As the saying goes, it all started in Memphis.
Since 1993 Eric Friedl — otherwise known as Eric “Oblivian” from the legendary garage rock band The Oblivians — has owned and operated the Memphis-based Goner Records. A label and record store that has become an international beacon for all things close to the truest scuzzy spirit of rock and roll, releasing seminal albums from Guitar Wolf, Jay Reatard, King Khan & The BBQ Show, Reigning Sound, Ty Segall, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Oblivians and plenty more.
Each year, the label puts on their own weekend-long festival known as Goner Fest which sees people from all over the world making the pilgrimage to the birthplace of the genre to celebrate the label’s special brand of unfiltered garage rock madness; however, 2020 was different. With no way to put on these shows in person, the festival pivoted online with a huge outpouring of support from fans all over the globe.
Ears to Feed caught up with both Friedl and Goner co-owner Zac Ives to talk about the long history of the label, touring overseas with The Oblivians, the legacy of Jay Reatard, running a DIY festival online and so much more.
Tell me about the beginning of Goner? I read that it initially stemmed from your love of the band Guitar Wolf?
Eric: I basically started the label off of a cassette that the japanese band Guitar Wolf had dropped off. I had gone up to Garage Shock — a festival in Bellingham, Washington — to see all of these Japanese garage bands and garage rock bands. It was really exciting. At the time, there really hadn’t been anything like that with the kind of bands I was listening to and Bellingham just seemed like a really fun and random place to go visit.
Guitar Wolf had jumped on the bill. They booked their flights to come over to this festival and they were not invited to the festival. The 5,6,7,8’s were playing… I might have the years wrong. But anyways, they showed up. They came all the way from Japan so Dave Crider and the guys from Estrus [Records] said “Alright, you can play during the time we gave everybody to soundcheck.” So they just started playing while people were coming in the door and we thought it was the best thing ever. The attitude and everything was just so much fun and they were so into it.
They came through Memphis and we put on a couple of shows for them. They were touring off of word of mouth. Basically, running into people at the festival and [people were] saying “I’ll book a show for you in Milwaukee,” “I’ll book a show for you in Memphis,” and figuring out what they were doing from there.
So they dropped off a cassette and at the time — this was 1993 — communication was over a phone call or a fax. Fax was cheaper than phone calls, so we did some faxing after they had gone back to Japan and left this cassette. I said, “I love this. I’d love to put out a record.”
To this day, I don’t know if they thought I was putting out a single or a LP. We went full on and did an album and got it pressed up. I had a friend at FedEx who’s based in Memphis and we shipped them over to Japan for ridiculously cheap. I gave them a couple hundred records. Seiji [of Guitar Wolf] worked in an office at that point, he was a construction foreman. He said all of these boxes started showing up in his office and he had no idea what was going on (laughs).
To compound things, the first pressing of the record — It’s just completely overdrive Link Wray Rock and Roll anyways — but the first pressing was mastered completely horribly. The worst mastering job you could do. But I thought it sounded great. So we went with it. There was more noise in between the tracks than there was in the music. I don’t know if it was a happy accident. But we’ve sort of stumbled into a lot of good things over the years and this seemed fortuitous.
I had just started doing the Oblivians with Greg and Jack in Memphis and we did a 45 after that. It was a time where I realized there was enough of an audience out there and you had access to distributors who would carry this stuff. You could sell 1,000 of a record pretty easily at the time, which was pretty wild.
Guitar Wolf are one of the great live bands.
Eric: Yeah! If you had asked me in 1993 if that band would still be going in five years, I would have said “I don’t think so.” They’re just in it for life. To this day, Seiji has Goner stickers on his guitar. It’s a real strong loyalty thing. Guitar Wolf took the Oblivians over to Japan twice to play at the height of their stardom. They were on Sony and there were Guitar Wolf fans everywhere. No one wanted to see some dumb band from Memphis. Except for Seiji.
Zac: Seiji wanted to see it! People would be like, “Where are you from?” —meaning where was he from in Japan — and he would always say (in a gruff voice) “Memphis.” He claimed ownership of it. That bond was crazy and was already there by the time I got into this thing later. It was unique that the connection was already there.
Eric: They did records with other people, but that bond was always there. Right after that, Jay Reatard started sending me cassettes. He was a big Oblivians fan and eventually played with all of the Oblivians. Not at the same time. He would rope Jack or Greg in to play drums with him. Eventually, we were in a band called the Bad Times together. I got to put out his first 45 and his first album. That was really exciting, too. Seeing this kid that was so gung-ho. I had no idea he was going to do anything more than even a 45 at the time. It was just him banging on buckets in his bathroom and figuring out how to work a broken 4-track.
I just got lucky that these bands had more to them than just a flash in the pan thing. At the time, I wish I could have capitalized on stuff and had done the second Guitar Wolf record and more Jay records. It was hard to have a long-term picture at the time. It just seemed like these things were just kind of here. It was hard to see down the line.
With your time in the Oblivians and touring with Guitar Wolf overseas, was it hard to see if the appetite for this kind of music was there back in the States in the early ‘90s?
Eric: Yeah, Crypt Records, who had put out our records, were based in Germany at the time. When we got to go over to Europe it was a whole other thing. It was kind of like the Dead Moon story. They lived off of touring in Germany and Europe for decades. No one cared about them in the U.S. Some people really cared about them, but their fan base was in Europe.
When we got over there, there were people just going bananas and knew our songs. We would go to clubs and we had never heard monitors before. These were actual clubs with working equipment and we had never done that before.
I don’t if anyone ever expected the next type of Nirvana type of thing [out of us]. Sub Pop was looming around and putting out the same kind of bands. You expected it to grow more than it did. It stayed pretty niche. You sell what you’re going to sell. The distribution is pretty good but without some big push it’s hard to get to the next level.
Most bands who are worth anything, don’t take it too seriously. If you’re in it to be a big band, unless you’re ridiculously talented, it’s going to kill off the interesting thing you have to offer if you try to appeal to a big group of people.
For Goner, what was the first release that really made you think the label was on to something special?
Eric: I think we’ve sold more of the first Guitar Wolf than anything? That record kind of appealed at the time and got picked up in a big way through Forced Exposure, that was distributing noise records and stuff more than rock and roll. It crossed over a little bit more. It was just a wild record.
You just sell less records now. The Eddy Current Suppression Ring should have been a huge record. The Cobra Man record is really selling well but it’s not at the amount that you could sell in the ‘90s by just having something out there for people to check out. Tom Lax at Siltbreeze said I pity bands now because it didn’t used to be that not every record in the world was being reissued at the same time new bands were trying to put out records. If you would go to the record store you’d go “What’s new?” and someone would go, “Check out this new band from Philadelphia”. As opposed to now, where it’s like “Here’s the best underground psyche record you’ve never heard before … and here’s this band from Philadelphia.” There’s just too much music out there.
Zac: I’d put that on top of the foundation of the entire industry shifting into Spotify and streaming, where all of this music is right next to you and you have this algorithm forcing everything in. There’s just no way for anyone to try and turn anybody onto new music anymore. Whether it’s reissues getting issued all of the time or new music, there’s this giant glut of new music all happening daily rather than every two weeks. The entire system has been turned back upside down and it makes it harder for artists and labels to be successful at this point.
Aside from local heroes like Jay Reatard, was it difficult to find fellow like-minded artists to work with in the early days?
Eric: No. Another thing, I got lucky that I was in the right place at the right time. I started doing the website really early in terms of people being on the internet and putting out rock records. I set up a message board that was a big hub for people that were into raw punk rock and rock and roll. At the time, it wasn’t Facebook, but if you were into this stuff you’d go check the Goner board and people would be like, “Hey, I’m selling this 45 for $3!” So a lot of people came to me. I started selling records through the website because I was into that and bands from all over the place.
My thing was I wanted to put it out if it seemed like no one else was going to put it out. If Get Hip was kind of in tune with some garage band and wanted to put it out I would rather let them do it than compete. I’d rather have a niche where I didn’t have to compete with anybody. There were a lot of records we could have put out but instead we let them go. I didn’t want to be like “I want to be the main garage rock label” and really be ambitious like that. Because, I didn’t really take it seriously, either. I didn’t expect the label to really go as a thing.
Really when Zac moved back to Memphis after going to school and we started the store again in 2004, that’s really when we took the label more seriously.
When people describe Garage Rock in the vein of the Cramps, The Gories, or The Oblivians they usually say that it is “dangerous” even though it is repackaging rock ‘n’ roll traditions in a very distilled stripped down way that is close to the essence of it. If rock ‘n’ roll is inherently dangerous, Shouldn’t slick soft rock be considered “dangerous” to the true soul of rock and roll?
Eric: I guess! I totally see the correlation of keeping things simple and direct. I think people still respond to that. With live “in the studio” type recordings people are always interested and say, “I wonder what they really sound like?” With some bands, that is what they sound like! Some bands are that good where they sound like Steely Dan when they’re standing right in front of you. Some bands it’s about production and making a killer record, layering things in, as opposed to blasting your head off while you’re in the same room as the guys.
I can appreciate all of that kind of stuff! That’s just how we did it. With the Oblivians, especially, all we heard was, “You need a bass player.” When we were playing with bigger bands with a bass player, it was really hard coming off the stage sounding good without a strong low end. But that wasn’t the point of the band. It was, these are the songs, this is the band, this is what we sound like, it might be crappy, it might be cool, but this is it. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, go find something else to listen to!
The Gories were the same way. We got to play with The Gories a bunch. The Gories could sound amazing or terrible depending on the mix because they do have a high end and a low end and everything. But if you have some random sound guy who’s trying to compensate for no bass, then you have this booming kick drum drowning everything out. Actually, Peggy doesn’t even play a kick drum. So there is no low end thing. It doesn’t work (laughs).
The last time the Oblivians got to go to Europe we traveled with a soundman, which we hadn’t really ever done. We were playing next to Death Metal bands and we were like, “Man, we sound good!” It really makes a difference with someone who knows what they’re doing. It comes off the stage in a way that makes sense instead of a mess. Which is the way we’re used to doing things.
Zac: It’s a very Memphis and garagey kind of thing to think “This is a good way for this to work” about 30-years into doing something. That’s perfect for us (laughs).
I think Greg Cartwright (Oblivians, Reigning Sound, Compulsive Gamblers, Parting Gifts) is one of the most underrated songwriters on the planet. Was it immediate for you to see while playing with him that he was capable of writing these timeless songs?
Eric: Yeah, both of those guys, Jack and Greg. They were in a band called Compulsive Gamblers, which was my favorite band. I was a record store guy who hung out and went to shows. Jack eventually showed me some stuff on guitar and we wrote some really dumb songs. That’s what took off as opposed to they were writing waltzes and much more complicated garage-soul songs. They had a violin player in the band. Their horn section was never in tune. It was god awful in some ways and glorious in all of the good ways.
Greg was working out of a Glenn Danzig type of thing and Jack was working out of a Richard Hell type of thing. They could write songs and play guitar. Greg especially, he was angry. You get him on stage and get him wound up and it was like “get out of the way.” It was obvious that they both had a lot of talent.
When you look at the lasting legacy of Jay Reatard, do you see his influence is still being felt in underground music?
Eric: I don’t know. What I always go back to is he has a Buddy Holly cover on his first record. Buddy Holly, to me, is the ultimate stripped-down, perfect pop songwriter. Those songs are just in your head the first time you hear them. He identified that and I think it shows a lot of what he was doing. Jay was known for being more crazy and out of control, but his later records really weren’t like that. I don’t know what going forward, what people are taking out of it. I think with Blood Visions-time, it was the sky’s the limit at that point and no one knew what was going to happen. Even after the last record, I had no idea what he was going to do next.
I don’t know really, because he was moving towards a more produced softer sound. The initial stuff is so brutal and direct, you could take either one and go with it as an inspiration.
Zac: He was like a sponge. Whatever he was listening to, he then filtered music through it. He was the most opinionated with whatever was playing on the radio or whatever other people would be playing. But he found things that he liked and would interpret them through his own music. He did that from the time he was 15.
I used to go and pick him up from his house around the time Eric that first single out. He was 15 years old and I would go take him to shows. One time we got in the car and I don’t think the tape player was working. There was a tape stuck in my tape player and we had to listen to the radio and a Cars song came on. I think it was “Just What I Needed.” We were both complaining about how we had to listen to the radio and this Cars song came on and we both talked about it and were like, “this is a pretty good song!”
We went off and did whatever we did, played music, hung out or went to a show. I picked him up two or three days later. By this time, I had my tape player fixed and he pulled out this tape he had made. It was a four-track version on buckets and his guitar of The Cars song. It was amazing! It was an amazing version of “Just What I Needed” that Jay had made!
It’s like what Eric said, Jay had Buddy Holly and FEAR covers on the first record. He was coming from these two different angles and how things kind of came together in his head and got reinterpreted in his songs, there was always a pop element and this completely intense over the top element. They were on a spectrum. Sometimes, you’d have the completely off the rails side. Then other times you would have the pop side. It was generally somewhere in between and I feel like that was there from the very beginning up until the end.
By the time he was ending, he was super into New Zealand stuff. We sort of found the Flying Nun catalog at the same time. He had just gone over to Australia and New Zealand and was super excited about meeting Chris Knox. He was really into weird pop stuff, Bauhaus. He had a boundless ability to find new things and then try and do different things with them all. He was also amazing at recording and playing everything. He was extremely talented.
Could you tell me about how you started Goner Fest? It has become the mecca for this kind of music.
Eric: It’s a typical Goner story. It was a happy accident. We were putting out two records at the same time. We were putting out a King Louie One Man Band record. This was the first year that we opened. Louie had been a friend from New Orleans for a long time. He had been in this band the Royal Pendletons playing drums but he had been writing songs. He’s a great songwriter. These were kind of stripped down rock and roll songs.
We were also putting out a record by King Khan & The BBQ Show, which was King Khan and Mark Sultan who had been in the Spaceshits together which was an amazing band. For some reason, they had sent out their record and no one had really listened to it. They kind of had a reputation of being out of control. They sent it to In The Red and a bunch of other places. We listened to it and said, “this is pretty good! We should put this out.” So for some reason we decided to put out two records at the same time and since they were both touring and coming down at the same time to play Memphis for their record releases we thought we would put Louie on one night and then King Khan and the BBQ Show one night and pad it out with a bunch of bands and call it a festival.
Zac: It felt like a one-off record. The King Khan and BBQ show was supposed to be a one-off record. One guy lived in Germany and the other guy I think lived in Montreal and just couch surfed and played shows. We thought they may never play again, let’s make it as big as possible.
Eric: As soon as we said we were going to do these shows, people were like, “Ah, I wanna go!” What we realized, we had done an Oblivians reunion the year before I think and people came in from all over the world because we hadn’t played in five years or something. That was insane, it was like 300 people. We realized people just want to come to Memphis. They wouldn’t really go there on their own, but if there’s a show or a reason to go it’s a great thing. It gives them an excuse.
So when we said these shows were gonna happen, we booked them at our favorite bar which holds 50 people. People were coming in from Italy, England and all throughout the United States and we were trying to fit in 200 people into this bar that fit 50 people. The Black Lips came down with King Khan and we were like, “We don’t think we have enough room for the Black Lips!” It got out of control!
Local bands got on and it was two-days of six bands. Goner Fest One was out of control so we had to do it again. We had no plan. It wasn’t like “Hey it would make sense to do a festival every year to get people into town!” It just happened and seventeen versions of it later, we’re still doing it and it’s still fun.
How was it pivoting to digital this year?
Eric: It was weird! We had no idea how it was going to work. Luckily we had done some online festivals with Pete from Slovenly who was into it way early. They kind of went completely over the top — like Pete likes to do — and we had learned about some things that worked and some things we should look out for from that.
We had people who had bought tickets a year in advance for Christmas. At some point during the year we were like, “Look, we could give you a ticket for next year or you could put your money towards Goner Fest, whatever it’s gonna be.” The majority of people said “use my money and make something happen”. So we actually had a budget and could actually pay bands to do these things. Which other festivals really didn’t because it was just an online thing and there was no perceived value.
Now, people are doing more shows where it’s $20 to go watch this online thing. But when we were planning it, that wasn’t in the business model. We were really winging it. Again, we relied on the goodwill of our customers and our fans. The people who really make this happen are the people who come to the festival and the bands. All of that came together and it was awesome. We added a couple of people to the staff who were luckily really good at AV stuff. We all figured out how to do this.
I work with a bunch of people that do TV news, cameramen and producers. I told them what we had done off of laptops and they said, “Wow, you did a three-day telethon off of laptops? That’s insane! You were on the air for 12-15 hours a day. That’s ridiculous!”
The Goner Records Fund Drive!
Eric: (laughs) Yeah! The bands were great. We went directly to New Zealand. We had Jack Oblivian play on top of a new building in town with amazing looking drone footage and we sent it immediately to New Zealand. At any point the signal could have crapped out, but it all worked. We certainly had our glitches for sure, but it was really fun!
Zac: The whole idea that we were able to pull all of that off was sort of mindblowing. We didn’t have a real plan until 4am of the day that we started on how we were going to pull it all off. Not because we were lazy or weren’t trying, it was because nobody had done it! We were figuring out a DIY way of being able to do this. Like Eric said, there’s no big energy drink company that is paying for us to be able to pull something off in Memphis. Nobody cares about us doing our little thing here. It took a bunch of people who had already bought a ticket saying “Here take this money and make something happen!”
It really goes to show how strong the community is with this. It really does feel like the festival is part family reunion, part rock festival. You get together to see bands and have a real experience with people onstage and off. People always talk about experiential marketing now, but you’re going for experience. It’s not the same when you’re standing in a big field and watch some band play all the way out there. The guy that you just watched on stage is standing next to you watching the next band.
Do you think that DIY spirit and fight prepared and propelled you through having to adapt to this past year?
Zac: Maybe? I think we’ve learned that we have to count on ourselves and that there are not really any handouts with anything that we’ve done. We’ve run the business that way from the beginning. It’s been really lean and we don’t spend a lot of money. We’re pretty conservative with our choices because we don’t have a bunch of resources or backing to be able to do anything. We have to approach things pretty practically, figure out how to pay for it and try to pull those things off. Because we haven’t been stretched in other ways, I think we’ve been lucky.
That prepared us and made us pretty flexible with coming up with solutions to this new problem. In that case, maybe it was helpful. But I also think the community aspect was really helpful. When the shop closed down and we had to shift online, we figured out a way to go online and had a big audience who wanted to help and support by buying records. That group has been with us from the very beginning. Hopefully it’s a reciprocation kind of thing. If you do good work and you put it out there, you get it back. We’ve been lucky so far that that’s how it has worked.