A call comes into Big Bertha Towers from one Dominic Brown, son of the much-respected music writer and Phil Spector biographer, Mick Brown. Brown Jr has set up his own label, Dancing Turtle, and he wants to compare notes. "I do it on the back of my day job," he explains. "I do everything from writing press releases to mastering the recordings myself and use the office equipment in the process. In terms of making money from the label, I can't really see it happening."
It's a Saturday afternoon, and a visit to Chener Books on Lordship Lane, East Dulwich leads to a conversation with the friendly man behind the counter, who alongside playing in various indie bands has decided to set up Tome Records. "The only way I can do this is by putting on nights that the bands play at, and all the proceeds go into funding the next release," says Kevin Hendrick, who has just put out an album by a project called Sleeping States. "I don't know why I do it, really. I suppose I just get excited about giving a platform for these strange bands that I like for one reason or another."
A few days later, I'm cycling along the South Bank of the Thames when I crash into a headband-clad jogger, who turns out to be the prodigiously talented film and television soundtrack composer Daniel Pemberton. "My own label is proving to be even less successful than yours," says Pemberton, who set up 1812 Recordings in order to give his television soundtracks a life beyond the small screen. "It's funny. Making money from doing scores is straightforward, but making money from putting out records and CDs appears to be almost impossible."
It is. So why do so many people start a label, especially when they don't have much in the way of a disposable income? There is always the possibility of lucking out further down the line -- as Ian Ballard of the punk-rock label Damaged Goods stressed when I embarked on the project, labels survive on having a back catalogue of discs ready to send out whenever an order comes in -- but you can't bank on that. The answer is that running a label, while an admin-filled headache that generally makes you poorer, is fun. Dealing with strange and intriguing people like Big Bertha artists Teddy Paige, Thistletown and Pete Molinari ensures that life is never dull. But the thought that Big Bertha Records might get these people a wider audience is the real inspiration. Starting a label brings out the musical evangelist in all of us. Rather like the annoying person that insists on sticking their mix tape onto the stereo at the party they've just crashed, the label owner wants to inflict their world onto other people, just as so many religious zealots do. It's healthy way of channeling an unhealthy human urge to spread your seed all over the world.
