When I moved down to the DC area from NY in the late 90s, one of the first local labels that I encountered was Virginia’s Magic Bullet Records. Bands such as MAJORITY RULE, PG. 99, CRESTFALLEN, and FRODUS, among others were commonly found on bills, and I had a particularly high appreciation of the first band named, especially around the time of the release of their debut full-length Interviews With David Frost. Although I never made personal contacts with the label as a fan, at some point Pastepunk began receiving promos of their releases, and I became mesmerized by the label’s attention to detail with each release and the intricate hobby/craft feel to the label. In the last couple of years, Magic Bullet has been on a great run with music by artists THIS WILL DESTROY YOU, AUSTIN LUCAS, LOSER LIFE, GOLDEN CITY, DISAPPEARER, and more. James and I put together this email interview with label honcho Brent Eyestone in late March. Please support them and if you’re in the area of Fredericksburg, Virginia, give their retail store a visit!

Pastepunk: What prompted the move to Gimmesound as a home/repository for the Magic Bullet discography digitally and what are the plans for the service going forward? Are all future Magic Bullet releases going to be put on the site, like the JESUIT and CHRISTIE FRONT DRIVE discographies or is it on an opt-in basis? Also, the obvious question: Has using Gimmesound made any money for you?

Brent Eyestone: I have this friend out in California named Sam that tends to jump from company to company in short capacities, usually helping some of them getting off the ground and putting them in touch with people who can further the process and take it into the world. All of the stuff he’s brought me into and helped me with had been met with a lot of success and opened up a bunch of doors for the label to that point over the years. He was the first guy to get me a break in the licensing world, for instance. Anyway, as far as the general principle behind the Gimmesound concept, I’d already had a free download model in my head for 4 years… I pitched it to Dirk at Lumberjack-Mordam when I felt it was time to really pounce on it, but it was brushed to the side (no shocker there and no shocker that the company collapsed soon enough) and I really didn’t have any other avenue to throw it toward.

So Sam got the concept going (in an advisory/street cred role) with some developers and self-described marketers/sales staff. And, per usual, he reached out to me right away. Because the general concept was how I saw digital downloading evolving with time, I was on board before he finished the pitch. I was super eager and excited that someone seemed to get it.

However…

Once Sam stepped away, they completely blew it. Their specific model doesn’t benefit the labels/bands at all and they couldn’t sell enough advertising to make it profitable for the labels whatsoever. Basically, in order for this concept to work, you really have to restrict the overall content so that each download nets a respectable amount for the bands/label in the end. Either that or sell a metric fuck-ton of advertising if it’s going to be open registration. Gimmesound did neither of these things and it immediately tanked/lost steam with bands and labels. Once my label was on board at the front end and started the PR push, the site became flooded with user-submitted content/new labels/new bands. While that’s great for site traffic overall (which only benefits the advertisers by getting more page views per ad and the egos of GS over seeing vistiors), it’s complete shit for each band and each label. The sales reports would be insane… We’d move thousands upon thousands of record downloads… but the lack of advertising $ to go around would dictate that we’d all get less than a cent per record.

It was a massive blow and we immediately pulled out of cross-promoting or even mentioning the company and their website. I pulled some artists from the site and other labels deleted their catalogs entirely from it, as it was really affecting their monthly download bottom line versus iTunes, etc. I can’t think of the last new band/record I put up there…   At some point I might go in and finally change all of the profiles so that they are streaming only. Like I said, it was a failed experiment for all involved. I don’t think they had the right staff to pull this off in the end and they definitely couldn’t envision how the big picture should have played out for everyone. It made me really nervous when things hit the skids and the CEO would call me, I’d give him really basic ideas to sell more advertising, and his mind would be blown. His mind shouldn’t have been blown by any of those ideas I had, to be honest. They were fundamental, entry-level concepts that any undergrad marketeer would know.

So no, no money for anybody on that little experiment. The concept can still work, but it needs the right staff and philosophy behind it.

Pastepunk: Aside from the already mentioned stuff, what does 2010 hold for Magic Bullet and what do you see as the space for Magic Bullet in the future?

Brent: Well, you mentioned the CHRISTIE FRONT DRIVE and JESUIT projects. On top of that, we’re looking at a new INTEGRITY 7″, a new THIS WILL DESTROY YOU 10″, and a new ALL-AMERICAN REJECTS 12″ right away in the short term. All of those will contain new, exclusive material. After that, focus shifts to the new GHASTLY CITY SLEEP 2xLP/CD/cassette, a special book/album with JULIE CHRISTMAS, some MADE OUT OF BABIES LP’s, an INTEGRITY CD, and quite a few other projects.

Right now I’m also staying up night after night rebuilding the label’s website. That should be up shortly and I’m really looking forward to it, as it’s long overdue.

As for Magic Bullet’s space in the future, I’m not exactly sure, but I’m not skeptical or cautious or worried about any of it. I know it’s really en vogue to talk about the uncertainty and “collapse” of the record industry right now, but I’ve fortunately been able to exist in an entirely different bubble than most labels’ imposed realities. Part of it is because I actually LOVE the challenge of evolving how our business is done at such a rapid and fluid pace. A lot of people waste their time fighting the prevailing trends dictated by the fans of the music. They’ll plea with the fans, they’ll sue them, they’ll talk shit on them. I’ve never done that and instead spend my time thinking about where the fans/supporters are going to take it three steps from that point. That way I can be there waiting. For instance, it’s hilarious seeing all these labels who shunned vinyl back in 1998 making such a huge fuss and making really awful and terribly schlocky “VINYL IS BACK” pitches and positioning grabs. Some of us never stopped making it or buying it, you know? You can tell who’s scrambling/struggling the most by how much noise they’re making and how hard they think they need to hype something. YET THEY ARE STILL MAKING THE SAME MISTAKES THAT KILLED THE CD INDUSTRY. Know why people stopped buying CD’s? Because the fucking SRLP was $15.98 and people know how cheap they are to make. And yet here we are, a small blip of people are buying more vinyl for two years in a row, so the labels are all rushing like lemmings to the perceived trend and… you guessed it… trying to charge $21.98 for a single LP. It’s mind-numbing how little people learn from the past.

Pastepunk: Are we ever going to see CAVE IN’s Moons of Jupiter show up on the service, or is that one lost in low priority major label limbo? (Ah yes, the perils of doing email interviews with out of order questioning… if I was more concerned about being an Editor I would have probably re-written this question or just junked it, but I am intrigued by the last part of his answer… – Jordan)

Brent: I assume you’re talking about that recording being up on Gimmesound? It probably would have gone up if the site/service didn’t bomb like it did. It’s funny, I actually dug out a huge box of all the stuff CAVE IN and Steve ever recorded through 2002. Live stuff, demos, full albums, everything. Most of it was on DAT back then, so I transferred it all to CD-R in 2002, and am now transferring it to hard drives. I’m listening and there’s some real gems and awesome rarities of both his solo stuff and full band material. I might need to resume the conversation about actually getting some of this into people’s ears now that there’s no longer a fear of over-saturating the world with either entity.

Pastepunk: Compared to the label, how much time and love does Magic Bullet Skateboards occupy in the schedule?

Brent: Maybe not enough? Or at least it feels like it’s not enough to me since that’s always the last thing I put work into and Mark (my brother) handles all of the day to business for the company and the retail store. If it weren’t for him being on top of it daily, it wouldn’t be what it is at all. Left to my workload, it would likely just be a few decks at the bottom of the label’s webstore versus a full team, a store, multiple DVD’s, live events, etc. We come up with the concepts and ideas together, but he does all the heavy lifting for that company. I got real lucky to have a brother who loves essentially the same stuff I do and was able to really focus and run with something that I always wanted the label to inspire, represent, and grow into.

Pastepunk: Pick a release out of your lengthy catalog that you think has been obscured by time and describe why it deserved a better fate. For me personally (Jordan), I think WAIFLE is a band that often gets lost in the ‘original-ish’ screamo discussion.

Brent: WAIFLE? WAIFLE?!?! Dude, I was IN that band and, as a 33 year old man that’s seen a lot of shit by now, I can honestly tell you that I have NO clue what the hell was going on there. I found our demo tape the other day while cleaning and decided to read the insert. It made NO sense to me whatsoever. All these weird stories about how Kate Moss ate a radioactive waffle… mixed in with super lefty political essays and “explanations?” The only conclusion I can come to is that we were a band of really goofy people that felt and caved into pressure to fall in line with the horseshit “political”/call-out/witch-hunt era of hardcore that existed in the mid 90′s. We were young kids who wanted to be a part of something (punk/hardcore), but by the time we were old enough to actually get a band together, punk/hardcore had turned into such a bizarre and distorted strain of itself.

Plus, there’s a whole “yearbook” element for me when looking at that band, as that was my first band and we were so young and inexperienced with instruments. I didn’t even know how to play guitar on the 7″, the full-length, and some of the other stuff. I just made the guitar make sounds/came up with parts that the drummer could put stuff to. It wasn’t until the 10″ and the split 5″ that I had any sort of confidence in playing and the band had any sort of clear vision or the ability to create art without thinking about how it would be perceived while making it…

But anyway, I digress. Thanks for appreciating whatever the hell that was that we did with WAIFLE. Haha.

As far as the one record that deserves a better fate, it’s DISAPPEARER’s The Clearing without a doubt. I’ve done a lot of heavy records in my time. That record is head and shoulders the BEST above all else I’ve put out in the heavy realm. What happened was… well, let me put it this way: it’s pretty established that for any indie band to really take off, they need to pass through Pitchfork’s scrutiny first. More or less. Well, with all things heavy, it’s pretty important to get a great review in Decibel. So I got at Albert, made sure he knew that this was our big release for 2009 and that I’d buy up whatever ad space necessary if it meant that they’d cover it, etc. Well, sure enough, I got sent the address of the reviewer for it. And then… well, dude decided to write and turn in all of his reviews that month via TWITTER FORMAT. Yeah, as in, no depth, no description, no album art… just a sidebar novelty of a dozen or so albums that had character limitations of what… 120? So the review was something like “this album reminds me of everything great about heavy music in the 90′s.” And that was IT. Nobody saw it, nobody read it…

I’m not naive to think that’s the only factor, but it was a big one. PELICAN was kind enough to take the boys out recently, so that helped raise a little awareness, but it’s still very much an uphill battle getting people to try the band out. Of course when they do, they’re hooked… I’m not giving up on that record/band yet. But it might be one of those things where it takes 5 years before people realize how amazing and classic it really is.

Pastepunk: A new Magic Bullet website has been promised for a couple of months now – what kind of space-age technology are you hiding back there?

Brent: Ha. It’s funny… I thought my concept was a bit reductionist and minimalist, but the guy I’m working with on all the coding keeps telling me “I love this! So many bells and whistles!” Hopefully he’s just talking about the backend shit and not the final, because the final is looking like it’s just going to be simpler, cleaner, and easier to maintain for me. I guess in some ways it’s going to make the experience of really getting familiar with the bands and why I back them much easier and more clear to get into… but I don’t think the site is going to advance technology whatsoever. Haha. (The new site has since gone live – hooray for another label site in WordPress!)

Pastepunk: We’re now a couple of years into the ‘vinyl resurgence’ and Magic Bullet is a label that has had some very awesome looking vinyl releases in its history. Do you think the elevated interest in vinyl is sustainable? (This was already tackled earlier, I know… I’m killing y’all here with his interview… but read on my friends, read on…)

Brent: D’oh! I didn’t read ahead, so I kind of already answered this. But to reiterate… it’s not sustainable in its current execution. The labels are charging WAY too much for the releases and it’s going to backfire on them. Dudes won’t be able to afford or justify it once the “newness” of their “hobby” is gone and they’ll return to their Mp3′s. Beyond this, most people seem to really be stressing and focusing on the “collectibility” and “color variant” aspect of it. That’s going to really lead to a ton of buyer’s remorse and eBay pennies on the dollar in about three years when everyone looks at their collection of 300 records and realizes that’s it’s only actually 60 different albums on 5 colors each… Shit happened with baseball cards, Beanie Babies, etc. etc. This whole “resurgence” is following both of those industries to a tee and people are too dumb playing catchup to step back and really look at it wisely.

Pastepunk: Finally, whatever happened to NITRO TOYKO? Did they party themselves out?

Brent: The band still technically exists, but they are really scattered geographically. Vicki from Black Cat got in touch the other day about a sweet support spot coming up and I know they discussed it as a band, but not sure if anything actually materialized. It’s funny… simply because RATTLER exists and goes how far they go, NITRO TOKYO sounds like a “serious” band to me these days.