The day the music didn't die

"A real strong idea for Kill Rock Stars from the beginning was that most labels exist to make money, therefore they make all these decisions that are not really in the best interest of the artist. That doesn't necessarily create the best music. If our motive was just to make great records, with money as a necessary evil, then we would make different choices. . . .

"Even though the Kill Rock Stars record went really well, my mental state was one of total nervousness for years. Because I kept putting out another record, and then worrying about that record doing OK, and always not really having enough money. . . . I got this idea in our heads to always push it. So every time something did well, we hired another employee or put out some records that we knew we'd lose money on but that were just really cool. By '97, I think it was, we were actually in really scary financial straits. And then the Elliott Smith Oscar nomination hit [for Best Original Song with "Miss Misery" from Good Will Hunting], and that saved me from having to do layoffs or something like that. And then ever since '97, for the past four years, I've been trying to practice a more mature—well, basically I'd explain it by saying that we realized that the growth period was over, and it was better to just try to be stable. . . .

ROSE MELBERG

Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill.

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"The music that I've tried to put out, we've always tried to hope that it's meaningful. Some of it's meaningful because it explores new musical ideas or because it's just really high quality. Maintaining a high aesthetic quality in the face of Britney Spears is its own meaningful thing to do. And some of it is political. But I think a lot of political bands out there are hackneyed and ill thought out, or their music's really terrible. Mostly the political bands that we ended up working with were those [Riot Grrrl] bands. Because what they had to say was really important, really exciting, really meaningful. . . .

"Even when I was 24, I had this big obsession—and now I just live in it—punk rock is so youth oriented, what is the place for career musicians and people who keep these values and this idea and this music for their whole life? I really wanted to support people who keep up a high quality and a high integrity for their whole career. And now that I'm in my 30s, it's even more of an issue for me. It's not that I want to age and mellow the label. But I just think it's tyrannical to have music only be about 18-year-olds."

Chris Nelson

info@seattleweekly.com