(Kevin Chanel recounts the rise and fall of an independent recording empire.)
This is a quicky rundown of the first (non-virtual or iTunes-aided) 10 years of a record label I owned on the fringes of San Diego’s musical culture (read: National City). It’s mostly thumbnails and sideswipes, so a lot of releases were left under the carpet. The carpet at my parents’ house, specifically.
Born of necessity, Scheming Intelligentsia Records began with its first release, The Front’s “Man, You Gotta Move” LP in the summer of 1985. The S.I.R. name had been created, the album was out, but there was no one to run the business end of things. By neglect, the duties trickled down to me, with a year of college under my belt and no business experience or interest.
The year previous I had put out the debut EP “Gangland” as a cassette-only release, again, out of necessity. We had recorded a tinny wad of hiss at Hiss Single Studios, stashed away in the basement of College Grove Shopeteria, and since no one else was going to manage either release, I did. This would explain my poor grades at USIU for the next years.
See Dawn Hill Waxon’s set of flyers from the Front!
Read Morgan Smith’s history of the Front!
Mind whirling from the unbelievable success of the Front releases (read: “lack thereof”), I opted to ignore conventional wisdom and continue releasing cassettes and vinyl with whatever money unfortunate enough to crawl into my pocket. In 1986 S.I.R. came out with a few releases by my satellite group — The Soul Brothers, as well as cassettes from pals’ bands Dark Globe and Gloomcookies. Despite the expected pushback from record retailers and distributors upon being presented with the prospect of marketing cassette-only albums, I soldiered on.
I believed that cassettes were NOT merely for demos and car mix tapes, but an instant and valid commercial option. Yep, I was young and empowered enough by poverty to justify almost anything. To a startling degree, this was effective. I received nationwide distribution merely by being a pain in the ass and running up a phone bill.
1987 saw the release of SD hardcore stalwarts Personal Conflict, more from Dark Globe, as well as the solo debut of Gloomcookies frontman John January. Surprisingly, the third one-hour cassette release from The Soul Brothers caught some traction and actually sold enough copies to force a second and third issue (not TOO impressive … we’re talking just over 1,000 copies or so). The title came from the basic math of this being the third SB tape logging in at one full hour’s worth of boss tuneage. (A side note: Side B was called “Great On Shrooms, Dude,” consisting of our attempt to create a half-hour of music to listen to whilst on mushrooms. A year later we road tested it and ended up in the middle of a busy street in Vista at 5 a.m., laughing at ants on the double yellow line minutes before a traffic jam).
Critical acclaim for “Three Hour Tour” began to bleed in from around the country, and S.I.R. attempted to attract even more notoriety with packaged showcases at various San Diego clubs and the kind patronage of the Tribune’s Frank Green. He threw some literary bones our way periodically and was quite the mensch. With the cahootery of local underground radio and the alternative show on overground station 91X, The Soul Brothers were able to snag out of town gigs at 1987’s CMJ conference as well as gigs in Germany with their artistic mentors Savage Republic. I was as happy as a little girl.
In 1988 a brief alliance with Savage Republic and Independent Project Records in LA spawned a couple of products — a cassette of live recordings from Savage Republic and Scheming Intelligentsia’s first compact disc release, “Woman With Bass” by noted LA artist Marnie Sounds (a.k.a. performance artist Marnie Weber). Savage Republic’s cassette, originally titled “I Buried Thurston,” had to be renamed “I Married Thurston” due to apprehension on the part of SR’s Jackson del Rey about diss possibilities on the Sonic Youth maestro.
High point of this: Bruce Licher of IPR gave me a stash of really impressive oatmeal-textured paper with which to print the covers. In addition, Independent Project’s side-gig Nate Starkman & Sons had commissioned ‘Brothers to the re-record “Three Hour Tour” for vinyl release on their new imprint. After many, many hours recording at White Glove Test’s home studio in Vista (read: bongs, mushrooms and backyard basketball), that rug was eventually pulled, and the band broke up soon after.
As the 1990s arrived, the emergence of Dark Globe as an attraction in the San Diego music scene marked more success for S.I.R. Their first vinyl, “Life Is Research,” was surfaced in early ’91 and soon sold quite well on a local level, with our first taste of national acclaim and sporadic college-radio charting. Another feather in the cap was the debut of popcore entrenchees aMiniature, titled “Plexiwatt.” Talk about popular — this was huge for aMiniature, if not so much for S.I.R. After modest sales offsetting scads of promotional expenditures, aMiniature got a slimy lawyer and weaseled out of their deal with in order to sign with Restless Records. 1991 also saw the departure of Dark Globe. A bummer indeed.
Don’t worry, we’re almost done with this.
1992 was populated with a whole new roster of groups, starring the big rock action of new SD wonderboys Uncle Joe’s Big Ol’ Driver and Ghetto Scheist. Their respective debuts came by way of a split single, with the Scheist side featuring the crack horn section from Rocket From The Crypt. Some other stuff happened that year, but it’s kind of a haze right now. So let’s just move on to the S.I.R. swan song known as 1993-1995.
With the annexed distribution of local jazzbos Donald Wilson’s CD debut, the label went about trying to force their disc down the throats of America. An amazing 7″ EP from Donald Wilson followed (no, there is no one actually named “Donald Wilson” in the group), entitled “Fred The Snowman.” Thirteen songs from the varied landscape of American music boiled down to one EP. Noisy jazz, jazzy noise, incestuous country, deconstructed metal, and much more. This record is just ungodly amazing, in my opinion.
They eventually collapsed upon themselves after a stunning Independent Music Seminar performance at the World Beat Center involving the core musicians and three rappers whom appeared stoned immaculately.
Unfortunately, aside from a second 7″ appearance by UJBOD, this was one of the last Scheming releases to hit the market. After the cassette release of Fern Trio’s “Sonic Slurs Of Herbal Agony,” they folded the tent and retired from the music industry. In ’95 the label was sold for $1 to former Tragic Mulatto drummer Bambi Nonymous. No lie. I really did that. Bambi put out a couple of vinyls and pretty much left it at that.
But as was the style of 2009, I un-retired in the laziest fashion possible, creating a new S.I.R. release, my own Lemon-Limes album “Profiles In Carnage,” as a virtual-only item (ITunes, Amazon, etc.) Recorded in two days under strict guidelines (no more than one note/chord per song, no chord repeated, no tunes longer than two minutes), it popped up in May of ’09.
And that’s it. At least I hope it is. Running a label is no fun, take it from me. Or you can buy it for a buck. I’m taking offers.
— Kevin Chanel