{"id":4882,"date":"2012-08-09T11:30:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T17:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=4882"},"modified":"2012-08-09T11:30:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-09T17:30:59","slug":"profile-no-label-collective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2012\/08\/09\/profile-no-label-collective\/","title":{"rendered":"Profile: No Label Collective"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nby Sheldon Birnie<\/strong><\/p>\n

What started as a small snowball of an idea bouncing between two friends has built itself into an avalanche of creativity within Winnipeg\u2019s DIY music scene. After a few months of bouncing around, the No Label Collective was rolling and picking up speed.<\/p>\n

Founded last winter by Dave Skene (Mary Jane Stole My Girl, the Manic Shakes) and Charles Granger (Ex-Modern Teen), No Label quickly blossomed into a diverse and tight-knit collective who are interested in finding fun and innovative ways to promote each others\u2019 projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re kindred spirits in a way,\u201d explained Granger. \u201cI bounced the idea off of Skene. It wasn\u2019t like \u2018let\u2019s start a label,\u2019 but more of a skills sharing co-op.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were already playing shows together,\u201d says Nick Friesen (Merch Table Delite) on how the bands in the collective came together. \u201cIt was already a scene. We just decided to pool our resources, give it a name. When people are working together it\u2019s a little easier, and people take you a little more seriously, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Something that connects all of the diverse No Label acts is \u201csort of like a DIY kind of aesthetic,\u201d says Tiff Bartel (Crusty Cat). \u201cEverybody does things themselves. They don\u2019t pay somebody else a ton of money to make them sound good. People in the collective do posters for each other, or do art.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the first projects that No Label began pushing was the idea of \u201cvideo posters\u201d to promote upcoming No Label gigs via social media. With a handful of filmmakers in the collective, this has proved to be a fun and effective way of practicing filmmaking and promoting shows. They\u2019ve also been recording, on video and audio, most of their No Label shows, and posting them almost immediately online for those who just can\u2019t get enough.<\/p>\n

Apart from Skene, Granger, Friesen, and Bartel\u2019s acts, the No Label collective is also home to punk legend and CKUW host Johnny Sizzle, as well as local outsider rockers Kato Destroy and Hey Pilgrim.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would get shows before the label but we didn\u2019t really know where we fit in with Kato Destroy,\u201d says Kato\u2019s Jimmy Shand. \u201cWe have a ballad here and there, a punk song, a crazy metal song. Sometimes we\u2019d play a metal show at the Zoo with these crazy hardcore metal bands and we just wouldn\u2019t fit in. With No Label, it doesn\u2019t matter. Everyone\u2019s different, but still somehow the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think us, being from Hey Pilgrim, we were a bit of outsiders because we weren\u2019t really friends with these other guys at first,\u201d explains Pilgrim\u2019s Tom Hurlburt. After playing a few shows with the Manic Shakes and Ex-Modern Teen, the band was approached by Granger about joining the collective. \u201cIt\u2019s been really boosting for everyone, because now everyone has to get their shit in order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond building an inclusive, proactive scene within the Winnipeg music community, No Label is working to produce a string of releases for the second half of 2012. So far, No Label has released the Manic Shakes 7\u201d in June, which has charted highly on campus and community stations in Winnipeg, and Merch Table Delite\u2019s lo-fi recordings from 2007 to 2012 in July, as well as a collective sampler CD. In August, Ex-Modern Teen\u2019s Teen Lion<\/em> will be released with a disc of bonus material, while in September the collective will release their tribute to Neil \u201cWheels\u201d Hope, featuring all of the No Label acts as well as a number of \u201cfriends of the collective,\u201d such as Vav Jungle, Brian James, and Josh Benoit. October looks to be exciting, as No Label puts out a long anticipated new release from Johnny Sizzle. Also look for a regular No Label night at the Rose n\u2019 Bee Pub (formerly the Standard Tavern) on the first Saturday of the month, starting in September.<\/p>\n

As far as long term goals for the collective go beyond the current year, that\u2019ll be something decided by the group itself over the course of their regular No Label meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy biggest dream right now would be for the collective to put on some sort of festival,\u201d says Granger, an admittedly \u201cbig dreamer,\u201d who would also like to see some distribution for No Label releases as their catalogue continues to grow. \u201cWhether that\u2019s a music festival, or a film festival, an arts festival, whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d just like to see a progression for the bands,\u201d says Hurlburt. \u201cI\u2019d like to see them not have success in the terms of dollar signs, but have success in terms of doing what they want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like we need another meeting with the collective to feel out how serious we want to get,\u201d says Granger, concluding our chat. \u201cThere\u2019s so many good people involved that we could make a really big snowball to push off the mountain. I always equate my ideas to one of those uncontrollable snowballs that gets bigger and bigger as it goes down the hill. My ideas always start as a real little snowball. But with all these people we could make something as big as a frickin\u2019 house and get it rolling down the hill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keep your eyes on lampposts, billboards, Facebook walls and pretty much anywhere you least expect it for No Label gig posters all around the city.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sheldon Birnie What started as a small snowball of an idea bouncing between two friends has built itself into an avalanche of creativity within Winnipeg\u2019s DIY music scene. After a few months of bouncing around, the No Label Collective was rolling and picking up speed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[536,563,671,1104],"class_list":["post-4882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-label-profile","tag-local","tag-no-label","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}