Except for Mad Sin's latest 'Burn & Rise' which almost made it into the German Top 100 Album Charts and for one week was in Finland's Album Charts. But in general the sales have gone down. Alan Wilson from Western Star Records said "From my own label's experience, Rockabilly bands, even relatively unknown ones, outsell Psycho releases by about 10-1. It seems pretty stagnant on the Psychobilly front once again, and talking to other labels, most of them say the same." There can be various reasons for this. Less people on the scene, lack of quality of the new releases or, and I guess most labels will say this is the main reason, illegal downloading and file sharing. I'm not sure if I buy that. People have always shared music and not every fan spent his money on records. I knew many Psychos in the 80s who would spent their money on booze and not on music. They would always tape the latest LPs from their buddies. For me the reason not to buy Psychobilly records is the lack of quality and originality. And the lack of a vinyl release. But no matter why, the bad sales lead to some unwelcome developments. Anagram/Cherry Red Records was able to locate and buy all existing master tapes from the recordings for the legendary 'Stompin' At The Klub Foot' LP series. From those they released in 2008 the Batmobile 'The Clarendon Ballroom Blitz - Live At The Klub Foot 1986' CD and just recently the Sting-Rays 'Live At The KLub Foot 1984' CD.
But if things, here sales, stay the way they are this will be the last release from the haydays pf Psychobilly and Trash and all other historical recordings, done when many bands were at their peak, style and sound-wise, will never be heard. Alan Wilson is the one working on the new Klub Foot albums, saving and mixing the old recordings and he said "I'm sitting on full live albums by The Tall Boys, Torment and several other great bands, all unmixed and mostly unheard, although as we all know a few odd tracks were released on the Klub Foot compilation albums. There's also a lot of bands in these tapes that don't quite have enough material for a full album, say 8 tracks or something - but I probably have enough of those to put together another 4 or 5 volumes of Klub Foot Compilations." The costs to save the old master-tapes, transfer the recordings and mix are quite high. Just too break even is hard with sales as low as they are these days, Wilson said. Due to this Anagram/Cherry Red has no plans to finance another Klub Foot project at the moment.
People always talk about the Klub Foot records as Psychobilly albums but there always were Garage and Rockabilly bands on the albums as well: Milkshakes, Prisoners, Styng-Rites(pre-Kaisers), Rapids, Rochee and the Sarnos etc. Maybe live albums by them would sell better?
Here is more insight in the work required to save the old recordings. Alan Wilson:
The tapes are stored correctly in a safe, dry and stable environment. But they are slowly deteriorating and will continue to do so - such is the nature of analogue tape - especially the Ampex brand from the early 80's onwards. The content of the tapes will never be truly safe until they are converted to a stable format. Because they are on 2" tape, it's a bulky and costly proccess to do that. The tapes have to be baked slowly in a specialist oven to de-humidify them. They then have to be painstakingly lined up on the tape machine for Dolby etc and because the recordings were done on a mobile 24 track using 2 seperate 24 track machines (these reels last about 20 mins so 2 machines were used so as not to miss songs on the tape changeover). Trouble was both machines must have been alligned badly and poorly maintained and one seemed to have different Dolbly than the other. No Dobly settings are documented on the tape boxes, no test tones, nothing...... Making everything trial and error, but with the added pressure that these tapes will not stand being shuttled back and forth on a tape machine.
So, trying to now play them back, in their fragile state, getting a decent head alignment, and trying various Dolbly settings is a f*cking nightmare. Too many passes and the tapes would litterally fall apart. And...t hese tapes were second hand when these gigs were first recorded! I know this because there are edits in the tape which songs have then been recorded over! These joins are falling apart and because they are often mid-song it really is a nightmare to repair them.
The Batmobile album took me around 4 days just to line up the two reels so they sounded ok and get the tracks transferred to a stable format. The results are great but look at the cost! That's all time spent before I was even able to mix the album! So it's easy to spend several grand before you even have a sellable product. AND there's always the risk that once you have done all that, the end result may be shit, faulty or even not what it says on the box! - I've already had that happen. It's a huge gamble for a label to spend thousands and not know if they'll get a product.... and even if they do, they then can hardly sell any copies because the scene quite small and because of illegal downloads etc.
With no interest from Cherry Red at this very moment other labels could take advantage and release those classic gigs. Wilson says "
My idea was this: If I could get a label to license/lease the recordings and pay an advance to do so, this would help pay for the 'recovery' costs of the audio sources. In simple terms... Cherry Red would still own the rights long-term, but the money raised from the short-term licensing would help pay for the recovery process. So, once the lease expired, Cherry Red had the material forever and got it converted on the license money. Great idea in theory. I contacted dozens of labels. I got just one reply and they hardly wanted to pay anything." Ain't it a shame?! So maybe it's time for privat investors. I don't know if there are any fans of 80s Psychobilly 'n'Garage who have tons of money lying around on their bank accounts but if so do something good with it and get in touch with Alan Wilson so that the world can enjoy the unheard recordings from the days when Psychobilly was still fresh and kicking!
Message Alan Wilson
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