Quote

This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.

I have been with the record company and Tommy was there doing records with other people.

We moved into the back, made it into a little 50s sitting room and started to sell the records. We had an immediate success. For one thing, these Teddy Boys were thrilled to buy the records.

Before I had a record deal, I was living in New York and playing anywhere I could, from somebody's house to an open mic to coffeeshops.

I saw an Elvis Presley movie Jailhouse Rock, where he gets out of jail and makes his own records and takes them to the radio stations himself. And then, he puts records in the store. After seeing that, I made records an put them in stores.

Certainly, R.E.M. grew out of the Wuxtry record store in Athens, where Peter Buck was working and Michael Stipe came in to visit. And even their later manager, Bertis Downs, they all met and congregated at that record store. So I'm sure we wouldn't see those without the record store.

Because of the way the record business has kind of stumbled and disintegrated, in a way, you're as likely to sell records at your merch table at your gigs as you are to sell them in a regular record outlet or even online.

I need to reach a lot of people to sell records.

Now the music industry is sort of like a Craigslist venture, right? Where you're making your own records and selling them online.