Blood on the Highway

Touring was always a dicey proposition for FCR's bands. The challenges always seemed to revolve around money. At FCR we had a horrible habit of "advancing" our bands tour support whenever we could afford it. This dangerous precedent was set initially by Chemlab in the label's earliest days but then continued when Acumen (Acumen Nation) joined the fold.

Acumen's first major tour on FCR was with Clay People, a horrible grungy industrial band out of Albany on the now defunkt Re-Constriction label. I believe we had a saying at FCR, "Clay People: great guys, horrible band". But one thing Clay People had that Acumen didn't was reliable transportation on their upcoming tour. Kicking off on the East Coast, the tour started out reasonably well but while on the road, Jason Novak, Acumen, head honcho, called me from the road. He basically told me that they had bitten off a little more than they could chew when it came to actually paying for the van that they had rented for this tour. They were out of money and wanted to know if the label could help. But this "van" they had rented was actually an 18-foot truck and was prohibitively expensive. I offered to get them a better deal on transport through a guy I knew who worked at Thrify Rent-A-Car out by Andrews AFB. Jason hastily agreed. To be honest I just wanted this tour to work and to get Acumen out there. So I did this even though financially it was somewhat risky.

When the band showed up in Washington, DC I couldn't believe they were touring in this huge truck. Acumen consisted of four members. Thus far, while in transit, two of the members rode in the cab upfront while the other two were in the cavernous back with all of their gear. I couldn't imagine what it was like for the two in the back riding for hours in this truck cut off from the world with no windows or anything. Without any real way to communicate with the driver, bassist, Jamie Duffy, who had been traveling in the back, was forced to use an empty water bottle to deposit his phlegm and spittle that was a by-product of his cold. When the band pulled up and opened the back he ceremoniously poured out the contents of this water bottle and I nearly retched when I saw the gooey white stuff hit the street.

We made it out to Andrews after unloading the truck and the band was hooked up with a van......a mini-van. There were no cargo vans available on this day and Acumen needed to be on their way to their next gig by nightfall. So a mini-van is what they got and it was about 1/4 the size of the truck they had just been using. This mini-van was so small that Ethan Novak, the drummer, was forced to leave part of his kit in our offices. When we took the back seats out we found that there was really only room for two people to sit in the back directly opposite each other flush up against the wall of the van and tucked tightly behind the driver and passenger respectively. It was ridiculously tight quarters but they managed to pull it off experimenting with different packing arrangements throughout the tour. At one point I think they had all the gear laying as flat as possible in the van with enough room for two people to lie down on top of the gear - but not sit up. They strapped a lot of their stuff to the roof of this van but a couple times bags and other items came loose from the roof spraying clothes and other items all over the highway.

I appreciated their spirit and knew that they were blowing Clay People off the stage every night.

No Direction Home

One of the most interesting stories about Fifth Colvmn Records actually occurred after I had already left. About one or two short years after leaving the label I ran into DJ Yoon otherwise known as indie label retail guru and supreme schmoozer of Caroline Distribution, Bryan Mechutan. Bryan was an all around good guy but the words “mover and shaker” don’t exactly apply to him. While he had good instincts for retail and was an excellent builder of relationships he was an incredible pothead with a proclivity for smoking on the job. I’ll never forget IM-ing with him late one afternoon and the exchange went something like this:

(me) Hey what’s up?
(Yoon) not much dude
(me) busy?
(yoon) weeze getting’ high….

I can’t remember where I saw Bryan when this story was relayed to me but I started telling him about my new gig in the music industry in NYC and he, of course, knew my boss through one or two mutual acquaintances. We got to talking about the fate of FCR and what became of its players. After the label lost its distribution deal with Caroline it basically ceased to exist on a national level thereby positioning the first nail in its coffin. Without any real managerial direction to right the ship, the label was now rudderless, directionless and taking on water (sorry for the nautical imagery here). With distribution checks getting literally misplaced amongst bills and random bits of mail and never actually making it into the bank, funds were hard to come by. The label personnel remaining on board tried to rally but it was hopeless.

During this slow progression into oblivion, FCR’s primary shareholder had his attention elsewhere and left the label to flounder. With one national distribution deal dead (Caroline) and others soon to die (primarily through Bayside and Metropolis) label activity had slowed to a trickle. These distributors, with no need to support a label that wouldn’t support itself, began returning product in earnest. But where to return this product? With the label owner not in the loop and the label staff cut loose, that left FCR employee #1 and Chemlab head honcho, Jared as the man on point. According to Mechutan, after several failed attempts to reach the AWOL label head in question and get him to provide FCR’s erstwhile distributors with a shipping address, Jared stepped into the void. Mechutan told me that all of this product, thousands of CDs worth roughly a quarter of a million dollars (more or less), was sent to Jared and his tiny apartment in NYC’s lower east side. I’m not aware of whether or not this product was actually returned to its rightful owner but much of it became available through Invisible Records a label, coincidentally, distributed at the time by Caroline Distribution. It’s always been my speculation that the original owner of FCR found out about this misdirected product, wanted nothing to do with it, and basically signed it over to Jared as a final parting gift. Chemlab was a band that never made any real money while signed to FCR and this would’ve been a tidy conclusion of business between the label and the band. Not all titles originally released by FCR are available through Invisible but early releases from Haloblack, Acumen, Chemlab, Trust Obey and Death Ride 69 should be.