Editing Sarah Records

{{Short description|British independent record label}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2015}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2015}}
{{Infobox record label
| name        = Sarah Records
| image       =
| image_bg    =
| parent      =
| founded     = November 1987
| founder     = Clare Wadd and Matt Haynes
| defunct     = August 1995
| distributor =
| genre       = [[C86 (music)|C86]]<br/>[[Indie pop]]<br/>[[Twee pop]]
| country     = United Kingdom
| location    = [[Bristol]], England
| url         = [http://www.sarahrecords.org.uk Sarah Records Website]
}}

'''Sarah Records''' was a British [[independent record label]] active in [[Bristol]] between 1987 and 1995,<ref name="Wolk">{{cite web |author=Wolk, Douglas |date=June 2007 |title=A User's Guide To Sarah Records |url=http://www.emusic.com/features/spotlight/284_200706.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080922002442/http://www.emusic.com/features/spotlight/284_200706.html |archive-date=22 September 2008 |access-date=8 March 2008 |work=eMusic Magazine}}</ref> best known for its recordings of [[indie pop]], which it released mostly on 7" singles. On reaching the catalogue number SARAH 100, the label celebrated its 100th release by throwing a party and shutting itself down. In March 2015, ''[[NME]]'' declared Sarah to be the second greatest indie label of all time, behind only [[4AD]].<ref name="NME">{{cite web |url=https://www.nme.com/list/the-greatest-indie-labels-of-all-time/371424/article/371426#article |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306040050/http://www.nme.com/list/the-greatest-indie-labels-of-all-time/371424/page/2 |archive-date=6 March 2016 |title=Greatest Indie Labels Of All Time |date=7 March 2015 |work=NME }}</ref>

==Origins==
The label was formed in [[Bristol]] in [[1987 in music|1987]] by Clare Wadd and Matt Haynes and grew out of the [[fanzine]] scene at the time, Haynes having previously edited ''[[Are You Scared To Get Happy?]]''<ref name="Larkin">{{cite book |last=Larkin |first=Colin |title=The Guinness Who's Who of Indie and New Wave Music |year= 1992 |publisher=Guinness Publishing |isbn=0-85112-579-4 }}</ref> and Wadd ''Kvatch''. Both these fanzines had given away [[flexidisc]]s, with ''Are You Scared To Get Happy?'' being part of the Sha-la-la organisation, a record label set up solely to produce flexidiscs. Several Sarah releases were fanzines and flexidiscs as, along with the 7"s, it was thought they summed up the aesthetic and politics of the label better than 12" singles and albums.<ref name="Larkin" /> The label also refused to participate in the multi-formatting that was common at the time, or even include singles on albums, feeling that these practices were unfair on fans. In 1990 Wadd and Haynes told ''[[Melody Maker]]'' that it was "a record company run from a record buyer’s point of view ... you shouldn’t rip off the people who support you".<ref name="Everett">{{cite web |url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/cutie-calls-everett-true-melody-maker-august-1990/ |title=Cutie Calls |author=True, Everett |date=4 August 1990 |work=Melody Maker }}</ref>

==Music==
Sarah Records was usually perceived as being grounded in the jangly [[indie (music)|indie]]-pop sensibility of [[C86 (music)|C86]] – though greater influences included the late Seventies DIY scene and stylish, imaginative independent labels such as [[Postcard Records]], [[Factory Records|Factory]] and [[Creation Records|Creation]]; as well as mid-Eighties fanzine culture. Many Sarah bands, notably [[The Field Mice]] and [[The Orchids]], also experimented with dance sounds. Other bands on the label included [[Heavenly (British band)|Heavenly]], [[East River Pipe]], [[The Hit Parade (group)|The Hit Parade]], [[Even As We Speak]], [[Boyracer]], Brighter, [[Blueboy (band)|Blueboy]], [[Another Sunny Day]], [[Orlando (band)|Shelley]] and [[St. Christopher (band)|St. Christopher]].

==Politics==
"It's just POLITICS, not as some distant unreal end, but as something encaptured in everyday life" declared the sleevenotes to the label's first compilation LP, ''Shadow Factory'', and the label always saw itself as political,<ref name="Paphides">{{cite web |url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/end-of-sarah-peter-paphides-time-out-august-1995/ |title=Que Sarah |author=Paphides, Peter |date=August 1995 |work=Time Out }}</ref> a response to its years of operation being "the years when CDs took over and vinyl died, when majors set up fake indies and indie became a genre not an ideology ... the years of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, of Clause 28 and the Poll Tax; the years when Lad Culture took hold."<ref name="Intro">{{cite web|url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/sarah/introduction/ |title=Sarah Records Introduction |publisher=sarahrecords.org.uk |access-date=2017-11-08}}</ref> Because much of the politics was represented by the label's actions rather than its music, this aspect of Sarah was often missed; but Wadd and Haynes always hoped that those buying the records would discover the politics “by osmosis. One day, they’d suddenly stop and think, ‘Hang on, why do I have to spend £3.49 on this Pastels twelve-inch from Creation when the Sea Urchins seven-inch on Sarah only costs £1.49 and they both have three songs on?’ And then they’d set fire to the Houses of Parliament.”<ref name="Popkiss">{{cite book |last=White |first=Michael |title=Popkiss: the Life and Afterlife of Sarah Records |year= 2015 |publisher=Bloomsbury |isbn=978-1-6289-2218-9 }}</ref> Haynes did admit, though, that "few people spotted that our sleeves didn’t use the female image as decoration, that singles didn’t appear on albums (except compilations), and that compilations didn’t include ‘previously unreleased’ tracks, so maybe our politics was too subtle."<ref name="Between">{{cite book |last1=Wadd |first1=Clare |last2=Haynes |first2=Matt |title=Between Hello and Goodbye: The Secret World of Sarah Records |year= 2014 |publisher=Arnolfini Gallery }}</ref> The politics was also always tempered by humour: 12" singles were used as a self-consciously hyperbolic metaphor for capitalism, the capitalist mindset of record collectors was mocked by randomly distributing postcards that formed a jigsaw of [[Bristol Temple Meads railway station]] in the sleeves of ten 7"s whose labels featured photos of consecutive stations on the local [[Severn Beach Line]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/more/trains-and-postcards/ |title=Sarah Records Trains and Postcards |publisher=sarahrecords.org.uk |access-date=2015-03-08}}</ref> and the label announced its Autumn 1992 release schedule by taking out quarter-page adverts<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/texts/adverts/|title=Adverts|website=Sarahreocrds.org.uk|date=27 January 2016 |access-date=20 June 2021}}</ref> in the music press, denouncing capitalism and the refusal of bands to accept responsibility for their own marketing practices.

==Bristol==
Being based in Bristol was very important to Sarah; despite neither being from Bristol, both Wadd and Haynes loved the city and wanted to make the political point that to run a successful record label you didn't have to move to [[London]].<ref name="Simpson">{{cite web |url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/sarah-r-i-p-dave-simpson-melody-maker-sep-1995/ |title=Sarah RIP |author=Simpson, Dave |date=2 September 1995 |work=Melody Maker }}</ref> Each 7" single featured a picture of the city on its centre label, the label's compilation albums were named after places in and around Bristol (and numbered after the buses that went there) and the city's road layout provided the board for Saropoly – the board game about running an indie record label (packaged as a 7" single) that was the label's fiftieth release.

==Press response==
Although Sarah releases were featured 15 times as Singles of the Week in ''NME'' and ''Melody Maker'',<ref>{{cite web|url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/press/press-singles-week/ |title=Sarah Records Singles of the Week |date=2 June 2014 |publisher=sarahrecords.org.uk |access-date=2015-03-08}}</ref> the UK press was mostly hostile, something Wadd and Haynes attributed to male journalists missing the point, being annoyed by it, or worrying that liking a label with a girl's name, co-run by a woman, would bring their own masculinity into question.<ref name="Between" />

The sexism of the music press was a major issue for the label. As Wadd wrote in a letter to ''Melody Maker'', "your treatment of women reinforces the status quo of a woman’s role being largely decorative – an object, a stage-prop to be placed at the front of photos … a puppet to smile and dance while the boys at the back (the 'brains') pull the strings. It’s hard enough for a woman to carve herself an independent role in music. Stupid basic things like going to gigs on your own and getting back afterwards have to be considered on top of society’s everyday constraints … Add to that the implicit criterion that to succeed you need to be physically desirable. What about the not-so-beautiful, the women who aren’t so confident about their appearance/sexuality? … You end up with half the population having no creative input.

"Yet even that is eerily disguised because it’s always the purely stereotypical (and therefore hardly qualifying as positive discrimination) FEMALE image within a band that the male writer/camera seeks out."<ref name="WaddLetter">{{cite web |url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/clare-letter-to-melody-maker/ |title=Letter to Melody Maker |author=Wadd, Clare |date=1991 |work=Melody Maker }}</ref> The label was always better received outside the UK, with bands playing to big audiences in Europe and Japan,<ref name="Paphides" /> and, after the label had ended, the attitude of the UK press gradually shifted. In March 2015, ''NME'' put Sarah at number 2 in its list of greatest indie labels of all time, saying "Sarah’s legacy is in thinking gloriously big, and believing that a label is more than a catalogue of disparate releases."<ref name="NME" />

==Ending and aftermath==
===A Day For Destroying Things===
Sarah ceased operations in August 1995 with the release of ''There and Back Again Lane'', a booklet telling the story of the label along with a CD of representative tracks. A party was held on the ''[[The Thekla|Thekla]]'', a boat moored in Bristol's [[Floating Harbour]], and half-page adverts entitled "A Day For Destroying Things" were taken out in both ''NME'' and ''Melody Maker''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/day-destroying-things-advert/ |title=A Day For Destroying Things advert |website=Sarahrecords.org.uk |date=2014-01-13 |access-date=2020-05-02}}</ref> "We don't do encores", the advert announced, and the label has stuck by this sentiment, with no further releases.

===Retrospective film, books and exhibition===
A film about the label, ''My Secret World'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://storyofsarahrecords.com/index.html|title=HOME|website=Storyofsarahrecords.com|access-date=20 June 2021}}</ref> made by Lucy Dawkins for Yes Please! Productions, was previewed at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol on 3 May 2014 as part of the exhibition 'Between Hello and Goodbye: The Secret World of Sarah Records',<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/sarah-records |title=Between Hello and Goodbye: The Secret World of Sarah Records — Arnolfini |access-date=19 July 2014 |archive-date=15 July 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140715165622/http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/sarah-records |url-status=dead }}</ref> and had its official premiere at the Hackney Picturehouse in London on 12 April 2015. A book, ''Popkiss: The Life and Afterlife of Sarah Records'', by Michael White, was published by Bloomsbury on 19 November 2015.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://333sound.com/2014/01/21/we-are-publishing-a-book-about-sarah-records/ |title=We are Publishing a Book about Sarah Records &#124; 333sound |access-date=23 July 2014 |archive-date=28 July 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140728222731/http://333sound.com/2014/01/21/we-are-publishing-a-book-about-sarah-records/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> On 16 October 2023, a second book about Sarah Records was published, called ''These Things Happen: The Sarah Records Story'', written by Jane Duffus.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.tangentbooks.co.uk/shop/these-things-happen-the-sarah-records-story-by-jane-duffus-signed-copies |title=These Things Happen: The Sarah Records Story by Jane Duffus }}</ref> This hardback book contains interviews with members of every single band signed to the label, as well as a large number of previously unseen pictures.

===Shinkansen Recordings===
After Sarah ended, Haynes established Shinkansen Recordings<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://sarahrecords.org.uk/and/shinkansen-recordings/shinkansen-introduction/|title=Shinkansen: introduction|website=Sarahrecords.org.uk|access-date=20 June 2021}}</ref> in 1996.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk/MagSitePages/Article.aspx?id=2812 |title=Shinkansen : Interview with Matt Haynes |website=Pennyblackmusic.co.uk |access-date=2014-05-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://diskant.marcelinesmith.com/features/shinkansen-recordings/ |title=diskant » Shinkansen Recordings |website=Diskant.marcelinesmith.com |access-date=2014-05-16}}</ref> Named after [[Shinkansen|the Japanese "bullet train"]], the label was originally going to be called "Metropolitan", but there was already a record label of that name. Shinkansen released new recordings by ex-Sarah artists (including [[Blueboy (band)|Blueboy]] and [[Harvey Williams (musician)|Harvey Williams]]) as well as other acts including [[Fosca (band)|Fosca]], [[Trembling Blue Stars]] and Tompot Blenny. Haynes went on to edit a [[zine]], ''Smoke: a London Peculiar'', dedicated to writing and art inspired by London.

==See also==
* [[Sarah Records discography]]
* [[List of record labels]]
* [[List of independent UK record labels]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
* [http://www.sarahrecords.org.uk Sarah Records Official Website]
* [http://sarahrecords.org.uk/day-destroying-things-advert/ A Day For Destroying Things]
* [http://home.clara.net/koogy/sarah/ Fan site]
* [http://smokealondonpeculiar.co.uk/ Smoke: a London Peculiar]
* [http://sarahrecords.org.uk/and/shinkansen-recordings/shinkansen-introduction/ Shinkansen Recordings]
* [http://www.twee.net/labels/sarah.html Sarah Records on TweeNet]
* [http://www.indiepopradio.co.uk/ Indiepop Radio]

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Sarah Records| ]]
[[Category:Music in Bristol]]
[[Category:Defunct record labels of the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:British independent record labels]]
[[Category:Record labels established in 1987]]
[[Category:Indie pop record labels]]