Research Catalog

Title

Popkiss : the life and afterlife of Sarah Records / Michael White.

Author

White, Michael (Michael Stuart), 1970-

Publication

New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxii, 258 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 23 cm

Summary

During its eight-year existence, from 1987 to 1995, Sarah Records was a modest underground success and, for the most part, a critical laughingstock in its native England--sneeringly dismissed as the sad, final repository for a fringe style of music (variously referred to as indie-pop, C86, cutie and twee ) whose moment had passed. Yet now, almost 20 years after its dissolution, Sarah is among the most passionately fetishized record labels of all time. Several of its releases sell for hundreds of dollars; devotees from London to Los Angeles to Tokyo hungrily seek out any information they can find about its poorly documented history; and countless new bands--some of them made up of people who weren't born when Sarah shut down--claim its bands as a major influence. Popkiss will be the book that thousands of Sarah fans around the world have been waiting for. Drawn from dozens of exclusive interviews with members of the 30-plus bands that called the label home, as well as Sarah co-founders Matt Haynes and Clare Wadd, it will offer--for the first time anywhere--a deeply detailed account of the label's occasional triumphs and many tribulations, and its last laugh in posterity. Popkiss offers a vivid portrait of something that is likely gone forever: the record label as highly personalized aesthetic statement, whose very name is a trustworthy 'seal of quality' to its acolytes. Following the rise of the Internet and the collapse of the traditional music industry, the uncommonly intimate relationship Sarah engendered with its audience--not only through its music, but through its artwork, self-written fanzines and newsletters, and unorthodox business decisions--is an accomplishment no new label could duplicate today.

Subjects

• Discographies
• History
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• discographies
• Indie pop music > Great Britain > History and criticism
• Sound recording industry > England > Bristol > History
• Sarah Records Discography
• Sarah Records History

Genre/Form

• discographies.
• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• Discographies
• History
• Discographies.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes discography (pages 251-254) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Songs of innocence and inexperience : the roots of Sarah -- Let's just communicate! : the 1980s fanzine underground -- How much do one thousand flexidiscs weigh? : when Matt met Clare -- Come to my world : the Sea urchins and the beginning of Sarah -- A constant source of bemusement and wonder : the Orchids -- Another fucking Harvey band : the ubiquitous Harvey Williams -- Sarah records unequivocally supports a fully integrated light-rail rapid-transit system for the greater Bristol area : expressions of civic pride -- A diary of sorts : the Field mice, Northern picture library, and the quicksilver Bobby Wratten -- I sometimes feel so lost : Brighter -- Safe harbour : the wake and the hit parade -- I am telling you because you are far away : internationalism and Sarah's written communiqués -- Atta girl : Heavenly, riot grrrl and feminism -- Sadness is unisex : Blueboy and the best album Sarah released -- An economy of ambition : Sarah's short-term visitors -- We had an outsider's perspective : Sarah's foreign visitors -- A day for destroying things? : the end of Sarah -- The afterlife of Sarah -- The Sarah discography.

ISBN

• 9781628922189
• 1628922184

LCCN

^^2015013367

OCLC

• 876882929
• SCSB-10297982

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library