This is MutantMutant PopPop free! Mailorder Catalog AI free! http://members.aol.com/mutantpop/ Remake, Remodel. Hang on to your headgear... Despite my best intentions, I will not be making conventional com- New Release. pact discs or 7” vinyl much longer. With CDs, the problem is insuffi- cient joy. Albums are serious matters to bands and every project comes with a whole set of needs and desires on the part of the band involved. It has come to feel like work. I don’t blame the bands in the least, if I were them I’d be pretty intense about my album, too. Never- theless, this is my hobby and not my job and no matter how selfish it sounds, in the final analysis I make CDs for my own fun. When the process becomes painful, it’s time to do something else—and I’ve reached that point. I’m 95% sure that I’m gonna finish up my album commitments this year and take 2001 off from making full-lengths. (Now available.) THETHE PEABODYSPEABODYS I just can’t begin to tell you how happy this one makes me. SICKO achieved what few bands are capable of doing: they gained a broad and passionate following among music fans on three continents without pandering to the industry or compromising their vision. SICKO developed their own sound, toured when and where they wanted to tour, maintained their personal friendships within the band, and when they felt like they had done their bit, they ended it with a “thank you” show for the fans— on the heels of their biggest selling album! SICKO did it with TOTAL CLASS from It’s not that doing the label sucks. I’m having the most fun with MP Day One to The Last. If you’re looking for a ever! Mailorder is doing well (thanks!). The Short-Run CD series is a band to idolize and emulate, this is it! This total blast! It’s just that cranking out a bazillion Short-Run CDs is so fifth album collects 18 non-album studio fun that it has ironically made other aspects of the label unbearable. tracks and their last show. It will come to Here’s what it’s like: imagine if you went jogging every Saturday be regarded as one of the best things Mu- for five years. Rain or shine, every single Saturday you went jogging. tant Pop ever accomplished. Ten bucks. “I’m a runner,” you kept telling yourself, “I like to jog.” Then let’s say that one Saturday you decided to give running a miss and to go swim- Also: there are new Mutant Pop T-shirts ming instead. You enjoyed gliding effortlessly through the water and available. They feature silver ink on thick you discovered that you got a great workout to boot. As you dried navy blue fabric, a Mutant Popized fantasy yourself off, it suddenly occurred to you that running is dull and makes version of the 1977 RAMONES “Sheena is a your knees hurt, while swimming is totally fun and feels great. How Punk Rocker” record label—A-side on the would you choose to spend your free time in the future? Well, that’s front and B-side on the back. If you wash an easy one for me: fuuuuuuuck jogging, I’m gonna go swimming! the shirt, a lot of ink flakes off and it looks Within a few short years, fanatical and single-minded exertion in like a rusty old relic. Keep it pristine or wear the SRCD realm will prove to be 10 times more (continued inside) it. Shirt run is 6 dozen. Four sizes: M, L, XL, XXL. List a substitute size!!! $9.00 Gjlgbcfyj d gtxfnm% 28.2.00 Nbhf;% 2 000 ”rp= Big MP changes afoot. (from cover) important to the underground pop-punk movement than anything I Mutant Pop News have accomplished to date with this label. My targets are 45 SRCDs Oh, the irony... Okay, so I stopped deal- on the street by the end of 2000 and 72 more SRCD titles in 2001. ing with all the distributors except for the That’s six releases a month! Some may not be modern classics, ob- one who actually paid the invoices when viously, but there will be many, many great new bands brought into they were due (Revolver USA) and prepared contact with you, the fans. A parallel process of rediscovery of old to take my lumps on the new SICKO album, material and documention of unknown groups will be taking place. sales-wise. SICKO has sold a total of 60,000 This is gonna be way better all the way around. Please trust me. copies of their four albums, according to The Fun is only part of the equation. In the case of 7” vinyl, my hand Rocket magazine. The exclusive distribu- has been forced by the realities of the marketplace and the choices I tor preordered a big 210 copies. I very opti- have made as a record maker. The vinyl market has collapsed in mistically estimated to the band that I North America, your unwavering mailorder support notwithstand- would probably get through 1000 copies in ing.The logic of my situation as a label has only recently become a year. I actually figured it would be more clear. Conventionally manufactured compact discs and 7” vinyl are like 800... The marketing game was finished forms of mass media: they have substantial initial set-up costs but for me and facts were facts... provide huge economies of scale for the label able to “shift units.” The Well, one of the big, fat stupid guys has label puts down the chips on the recording and mastering and manu- heard of SICKO before or something. Im- facturing and then basically scrambles to sell 500 or 800 or 1200 or mediately after the release date, the dis- however many copies is necessary to recover the chips to play the tributor came right back for 250 copies and game again. Or, if the label is into it for the money (as so many are), then again for 300 more. Now it seems they multiply those target numbers by ten or twenty. The only catch is that want all but the 100 copies of the second to get to these kind of numbers, the label has to deal with the estab- pressing that I will need for mailorder... Bear lished distribution and retail network, which is based in large mea- in mind that no Mutant Pop CD release has sure on chain retail stores in shopping malls and the dollar-driven sold over 2,000 copies before—and that’s distributors who service them. And then of course the label needs to over a four year period, when I was trying McAdvertise its McProduct in McZines... Wheeee! to sell lots of copies!!! Ho ho, I just basi- Well, the game is rigged and I’m not gonna play it anymore. With cally told the record industry to fuck off and the SRCDs I’ve figured out how to do the FUN and IMPORTANT part kiss my ass in the last Hit List. Making 2,000 of doing a label (helping good, new bands get their stuff heard by copies go away in one month to those guys music fans) without having to put up with ANY of the music industry is a truly humorous turn of events... bullshit. I’ve committed to a number of (conventional CD) albums for Wayne and Chris Griffith from THE 2000: RUTH’S HAT, WANNA-BES, CONNIE DUNGS, AUTOMATICS CONNIE DUNGS are starting a new band comp, UNDERHAND comp, KUNG FU MONKEYS. A few other al- with some local Just Add Water Records bums remain to be recorded. As for the 7” vinyl, the forthcoming fans. The band is going to be called THE PEABODYS EP is the last one on the board and as a nice, round BLEEDIN’ HEARTS and they are said to catalog number seems like a good place for me to stop. crank out high energy rock‘n’roll in the vein So with huge pools of red ink covering the carpet, the Mutant Pop of TEENGENERATE and THE PROBLEM- Singles Series lamentably ends here, with MP-40 THE PEABODYS ATICS. No songs about relationships... “Dilemma” EP. A great finale if there ever was one: blast the game Brandon Dung is starting an English-Pop winning homer and hang up the spikes... Unless I miss my guess, band (PSYCHEDELIC FURS food group) and THE PEABODYS are gonna be to the next five years what THE said to be writing poetry. He is a great art- CONNIE DUNGS have been for most of the last five—the best pop- ist and will do well in both of these endeav- punk band in the world! Wild, lavish praise, to be sure, but they hon- ors, I think. Dave Spodie is hard at work estly have got all the pieces: a distinctive sound, big hooks, plaintive with me getting the Eternal Bad Luck shy-guy vocals, songwriting chops, the ability to record well... The Charm CD booklet finished. We’ll do a last MP 7”er will be on opaque blue vinyl, and preorders are now SPODIE Short-Run CD soon after. open for that. Three bucks. This is expected to ship in late March. Next album through the pipe will be the There are three new Short-Run CDs out this month as well. One full-length by RUTH’S HAT, recorded at of them is a total indispensible classic.