Songs Of The Day 3/7/2015: The Tights – “Bad Hearts” + “Cracked” + “It”

Cherry Red – The idea of working at a record label never really appealed to me, and that's even before my concerns about such employment were vicariously concerned by HBO's music biz series Vinyl, which I confess I'm watching. I have several good friends and a couple great ones who work at record labels, but in large part I think we all benefit by not being there. Still, there are some exceptions, certain labels I'd work for without hesitation. SubPop's one, because the commute's convenient. Reissue-based labels like Legacy, Rhino, Shout Factory and Light in the Attic (there, I'm begging all four of you at once!) would probably be best suited for my particular set of skills, including wallowing in the past via a daily-published music blog.

But after reading about Cherry Red Records in Britain, I think that's where I really belong. (I take those four begs back.) They were founded back in 1978 by Iain McNay and Richard Jones. They began by unassumingly signing and issuing local punk-veering bands to singles -- the first one containing all the songs featured on today's post. The singles were immediate zeitgeist-busters. Cherry Red also financed part of the recording of the Dead Kennedys' Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables and released it in the UK before Jello Biafra put it out on his own Alternative Tentacles in the US.

What really impressed me about Cherry Red was their lack of artificial boundaries -- there doesn't appear to be a single genre they'd not consider -- and how they used many of the constructs of the music business to work towards their advantages. Their reissue strategy in particular is insanely good, and somehow they've harnessed their creative ideations and inspiration into strong strategy. We'll get to that in a bit. But let's enjoy the beautiful sounds of the first Cherry Red single, which also contains 60% of the total recorded output from Worcester punk band The Tights.