Roots Archives Forum

tings nuh de same wid nuh B&F stuff

BLESS

you don't need any money yourself..., what you need are reliable investors

I'd just like to pitch in to say that I have nothing but respect and admiration for the upright works of B&F. I know nothing of the inner workings but certainly this 'niche market' of reggae reissue must certainly be a real struggle.
Disregarding all of the arguments, opinions, misconceptions etc. about vinyl versus Cd versus digital file, I really believe that B&F proved that remastering could be done properly. I have always suspected that the cost of such perfectionism must have really cut into their profit margin on almost every release as did the sumptuous packaging and the novel idea of paying the artists and producers.

These days it appears the owners of the reggae back catalogues have become more aware of the value of their material and are actively reissuing for themselves. Perhaps not with the same degree of reverence for the music, hopefully availing of the best remastering equipment available.

I have huge respect for Steve Barrow and his dedication to Reggae through thick and thin. B&F releases and the Reggae Rough Guide ahve been invaluable resources for me for a good few years now.

As to the business sense aspect. You need to sell to sustain a business. Sounds obvious, but think about it. How many copies do reissues in general sell? Corporate record companies (damn their evil souls!) must have huge selling hits to offset the relative losses incurred by non-hits. How do you make a hit if you are reissuing? Marketing? To some degree yes, but it's a gamble and the stakes are higher without the financial backing of corp. and indeed the unlikelihood of a touring band to promote the reissue release. Right? All a labour of love really.

I'm a fool for this music and always will be, but the likes of the people who post on the RA forum are exceptional rare (obsessive) people who do not go out and buy what is marketed to them - they are/we are knowledgeable people who know what we want and seek it out. We are the poeple that labels like B&F depend on. Let's say they reissue something not that many people want for whatever reason. What do they do besides lose a heap of money?
I will download stuff for free when it is the easiest way to get it, but if BF or Pressure Sounds have something that I think sounds interesting - or I've wanted for a time - I'll spend the $$$.
At the same time though a few of the B&F reissues have been misses for me. I bought them but never play them. The Satta tree thing was just an expensive waste of B&F money. Only obsessive completists would want this. Maybe they had the budget for it but I suspect it was a mistake.
Blazing Horns was to trying to fill a gap that wasn't there. Plenty of Tommy McC stuff out there already. OK their CD (vinyl? dunno) was better sounding - but if you already had it? I bought it but never listen to it.

See what I'm saying? A delicate balance between giving the people what they want and pushing what you think they need.

Someone mentioned the issue of the current failing record company business model. Yes indeed. B&F may have increased sales a bit by offering high quality mp3s (without DRM) and may have actually gained more audience from piracy - hence more sales. Who knows?

Perhaps at issue here is a preciousness about the music - an elitism - well why not be a roots reggae pusher - get your friends hooked - expand the market...

I think they had to do the same as what Honest Jons, Soul Jazz (and also basic-channel more or less ) are doing, not just gamble on the (successful) re-release of reggae records, but spread the risk by also exploring other niche markets and re-releasing for example soul,funk and African stuff....

And I also think they had also had to cooperate more with (foreign) stores..I know in my country several shops which sell (or sold) the latest releases from Honest Jons and or Basicchannel. Never seen a store which sold the latest B&F records....

And don't say Honest Jons is run by millionaires, because that doesn't make a big difference..These people are not wasting a penny of their investment, they are not retarded...

>and the novel idea of paying the artists and producers.
Well, maybe a nice and very friendly gesture, but not really smart in terms of business (imo this is financial suicide )

bonga wrote:...and the novel idea of paying the artists and producers...
Well, maybe a nice and very friendly gesture, but not really smart in terms of business (imo this is financial suicide )

You are right, but I hope that's not only business terms matter in this world...If they paid original artists and it was the main reason why they are out, then even greater respect for them...

Dub out of Poland wrote:I really miss B&F, they did a great job, numerous fantastic albums brought back to daylight!!!

adilisha wrote:Blood & Fire was my favourite label and I learnt much through their releases.

Zionist wrote: ...Blood & Fire exposed me to a tremendous amount of great music... It's just not good for the music for a high quality label like that to fold.

Jah Titus wrote:tings nuh de same wid nuh B&F stuff

Blood and Fire had a huge effect on my tastes, starting with a 2nd hand copy of 'Dub Gone Crazy' picked up in Glasgow, quickly followed by copies of 'Jesus Dread' and 'Social Living' bought from my local record shop. I was astonished when I first picked up some Jamaican vinyl - it sounded crackly, it had a shoddy cover, there was no sleevenotes. Surely I had a bad copy!? I assumed ALL reggae would be as lavishly packaged and sound as good as Blood and Fire stuff. Know better now tho'!

But I think the main thing about Blood and Fire was Steve Barrow. He selected which albums got the 'treatment' (remastered, repackaged, bonus tracks, sleevenotes) and I think his choices speak for themselves - 'Pick A Dub', 'Heart Of The Congos', 'Prophesy Of Dub' and 'Open The Iron Gate', to name a few of my favourites. And more importantly, he put together some absolutely KILLER compilations. Before 'Termination Dub', 'Jesus Dread', 'Freedom Sounds In Dub' and others were made, the music featured was not only difficult and expensive to get hold of, it was not available on one LP/CD. Imagine how much it would cost you to track down all of the tracks on 'Jesus Dread' in their original form!

And he's been up to this for ages - right back to the rafts of compilations he put together for Attack/Trojan in the late 80's and early 90's, and in the present with the stuff on Hot Pot and Equalizer. I think any reggae fan (and especially roots fans!) owe him a debt of gratitude for the work he has done in helping make this music available and affordable, and for his (mostly!) good taste in what he reissued.

Still miss Blood and Fire though - gone!

Zionist wrote:As a person who has deliberately avoided the vinyl bug, Blood & Fire exposed me to a tremendous amount of great music. I'm probably preaching to the choir but they really set the standard for high quality reissues with generally good sound quality, fine artwork, great liner notes and even the odd royalty to the artist (who ever heard of such a thing?!) Props to Barrow.

ACEtone wrote:Disregarding all of the arguments, opinions, misconceptions etc. about vinyl versus Cd versus digital file, I really believe that B&F proved that remastering could be done properly. I have always suspected that the cost of such perfectionism must have really cut into their profit margin on almost every release as did the sumptuous packaging and the novel idea of paying the artists and producers.

Yeah, my hats off to Steve Barrow for this as well - rather than rushing them out in shoddy packaging with no licensing deals and no mastering, he went to a great deal of effort to make sure that what he thought was great music with enduring appeal was treated accordingly - and he made it available and accessible to both hardcore reggae fans and to curious beginners.
It had a knock-on effect too I think, cos other reissue labels started up along the same lines - 'yeah, this IS bloody great music, and people need to hear it' - and spent the money, time and effort to make sure the records they reissued sounded and looked good - Motion, Auralux, Makasounds, Moll Selekta, Pressure Sounds, Soul Jazz and others step forward!
And it's been great - the last ten or twelve years have seen a deluge of classic roots music available in record shops or at the click of a mouse. Not everyone has the time or money to track down an original vinyl copy of 'Blackboard Jungle'. Heck, not everyone has a record player! And now they don't have to.

ACEtone wrote:How do you make a hit if you are reissuing? Marketing? To some degree yes, but it's a gamble and the stakes are higher without the financial backing of corp. and indeed the unlikelihood of a touring band to promote the reissue release. Let's say they reissue something not that many people want for whatever reason. What do they do besides lose a heap of money? All a labour of love really.

Dub out of Poland wrote:The problem is that such labels are usually led by reggae lovers, not businessmen. It's a passion, not a business. At least, not only...

This is the bit that worries me - these are all small, specialised operations, and if the biggest can fall, it must be a precarious business. I imagine there are records the labels themselves would love to repress that they can't take the risk on.
Look at the Phase One collections Motion and Blood And Fire put out - both labels had problems shifting them, and it's not because the music is bad. Far from it - there are tracks on both that I think are up there with the best from that era. But the vast majority of people (including a lot of reggae fans) had never heard of them, and they sold poorly. Not the fault of the labels, and I respect their passion for and belief in the music. It has to be a passion - I can't see anyone getting into the reissue business for financial peace of mind!
I hope these labels continue and prosper tho', cos the music needs them if it is not to retreat underground and become the preserve of a few diehards - like us folk!

informer wrote:the problem is that the youth of today prefers mp3 low fi shit and the days of vinyl and cd come to an end i fear. so it becomes more and more difficult for a small label to survive in a ever shrinking market.

ACEtone wrote:I will download stuff for free when it is the easiest way to get it, but if BF or Pressure Sounds have something that I think sounds interesting - or I've wanted for a time - I'll spend the $$$.

bonga wrote:If the market is shrinking, or changing you need to adapt.

I have posted my thoughts on this here:
http://www.roots-archives.com/forum/rea ... 177,page=1
Start at the message that begins "Yeah, the wallet emptying prices.."

I've changed my mind on a couple of things though - it wouldn't only be dub LPs, it would be anything that was good and out of print or otherwise hard to come by, and it wouldn't have to be an album either - even a one off single or a dubplate would be fair game.

If you are interested enough to read it and have any thoughts or criticisms, I'd be happy enough to read them, whether you PM me or post them up.

Yes it is a bloody shame such a great label has had its demise. For it gave us reggae enthusiasts to really appreciate the sound. I think it was the realtive cost of reproducing the CD's that got them. They quoted that Jesus Dread Cd and vinyl almost put them out the back door then. For if you consider 8 stages of digital transfer before it gets to vinyl or CD then you must consider what you are releasing to the market. The early Blood & Fire releases were vital and then the later stuff got to a point of being irrelevant. but without Blood & Fire we wouldnt have all of the smaller labels. Nuff said!!!

Stubie wrote:The early Blood & Fire releases were vital and then the later stuff got to a point of being irrelevant. but without Blood & Fire we wouldnt have all of the smaller labels. Nuff said!!!

hey Stubie, mi nuh tink later B&F stuff as being irrelevant - wat do yu seh bout Prince Far I´s "Silver & Gold" or Yabby You´s "Deliver Me From My Enemies"? Blessed an Crucial stuff, yunno

BLESS

informer wrote:the problem is that the youth of today prefers mp3 low fi shit and the days of vinyl and cd come to an end i fear. so it becomes more and more difficult for a small label to survive in a ever shrinking market.

Agreed. But it may not be their fault. People are being brainwashed, somewhat, into believing that an iPod loaded with mp3s is some some of 'state of the art' sound reproduction kit.

Dub out of Poland wrote:The problem is that such labels are usually led by reggae lovers, not businessmen. It's a passion, not a business. At least, not only...

While that is true don't you think it's more down to the current climate? BAF released dozens of albums! If they couldn't handle the business end they would have folded after issuing just a handful.

They lost a lot of money when one of their distributors folded, which is an occupational hazard for record labels. Distributors may lean on the retailers for payments but they're not always very impressive when it comes to paying labels for their product.

Stubie wrote:... without Blood & Fire we wouldnt have all of the smaller labels. Nuff said!!!

Blood & Fire was near enough as small as it gets - only three staff.

bonga wrote:I think these people have a bad/uncoordinated business model, combined with a not very smart financial strategy...

If the market is shrinking, or changing you need to adapt. It's the same in the animal world, Animal species who can't adapt themselfs to new environments won't survive....

If 'adapting' no longer means selling sufficient quantities of CD's or LP's where can you take it other than mp3 downloads?

And what's the point? For every person who buys an album download from a label, how many catch a free (pirated) version from some file-sharing site?

Seems like the good days are almost over.




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