Independent Label Fair Saturday 4th August 2012 at Summerhall
You may remember there was an independent label fair last year but it clashed with our in-stores from Rachel Sermanni and Withered Hand so I didn’t have a decision to make about whether to attend. As with the fairs down south it has on the face of it to be a lose/lose situation for shops. Either the labels sell their normal stock already mostly available in Avalanche in which case they would just be competing with the shop on one of our busier Saturdays or they would sell things not available in shops in which case they would be fucking shops over.
The aim was to attract newcomers to the delights of the micro and not so micro Scottish labels which of course would be a good thing though all reports said it was mostly just the usual gathering of bands and labels that you might get at any well attended gig. The SMIA as part of their 5 year plan would have these fairs all over Scotland which again would definitely be a good thing but when I started to discuss this year’s event it transpired that not even the Glasgow Fair had gone ahead. For reasons I couldn’t get to the bottom of the people of Dundee and Inverness had been spared the delights of Song, by Toad et al.
However I do appreciate there are some good intentions behind this and I did initially offer the shop’s premises last year before Summerhall was chosen. I also felt it would be good to see as many bands and labels as possible represented and not just the better known labels though there was still the problem of me not being able to be in two places at once. However I was able to rope in Ed Jupp of 17 seconds and one or two other helpers so with the proviso that I would moan like fuck about why there hadn’t been any fairs elsewhere I agreed. As you can see earlier I fulfilled that proviso and now it is time to move on hopefully attracting crowds of new folk to sample the wonders Scottish labels can offer. I also very much look forward to all the labels turning up for the independent label fair in Thurso.
Of course if you are reading this then you are almost certainly not one of those “new folk” and I urge you to come to the shop and buy local releases. As well as Ed’s 17 seconds stuff we will have all the Chaffinch and Ballboy releases and basically any release a band or label would like us to have on the stall. So if you are indeed a band or label and would like your releases to go on sale at the label market just drop in a small number to the shop. I don’t want to start taking too much stock out of the shop so if you have your releases in the shop already it would be helpful if you could bring in more for the label market. I’m sure Ed will display any point of sale displays you can provide and within reason some merch. I assume we will be given as much space as we need.
If anybody else fancies helping out for an hour or two let me know and I’ll tell Ed. Let’s hope the publicity goes beyond us all tweeting about it to each other and then tweeting about how great it was afterwards interspersed with a few blurred photos tweeted during the day !
Of course later on I assume I will see many of you at The Queen’s Hall for Withered Hand, Ballboy, Josie long and Darren Hayman.