I’m Your Fan

"If you like our music, drop us a comment down below. Or give this video a thumbs up. Want to buy our latest release? Just head over to Bandcamp and download it. You can pay at the click of a button via Paypal."

So that’s how things work in the internet age. Nice and simple. Frictionless transactions or some such marketing jargon. There’s still a process taking place somewhere, but it’s discreet. Behind the scenes. It probably involves a data centre out in Iceland and is a tiny tiny part of the reason the planet will shortly kill us all via climate change … but as we always say at times like this, that’s a different discussion for a different blog that you haven’t heard of and probably won’t ever read.

My first interaction with a fan came about – ever circuitously – like this. It was the late 80s, I had somehow wound up running a small independent record label. The main intent had been to release my own music via tape - and later also on vinyl. But a label of one act – an act without much going for it – isn’t much of anything. So I’d acquired some other bands to make the whole operation appear more credible. It started out with a compilation – bands were recruited via an advert in the back of Melody Maker (which was the go to weekly music paper for such small ads). That initial compilation – tape only – was titled New Songs For Mutants and featured about 12 different acts.

One of the bands that I came into contact with were from Iceland. They were in a similar situation to me – they had their own band (loud, punkish and singing in Icelandic) and they also ran a small label by which they distributed and sold compilations and tapes featuring other Icelandic bands. We formed a loose alliance. I added some of their catalogue to mine. I helped to finance the pressing and distribution of their first album. (There were, as far as I recall, no vinyl pressing plants in Iceland at that time).

Later down the line we did a similar deal for another Icelandic band, who went by the name of The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. (This was a reference to the Peanuts cartoons of Charles M. Schulz, about whose work I should write in depth somewhere else). The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm sung in English. Their debut ep was an intoxicating mix of fuzzed up guitars and snappy sub 3 minute pop songs. Topping it off at track 4 was an adrenalin rush cover version of the Blondie hit Heart of Glass.

The record came in a fold out sleeve, in the centre of which was a striking black and white picture of Debbie Harry. It was the perfect product, perfectly packaged. We had 500 copies pressed, some of which went to Iceland and the rest of which resided in my parents garage. Next step was to mail out copies to all the music press and to a few local and national radio stations. Apart from the great music and the great packaging, we had one other element in our favour. A band called The Sugarcubes had recently made a spectacular breakthrough into the UK charts with their otherworldly hit Birthday. They were also from Iceland. They had the backing of a big time Independent label. Their singer was Bjork. They were making waves and in their wake everything Icelandic was suddenly deemed to be cool.

So our little ep quickly gained traction. It got positive reviews in all three of the main weekly music papers of the time – Sounds, Melody Maker and NME. Melody Maker even awarded it single of the week. Meanwhile over at Radio One, John Peel played it. Not just any track, but track 4, that inventive reworking of the Blondie classic. It proved popular and so he played it again a few nights later. He played it multiple times over the coming weeks. He wasn’t actually a fan of Bjork or The Sugarcubes after an awkward encounter with them in a studio somewhere, but he acknowledged the growing influence of Icelandic music and he loved The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm ep.

We didn’t have a distribution deal for this record. It was being sold for a pound via mail order. I’d had no anticipation of the impact the record would make, but shortly after release the postman was arriving on a daily basis to deliver dozens of envelopes to which eager purchasers had sellotaped a pound coin to a piece of paper giving their return address. The 500 pressings soon sold out and we had to get another 500 made (sadly this time without the cool fold out sleeve featuring Debbie Harry).

The full story of The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm and what became of them after that initial burst of success will be found elsewhere, but now we must get to the point of today’s entry. We sold 100s of those singles by mail, but one day instead of the postman knocking at the door, I found a sober looking young guy with glasses waiting outside. It wasn’t anyone I knew but he quickly introduced himself – I forget his name now, but he was a student, probably in his late teens. He’d heard the record on the radio, heard the address to write off to being given out and realised it was literally a couple of miles from where he lived. So he’d turned up with his pound coin to purchase a copy.

I’d never considered someone might just appear at random at the front door of my parents house. It turned out to be a one off and he was a perfectly normal young man, so all was fine. Later on, either in person, or I think by mail, he bought other items from our catalogue. Not only the popular stuff, but some of the music I’d recorded and released as 91 Vibrations, the project I’d started and then co-opted my brother in to joining.

We’d released a tape only album. We’d contributed tracks to a free ep that was distributed via a fanzine, and we were finally making our own debut vinyl record. This was the one we laboured over for several months. This was the one where we got so lost in the weeds, we failed to have any perspective when we got to the finished product. It was terrible. Incredibly, painfully awful. Stilted. Lifeless. The very antithesis of that Daisy Hill Puppy Farm debut. (Time wise our album preceded their record by several months or a year). I think on completion  of the recording process I thought our album was great and yet by the time – a mere few weeks later – it had been pressed on to vinyl, I wanted to dig a huge hole in the ground and bury every copy out of reach for the rest of eternity.

It was a painful lesson for us, it wasted a small but significant amount of money, but I guess me and my brother did get years of pleasure later in life remembering just how terrible the whole experience had been. We learnt from it. We didn’t give in. We did go on to make some interesting music (on a modest scale) elsewhere.

So no one was giving us any accolades in the press. The postman didn’t need to trouble himself on our account. There was only tumbleweed and a garage full of unsold vinyl. 

Except.

Except there was that student guy with the glasses who turned up to buy the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm record. He’d gone on to purchase the rest of the label’s back catalogue, which included that disastrous 91 Vibrations album. And apparently he loved it. He wrote a sweet little handwritten note of appreciation and posted it through my parents letterbox one day while I was out elsewhere.  I kept the letter for many years, alongside other ephemera from my musical days in the 80s/90s. It was the first piece of fan mail I ever received. It was, surprisingly, far from being the last. But that, my friends, is a tale for another day.