The logo

Ah, the creative process. If only some of that vibe from my birth place Worpswede had rubbed off onto me. Artistically speaking me holding a brush and painting a beautiful nature scene is as likely as Gu not eating pizza at Torno tonight.
So we decided to put it out to tender. The designers which were all personal friends of either Gu or myself got a brief that was hard to resist. It went a little like this:

"Ceri, hi there. Howzit? You chillin', homy? All square in the pants department?"

Actually, this is nowhere near of how we talk but I thought as record producers we have to ensure our street cred is intact.

"How would you like to be involved in the new record label I am starting with my brother? The deal is this - We have no money and all this money that we don't have we will put into our first production which is going to be a funk 45. We need a really cool logo and would like you to have a go as we appreciate your talent, skill, experience [insert a few more minutes groveling here]. In return you get what we know we will produce that is one copy of the first single and a T-Shirt with your creation on it. All copyrights and other titles will have to be transferred to us, of course. Whatta you say?"

They all said yes!

So about two weeks later we were discussing the draft logos we had been sent. One from England, one from France and one from Germany. Truly European. We chose Paul's as we felt it came closest to what we thought the new label stood for: Round things with little houses. :-)

Paul has since received his 45 of Give me a minute Pt 1 & 2 and is a proud billboard for the T-Shirt. Ceri has been moving house for the last 5 months and has promised me that we will meet up soon for him to receive his payment.

In the beginning was the Funk

While I listen to the latest unreleased track from The Inmates [well, in fact it is the FIRST unreleased... ok the first ever track from that band] I reminice about the begining.

How did it all start?

All Gu's idea really. He had been a funk DJ for at least 6 years with his residency in Bremen's Urban Jazz Groove and several guest appearances at Keb Darge's Deep Funk at Madame Jojo's in London and the Leeds Hifi Club.
The next step for him was to start producing. The idea floated about and we talked about his own label. As I was the one not having been found out yet and still working in business, he asked me for advice which I was happy to give. He had left London when the thought dawned on me that I would actually love to be part of this project. I was a little apprehensive about asking him, thinking that he might not want me to steal his project. Unfounded fears. He was delighted and loved the idea of us doing this together.

[let me quickly change iTunes to Breakestra]

So we both went about starting the label our own way. While he announced to the New Mastersounds that he would like them to play our first funky 45 I went straight onto Amazon and ordered two second hand books that apparently would tell me all I needed to know about the music business. They probably did, but most of the information was utterly irrelevant at this stage and I only read the second book half. Note to myself, try a library first next time, might save some of that desperately needed start-up cash. Of course we still had the biggest ever issue to tackle. The name. No pressure but we wanted to found a label which produces funky 45s. Such a label had to have a good name. Ideas that we didn't use included sensible and not so sensible suggestions like Sesambrothers, Fragments of Funk, Unanimous Music, Her Mistress Music (get it?), Intelli Gents, Happy Mess, Unusual Name, Dosing Dose and 'Power Nappies - We produce some serious shit'.
As it happens sometimes our conversation switched to English and back to German and it must have been during one of those phone conversations that we wondered what we should call our label. And there it was. Why don't we call it Our Label Records. A quick check on Companies House website and DirectNic confirmed that the URL was not taken and that nobody had registered a Ltd. on that name.

Welcome note

Every blog should have one. A welcome note. I am very aware that the very nature of a blog means that the welcome note will probably not be read by the vast majority as it is written when there is no audience, except the author. And once there is an audience, there should be more exciting entries than a welcome note to read first... otherwise there would be no audience, init?

So. In effect, this is a note to myself. Which is nice. I feel that, recently, I have not spend a lot of time with myself. We never talk anymore.

Anyway. Before I tell anyone about the existence of this blog I will write some more. The idea is to follow the stony path of setting up a small record label. The chores I remember and the bits that excite me about the whole endeavour.

So sit back and relax. By the time you read this there should be a lot more content and if you worked your way back to this very first entry, congratulations. This is where the log started ;-)

Tom

Huhuu to Gu

Dude,

na? so einfach und so schoen :-) alles pretty standard.

Ich kann sogar all diese loeschen und editieren. Wenn ich mich also entschieden habe, ob ich ein ZweitBlog ansetze werde ich wohl dieses System benutzen :-)

Und Du kannst comments schreiben ;-)

T.