Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small - Softcover

Ballance, Laura; Cook, John; McCaughan, Mac

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565126246 ISBN 13: 9781565126244

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 2009

Synopsis

Merge Records defies everything you’ve heard about the music business. Started by two twenty-year-old musicians, Merge is a lesson in how to make and market great music on a human scale.  The fact that the company is prospering in a failing industry is something of a miracle. Yet two of their bands made the Billboard Top 10 list; more than 1 million copies of Arcade Fire's Neon Bible have been sold; Spoon has appeared on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show; and the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs is a contemporary classic.

In celebration of their twentieth anniversary, founders Mac and Laura offer first-person accounts―with the help of their colleagues and Merge artists―of their work, their lives, and the culture of making music. Our Noise also tells the behind-the-scenes stories of Arcade Fire, Spoon, the Magnetic Fields, Superchunk, Lambchop, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Butterglory. Hundreds of personal photos of the bands, along with album cover art, concert posters, and other memorabilia are included.

About this title

About the Author:

Laura Ballance plays bass in Superchunk and formed with Mac the Merge Records label. She lives in Durham with her husband and daughter.


John Cook is a reporter for Gawker Media and has worked for Radar magazine and the Chicago Tribune.

Mac McCaughan plays in Superchunk and Portastatic (guitar and vocals), and founded, with Laura Ballance, the Merge Records label in 1989. He lives in Chapel Hill with his wife and children.

From AudioFile:

Despite the high-profile name recognition of bands like REM and Nirvana, indie rock was hardly known by mainstream music listeners. That's not surprising given the deliberately obscure nature of the genre, which is epitomized by the title of this book--co-authored by Merge Records founders McCaughan and Ballance. Located in the college town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Merge embraced the do-it-yourself ethic. Founded on handshake agreements and geeky ideals, the label maintained integrity in the face of an industry that doesn't have any. Narrator Ray Porter gets the irony to be found in the story. He takes the tone of an insider with his droll delivery as he describes the politics of the underground movement and the almost-uptight preoccupations of its participants, which make the party-down ethic of the previous generation's rockers seem quaint. J.S.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1565126246
• ISBN 13: 9781565126244
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320