In its early days, Merge Records had to depend on the kindness of its peers to survive -- most notably Chicago-based Touch and Go Records, which served as Merge's main distributor when the label was moving from seven-inch singles to full-length albums in the early '90s. Nearly two decades later, Durham-based Merge is one of the most prosperous and respected independent labels in the land. But Touch and Go has fallen on hard times. The label announced on Wednesday that it is closing its distribution operation, prompting the statement below from Merge co-owner Mac McCaughan.
Touch and Go basically allowed Merge to exist as something other than a singles label... We did our first full-length (the Superchunk "Tossing Seeds" comp) in 1992 because Corey [Rusk] agreed to take on Merge as a label under the Touch and Go umbrella. We've worked with Touch and Go since then -- 16 years -- and they are the most straight-up and ass-busting-for-music-they-love people we know.
Corey Rusk is the most meticulous, cautious, thoughtful business person I know, which is what makes this whole thing so unbelievable and such a bad portent for the rest of the independent music business -- if a company that did everything the right way can't survive in this environment (and the environment existed before the current worldwide financial disaster -- the Bush economic legacy only piled on), then who can?
This is not even to mention the fact that Touch and Go put out some records that were incredibly important to me long before Merge existed -- Big Black, Scratch Acid, Die Kreuzen, Negative Approach, Butthole Surfers, and later on Slint, Jesus Lizard and the list goes on... -- a ton of records that are just important period.
It's a sad day for music, independent music and punk rock in particular, and the music business as we know it in the real world.
