Miscellaneous - Interview with Sean Price

  by Olga Sladeckova

published: 13 / 7 / 2002

intro

Perhaps the most prolific indie pop label in Britain, Fortuna Pop has now put out releases by over 20 bands. Label owner Sean Price chats to Olga Sladeckova about its 4 year history, and why he now plans to slow things down a little

Do you know that feeling when you are driving a car and the road seems very quiet and straight? And you just can’t help speeding up and going faster and faster and the road is no longer straight and has humps, but you just can’t slow down now because it’s far too exciting for that, even though you know that you will eventually need more petrol to feed the ride? I think that running a record label is like that in some ways. At the beginning you feel it’s going to be great what ever happens and set off fast, but then you find out it’s nothing like you thought it would be and that it costs a lot of money, but your musical heart would break to give up now, so you just go even faster. One convincing example of a label such as this is the popular London based indie pop label Fortuna Pop!, which is run by Sean Price, and which has released albums and singles by the Butterflies Of Love, Tender Trap, Mark 700, Would-be-Goods, and Airport Girl. I met with Sean in the Select A Disc record shop in Berwick Street in central London. While we were wandering round Soho and Tottenham Court Road looking for a quiet pub ,Sean told me he moved to London only 4 years ago. The now 5 year old Fortuna Pop ! was originally based in Shepshed in Leicestershire which is where Sean comes from. It is named after Fortuna Grove, the road that Sean used to live on. Running a record label is a lot of hard work and Sean, from dealing with bands and releasing records to doing the advertising and publicity, does it all on on his own, which, alongside holding down a day job, he finds exhausting. Finally we find a dark but warm pub, on Tottenham Court Road. We walk down the stairs to have a beer and a coke and to talk all about Fortuna Pop! Fortuna Pop! has released records and tracks by almost 20 bands up to date. It’s obvious that Sean knows exactly what he is doing now, but it always takes time to learn everything and I wonderedhow the label initially started. “There were quite a bunch of us who were into music,” recalls Sean, looking on my dictaphone for the microphone. “But we didn’t really do anything. We just sat around and occasionally people would form a band and then they would split up and nothing would happen. Nobody would play any gig.s The bands just existed in people’s bedrooms.” “Shepshed is quite old and a small place” he continues. “It’s either the biggest village or smallest town in England. There is not much to do. For entertainment you just go down the pub. Nothing is really happening. Nobody runs record labels so we just wanted to do something and make things happen maybe…” Was there any specific reason though why Sean decided to do the label? “I’m not really sure…” he ponders. “Basically my brother was in a band called Airport Girl with Adam who was in a band called Taking Pictures. But they just played in their bedroom and recorded on a 4-track machine. I later helped them to buy an 8 track machine and Adam recorded a few songs on it. He had this one song which sounded kind of like the Velvet Underground . It was really short so he made it longer , and he added onto it a section which lasted about 30 seconds of pure feed back and which made it almost completely unlistenable. We thought it was really good and released it.” The recording that Adam did then carries a title ‘Fallen Angels’ and became the first release. in the Fortuna Pop ! catalogue. Organizing the release of a record was something which was completely unknown to Sean then and he had to learn it along the way. “I would phone up Key Records,” Sean says, looking back and laughing. “And would say : “We want to make records. How do we do it?” I also couldn’t make phone calls from work because I didn’t want to be caught talking about making records, so I was making all those stupid phone calls from phone boxes and asking them what format they needed it to be mastered on and they were telling me things like “Those days it’s usually on digital audio”. We didn’t even know what digital audio was.” The record was eventually made. but that was not still the end of work. “We made 1000 of them and we didn’t have any idea what to do with them” Sean admits. “We took some of them down record shops and sent one to John Peel and he played it and that was it really. We thought that if things happened it would become the world’s greatest pop single ever and pretty soon we would be on Top of the Pops, but that didn’t actually happen... And about a year later I still had about 950 of them underneath of my bed, and then we decided to make another record.” Fortuna Pop’s second release , ‘Coffee, Coffee’, was a 4 track record featuring Airport Girl, Taking Pictures, Kooky Monster and International Strike Forces, all of whom were Sean’s friends. International Strike Forces were a relatively known band, as they had already appeared on a John Peel session, and this helped sales and to spread the label’s name further. The early Fortuna Pop releases are generally compilations, featuring a variety and selection of bands. Most of them were Sean’s friends or friends of his friends. “When I moved down to London,” he explains , “I was sharing a flat with a guy called Matthew who used to be in a band called the Action Time and is now in a band called the Hot Wires. So, I was living with him and he got a band called the Family Way to do something and then other bands like Twinkie and Mark 700 and so we kept going.” One of the resident bands at Fortuna Pop! is the above mentioned Airport Girl. The line-up consists of 5 musicians, and includes Sean himself on bass guitar and his brother Mikeon vocals and guitar. “My brother originally did the band in his bedroom with the 4 track machine” Sean says. “It didn’t really exist as a band. I think he would have liked it to but never did really. The thing about Airport Girl is I do all the organizing and make people do things, while my brother does all the creative songwriting bits, but if it wasn’t for me he would probably do this by himself , but not do anything about it so it works both ways.” “It normally seems to go that way,” I remark, “that one or two people hold it together and the other ones just…” “Turn up !” Sean says, completing my sentence and adding excitedly . “Yeah, that’s how it works with the Airport Girl!” Fortuna Pop! has released music by nineteen bands to date. It is becoming rincreasingly popular on the UK music scene, with Sean releasing bands on a “ music I like’ policy. “The only criteria I have are that I have to like the music,” reveals Sean when I ask him about how he looks for new bands for Fortuna Pop ! , “I like both good melodies and lyrics. And secondly, I have to be able to go down the pub and to have a few drinks with the band. The last thing you want is to work with a band you don’t get on with. I like all the bands I work with.” One of the most popular bands on Fortuna Pop! at the moment are the Butterflies Of Love. The way in which Sean got in touch with them was very lucky. “I had heard them on John Peel” he recalls. “That was when I was doing the second single. I was sitting at my desk and was doing some mail orders and sending promos out to journalists while I was listening to John Peel. He played this amazing record ‘Rob a Bank’, the Butterflies Of Love single which I put out and at the end.  I thought : “Wow! This sounds brilliant!” It sounded like the Velvet Underground or the Jesus and Mary Chain.” “ I just sat there,” he says, continuing with agreat enthusiasm. “And John Peel said : “This band is from Connecticut and will be really surprised if you write to them.” I just wrote down their address and wrote to them asking if I could put out one song by them on a compilation. I didn’t even know who they were. I thought that ma;bum aybe they were really famous in America and now I am about to put out their second Fortuna Pop !.” Tender Trap, the new band of Amelia Fletcher (Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, Marine Research), have also been attracting a lot of attention from music fans. “I knew Amelia from when Airport Girl played with Marine Research” says Sean. “They were just looking for someone to put their record out, so I said I would.” If you look at some of Fortuna Pop!’s releases, you might notice that on the back of their CD boxes there are two contact addresses. The other one belongs to the US label Matinee. Jimmy Tassos, who runs Matinee, one day received a tape with Airport Girl on it from a friend in Australia and loved it so much that he got in touch with Sean. Nowadays they collaborate on regular basis. “Yeah, I do lots of things with Matinee” Sean enthuses.  “There is quite a lot of stuff that both Jimmy and I like, so sometimes we end up putting out the same band and do joint releases so both labels’ logos appear on the back. Jimmy is really nice.” To earn more popularity, some labels occasionally run their own clubs to promote their own music and to provide a venue for their bands to play gigs. I asked Sean if he had ever thought of doing something similar. “Occasionally I have” he admits. “But I don’t think I will be able to do it. It’s so much effort to run a record label I don’t think I would get time to do a club as well.  I think Track & Field(which runs a once month club at the Betsey Trotwood pub in North London-Ed) , do it really well. Steve and Paul, who run both Track & Field records and the club, have always helped me out and to promote own my bands.  They are going to promote Butterflies Of Love at Feat East in September when their record is coming out.” Indie pop music to me anyway generally seems to me to be relatively happy in attitude. What does someone who runs an indie pop label think about perhaps the most depressing, but more importantly one of the most beautiful and vivid albums of all time, Lou Reed’s ‘Berlin’? “I like Berlin” claims Sean when I surprise him with this question. “It’s not my favourite Lou Reed album. It’s a bit miserable… but yeah. I like miserable music. If you spoke to my girlfriend she would say I like miserable music more then happy music. It’s a bit odd.” Looking into the future of Fortuna Pop! Sean seems quite certain about his plans for the label. “I just want to get the Butterflies Of Love out in September” he enthuses. “After that I want to put out less records than I have done so far and get some sleep, so I don’t get sacked from my job. Every night I’m answering my e-mails and putting things in envelops until 2 in the morning and then get up at 7 and go to work. It’s very tiring.” “Next year,” he continues, “I want to do a compilation. Something like the best of Fortuna Pop! up to date. I think that will help to define the record label. People will see what I have done in 5 years and see things that I did quite a while ago now, but which were really good and that have forgotten about now. And then there will be Chemistry Experiment and Airport Girl albums at some point as well . The Aislers Set are also recording a new album, but I don’t know whether I will get to put it out because there are some other labels who have got more money then me and are interested in it.” “But that is what I’m intending to do.” Sean says, closing the interview with a sound of victory in his voice. The Dictaphone goes off and this is it or at least some of it. Some of the history, present and future of Fortuna Pop! It seems Sean has been driving his label at 60 miles an hour up until now . We shall see if the temptation to speed up still further will really be suppressed by his resolution to release less records in the future.It is clear, however, that he is steadily staying on the Indie Music road. ‘Bon voyage!’

Picture Gallery:-