With a plethora of pirated music available online, many independent record labels have had a hard time weathering the music industry’s transformation to digital. But one local label has flourished in a turbulent industry for 25 years, working with platinum-record selling bands like They Might Be Giants, 10,000 Maniacs, and Hudson County heroes Yo La Tengo.
Bar None Records, which actually formed around Maxwell’s music club in Hoboken in 1986, is a small music label tucked under the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel on Willow Avenue in Weehawken. Owner Glenn Morrow said working independently – without the backing and financial security of a larger label – has made for a difficult, but satisfying quarter of a century.
“We’re not owned by a larger corporation,” Morrow said. “We get to control what happens to the master recordings of our music. Sometimes it feels like a crack habit, when you’re throwing money at a recording hoping it will sell. But we’ve been pretty adept at changing with the market.”
Morrow said a successful label has to be diversified in order to adapt to an often fickle industry.
“We’re marketing vibrations in the air.” – Glenn Morrow
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For Bar None, finding the key to success has always been an ongoing struggle.
“We try to be more eclectic,” Morrow said, “and find projects that seem special, at least to us. We never knew what were going to do next. But the downside is, we’re always reinventing the wheel.”
The label’s ingenuity shows. By not following a specific business model, Bar None’s projects are wide-ranging, making them one of the more interesting amalgams of music in the area.
The Maxwell’s scene
Morrow was a member of two prominent Hoboken-based bands in the 1980s, called Rage to Live and The Individuals, the latter of which held a reunion show in 2008 at Maxwell’s, where it all began more than two decades ago. But one of Morrow’s favorite projects was working on an album with the well-loved Hoboken band Yo La Tengo.
“We did an album called ‘Fakebook,’ “ he said, “which is one of the most endearing and popular albums they ever did. It was recorded in a circle with all the musicians facing each other. A standup bass, very rudimentary drum kit, two reels of tape. It’s incredible how long they have been playing.”
Current projects
A newcomer to the label, teenage musician and Weehawken resident Jack Skuller, is one artist Morrow is particularly excited to work with. With a new video out for his single “Love is a Drum,” Bar None is hoping to promote the musician to teen heartthrob status. ”He’s probably the first teen we’ve worked with on the label,” Morrow said. “It’s like a whole other world.”
Also, former Hoboken resident and long-time Bar None artist Freedy Johnston, who gained popularity with his 1994 hit “Bad Reputation,” is back on the scene with his first new album of original music in eight years called “Rain on the City.” The album is full of melodic radio-rock hits and even touches on South American styles using bossa nova rhythms.
Where the industry is headed
“What everyone keeps talking about now is ‘the cloud,’ “ Morrow said, referring to a theoretical project in which subscribers could access virtually any music from a remote server. “It’s beyond buying MP3s. Music [would be] completely stored in cyberspace, and people can have access to all music all the time.” Although that sounds like a sonic dream to music lovers, Morrow isn’t sure if the inevitable “cloud” is a step in the right direction for the industry.
“It’s definitely going to be very different,” he said. “You can certainly feel things moving in that direction. It will be perfect if the artist and labels and the promoters can still find a way to be rewarded for their work.”
Although the industry is going through “a strange time,” the public’s appetite for music has never been more voracious. “People are absorbing more and more content,” Morrow said. “Consumption is definitely up.”
He pointed to websites like Pandora, a music recommendation website that lets users pick their favorite musician and supplies listeners with similar sounding music from other bands.
“Pandora pays money into something called The Sound Exchange,” Morrow said. “So all [the money generated by] the music that gets played on there comes back.”
By utilizing something called the music genome project, which classifies songs not by genre but by specific elements of the music, Pandora has become another tiny revolution in the ever-changing industry.
“I was definitely shocked by how accurate the website can be at defining my personal taste,” he said.
For more information on Glenn Morrow or Bar None Records, visit the label’s website: www.bar-none.com.
Sean Allocca can be reached at editorial@hudsonreporter.com