"Harvest Of The Innocent" - Cleopatra records and why they are scum

[Steven Skane]

Well. At least it was more positive than what I get when I ask for a
character reference for myself.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Amphetamine Embalmer" <superskrull666 at YAHOO.CO.UK>
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 2:50 PM
Subject: OFF: "Harvest Of The Innocent" - Cleopatra records and why they are
scum


Hi all,
Like a fucking warrior I have to present this article
to somebody or anybody somewhere still close to the
war. It is probably still of major interest to those
last remaining few survivors here who still truly walk
among us... stay dead or just enjoy at your own risk.
Yes, I used to be John Bonham, you know... but then I
have to be Rob Halford all over again... fucking
Discharge... dead Iron Maiden!

"Harvest Of The Innocent" - Cleopatra records and why
they are scum

The frequently rather flimsy and somewhat unserious
reputation of the American Cleopatra label continues
to disgust fans and insult artists alike with
unbeleivably crap artwork, but they may be getting
better, according to some fans and random eyewitnesses
alike... With their unforgivably shoddy and generally
nauseating habit of releasing and packaging so many of
their CD's in crap computer artwork so laughably ugly
and so unforgivably cheap and tacky looking that their
otherwise generally unedible obsession with sleazy
gothic script or primitive science fiction fonts still
clash and blur in spindly digital collages, their
trademarked computer generated style lending their
many releases the unique Cleopatra look. Often mixing
random or obscure biblical or mythological imagery to
create images of some kind of cosmic or profound
interest or value, the typically spidery line artwork
and uniquely artificial color schemes on many
Cleopatra releases are easily considered just as tacky
and substandard to the gifted as to the mad, as many
of their generally far simpler outer space type covers
prove, often being just a crazy looking collage with a
big floating head somewhere, or just some kind of
clunky spaceship image or a stupid computer generated
robot motif, or even some kind of big empty meteorite
storm type thing, a decent composition seems to equal
some kind of blurry inertia on most of their cheaper
looking releases.  The US label first reared their
head in the early 90's with Hawkwind founder Nik
Turner's rerecorded "Sphynx" album, also housing
industrial hardcore pioneers Pressurehed for their
three classic and well packaged albums, and while
Cleopatra's frontier attitude to the mass market and
in-house approach to their product admirably being as
DIY as anything else equally mainstream existing in
the industrial, psychedelic and gothic underground at
the time, their independent role in the record
industry certainly lending the label an extent of
credit and credibility with such a star roster of
artists such as Nik Turner, Psychic TV or Chrome.
Despite their otherwise interesting reputation as a
label  in all their healthy and crass commercialism,
promoting their broadened and streamlined genre of
industrial rock and beyond to a market so ready for
their  product and vision that there is no way they
can fail, while the underbelly of Cleopatra's
otherwise visionary role in the US record industry and
the underground music scene in general remains
reflected in their blatantly tasteless sleaze machine
recycling of the underground just to line their
pockets in a quick fix off a commercially marketable
chunk of modern underground as some kind of subculture
to be cynically and cheaply exploited in the wake of
mass marketing like a bunch of fucking jews in
buddhism, their otherwise reputable and adult product
being continuously packaged and repackaged in pitiful
and cheap artwork to an increasingly thriving juvenile
market eating out of their hands much to the disgust
of an older or wiser group of fans and artists, and as
with so many of Cleopatra's numerous dodgy cash-in
compilations and crappy reissues floating around in
stores as some kind of indication of their real
intentions as a ripoff operation of profiteers
appearing as something of an amateur phenomena when it
boils down to the bare facts, as a label catering so
much of their potentially interesting quality product
to the less gifted of music fans with alot of cheap
looking garbage not only insulting the standard
intelligence level of the average connisseur or
collector of quality music with flimsy looking
reissues and cheap compilations, but as a label
Cleopatra openly catering most of their trash product
to this kind of low brow high school halloween scene
and down to a gutless idiot level of parody of the
cutting edge culture which they claim to promote, and
as if such a shamelessly cheap and rickety looking
underground scene really exists or ever has existed,
then it looks like Cleopatra seem to make some kind of
bizarre or drunken claim to it in the mass clearance
bins of shopping malls and second-hand record stores
across America.  While Cleopatra as a label still
demonstrate their otherwise misplaced intentions and
dishonest interest with an attitude of record
disregard of integrity so staggering in its mass
harvest of the innocent which still demonstrates that
this still reluctantly respected and increasingly
celebrated label's ceckered past and rather flimsy
reputation and rank amateur attitude still remains
rooted in some kind of perverted or polluted ideals
still somehow rooted in an almost childlike artistic
innocence and interest in quality music, Cleopatra's
original vision of course founded in a very narrow
cultural segment of the music market which still only
speaks for the label with some amounts of respect
still intact in the wake of all their shoddy rip-offs
and bum deals, their otherwise disrespectable record
of terrible taste and unfashionable tendencies ever
present since their conception, Cleopatra at their
worst reaching record highs of disgust and disrespect,
cheapening not only the industry in general but also
so many of their artists with their somewhat laughable
and dodgy reputation, a label known to fleece the
underground music scene as often as they can and in as
many ways as possible and without any regard to common
human decency or real interest of the fans, they sure
run their operation as best they can without a shred
of honesty, but as we all know, with such a ragtag
roster of artists and such an array of completely crap
releases under their belt, inetween the odd artistic
gem or the rare shimmering demonstration of genius,
they still fucking suck like the maggot infested pile
of dead idiot liar goths from America they truly seem
to be to most of us who still like a bit of fucking
music.

article (c) 2002, Christian Mumford

-Chr.
aka 'Big Hairy Dad'

ObCD: The Screaming Trees - Anthology: The SST Years
1985 - 1989

---
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