CD-endangered-794300

Touch and... ah hell.

 

I was gonna call this blog, "Touch And Gone," and talk about how the downsizing of Touch And Go Records is sad for about three zillion reasons, not the least of which being: Where will Ted Leo go now? Is he warm? I hope he's warm.



I even went and got quotes from folks at some of the labels (like Jade Tree, Kill Rock Stars and Merge) that used T&G for distribution. But I was so busy working on Scott's awesome interview with Mark Hoppus that another blog stole my title. To be fair, I guess it wasn't all that original of a title in the first place. Yeah, it's deflating, but there are issues going on that are bigger than me and my misplaced creativity.



In case you missed it, legendary indie label Touch And Go drastically scaled down its operation this week and announced that they would not only stop releasing new albums, but they'd have to stop doing the distribution work they did for the aforementioned labels among others. For those of you who didn't know that actual physical copies of albums exist outside of iTunes, it takes a distributor like T&G to put those CDs (and if you live in my hometown: cassette singles) on record store shelves. Of course, if you're lost on what CDs are, there's no way you can wrap your head around the concept of record stores, which popular movies will tell you were places of magic and wonder, where you could browse through a seemingly endless bounty of albums, occasionally argue over the best songs to listen to on a Monday morning and/or host a signing with Rex Manning.



Although the labels I spoke with all said they're definitely bummed on the news, most of the reps –like Kill Rock Stars VP Maggie Vail–told me that it's just sort of the nature of the business these days. "All of our titles will just be moved over to our new distro," she said. "We aren't anticipating much of a hiccup at all."



But the real story is that Touch And Go was a model record label. Seriously. Other labels grew up idolizing T&G. Forget the fact that T&G released some of the most influential and groundbreaking albums of the past three decades from the likes of the Jesus Lizard, Girls Against Boys, Big Black, Blonde Redhead and Slint. That alone would've made the label legendary. But within the music business, it was common knowledge that label head Corey Rusk ran a flawless operation and treated everyone in the industry with the kind of respect that the industry just isn't used to. And if this happened to this label, what does that mean?



Jade Tree
 co-owner and president Darren Walters told me that the news is bad, bad sign. "It's an illustration of how both the decline of the U.S. economy and music sales combined have the power to deal blows to music companies that not even the best, the brightest, the biggest or most solvent of us may be able to weather," he said. "This may only be the tip of the iceberg."
 
 
Look.
 
Music ain't gonna go anywhere. Until teenagers decide they don't need to rebel or compartmentalize each other based on aesthetics, musicians will always have their place.
 
 
But, man.
 
If you have conscious memories of buying albums on cassette, or in extreme cases: albums, the end of Touch And Go represents much more than just the end of Touch And Go.
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