Wax Electric Recordings is a recording label dedicated to finding, financing, marketing and supporting original and truly independent indie pop/rock music for today's times.
The label was founded by me, Todd Bondermann, because I became sick of what is passing for indie rock today. I listen to mucho music. I go to dozens of concerts a year. I went to Intonation, Pitchfork and Lollapalooza in 2006. And though I love Chicago, the whole thing only made me increase my Xanax and Vodka intake to keep from banging my head against a pointy rock at the state of indie rock today.
I remember what happened to alternative music when the grunge Seattle scene came along circa 1990. Over the next few years, what had been groundbreaking and original became homogenized crap. What was once free-form and diverse became corporate, one-dimensional drivel and drone. And drone. And drone.
Well, it's happening again. Only 10 years or so after landmark releases by Guided By Voices and Pavement, those great bands are gone and reduced to legend, while we're sold Death Cab For Cutie and Modest Mouse as the new indie torch bearers, but only after they sign major label deals, of course. Matt Pond has to move to New York to be heard, and Marjorie Fair opens for John Mayer. Folk rock Nick Drake-ripoffs find a regular home on public radio because they sound "nice", as college radio plays the newest releases from bands already rich enough to afford a Team Clermont or Tinderbox college radio campaign.
And the literally poor-as-dirt artists, the ones who always have and always will truly represent what's best about any art? You know, the ones still doing it from their hearts and because they have to. The closet geniuses who have enough integrity not to make that trendy sound just to get on SubPop or make it into a Pitchfork review. The artists who remain what independent pop/rock is supposed to be all about: melody; sensitivity; intelligence; raw sound; and determination built on a dream, not a bank account.
What's happened to those guys?
Well, they're still around. But the music blogs, MySpace and free internet downloads can only go so far to save their fate by promoting their original work. Without any established money machinery telling radio -- and you and me -- that we need to hear them, or even showing us where to find them, these artists are only left to wait. For us to listen. For us to decide.
These artists need someone to tend to the indie rock garden and pull out the daisies from the crab grass, before the whole alternative scene once again spirals downward into bogus, force-fed troughs of otherwise poisoned would-be fertilizer.
I decided that since I hate real life gardening, I'd give the whole metaphor a shot and try finding some daisies. And in May 2006, I founded Wax Electric Recordings. Our 45-spindle logo should give you an idea of what we're about. Imagine bright and moving indie pop/rock that you want to play again and again, even if it scratches and skips.
Because it has a feel. And it's real.
Todd Bondermann, President
