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scratchy
records. a brief history
home part
one it’s
1996 and i’m at work in the outskirts of sitting
opposite me is ‘doctor mental’ aka nick johnstone, ad manager and would be
music journo. a couple of feet above our desks, suspended from the ceiling is
the sales mook. the sales mook is essentially an empty catering size tin of
nescafe which has undergone a voodoo-esque transition into the living,
floating embodiment of the craziness that surrounds me and the other
employees caught up in doctor mental’s unique approach to ad sales. like all
good religious sects we have new names.. there’s gandrew, trapper,
international nurse mental matron, the fly, flying v, michael heseltine’s
son, demi-beard and me ‘lionel’. should
work be this much fun ? i don’t know. somehow
we’re selling ads so the boss can’t sack us for poor performance. every so
often he passes our enclave in a fog of bewilderment and fear as respectable
ad agencies a few miles away in the centre of town receive cut and paste sex
pistols style faxes offering last minute offers of space. of
course it had to end. in between the faxes to clients dr mental was busy
sending pitches for features on US proto grungers ‘the replacements’ to
melody maker. one day they printed something he’d written and a new career
was born. soon after he landed a commission to write a book on patti smith
who’d launched her career back in 1974 with a self-released version of ‘hey
joe’. nick occasionally played guitar in my band ‘bromide’ and suggested i
too should record my debut album and release it on my own label. i
immediately rang a recording studio and booked some time. scratchy records
was born. part
two bromide
released a couple of singles and albums including ‘iscariot heart’ in 1997
and ‘no.space.anymore.even.inbetween.words’ in 2001. then at a moldy peaches
gig in 2002 i met a band called ‘the rocks’. a week or two later i witnessed
them igniting a packed hope & anchor crowd and realised i’d never seen or
heard anything quite like them.. plus it turned out they had £500 to press a
7inch vinyl single and needed a label to release it. maybe scratchy could
release music by other people as well.. like a proper label ! the
rocks released 4 singles and an album on scratchy before signing to weekender
in 2006. around this time a handful of musicians i knew all had music that
was ready to go and needed a home and some of them even had money.. so in
2008 scratchy put out the debut album ‘many of them seriously’ by
postspacerockers ‘spork’, another bromide album ‘the trouble with.. bromide’
and then in 2009 the self-titled debut by ‘full english breakfast’ as well as
a belated release for the rocks’ second album ‘letters from the frontline’
which had previously only come out in germany. 2010
saw the debut release from folker matthew neel ‘new maps of hell’ and in 2011
the first outing on scratchy for jonny cola & the a-grades with their
‘postcode wars’ ep featuring an ex-rock, mauro venegas on guitar. this
year there’s been another ep ‘halo’ from jonny cola & the a-grades and
there’s new albums from bromide and full english breakfast on their way in
june. simon
berridge |