BY JEFF STRATTON
www.newtimesbpb.com
The August 30 local premiere of the British film 24 Hour Party People, which chronicles the rise and fall of Factory Records and Manchester's brief tenure as the sonic center of the universe, was one of the musical events of the year. In attendance at the Friday-evening event in Sunrise was Chris Moll, pop tactician behind the New Times award-winning See Venus (and before that, his happy, bouncy band 23), who has always copped to a love of Factory's biggest groups, Joy Division and New Order. The following night at the Billabong, the film was among the discussion topics for Bandwidth, drummer/impresario Steve Copeletti (of Whirlaway, New Graduates, and Poptopia fame), and Ed Artigas, owner of Miami's Spy-Fi Records. Astute readers with intact dendrites will remember Artigas's multiband tribute to Joy Division and New Order ("Joy to the World," December 12, 2001). Even as they chatted, Artigas and Copeletti ran around setting up equipment and doing door duties at the 'Bong, commandeering their own teeny but formidable scene.
That's essentially the story of 24 Hour Party People: Anthony Wilson, a visionary who is tired of abiding Manchester's second-city status, creates his own niche where cool collects like condensation. Wilson may not have been a musician or a businessman -- he was just an overgrown fan-boy -- but in 1979, he found himself in a fortuitous position for setting up his own empire. Factory and the subsequent "Madchester" renaissance couldn't have happened without a unique collision of circumstances and personalities.
The film depicts half-crazy producer Martin Hannett as the genius he was. Despite a cantankerous disposition and prodigious alcohol and drug intake, Hannett produced albums for Joy Division and Happy Mondays (which figure heaviest in Party People's summation of Factory) that gain much of their power from his erratic yet infallible sonic sense.
Wilson also had the foresight and luck to enlist Joy Division as the centerpiece of his new label -- a band the likes of which come around only every hundred years, if that. With Joy Division's pair of albums and smattering of singles -- which came to essentially define Factory -- a legacy was born.
Over here, we Yank record-store junkies soaked up the lavish packaging and obscure sounds of each Factory release (available only as high-priced imports). We didn't have a clue about Manchester's drug scene or the Hacienda, the nightclub sinkhole in which Mssrs. Wilson, Hook, Gretton, Saville, Erasmus, et al. lost so many quid. When Joy Division singer Ian Curtis hanged himself in May 1980 on the eve of the band's inaugural U.S. tour, the news didn't even warrant a two-sentence mention in Rolling Stone's "Random Notes." Factory was, and still is, a very English thing.
24 Hour Party People too briefly touched upon one of the essential elements in Factory's success: the art design of Peter Saville. With ideas lifted from Italian Futurism and Constructivism and an exquisitely sharp feel for what to leave off an album sleeve, Saville created simple, iconic beauty to match the contents. Factory's records stood out in the racks to such an extent that they had to be investigated -- and that's successful design. One Party People scene ably illustrated how Factory's long-range vision could manifest itself with crippling nearsightedness: Saville's sleeve for New Order's monumental "Blue Monday" was designed to look like a floppy disc -- not exactly a recognizable totem in the year 1983. Each record cost 79 pence to make, but Factory could recoup only 77 pence a copy, so the more copies sold, the more money the label lost. And as it turned out, "Blue Monday" went on to become the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time.
Factory lacked promotional finesse as well. Both in Europe and America, the label relied almost entirely on word of mouth to push its products. The records in their stately Saville sleeves would be duly shipped to shops, but rarely if ever were promotional copies sent to journalists or radio stations. Factory didn't even have a record licensed in the United States until Quincy Jones signed New Order in 1985. The legend was inversely proportional to sales -- there was an inexplicable cult of obscurity that, unlike, say, that of the Residents, did not serve Factory well. Regardless, the attitude and contrarian approach to the mainstream music industry made Factory Factory.
Mick Middles, whose 1996 book From Joy Division to New Order: The Factory Story was the template for Party People, called the label "profoundly, aesthetically aloof; arrogantly self-centered... a mess of indecision and squabbling; an accountant's worst nightmare; a resting home for aesthetic waifs and strays; a breeding ground for unlikely genius; a graveyard for the trendily uninspired."
That last label I'd gladly affix to Happy Mondays, the band that made a career (and a few decent records) of being drunken, stoned, E-riddled buffoons. As Party People shows, the Mondays included one member whose sole purpose was to dance about like a goofball, and their excesses helped pull the label into bankruptcy. But for better or worse, the Mondays came to typify the exuberant energy Mancunians felt when their music seemed to be the whole world's soundtrack. Their mythic messiness and unreliability were no charade: I still have a pair of tickets to a Happy Mondays concert in July 1990. The band blew off its show that night at the I-Beam in San Francisco to stay in L.A. and party with Soul 2 Soul.
In fact, to a former fanatical Factoryphile, 24 Hour Party People and the so-called "Factory story" concentrate too heavily on Wilson's egotistical exploits and not enough on the lesser-knowns who dwell in its formidable back catalog. True, the career of white funkateers A Certain Ratio is acknowledged, and the contributions of the Durutti Column -- the first and still quintessential Factory band -- while not examined in depth, are given a token measure of respect. Wilson never wavered in his championing of classically trained Durutti guitarist Vini Reilly, who had no commercial potential whatsoever but was one of the most talented men ever to pick up the instrument.
It isn't surprising that the Durutti Column doesn't have a bigger role in the story; the band's prolific output never added up to anything but marginal sales. At least there's one celestial Durutti track included on the 24 Hour Party People soundtrack (which also includes six pivotal yet non-Factory-released songs). But someday, it would be interesting to shine a flashlight on some of the more obscure Factory offerings that played a role in the label's development. For starters, both Section 25 and Crispy Ambulance were inseparable from Joy Division in the early days: The former would perform encores with JD, and the latter's vocalist, Alan Hempsall, would regularly fill in for Curtis when he became ill. Both bands have seen their 1980s-era records reissued of late. Crispy Ambulance even mounted a reunion tour in 2000 and recorded a new album this year. Despite producing some excellent pre-acid house dance breakthroughs in the mid-'80s, Section 25 never made another record after 1988's Love and Hate, and now its Webpage pitifully informs faithful fans that new songs have been written and are ready to be recorded -- if followers can raise enough funds to buy Section 25 new instruments! Neither the music of Section 25 nor that of Crispy Ambulance, it has been reported, ever managed to gain the favor of Tony Wilson.
But Wilson was enamored of the Stockholm Monsters, Quando Quango, and the Wake -- three bands that inexplicably languished, despite having mass-appeal potential. Two label compilations, Young, Popular and Sexy (a vinyl-only release from 1987) and 1991's Palatine (the four-CD box set that served as Factory's epitaph), include their songs, along with contributions from the ones that got away. OMD released its first single on Factory in 1979 only to go on to international acclaim and sales figures immediately thereafter. In the late 1980s, the folk-inflected Railway Children (and also James) did the same thing. The list of Factory obscurities goes on and on: such vanished entities as Red Turns To..., Northside, Tunnelvision, Stanton-Miranda, Kalima, and the Shark Vegas don't even merit footnotes to the story but still helped write one of the most entertaining music fables ever.
Some of the music produced by our little South Florida labels may well be consigned to the same fate, but entrepreneurs like Artigas and Copeletti nevertheless devote as much attention to their projects as did the Manchester trend-setters. Last weekend, Artigas distributed copies of some of Spy-Fi's finest products: Machete's amazing eponymous album; a bubbly, candylike recording by Sacramento pop outfit Baby Grand; the debut from Miami's Bling Bling, on which Artigas drums; and a three-inch disc in a
personalized package from Zira Lowtech -- which is actually Artigas's solo project. He zealously oversees his label as Wilson did, not caring whether he earns a dime but making sure that his stuff stands out -- musically and visually -- from the increasing glut of the CD-burner brigade. One day, Spy-Fi could even have its own high-tech office, complete with a $30,000 conference table, just like Factory did.
"That's all we can hope for," Artigas sighs.
newtimesbpb.com | originally published: September 12, 2002

Posted on Thu, Jul. 11, 2002
BY EMMA TRELLES PHOTOS BY MINDY HERTZON
In the thick of June's aquatic heat, three hundred bodies slow-churn around Churchill's Hideaway, Little Haiti's premiere, and only, live-music dive. Necks are fanned with flyers for upcoming shows. Beer downed by the pitcher. A fraction of tonight's draw comes from World Cup trackers and the usual neighborhood hard-ups. But the bulk of the evening's patrons are sweating their asses off to pay homage to Machete before the atmospheric quartet calls it quits.
Where do Great Local Bands go when they die? Does it even matter? Better to squash against the stage and submerge into a six-year catalog of celestial guitar-work, weirdly pleasing rhythms, Pixies covers and the overall sense that you're listening to something that belongs in dome-topped concert halls, a music that makes you want to stretch out your arms and fly.
For Machete's final gig, Spy-fi Records founder Ed Artigas has burned 100 CDs of the recently completed Untitled Music. Price: a paltry five bucks. Artigas figured if he tagged the release on the cheap, followers and the curious might buy a couple, a sixer, maybe even a baker's dozen. By the time the band shimmers through its second set, one that ends at three-ish before a tanked and giddy crowd, copies of Machete's only CD have sold out. ''If it would have been $10, I wouldn't have moved as many. The whole purpose of the thing was to get the CD out there,'' says Artigas.
And yes, it would be nice if he made some bank, was able to ditch his job as a customs broker and sustain himself and the bands he digs solely through his label. ''I don't see that happening anytime soon,'' Artigas says matter-of-factly. 'All the money that's made is basically for production and promotion. You might hear me say, `I want to make my money back,' but only because I want this music to perpetuate itself. I feel like people are sitting in the suburbs with nothing to do and nothing to listen to except vacation music. You know, 'driiink the fruity driiink; speeeennd your money,' '' he hypno-chants.
Moving local music from random rock clubs into the stereos of suburbanites, city dwellers or anyone seeking to flee the mono-drone of SoFla's commercial radio is a task Artigas is wedded to because it takes more than heart to run an independent label.
It takes scrambling for dollars to subsidize studio recording, mastering, packaging, pressing. It requires building relationships with manufacturers to avoid getting fleeced, drumming up one-sheets that describe the band and its sound. Finding distributors with a like-minded aesthetic, then persuading them to stock and hawk your CDs. Sending review copies to indie music mags, hassling college radio stations for airplay or finding a company to do it for you, one that will only pick up the record if it's deemed worth pushing. It takes asking endless questions and fielding as many rejections. It takes grit.
Artigas can't even guess how many hours a week he puts into Spy-fi. ``The whole thing is laced into my life. I could log the hours that I'm talking business, taking notes, all in reference to a specific band. But then I'm also out there rehearsing, talking to people, helping, setting up shows. It's hard to say where I stop and the label begins.''
That's not to say Artigas isn't having a fine time while he toils, playing in guitar-washed bands with sly sobriquets like Bling Bling and the Marisleysis Alien Conspiracy (MAC), a crunchy surf act whose name was inspired by the oceanic arrival of Elián Gonzalez and the cousin who doted on him. The label's moniker is a morph of his two dream jobs as a kid: secret agent and science-fiction spaceman. Spy-fi's slogan? Muy conocido en su casa, Cuban-speak for ``someone who is well-known only in his own 'hood.''
Kind of what independent labels are all about, low-brow soldiers of an underground army comprising tiny record stores, zines, college and pirate stations, bands and fans that swap music and favors and proffer the punk mantra of DIY: do-it-yourself. Indie labels promote music unconstrained by commercial demands, with a fuck-the-suits attitude established by out-of-state start-ups like Dischord and Twin/Tone in the Eighties, labels that made good for years before the majors even noticed. While major labels are chained to profits, indies are enslaved to music. The former makes a commodity while the latter builds a community.
This hardly means all independent acts sneer at getting signed. But with labels like Spy-fi, one of thousands across the country, bands don't have to wait around for Lotto-like breaks to put out records. ''I thought, if I can do it myself, why don't I do it myself?'' Artigas explains. 'That's the whole thing about Spy-fi. You want to do something? Let's do it. It's always been about helping my friends' bands that are really amazing, whether it's only an extra 500 people hearing about them or it's 5,000.
''People will make trips for national level indie bands like Sonic Youth or Belle and Sebastian, but most people tend to skip over what's around them because they think it takes too much effort to follow local bands,'' he adds. ''A lot of times, they don't have recordings for a while.'' But for Artigas, plucking music from the void is the whole point. ``When I see a local band or play in one, I get to hear stuff that hasn't been recorded. A label is music you find and want to share. And I'm a guy who wants to share that.''

•  •  • 

The chronology of indie pop and rock reads like the fifth chapter of Genesis: And postpunk begot alternative rock, and alternative fathered punk-pop, dream pop, noise pop, then lo-fi, sadcore, prog-rock, math rock, shoegazing, emo. The jumbled lineage is more difficult to decode than the molecular makeup of alien dust. Much easier to distinguish are the two essential kinds of rock fans.
Faction 1: Those who opt for spoon-feeding of corporate comfort rock. This kind of fan learns about bands through MTV and megawatt radio stations. Cornelius and Super Furry Animals sound like toy companies. The names of labels garner zero attention except, perhaps, as the graphics stamped at the back end of a CD. These fans don't intentionally snub indie music. They just don't know it exists. Give Faction 1 arena anthems and a lighter and leave them be.
Faction 2: Smaller in ranks, these hardcore followers of indie music wouldn't give a monkey's butt to inform Faction 1 that there is something else out there besides Kid Rock and Puddle of Mudd. They don't have time to educate because they are busy digging for new songs that they will never ever hear on the radio. Faction 2 finds this music by reading the likes of Magnet and Skyscraper and trolling obscure (but not to them) dot-coms like insound and PitchforkMedia. They find it by talking about music with the reverence bookies pay to odds.
No minutiae is too trivial. They know that Flaming Lips drummer Steve Drozd played with the Breeders, but only for a couple of weeks to work on some songs while he was in New York. They know that Man or Astro-man? bassist Coco the Electric Monkey Wizard lives in an Atlanta warehouse the size of a shipping yard, with a full-throttle recording studio built inside and a control booth carved from a train container.
Artigas is a digger. Even as a kid, he played the B-sides of his older brother's 45-rpm collection looking for cool new songs. But he's also a truck-stop minister of sorts, someone itching to spread unexpected psalms to fans of fringe. When Artigas launched Spy-fi Records in 1998, his first offering was a 7-inch for local art-noise-hint-o'-pop band Monotract. After that, free cassettes from the now defunct Spark Chamber, followed by a Whirlaway EP, with a track that landed on one of the CD compilations Magnet magazine regularly mails to subscribers. The EP even drew a bit of ink from Losing Today, a European mag devoted to shoegazing music. Other bands followed, with Artigas orchestrating last year's Rainer Maria gig at Churchill's and tribute shows to Joy Division, New Order, the Pixies and the Smiths.
As of late, Artigas has taken to promoting Spy-fi at venues like micro-danceteria Poplife, manning a mini-booth that offers e-mail sign up, freebie stickers and his label's releases along with anyone else's he's familiar with. Most of the CDs sell for three dollars and are taped to a three-ply board propped atop a table. Artigas calls it the ``science project.''
''I was up all night and my dad didn't even help me with it!'' he cracks from his post by the entrance.
''Where's the erupting volcano?'' asks Courtney Recht, a recent (and unpaid) addition to Artigas' staff of one. A publicist with a small PR firm on Miami Beach, the 25-year old Recht was poking around for local music and heard about the label through a friend. She e-mailed Artigas in April with offers to help. It took him two months to get back to her. ''His computer was down, but he finally messaged me and asked me to meet him at Revolver. That he'd be the one with the tie,'' Recht recalls. 'I went up to some random dude in a tie but it wasn't him. Then someone shouted out, `I love you Ed!' and I found him. He knew who I was before I said anything. He introduced me to everybody; he knew the whole club. By the end of the night we were dancing.''
Since then, Recht has penned Spy-fi's press releases, sorted and surveyed, sold merchandise at shows and, more recently, has helped the label's online zine get ready to roll by September. ''I've been interested in doing record label stuff for a while,'' she says. ``I think I'm enamored of musicians because I'm not one. Writing lyrics, the way each beat is arranged. I don't think I could do that.
``So I'll do whatever I can to help Ed. He's got lots of stuff to do.''
At the moment, Artigas is intent on making a drink run to the bar. He deadpans to Courtney something about holding the crowd off and disappears behind a courtyard filled with greenery and gushing fountains and the canned croaks of frogs.
Since Poplife commenced three years ago, the Saturday-night fest has consistently booked local and regional independent acts. ''Ed is one of the people who are good for the local scene,'' says Aramís Lorié, one of a four-person crew that promotes the mod-pop night. ``On an average night, we have about 500 people. That's a big amount to promote your stuff to. Ed doesn't really care to make money; he just wants to push the scene and the bands in it, so I help him out any way I can. Poplife is basically his house. If he wants to come in here and set up whenever, he can.''
By the time Artigas returns, the line outside Piccadilly Garden Lounge stretches into the street, yet only a handful have signed the Spy-fi list. Artigas is unfazed. He figures if nothing else, revelers will see the label. His is a slow business, spiked with visits from another local label owner, a guy kicking off a music zine, a graphic designer who's offered CD art to Spy-fi for gratis. Someone corners Artigas beside the booth and whines about how his band received ''only'' a hundred dollars for headlining at the Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale. He tells Artigas his band ''kinda has a Big Sky sound.'' Artigas shakes his head, says he hasn't heard of them. Later he says, 'I don't think I was supposed to know. I'm not sure, but that name gives me a Dave Matthews vibe. When I went out to California last year, I told bands how the local clubs down here will pay you a hundred bucks and they were just like, `Wow, that's a beautiful thing.' All the guys I was telling out there, they've driven from Sacramento as far as Portland to play. These are career indie rockers, and they didn't even get 20 bucks.''

•  •  • 

Billabong is a neighborhood bar in Hallandale Beach that's become increasingly hijacked by local music, with the second weekend of the month set to be dubbed Spy-fi Saturdays. Artigas and Recht plan on booking local acts from the tri-county area, perhaps another tribute show. Tonight the evening belongs to the promoters of Poptopia. The New Graduates have polished off a floating acoustic set followed by the MAC, all of whom are clad in Hawaiian shirts and throttle their guitars as if this were the last clambake on the planet.
The Bong serves a treasure chest of beers and some pretty slamming cheeseburgers. It's not as crusty as Churchill's, but it's got plenty of strip-mall-beside-the-interstate ambience: wood-panel walls, a dart board above the makeshift stage, pool tables and a small clutch of locals who appear to be mummified on their bar stools but typically clear out by the time the second band hits the stage.
Artigas bellies up to the bar and notes a friend has ordered a Framboise Lambic, a raspberry-flavored beer he recommended at the previous week's Superchunk/Get Up Kids show. (Faction 2 minutiae: Superchunk played for a great glob of underagers who were in grade school when this band was tearing through concert venues in the early '90s. Superchunk made the over-hyped Get Up Kids, whom they opened for, sound as forgettable as supermarket music. Appropriate since the Delray Beach venue was once a Winn-Dixie).
The fruity brew is sampled by all save one holdout. Artigas mock-twists her arm lightly, insists on a small swig. He might as well be evangelizing for the music he plays and loves and spreads like the new good Word. ''Go ahead and try it,'' he cajoles. ``Just a taste.''
DETAILS: Spy-fi Saturdays are held the second Saturday of each month at the Billabong Pub (3000 Country Club Lane, Hallandale, 954-985-1050), and begin this week with performances by Poulain, Scott Nixon and Matt Sabatella. Music starts at 9 p.m.; cover is $4 for 18-and-over. For more info go to www.BillabongPub.com.

Rekindling indie-pop fun is what Bling Bling is all about. The four members of this group, formed in the summer of 2001, threaten to have fun and take the whole world with them. Ivan Choo Baby is electricity on the mike, Kiki La Rocca slaps the bass silly, Jonathan Sensitivity trumps zigzagging melodies, and Black Angus handles drum beats and background vocals. They sound along the lines of indie acts like the Pixies, Pavement, and Archers of Loaf. The past few years have been spent dominating clubs and one-nighters like Poplife and Revolver. Recording and releasing their six-song debut EP, Always Give Candy to Strangers, was a shot in the arm for the local indie-rock scene, but don't worry, the syringe was clean.
— MIAMI NEW TIMES BEST OF ISSUE 2003