Philosophy

Last Minute Records is a group of individuals dedicated to helping each other achieve our respective musical goals. We have no financial or ideological relationships to each other, instead our relationships are those of comradery and friendship. Our goal is simple: each of us as individuals and as bands love to play music and we would all like to someday be able to make music a sustainable way of life. In a society so commercially dominated as ours this goal is not so simple to achieve; it requires networking, promotion, persistence, etc. Therefore, we have united together for several reasons:

1. To offer each others recorded music to different audiences across the country, this means at any show that a Last Minute band plays, they will display and sell other Last Minute CDs along with their own.

2. To spread the name and mission of Last Minute Records in hopes that others will wish to become involved or start their own such organization.

3. To give ourselves a greater purpose other than our own self interest. Knowing that we're helping our friends achieve their goals as we work to achieve our own helps give us motivation while at the same time giving us the strength of humility and helping us to never forget our roots.

With all this said, Last Minute also opens its arms to art forms of all kinds including photography, video, print, and spoken word. Though these other art forms may be more difficult to fit into our merchandising scheme, we are dedicated to staying open minded and receptive to any and all ideas and forms of expression. For now, Last Minute is a small collective, representing only a few bands in different places in the country.

History

Last Minute Records began as an idea while I was riding on a train from Seoul to Kyunju while on a family trip in Korea.  I had been playing music in my hometown of Rochester, MN for several years.  The music scene in Rochester was at a transitionary state. All the old hometown favorites (Tang, Rosin, End on End, etc.) who had been the driving force behind our local music scene had recently broken up or moved on and my band, relative, was the most logical choice to take the reins.  Anyone who's ever been a part of a music scene in a small Midwestern town knows how it works -- usually there's one person or one band who does alot of the work of making the music scene work: booking local halls, booking the bands, promoting the shows, etc. Relative had been around and playing shows for almost 4 years at that point and we were ready to do more. On the train, traveling cross country in a beautiful place so different from any I had seen before, I had plenty of time to think of ideas of how to proceed.  I came to a realization that none of the bands in our area had never released any music except for homemade dubbed demo tapes. I thought maybe we could find a better, more organized way to facilitate running and promoting shows and at the same time get some more professional sounding and looking recordings out for some of the local bands. The first idea I wanted to try was to release a compilation CD of a few local bands. My original idea centered around taking a few different songs by a few different bands and releasing a short CD -- when I was finished, I ended up with 14 different bands, about half of which I recorded myself in a make shift studio I had put together in my mother's basement.  The final product became "Gnostic Evolution."  A week before the scheduled release date, Brian Busenius (from Relative) and my brother Aaron sat me down and proposed the idea of starting a record label around our efforts. I was initially strongly opposed to this idea, but after a few long debates I reluctantly agreed. We then had to grapple with the idea of finding a name.  We wanted something meaningful that flowed off the tongue. At one point we came up with the idea of "Hectic Records" but that lasted only long enough to print up the first batch of flyers for the CD release party as we discovered that there was already a company with that name.  Right before we did the final print of the CD sleeves, Aaron (my brother) came up with "Last Minute Records" -- what could be more fitting?

After the release of Gnostic Evolution, the label had a flurry of activity. Our first full length release was the Tang CD which had been recorded at Pachyderm in Canon Falls, MN and the Warehouse in LaCrosse, WI. They had payed big money to record and produce their CD and they never really did anything with it. After the band broke up, I approached the former members about releasing it. They had been a real cornerstone in the local music scene and I knew alot of people who would be interested in hearing those songs on a CD. The band seemed into it and so we did it. Meanwhile, for posterity's sake, we added the first Relative EP (which had been released about six months prior) to the Last Minute catalogue as LMR002. The Tang CD became LMR003.  There had been a certain amount of controversy surrounding Gnostic Evolution regarding the inclusion, or lack thereof, of a song by the local band Lava. They had approached me early on in the process of making Gnostic about having a song of theirs on and I had said that would be great. I didn't hear from them again until about a week and a half before the scheduled release when they sent me a short message telling me to put track so and so off their full length CD on as their track on the comp. I had been reading their website and they had been basically talking shit about a few of the other bands on the comp on their website. I made the decision, based on the trash talking and a few other factors, not to include their song on the CD. I explained to them that in putting together this CD, we had almost built kind of a community and alot of people had put in alot of work to make it happen. For them to come in at the last minute (heh) and just slide their song in while talking out the other side of their mouth about these bands wasn't something I wanted to be a part of. Well, the point of the story is that Lava and I had some differences that kind of became public. Releasing their Little Girl single on the label turned out to be a kind of unspoken way to announce that we had resolved those difference;. it became LMR004. Cesto's Simneed in a Tin was what I think of as the label's first real full length release, in that it was the first that was a Last Minute project from start to finish -- it also turned out to be the first full length album I ever recorded (which I'm sure you can gather if you've ever heard it). At the same time, we also started to record songs for a second compilation CD -- a sort of sequel to Gnostic Evolution. I had planned to have the second comp out about 6 months after the first (Gnostic took us about six months to put together, so I figured the second time would go even faster, right?). Had all things gone as planned that would have put the release for the second comp at December of 99. The reality of the situation turned out much differently -- but that story will come soon enough. Simneed in a Tin really helped the label take off and we were selling it and Gnostic Evolution like hot cakes. Since we weren't really sure how any of this was going to fly at first, we had done both of those CD's on CDR's and done the covers through local printers. After seeing what a success they had become, we decided to do our subsequent releases through a CD manufacturing company.

The Cesto CD had been a real learning experience for everyone involved - probably for me more than anyone else. While we were recording their CD (summer of 99) I came across a young local band called Dinner With Gregg. I had known their guitar player, Chris Porterfield, since we were kids and was interested to see that he was in a band. I saw them live for the first time at an acoustic concert - a benefit for the new Studio Academy arts high school. I was hooked. It was obvious that they were just starting to develop their own style, but the music they were playing was very different from anything anyone in our town had done before. It was kind of an alt-country rock - heavily influenced by the likes of Neil Young, Counting Crows, Uncle Tupelo, etc. It was something new and refreshing. Shortly after that they got a new drummer and really started to refine their sound. I approached them about recording an album. We worked for several months and came out of the studio with Among these Dwellings. At the same time, another band that I had been playing with, Discontinuity, had been working on an album in our spare time. The two albums would be released simultaneously at a CD release party that both bands played. They became LMR006 and LMR007. Things started to slow down a little after that. Relative had started to record an album in the late summer of 99, after many trials and tribulations the album was finished and ready for release in Jan of 2001. By that time, I was working for the Studio Academy Arts High School. I was running their recording studio and teaching classes. This gave LMR 24 hour access to a professional recording studio that we had built. The relative album became LMR008.

2 Years after the original Gnostic Evolution, its sequel was finally finished. The new comp CD titled Stagnation in Progress was the most ambitious release for the label. It featured 17 songs by 17 different artists, all recorded by LMR. It was sold for only $4 a disc, with all proceeds going to charity. We followed Stagnation with a slew of quick releases including the newest Dinner With Gregg, Song is Round, and two final Discontinuity records. After the release of the last two Discontinuity records and the breakup of that band, relative went on their first national tour. The tour was 17 shows in 30 days and covered most of the Western half of the US. The beginning of the relative tour marked the beginning of a long period of inactivity for the label. After we got back from the road, I decided it was time for me to get out of Rochester. On January 18, 2002, relative played its last show and shortly thereafter, I moved with my newest band, eyesnine, to Olympia, WA. Eyesnine released a demo CD and broke up shortly after. That CD has been posthumously added to the LMR catalog.

So what comes next? Last Minute Records isn't finished, we're just in transition. We're trying to change the label from essentially a local-only outfit into something that has more national viability. The main focus right now is on Dinner With Gregg. They have a new album in the works and have been playing shows regularly in Minneapolis, Eau Claire, Madison, etc, and will be playing more and more all over the Midwest. We also have high hopes for a new project that Brian (from relative) and I are working on. Other than that, we are always looking for others who share our enthusiasm for music and want to work together as friends to promote each other. You can expect to see us working together with bands like Sah, Orange Farmer (formerly the Audreys), and others.

Thanks for reading, feel free to contact us if you have ideas, comments, criticism, or if you'd like to get involved.

Yours,

Mike Thompson Last Minute Co-Founder miket@lastminuterecords.com Jan 2003