The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—
all the exciting detail
of the chase
and the escape, the error
(William Carlos Williams, “The Crowd at the Ball Game”)
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Nearly a week has gone by since the England riots. Living in a third-world country where authority often amounts to a joke, we have many a time had our own casual brush with mob mentality and mindless chaos. And it’s never pretty; it’s opportunistic and selfish, with no pretense of nobility. Our thoughts go to everyone affected in any way by the riots – stay safe and wish you all the best for the recovery.
PIAS warehouse up in flame
The PIAS distribution warehouse in London, which housed countless copies of CDs and vinyls from more than 120 independent labels, was burned down to the ground in the riots – leaving these labels with massive financial loss. For some of the smaller labels, this might even mean closing down.
Still, not all hope is lost. Only a few hours after the news spread, support started pouring in – from the media, bloggers, music fans and musicians of all genres – all of whom were moved by these labels’ plight and tried to help out in any way they could.
Outerbeat’s August 10th edition was dedicated to showing some love to the affected labels. We played artists released by five amongst the hundreds of PIAS-distributed labels, namely 4AD, Rough Trade, Sub Pop, Matador, and One Little Indian.
Below are links to the podcast of the show as well as some related links. If you like what you hear (which you will ;D), consider heading to the labels’ websites and purchasing the digital download. Even if you don’t (which makes no sense, as you are reading this blog), give the other labels a try. Scoot!
POPcast #LabelLove by Outerbeat on Mixcloud
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