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LabelLove - Raising Money For Labels & Artists Affected by the PIAS Fire.
For the last few days the UK has been gripped by riots up and down the country. Thousands of people have been affected, and several small businesses may have to shut up shop for good - and all because of some opportunistic looters smashing up anything in their path.
The only silver lining we've seen in the news over the last few days are the communities who've come together to put an end to the chaos, and take back control of their streets. Whether it's the Turkish community in Dalston, the Sikh's in Southall or the Twitter community descending on affected areas, brushes in hand, intent on cleaning up the damage caused by the riots.
Two people that are particularly close to ABoF's heart are Dan Salter (Echoes And Dust) and Hannah Morgan (Rumour Cubes), who, early in the hours of Tuesday morning, started a Twitter campaign that quickly went viral. They're the people behind the LabelLove - a PIAS Benefit.
First of all, if you could explain what the PIAS benefit is in aid of?
One of the many unfortunate consequences of the recent rioting is that the Sony distribution centre in Enfield got burnt down. This is an annoying inconvenience for a company the size of Sony but the ramifications for the independent music industry are massive as the warehouse also stored most of the physical product for PIAS, the UK's largest distributor for Indie labels.
Whilst a company like Sony can take the hit and wait for the insurance cheque to come in for smaller companies that work on much finer margins the loss of almost all of their physical stock is going to cause potentially terminal cash-flow problems. Our idea was to organise an event or series of events to raise both money and awareness of what is a serious threat to our little corner of the industry.
Do you know anyone who's been personally affected by the warehouse fire?
We know of several of the labels that we regularly deal with through Echoes & Dust who have been affected and since the idea for what we're doing went somewhat viral on Twitter yesterday quite a number more have got in touch with us. Some of the stories are heartbreaking, people having pretty much lost their whole livelihoods in one act of mindless violence.
How close were you to some of the riots?
We were far too close for comfort on Monday night. I live on the edge of Hackney & Stoke Newington so the violence on the Pembury Estate was less the half a mile away at one point.
In your opinion, what's the best way to stop this from happening again?
Jeez, that's a tough one & if I knew the answer to that I'd be one up on the government! I guess go back to the Thatcher era and stop the start of 30 years of social separation, exclusion of the poor and rampant consumerism would be the ideal but it's a bit late for that now.
How can people help you with the benefit?
We're still figuring out what to do next at the moment. If we're honest we're a little overwhelmed at the volume of the response we got to yesterday's appeal. We've had literally hundreds of offers of skills and support. Everyone from international music superstars to a 14 girl from Hackney have got in touch to offer their services, it's been amazing. If people want to volunteer then the best thing is to drop us a mail at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with details of how they want to get involved, this also applies to artists who want to get involved. Anybody!
When can we expect the first benefit gig?
Obviously, we want to strike while the issue is at the forefront of people's minds so hopefully the first event will be in the next couple of weeks. We've also had a number of people put forward their already existing events to be PIAS benefits so we'll be publishing the details HERE over the next few days. Watch that space for details.
If you would like to get involved or contribute in any way please drop Dan & Hannah an email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)