Wow. Cleopatra has really diversified, haha!
They used to just be a little niche label with a cluster of punk/gothic/industrial stuff.
Now they have Oak Ridge Boys, Judy Collins, Bob Marley . . .
They’re a funny bunch, for sure. They apparently just buy pressing rights for random out-of-print stuff or crappy live shows and stuff. That’s all well and good, except for the fact that they seem to put, at most, $12 of investment into any project. The sould quality is always crap, the art is always crap. I don’t know. It just seems like everything they do is crap.
[reply]Wow. Cleopatra has really diversified, haha!
They used to just be a little niche label with a cluster of punk/gothic/industrial stuff.
Now they have Oak Ridge Boys, Judy Collins, Bob Marley . . .
They’re a funny bunch, for sure. They apparently just buy pressing rights for random out-of-print stuff or crappy live shows and stuff. That’s all well and good, except for the fact that they seem to put, at most, $12 of investment into any project. The sould quality is always crap, the art is always crap. I don’t know. It just seems like everything they do is crap.
I can’t imagine a huge demand for these records. There are plenty of used copies of the originals out there that go for roughly the same price. It just seems like a wasted effort.
I’m still skeptical about what they’re actually doing with the Ministry stuff. Something tells me we’ll get Early/Side Trax on vinyl, but no new tracks.
Wow. Cleopatra has really diversified, haha!
They used to just be a little niche label with a cluster of punk/gothic/industrial stuff.
Now they have Oak Ridge Boys, Judy Collins, Bob Marley . . .
We used to get Cleopatra catalogs and such in the Invisible offices back in the 90s, and yes it was almost exclusively punk / EBM / goth, as evidenced by the fact that they were pushing Electric Hellfire Club as their ‘flagship’ act (there were certainly more popular acts in said catalog, but they were all bands acquired from licensing deals.) So this new “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” approach is amusing.
They are one of those subcultural outfits that, I think, really focused all their energies on distribution and product placement, but not so much on actual quality of sonic content and (especially) packaging. But I don’t think one has to be sacrificed for the other: I remember the label Tzadik was very aggressive with getting stuff into unusual places like Best Buy - even demanding that store buyers get ‘one of everything’ from their whole catalog, rather than just the one Painkiller disc that the kids dig - yet they never skimped on artwork or made facepalm-worthy typos.
There used to be something about the niche labels that was really special. Alternative Tentacles, for example. If a record/disc had the bat on it, I felt quite safe throwing $10 at it even if I knew nothing about the particular act. And they (as any respectable indie label did) had those sampler discs that you could buy for like $4 or they’d just give you if you were a loyal customer. Wax Trax, A.T., SST, then some of the extreme metal labels too (Century Media, Earache, etc.).
Maybe I’m just old and jaded now, but there does not seem to be anything like that anymore.
Wow! I just checked the A.T. site. They’ve re-issued a lot of good stuff that I thought was long out of print . . . The Dicks, Crucifucks, Not So Quiet on the Western Front . . .
I couldn’t care less about the new stuff, but there’s some proper 80’s and early 90’s gems in there.
There used to be something about the niche labels that was really special. Alternative Tentacles, for example. If a record/disc had the bat on it, I felt quite safe throwing $10 at it even if I knew nothing about the particular act. And they (as any respectable indie label did) had those sampler discs that you could buy for like $4 or they’d just give you if you were a loyal customer. Wax Trax, A.T., SST, then some of the extreme metal labels too (Century Media, Earache, etc.).
Maybe I’m just old and jaded now, but there does not seem to be anything like that anymore.
A.T. seemed to take the approach that the common denominator should be the bands’ attitude to making music, rather than the resulting sounds - I still think they had a lot of daring for releasing the stuff they did in their heyday, since it did alienate a lot of the punk faithful and was never guaranteed to generate a new audience.
It’s revealing to look at yellowing old copies of 'Maximum Rock ‘n Roll’ to see just how much they were getting away from ‘scene’ orthodoxy: in the front pages where all the contributors would list their album picks for that issue, everyone else would limit themselves to punk records while Jello Biafra would be encouraging people to check out Univers Zero or some unheard of ‘tropicalia’ outfit.
Of course a lot of people will take that same eclectic approach today, but there’s quite a difference between playing the hipster contest of ‘out-diversifying’ your peers, and genuinely enjoying all that eclecticism.
There used to be something about the niche labels that was really special. Alternative Tentacles, for example. If a record/disc had the bat on it, I felt quite safe throwing $10 at it even if I knew nothing about the particular act. And they (as any respectable indie label did) had those sampler discs that you could buy for like $4 or they’d just give you if you were a loyal customer. Wax Trax, A.T., SST, then some of the extreme metal labels too (Century Media, Earache, etc.).
Maybe I’m just old and jaded now, but there does not seem to be anything like that anymore.
I totally agree with this…there used to be a time where I could buy stuff from certain labels and I had no doubt it would be quality…I would buy it without knowing anything else about it…those days are gone…
We used to get Cleopatra catalogs and such in the Invisible offices back in the 90s, and yes it was almost exclusively punk / EBM / goth, as evidenced by the fact that they were pushing Electric Hellfire Club as their ‘flagship’ act (there were certainly more popular acts in said catalog, but they were all bands acquired from licensing deals.)
I was in college radio at that time - they would only send us the real garbage acts like Electric Hellfire Club and Die Krupps (at that stage of their career) which for some reason were giving major pushes to. We did get Psychic TV and Download, but those were anomalies.
I was in college radio at that time - they would only send us the real garbage acts like Electric Hellfire Club and Die Krupps (at that stage of their career) which for some reason were giving major pushes to. We did get Psychic TV and Download, but those were anomalies.
Yep sounds like we had similar experiences - I think they put more design work into those promo / p.r. booklets for Die Krupps and EHC than they did for many of their album covers.
And those promo packs - since I’ve already been posting on Godflesh today - are where I first heard the claim that Justin Broadrick was inspired by ‘Slave State,’ the former band of Thrill Kill / EHC goofball Thomas Thorn, to “pay homage” with the Godflesh record of the same name. Needless to say, I’ve never unearthed any interviews that would confirm that.
Getting even further off topic, Rev. Thorn now has gainful employment as a theme park pirate - a fact which CAN be confirmed if I can locate the MySpace account associated with his swashbuckling persona…
HAHA!!! I bought that Industrial Revolution book from them around that time. It was HILARIOUS. Sure there was a good coverage of the obvious, including proper nods to the “originals” like Throbbing Gristle, NON, etc. But they also overly used it as a chance to push every damn band on their label, regardless of how “industrial” they may or may not have been. It was kind of sad, really. I mailed off the book to some Piss Army kid about 8 years ago, but kind of wish I still had it so I could go back and have a laugh.
And yeah, they had a handful of tribute albums in the mid 90’s that I thought were actually pretty cool, especially “Covered in Black: An Industrial Tribute to AC/DC” (that had the Birmingham 6 “Thunderstruck” track on it, which was easily the best on the disc).
True. Probably the MOST appropriate title would have been “Ministry, Throbbing Gristle, and Every Band That Currently Exists on Any Cleopatra Release.”
There were some that were so thinly related, if at all. Like, I think Cleo had just re-pressed a Faster Pussycat CD or something, so they were like, “Oh, Faster Pussycat? Yeah, they were very influential on the Industrial scene!”