Slash Records

A buddy of mine passed along the news that Bob Biggs, the founder of Slash Records, has died at 74. As someone who's been a fan of the label for decades I must say, I'd never heard of him; in fact, I had no idea there was kind of a single voice or vision behind the label which gave us such great bands as X, The Blasters, Los Lobos, The Dream Syndicate and of course The Violent Femmes, among others. I'd always known Sire = Seymour Stein and Twin/Tone = Peter Jesperson and Alternative Tentacles = Jello Biafra and on and on, but nothing about Slash. It's a shame he was so overlooked - at least by me, anyways - as such an influence on culture over the last 40 years. This says a lot about him:

“How do you measure success? By selling millions of records,” Biggs wondered aloud on artist accomplishment to The Times in 1987, “or by changing lives? I’d rather sell only 100,000 copies of an album and be of some cultural value.”

Of course selling 100K albums isn't exactly NOTHING, but his point is well taken. Hopefully, he was better recognized for his amazing work during his actual lifetime than he ever was by me.

Him signing the Violent Femmes should be enough for immortality, as I wrote years ago about the curious universal love for the debut album:

Certainly, no record that sold so little has ever become so well-known to such a high percentage of people, no? And I don't mean in the VU/Ramones vein, wherein nobody bought their debut records but the few that that did started their own bands - EVERYBODY on Earth knows these songs.

Everybody knows all the songs from the album, and nobody has ever made a mix tape without including at least one of them. A bizarre life for an album by a "non-huge/popular" band. And it easily goes on my list of greatest debut albums alongside The Velvet Underground, The Jesus and Mary Chain, REM, Camper Van Beethoven and The Ramones.

Also on Slash Records? The Germs, featuring the unfortunate Darby Crash:

 2) I just stumbled upon the fact that CS Lewis died on November 22, 1963. Seems like that would be a bad day to die. Here he is a pretty famous dude, and I'm sure with JFK dying that day you could find some press about Lewis' death hidden in the fucking JUMBLE the next day. Reminds me of Darby Crash, the singer for the Germs, who decided he was gonna kill himself, thinking it'd get a ton of press. Of course he happens to do it the day John Lennon gets shot. Boy. There's bad timing, then there's BAD timing. I perversely like to make it worse by thinking that just as he was about to kill himself, he glanced at the tv and thought "hey...why are they talking about John Lennon? oh well" BLAM!! But hey. That’s me. - XMASTIME

Whoops!