IfIHadAHiFi
Independent labels don’t have the same cachet they did 20 years ago. Back then, landing a home on a respected label—something like a Dischord, a Southern Records or a Touch and Go—gave an artist instant credibility. Labels served as a seal of quality, signaling to listeners that if they liked any of the label’s other releases, there’s a good chance they’d like the one they were holding in their hand as well.
Latest Flame Records’ co-founder Dan Hanke brought that same sense of integrity to his Milwaukee label. From its beginnings in the early ’00s, the label represented a tight community of bands, mostly from around Milwaukee and Chicago. And especially in its final decade, the label stood up for an underserved niche: noise-rock with a pop lean, and heavy rock that was typically too loud for traditional indie tastes, but too eccentric for mainstream rock fans. It’s not the type of music anybody gets rich releasing, and sure enough, Hanke never got rich.
This weekend Latest Flame will wind down operations with a pair of farewell shows at Club Garibaldi featuring 15 acts with ties to the label, including mainstays like IfIHadAHiFi, WAXEATER and We Are Hex, as well as three bands from the label’s past reuniting for the event: The Response, Troubled Hubble and Police Teeth. Latest Flame merchandise, including most of the albums the label has released, will be on sale for half off at each show.
Hanke is giving bands affiliated with the label permission to use its name on their future digital releases, if they wish, but says the label simply couldn’t afford to keep issuing physical releases anymore.
“It got to the point where I couldn’t afford to hire PR, so for the last two years we were doing everything in house,” Hanke says. “I was researching labels and realizing, ‘Geez, I don’t have the resources to sink $2,000 a month into a publicist or to take out ads that take $600, especially when you’re only pressing 300 records because you don’t know how many people are going to buy it. That’s enough to break even on the cost of manufacturing and radio and PR, but I always though if we’re going to do this, let’s do it all the way, but if it gets to the point where you can’t hire advertising and promo companies it’s time to call it a day, because everything else bands can do on their own.”
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It’s a disappointing end for a label that periodically looked like it might make a significant name for itself outside the city. “Right out of the gate our first release was Troubled Hubble, and they were playing about 150 shows a year at the time, so we went through two or three pressings of the CD, and half of those sales went directly back into the label, funding the next four or five releases,” Hanke recalls. “It always seemed to go in cycles like that. Troubled Hubble got signed to Lookout!, and then The Dials had a big push. Then Police Teeth. So it seemed like every four or five years we would get a release that pushed us past breaking even.”
And though Hanke wishes it could have seen that kind of success with all of the label’s acts, he says he’s proud of the community he helped create with Latest Flame. “For the longest time, I was so passionate about these bands, and I couldn’t see why they weren’t taking off,” Hanke says. “But as good as the bands are or could be, some things are just beyond your control. So I don’t like to think negatively about why things didn’t happen. I’d rather think about the things we did.”
Latest Flame Records’ farewell shows are Friday, Oct. 23 at 8 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 24 at 5 p.m. at Club Garibaldi. For a compilation featuring every band performing, visit latestflamerecords.bandcamp.com.
