A Label All His Own - Long Gone John, Indie Rock's Anti-Mogul

The Washington Post ^ | May 28, 2003 | By David Segal

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LONG BEACH, Calif. -- The reclusive indie rock entrepreneur known as Long Gone John is rummaging around his backyard warehouse, searching cardboard boxes on wood shelves that reach to the ceiling. Every box is filled with CDs or seven-inch singles, most of them by punk and retro-rock bands with names you've never heard of: Savage Pencil, Loafin Hyenas, Crowbar Salvation. He stops searching when he comes across a 45 by a band called Servotron.

"See this?" he asks, proudly handing over a copy. "I had this pressed on special silver vinyl. It's really expensive. I lost a lot of money on it."

He sifts through a few more boxes and finds a double CD by a now-defunct band called the Gun Club. It's in a pricey leather binding with aluminum bolts, and the liner notes are printed on heavy-duty vellum. "That paper isn't cheap," he says, looking pleased. The Gun Club has a passionate but tiny following, which is why this CD lost a bundle, too.

There aren't many businessmen who crow about failures, but there aren't many businesses like Sympathy for the Record Industry, a label based in a tree-shrouded house in this shoreline city south of Los Angeles. Since 1988, Long Gone John has been Sympathy's CEO and sole employee, a self-described "anti-mogul" releasing obscure rock at a rate that seems frenzied for a one-man company. The tally so far: 280 CDs and 400 vinyl singles from 550 bands. At its peak of production, Sympathy issued a new album or single every week.

Most of them lost money, he says, but by digging for talent in the country's dingiest clubs, the 51-year-old Long Gone -- a nickname he gave himself in his mid-twenties -- has struck some gushers. The biggest is the White Stripes, one of the most buzzed-about acts in rock today. The duo's fourth album, "Elephant," has been raved over by critics and taken home by more than 300,000 fans. In April, it opened at No. 6 on the Billboard charts.

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The author seemed to focus on some odd traits or rumors about "Long Gone John" but I was still surprised to see that the WP has even bothered to profile him and his label.

There are far better bands on his label than the White Stripes and he has released a number of low cost compilations of these bands. The article almost seems to gloss over the "oddity" (at least in the mainstream viewpoint) that he still is releasing new recordings on vinyl 45s and LPs (in addition to CDs).

Other good labels are also doing this (Norton, Estrus, Get Hip...). What Viacom and Clear Channel are calling "garage rock" is anything but. These labels are the ones responsible (and have been since the 1980s). Tim Kerr has played in these bands, influenced these bands, and produced these bands.

Grunge was the late 1980s attempt to mimic Poison 13. It seems that the industry never can get it right.