Off: the Godz

[Doug Pearson]

On Fri, 24 Jan 2003 18:26:58 -0500, DRider <Hawkwind at ATTBI.COM> wrote:

>Polydor's parent company was actually Polygram - right?

Other way around ... Polydor was the parent company, and Polygram, Mercury,
Casablanca, and Phillips were among its labels (I can't remember now, but
it's now part of either BMG or Universal, BMG I think).  I think, though,
that European releases were on the Polydor label.

>Was Casablanca - Bill Aucoin's (sp?) label?

Neil Bogart's.  The man who gave us the 1910 Fruitgum Company and other
bubblegum hits on Buddah (and also put out Captain Beefheart and Flamin'
Groovies albums on the label, so he's A-OK by me!).

>Casablanca did go belly up though, correct?

Yes, although nose-up might be a better description ;^).

>Financed and distributed..... I am not a business guy....
>
>But doesn't that mean Casablanca was a small independent label that got
>backed by the major label (Polygram).......?

No, it was more of a major-financed "vanity" label, sort of like Dave
Geffen's DGC or Madonna's Maverick.  Not like current labels such as Sub
Pop and Matador which DID start as independents (as A&M previously did),
but are now (mostly) major-owned/distributed.

>This would have been because Polygram knew Casablanca had a money making
>band on their hands, right?

AFAIK the seed money Casablanca came from Polydor, so it was financed
entirely by the major label.  From what I've read, the Europeans who ran
Polydor didn't have a clue about the music biz at the time (just look at
how many hit bands were on Mercury in the mid-70's, before Rush & the
Scorpions got big) and were desperate to increase their market share.  So
they gave a ton of money to a guy with a proven track record (Bogart), and
didn't pay enough attention to where their money went.  But I don't think
that the Polydor executives had any inkling that Kiss (or Donna Summer) was
going to be huge, they just knew that Bogart was a successful record
industry guy.

>Mercury was/is a subsidiary of Polygram. I am sure of that. Isn't there a
>difference between an independent label being backed by a major and a major
>having subsidiaries?

It depends on your definition of "independent".  I take a pretty strict
definition, where a label needs to be independently financed, manufactured
AND distributed.  Under a looser definition, a partially-major-owned, major-
m&d'ed label could be considered "independent" (although not by me).  But
with Casablanca, all three came from Polydor, so the only way it
was "independent" is that Polydor didn't interfere with Bogart's management
of the label (until it was too late).  If you consider *that* to be
independent, you might as well call early-1970s Columbia an "independent"
label, since Irving Azoff (or was that David Geffen? now it's all getting
fuzzy) was able to run it without corporate interference.

>I know that Kiss went from Casablanca to Mercury when Creatures Of The
>Night came out.....
>
>Same label basically??

Yep, just one division of Polydor to another, and yes, that would have been
right around the time that Casablanca went up to the great coke-mirror in
the sky.  Sadly, Neil Bogart died of cancer shortly after that, a broke and
broken failure who had been on top of the world only five years
previously.  But you already knew that cocaine can be a bad thing ;^) ...

While we're on the subject of Casablanca, I'll just add that I've been
immensely enjoying my recent purchase of the Parliament '12" collection'
album ... some pretty intensely repetitive synth grooves on some of
those ...

    -Doug (whew! enough record label history for one day!)
     jasret at mindspring.com