Well happy that this has come back around after I missed the debut screening in January. Given the berating that a recent screening of an LA beat-scene doco earned on these pages, you’d be forgiven for thinking we might be skipping the 90-minute documentary on the greatest indie label of all time, birthed from and repping Los Angeles since 1996, but we genuinely couldn’t be more excited to see this. Not only the blueprint for how to do business, and chasing what you believe in, Stones Throw itself has consistently evolved ahead of the industry, always an outsider, and always releasing some of the best music around.
As a label and a cultural institution, Stones Throw records is a constant in a lot of music heads lives, myself included. No matter whether you came in to the game through hip-hop, funk, turntablism, edits, disco tools, psyche, reissues, classics or future drops, Peanut Butter Wolf’s label sits in any decent record collection, always ahead of the curve. If you’re lucky then you’ve experienced the label from all angles, including the Egon run Now-Again imprint.
My own relationship with Stones Throw started with Madlib, and went backwards from there. The Beatkonducta’s work on Dudley Perkins, Madvillain and Lootpack albums were just a door opening, and I still believe his DJ Rels alias is the most underrated project of all time. There’s a period in 2007-2009 where I purchased every single record that was released by the label, all catalogued by cat. number, often as doubles, and it still makes up more of the collection than anyone else. I certainly wasn’t the only one with some form of ongoing obsession for what these guys were doing at the time, even if my purchases are somewhat more sporadic (or, as my psychiatrist calls it, healthy) nowadays.
And this documentary, collecting their front-of-store and behind-the-scenes actions for the last two decades is a big deal. Before youtube came along their was only the release of Stones Throw 101, an import DVD that cost a bundle, but at the time was the next step from CDs and records in understanding the label’s aesthetic and depth of roster. It was also the first time that I saw and heard Charizma and Peanut Butter Wolf as a double-act with ‘Red Light, Green Light’, and got some understanding behind the start and journey of Stones Throw Records.
Since around 2002, talking to artists, employees, collaborators or record traders, I’ve never heard anything but love heaped on to the label and the family of people involved in it. Something about the Stones Throw aesthetic and attitude makes people walk higher. For what we’re in to, getting on Stones Throw is the ultimate, at least for everyone except The Humble Magnificent it would seem, but that’s a tale for another time.
We’ve been among the fans who’ve rinsed the interviews, the music videos and the live sets of our heroes online to death, or at least to the point where we know them backwards hearing only the start music. Any insight from the crew is chased and examined, from Keepintime to the Jaylib live shows, especially with the one Madlib The Badkid. Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton – This Is Stones Throw Records is a blessing for long-term fans, and anyone with an interest in music should bump down on Thursday to try and view it. Don’t be surprised if there’s a few of us shedding some tears.
It’s happening at Cake Wines in Redfern, kicking off at 7:00pm, kicking people out at 10:00pm. Tickets are $15, make sure you don’t sleep on this. Trailer below, write-up underneath that with venue details linked up.
Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton is a feature-length documentary about avant-garde Los Angeles-based record label Stones Throw Records. The film weaves together rare concert footage, never-before-seen archival material, inner-circle home video and photographs and in-depth interviews with the artists who put Stones Throw Records on the map. Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton gives an exclusive look into the label’s left-of-center artists, history, culture, and global following. Limited tickets for this event so get in early!
Date: 17.04.14
Time: 7pm
Location: Cake HQ – 162 Redfern St, Redfern
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/cake-wines-presents-our-vinyl-weighs-a-ton-this-is-stones-throw-records-tickets-11215898053
…and here’s where it all started. A wicked kickstarter video that had us hyped for days back in 2012.