Crunchy Frog Is About To Celebrate Twenty Years In The Game

Jesper “Yebo” Petersen’s label Crunchy Frog pioneered Danish indie music in the 90’s. He started the noise rock label with bandmates from Thau in opposition to the evil major labels. They worked with 50/50 deals, meaning they’d share both profits and losses with the artists themselves. The model attracted some of the biggest Danish acts to date like Superheroes, The Raveonettes, Junior Senior, Thee Attacks and Shiny Darkly.

In light of their 20th anniversary bash tonight, we had a chat with Yebo about the last couple of decades in the Danish music industry.

VICE: Tell us how Crunchy Frog started out.

Yebo: Back in the 90’s, I was in a band with three demo tapes under our belt. We went to the only cool label in Denmark at the time, Cloudland Records, to see about getting published. They offered us a distribution deal on the condition that we started our own label. Thankfully we had a bit of experience promoting stuff, thanks to us having run a concert club for a number of years called Prop Den Op Pop Klop on Stengade. It’s where Mew had their first show. 

Sounds kind of silly.

Yeah, we made these silly newsletters and press releases. We still do today, really. We call ourselves the best label in the universe for instance. Scratch that, the known universe. There might be a better label on some undiscovered planet.

Could be. How was the music scene in Copenhagen when you started out in ’94?

There was a bunch brit-pop and noise rock. That and some precursors of Nirvana like Sonic Youth, Pixies as well as British shoe-gaze like My Bloody Valentine. We were all about that – still are.

And drug culture in the underground?

I’m sure there were drugs aplenty, but for some reason we never worked with bands spaced out on whatever. The scene mostly consisted of folks around the age of 17-18 on SU, drinking cheap beer from Netto. No one could afford cocaine or heroin, myself included. But you’d almost dream of it, because of all the New York bands who were doing it. Slum romantics, you know. Honestly, I don’t even know what that stuff costs.

Your best guess then.

For how much?

I don’t know. A gram of coke?

Ha. Cool, man. It’s for VICE right? Only read by addicts and hipsters who know exactly how much one gram is. Okay, maybe 500 kr?

Totally reasonable, well done. What was the industry like back then?

Indie labels were almost non-existent. There was a huge divide between the established business and the underground labels. At the time, the entire music business was running amok, selling a ton of cd’s, drinking champagne and doing coke left and right. The underground was even more underground, as everything was more expensive back then. Also, we didn’t have MySpace or whatever. 

You didn’t think too highly of the established labels I take it?

There wasn’t any money, any funding, no association of independent indie labels. So like every proper indie label should, we started out in opposition to the industry. We thought it was shit, and the people working there were exploiting the poor artists. For us it was all about community and 50/50 deals, even if we made zero profits for years. We still operate that way.

How did your big break affect the label then? When Junior Senior became a roaring success in 2002?

Many discovered Crunchy Frog after Superheroes and Junior Senior. They thought we were a pop or dance label. We were on lists of the top three dance A&R’s in the world, because of that one hit. Many forgot, that we were actually a noise rock label, with stuff like the Raveonettes, Tremolo Beer Gut and such.

How has the business changed since then? Are things tougher now?

I think things have become easier, actually. The crisis has been good for certain players in the business. Some were forced to sit down and figure out, why they wanted to make music and focus on that. Also, the gap between indies and majors has decreased. In ’94, the differences between the two were infinite. Now, certain major labels have adopted 50/50 deals to some extent. It’s become a bit easier for the small guys and a bit harder for the majors, bringing us closer to one another. 

So you’re all friends now?

I still think that major labels are fucking evil, and that corporate rock sucks. 100 percent. But there are people in that business who are alright too. They’re just part of a system that’s inherently evil. 

Inherently evil?

Exactly. They don’t care about the artist at all. Someone a “Sonyversal” signs an artist, fucking loves the music and promises them everything. Six months later, the guy is fired and the band is stuck at a label that doesn’t give a shit about them. It’s pretty sad. At our place, I can still pick up the phone and call someone from twenty years ago. The only thing that sucks is, we don’t have a lot of money.

So you’re not exactly loaded?

We ran at a deficit last year. We still lose money on some of our releases, but that’s the name of the game. We just try to sign quality acts.

Thanks a lot, keep it up.