Academic Archive Vol XIV

We are in the midst of an era marked by striking changes in the way music is created, produced, distributed, regulated, and of course, consumed. The iPod revolution has made flipping a record over every twenty minutes positively archaic. Ironically, the diverse record collections that took years of dedicated digging to accumulate can now be easily and quickly accessed via peer-to-peer networks. Rather than lamenting the death of the record-collecting industry as we knew it, this newfound access has liberated more and more recordings that might have sat idly in the back corners of record collections. Although it may seem like everything is available all the time, it takes the tireless work of labels such as the Numero Group to fill in the gaps.

The 80/20 economic rule states that twenty percent of products produce eighty percent of sales and nearly all the profits. Popular culture, both in production and consumption, has long been dominated by hits, or by the head of the distribution curve. In his most recent book, Wired Magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson documents the economic changes happening in today’s music. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More examines how the means of production and the methods of distribution have both been democratized, resulting in the near reversal of the 80/20 rule. For instance, Ecast, a digital jukebox company, sells ninety-eight percent of at least one track per quarter of their top 10,000 albums—what Ecast CEO Robbie Vann-Adibe calls “the 98% Rule.” Anderson has also studied the online music service, Rhapsody. He found, as expected, tracks at the head of the curve were sold in massive amounts. “But the interesting thing,” Anderson declared, “was that [the sales curve] never fell to zero.” The 100,000th most popular track was selling in the 1000s per month; the curve—referred to as the long-tailed distribution curve—kept going well past the 400,000th most popular track. No brick and mortar store would ever carry such diversity of product.

For online retailers such as Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, Rhapsody, and others, the long tail of retail sells to such a degree that all those products in sum offer stiff competition to the remaining hits. When offered the choice, consumers are actively consuming the non-hits, the niche markets, the rarities, the obscurities, and the underground nooks and crannies of popular culture with abandon. Supply and demand connects without a big media conglomerate functioning as the mediator, gatekeeper, or puppeteer; products are not hindered by the tyranny of geography or limited shelf space. The long tail contains infinite shelf space and can be accessed from anywhere at any time by anyone with a connection to the Internet.

Here’s the rub: even though a fourteen-year-old can have a music collection of digital files as diverse as one gleaned after thirty years of record hunting, one would be mistaken to think that the long tail is indeed complete or even near exhausted. Similarly, one would be mistaken to think that much of the product out there is even worth the virtual space where it resides. The plethora of products is reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “The Library of Babel” where “for every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles, and incoherencies.” Sure, anyone can get a product out on the tail, but who will dig deeper into the history of twentieth-century music and find what has still been overlooked or forgotten?

Ken Shipley, Tom Lunt, and Rob Sevier, who founded the Numero Group in 2003, draw straightforward lines across the labyrinthine history of twentieth-century music unlike any other independent label. According to Ken, “It takes somebody to put together a primer on subgenres.” As Ken tells the story of the label, he makes it clear that this is not a job for just anybody:

“In the beginning when we were setting up the label, we believed that everything was part of a larger collection, a kind of ongoing box set—like a never ending stream of thought. There wasn’t one sound or culture we wanted to cover. Whether it was funk or soul or Belizean folk, it could find a home at Numero. And the greater idea was that once you find one thing in a library, it will lead you to other things.

“Our collections exist to show the world things that they would not normally have encountered. Maybe it’s gospel, maybe it’s private folk or some subgenre or a nonexistent genre waiting to be discovered. Furthermore, it’s no longer just about record digging, but instead, culture preservation. We want the story, the photos, the shit in the bottom of the drawer, and the bodies buried in the backyard.

“I’m not as interested in owning records anymore. I am much more interested in master tapes. They’re kind of the ultimate collectible. But you can’t just go in guns blazing and expect to walk out with some guy’s entire tape library. It takes finesse and an honest desire to cultivate a relationship. So we’ve taken the position with our clients that we’re their partners, not just a few opportunistic dudes looking to exploit their history. We work with both the labels and the artists and try finding amicable solutions for rights and licensing. We view ourselves as long-term asset management. The artists or label owners might sense that there is still value in their recordings but not know how to bring them out again.

“Chances are if you’re working with us, you’ve been burned by the record industry, so the likelihood of initial distrust is high. But as we talk with artists and label owners over the course of a project, doors begin to open. Barriers come down. For example, Willie Clarke was really cagey while we worked on the first Deep City project. He told us there were no more master tapes. A year and a half later he ‘found’ fifteen master tapes in his ex-wife’s closet and entrusted us to sort out the contents. That wouldn’t have happened had we stuffed a wad of cash in his hand and never sent him a single statement or royalty check.”

After I initially contacted Ken, he sent along Numero Group’s most recent release, which at the time was Catherine Howe’s What a Beautiful Place, in addition to one of their early Eccentric Soul compilations, The Capsoul Label. The two couldn’t have less in common. I could place the late-’60s sound of The Capsoul Label. The cover, like all their soul compilations, contained a photo of an actual 45, presented in a tattered and yellowed 45 sleeve. By presenting each of their Eccentric Soul compilations in such a manner, Numero has clearly distanced itself from the decontextualized cover art of many other R&B and soul reissues, especially bootlegs, as Ken details:

“We wanted to fully display the archeology. Archeological museums display the actual artifact. They might dust it off a bit, but they just lay it out and show the whole thing. Beat-up sleeves are what you find in the field. The covers are a snapshot; exhibit A—the artifact that led the whole project off.”

Numero only releases licensed tracks, and they strive to find each artist whose music they release because they believe they can’t fully research a record until they find the person who recorded it. Then, and only then, can they tell the story of the music. It is not always easy asking people to dig into the recesses of their memory, into stories that might not have seemed important at the time. With each passing year, certain pockets of music get further buried by time and history. For Numero, researching the records and finding the key participants takes most of their time. Ken has a never-ending list of names to find, and the list just gets longer. “It’s a long detective process of sourcing a person or a record. The process never ends. Like Willie Clarke, there is usually more buried deeper.” There is no shortage of music out there, but there is a dearth of music presented in its cultural context. Numero is “looking for a more discerning listener who knows that a record isn’t just another record, but instead part of something much bigger.” They ask the listener:

“Why not actually discover something about the music or the artist? Discovering a record is discovering a person. All this info is buried. We hope we are telling the story behind the secret life of soul music. The Black American music experience is not being documented, and we’re running out of real estate.”

In between repeated listenings to Capsoul, I kept returning to Catherine Howe, wondering why in the world of ethereal recordings did they decide to reissue What a Beautiful Place? Ken later explained that they used to listen to Howe’s album in a typical day’s rotation in the office, and it would creep up and take them by surprise. Once the distinct notes in track one’s “Prologue” would sound, everyone would stop for a moment. Ken tells the following story:

“Keith Darcy had been negotiating to do the record on RPM/Rev-Ola but could never get the trigger pulled. He had helped us out with Ladies From The Canyon and shared the [Howe] record with us as an after thought. It stayed lodged in our office CD player for six months before we finally decided to do something with it. Great records get stuck sometimes. It was such a cool record, not quite folk, not quite pop, and it has elements of jazz. The whole production was of a time.”

As Numero releases go, the Howe project took one-fifth of the time that the Twinight compilation consumed. After learning of a connection to Phil Gillin, one of the original producers of What A Beautiful Place, the possibility of reissuing formalized into a plan.Ken instinctively knew that no one would be expecting Numero to release this record. They have succeeded in cultivating an audience for their reissues, an audience that freely wonders, “What’s next?” and is genuinely open to Numero’s answer. Such creative thinking has allowed Numero to diversify its holdings and stay one step ahead of the death of the recording industry and a few steps up the long tail distribution curve.

After repeated listenings, Catherine Howe began to work her magic on me and Numero’s raison d’etre became transparent. For the Numero Group: “There is no ‘Numero’ sound. Instead, Numero offers an aesthetic. A shelf of Numero discs feels less like a record collection and more like a library.” The soul compilations form the reference area: Capsoul, Bandit, Deep City, Big Mack, Twinight, Prix, and a mix from Phoenix, Arizona. In the rare book room, the Ladies From the Canyon, inspired by the folk of Joni Mitchell, sits next to Belizeans and Boil Up, their savory mix of musical styles, while Fern Jones and her gospel rockabilly shares space with the obscurities assiduously collected on A Gospel Funk Hymnal. Borges concludes his story by explaining the logic of his library conclude: “The Library will endure: illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless, equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret”—useless no more, though, when recontextualized by the master librarians at Numero.

“We’ll be a private Smithsonian of sorts. We’re doing a service here, providing a base of research and knowledge. The real long tail means to find everything—to search everything out.”