The end of alpha draconis records
posted on 16 Dec 2007 under category News
As you have probably seen by now, Alpha Draconis Records is no more. Dante and I laid it to rest a few days ago, on December 13, 2007. I promised to try to give the reasons why here, so that I wouldn’t have to go over it again and again.
And sometimes, nothing is so scary as a blank page. So, forgive me for the somewhat aimless wanderings that follow. There are several factors at play, and they twist and tie together in ways that could be put linearly in too many permutations to choose from. Normally, I try to say something perfectly. For now, I’ll just say it. Time is a curse. While it’s all we have, it’s constantly slipping away, and choosing to do something means choosing to NOT do myriad other things. Which wouldn’t be quite so bad in and of itself, but when you don’t have forever, you realize those choices mean you’re choosing, effectively, to NEVER do something. Worse, many of those things you’ll never do aren’t even filed under ‘never’ - they’re most likely in a huge folder called ‘someday’.
And its frustrating to see that folder bloat and bloat with nothing coming out of it. Ironically, that’s how ADR got started.
While working on UHR, which was just a CDR label, I decided one day that I would like to, someday, release real CDs. I’d mentioned it to Dante, and he liked the idea as well - it’s another way, outside of your own band, to support music and musical statements that you think should be promoted. When we both had disposable income and Vrolok was looking for someone to release Resurgence II, we saw that fate had dealt us a possibility, and so we took something out of that ‘someday’ folder and put it on the desk. Thus, Alpha Draconis Records was born - because someday, I wanted to put out real CDs on a real record label.
Well, I did it. It got popular, then merged with the BWV webstore when that closed, got more popular, we found more bands and released more albums. And soon, I was spending so much time on it that it was taking away from home like and all my other somedays - and even some of my active projects. (Ever wonder why it took from 2002 to 2005 to get Death Beast from a demo to a full album? And why it’ll be 2008 before there’s another? You might also want to look at Rampage’s discography over the past four years and compare it to the four before that…)
And, really, for what? Dante and I both fully believed and really liked and respected the musicians we dealt with and the albums we released. But we’d DONE it already - we released albums. We got them out there. They got good feedback. We used those albums, traded to other labels, and created a webstore that, I like to think, was pretty well-known, if not far and wide, at least among a dedicated crowd who liked the confluence of decent selection of off-brand quality music, good prices, and good service. We both somewhat liked what we were doing, we really believed in supporting the music and the bands we dealt with, but we’d already done everything, so it was going to just be more and more work that we’ve already done, and watching that ‘someday’ pile keep getting bigger with OTHER things we wanted to do…
It finally reached that make-or-break point, though, that I’d seen so many underground labels reach. Think of it as critical mass. They are doing enough business and have enough reputation that it’s too much for just the founders - so they have to either sink MORE money and time in to make it float for real, and continue the growth, tread water because of inability to put in enough money and time, or sink.
And you can’t tread water forever.
I can’t speak for Dante, but I’d passed too many somedays in maintaining the label that I really started to question if it was worth it. I wanted out, but I didn’t want to go down the long, slow slide - I thought it best that, if this was going to end someday, it should be at OUR choosing - choosing to go out at our best, instead of sinking into obscurity or infamy, or worse.
I nursed these thoughts on my own for a while, then mentioned to Dante one time “sometimes I wonder if this can go on forever. Do you ever think we could just end it?”
Oddly enough, he’d been thinking the same thoughts for a while on his own. And so, a few months ago, we decided to find a good time to bring this soiree to an end, made a list of things to be done to close it down, and up at the top of the list was the biggest one - what to do with all these damn CDs in our rooms? Dante talked to a few of his contacts and it turns out we had some parties express interest in possibly buying things up should we decide to close.
And, with that, it just became a matter of notifying everyone and choosing an end date - and this was just a couple of weeks ago, so both Dante and I were thinking of Chuck Schuldiner’s sixth-year-death anniversary. It’s a 13th, so it’s got that angle too, and it gave us time to wrap up with one last sale. A goodbye party before the hemlock, so to speak.
-–
Funny, I’ve talked a lot about it, but I still don’t think I’ve explained it, though I have touched on all the main reasons. Maybe it’s because it sounds selfish to say I wanted to drop ADR so I could get my own music done - however, I have supported several bands that I do think are worthwhile. Maybe it’s egotistical to say I want to go out on top instead of taking the long slide down, as if I am ‘on top’ - however, I can say with honesty that I was and still am 100% behind everything ADR has released to date. Maybe it’s because some of that ‘free time’ I’m going to reclaim to do all those ‘someday’ things will just go into regular life maintenance, video games, reading books… but isn’t it MY time to choose to spend? Maybe it sounds greedy to say it wasn’t making enough money to be worth all the time it was taking - however, it’s never been about the money, per se. The money was just a way to get more albums printed by bands that I thought deserved albums printed, in a music scene that’s flooded with shit. Maybe even that sounds a bit full of myself - but we moved enough of these discs to know that enough people out there agreed with me to make it worthwhile. Well, that about covers it, unless you want to meet up for a beer or some vodka martinis and talk about it some more. There are a few ‘by the way…’ questions I’ve thought of that are follow-ups to ‘so you’re closed?’, and they’ll get their own FAQ here shortly.
For now, though, let me close by saying that I sincerely appreciate all of the support we’ve received from the labels we’ve dealt with and all of our customers over the past four years. Maybe it sound cliche to say you helped make a dream of mine come true, but it’s the truth, and it’s no small thing to me. I also give all of the best wishes and ultimate respect to Diabolus, Warharan, Kutcheck, and Vindsval, Nachtjaeger, and the rest of the guys in Midwynter. We couldn’t have done it without you, and I’d like to think that, just as our customers helped my dream come true, I hope the support that Dante and I gave to you and your musical projects gave you similar feelings of accomplishment. I am proud that we could be a part of what each of you has built.
(Nothing to add.)