FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

ALEX OGG - INDEPENDENCE DAYS

Alex Ogg is a music journo from London who has produced two mind-blowing books in the past few years. The first was 2006's No More Heroes, a phonebook-sized encyclopedia of UK punk that has probably resulted in more toilet-reading-related hemorrhoids than any other book alive. His new one is called Independence Days, and is a similarly lap-constricting 500-page tome that delves into the history of the British indie label explosion in the late 70s like no book has done before.

Advertisement

The beauty of both books is Ogg's intense concentration on giving every band, label head, or third-tier roadie an ample amount of page space to tell their story. Everyone from Geoff Travis of Rough Trade to Keith Dobson of the estimable Fuck Off Records get equal time to shine and isn't that what this whole punk rock thing is about? Well, that and having a cool studded jacket with "Chron Gen" painted on the back, I guess.

Vice: How did you start work on Independence Days? Did Cherry Red put you up to it or was it your own idea?
Alex Ogg: The original idea came from Cherry Red's chairman, Iain McNay. He wanted a book that celebrated the independent label boom in the late 70s and early 80s. It was a good idea, I thought. Certainly there was very little prior research into the area on this scale, unlike punk and hip-hop, which have been exhaustively documented.

The one thing I loved about the book was that it didn't paint a pretty picture of all these indie labels being idealistic endeavors. You had labels like Rough Trade or Small Wonder, but then you had ones started by people who were ex-managers of Deep Purple and just wanted to make some money off the punk explosion.
Yes. I did try to convey the fact that, as much as there was a laudable unifying spirit and some very "good eggs," some of those within both the mainstream and tertiary narratives were less altruistic. And I would excuse the ex-managers of Deep Purple here, incidentally. I don't have a problem with honest businessmen as long as they fulfill that criterion.

Advertisement

The independents were generally a positive outcome from punk, and there were many people involved whom I respect enormously--the sort of folk who intuitively do things for the right reasons. And yet, we could talk about people whose investment in music and belief in their artists was to the point where they treated their own staff savagely. Is that justified? I'm not sure it is. Then you have the swindlers, bandwagon-jumpers, and blackguards. And, of course, some of the very best music was realized by the latter subset. You could make an argument that the better labels had values that were implicit in their output, and that's true, but not of all labels.

During the process of writing I became very aware that some were clinging to the idea of "independence" as an attempt to secure the moral high ground. Based on my experience, I did not concur. That was borne out of my experiences with the publisher. Unfortunately Cherry Red, and Iain McNay in particular, were not averse to trying to twist the narrative in their favor, to the extent that the published chapter on Cherry Red is somewhat short of the truth. I can't tell you how much I resent the massive workload and personal investment being compromised in that way. It is to my eternal shame that I didn't pull out of the project when that occurred.

It's obvious from this book and your previous punk book No More Heroes that you really get in touch with anyone and everyone involved. How do you track down… say… someone who was a member of They Must Be Russians?
They Must Be Russians is a really interesting example to pick--there were actually TWO different bands with that name. A member of the Sheffield version used to print my first punk fanzine way back when. And Mick Clarke of the Slough TMBR is a friend. He helped in the final stages of No More Heroes. Some of these people you know historically, some of them you seek out. No More Heroes could not have been written without the internet, which was a real boon in tracking people. Unfortunately, most of the research came before the big MySpace wave, which has thrown up lots more in terms of info and contacts. So a lot was done through email, a good deal over the phone, and some in person. With Independence Days, it was primarily meeting people, as several hold quite senior positions, or talking over the phone.

Advertisement

I would figure some of these guys might be pretty fried by this point. Did you track anyone down only to find they didn't remember anything?
Yes, if you take any large research sample you will find lost geniuses along with equitable disinterest as well as deeply troubled and disappointed people. No more within punk than any other subject area, I would say. Nothing too freaky happened. The most amusing instances were probably when I spent ages tracking down the most obscure band and would then receive an email saying, "Ah, but you took it all from the bass player's point of view." Approximately 78 emails later you'd finally infer that somewhere along the line someone had played swapsies with another band member's girlfriend and you are now officially the locus of their brooding resentment.

Did you just make a list of every British punk band you could think of?
I wish I had done a list. I just set about writing about everything I had info on, and along the way I uncovered dozens of other bands. What really motivated me was not critiquing, necessarily, these small bands, just telling their stories. It was done over about a three-year period, after I'd left my day job. In the end there was twice as much stuff as actually went into the book--some day I intend to publish a second volume. Just find me a publisher who understands the concept of copyediting.

I was wondering why some of the UK indie labels of the early 70s were not pursued further in the book. Off the top of my head, you don't get into Holyground, Penny Farthing, Neat records, or really any of the indie NWOBHM labels. Did you consciously omit them because they weren't of interest, or were you just trying to keep the book from becoming a 3,000-page monstrosity?
I intended to mainly focus on the independents who emerged as a direct result of punk, which is why I effectively started with Chiswick and Stiff (and I'm very aware the latter were only truly independent for a short time). I did try to set the scene by looking at the 50s R&B independents in the US as well as Virgin/Island and a few others. Neat deserved more coverage too, but I was way out of my comfort zone--I've always loathed metal. Perhaps that's an example where I let my own prejudices show.

Advertisement

What's your opinion on "indie" culture in this day and age? From what I can observe from here, in the UK the term "indie" is still widely used to describe bands of a certain style without any regard to how their music is released.
It makes no sense at all. You can look at this in a number of ways, but essentially, to me, it's a classic example of capitalism turning art into commodity. It amuses me to think that marketeers still think that "indie" denotes some kind of "edge." If you look at the output from early UK independents, these were not soundalike bands at all. From Throbbing Gristle to the Young Marble Giants to Josef K to the Desperate Bicycles--pick your own examples. Indie has become a wholly worthless brand in the UK that effectively constitutes homogenized, one-dimensional and generally gormless dross.

What's up with the Dead Kennedys book I heard you're working on?
I've been in contact with Biafra for a long time. I was going to write a big DKs piece for a magazine until the editorial staff changed. Then in 2005 I was commissioned to write the liner notes for the reissue of Fresh Fruit, which I spent a whole month on. Then the curse of the Kennedys struck and a certain band member got very uppity about a rogue sentence. So I've archived a whole bunch of stuff that I wanted to set down without editorial interference. Also, I have to say, I still rate Fresh Fruit as my favorite punk album. I know that's heresy and we're all supposed to say Clash, Pistols, Ramones. But Fresh Fruit affected me more than any other album growing up and I was determined to persevere with the project despite the complexities and difficulties. That said--I will believe it's actually "out" when I see a physical copy.

INTERVIEW BY TONY RETTMAN

Buy Independence Day here.

http://www.cherryred.co.uk/

http://www.alexogg.com/