it would be a good idea to put out a single by them." Since Sunday Puncher had already recorded some tracks back at school, everything fell into place from there. "I started Turnbuckle with the initial intention of keeping it at a hobby level," he said. "Now I do it full-time."

As Sea Ray and the Garbage Czar folks have discovered, getting the word out about a small label's artists is intimidating outside the familiar environs of a local scene. "For every couple of good bands, there's a little indie label," Weyerhaeuser said. "The sheer quantity of music makes it hard to get distribution, radio play, press, bookings, records into stores." And though Weyerhaeuser now runs a professional record label, he faces the same financial risks as his DIY brethren. "I've recouped my expenses on very few Turnbuckle releases," he said. Go added, "None of these projects, at this level, are ever about making money. The vast majority are about losing money."

The much-welcomed opportunity to record in a studio, however, is a double-edged sword, even before the rewards and setbacks of releasing and promoting one's own music start to accrue. "Recording is an agonizing process," Go said flatly. "You play with the same people for months or years, and then you get into the studio and everyone's obsessing over their instruments and biting each other's heads off over nothing. It's also, seriously, the most fun you could ever have in your life."

Graphic by Sara Edward-Corbett.

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