I noticed that The Damage Manual is a featured artist on EMusic. I guess quite a bit of Invisible's roster is available through that service. Do you see that [electronic distribution] as part of the future of music? I mean, Napster's getting chewed on in the press, MP3.com is getting chewed on, but EMusic is a definite legitimate means of Internet distribution.

Martin: Someone can be noodling around looking for Kylie Minogue or Andy Williams or Frank Sinatra and boom! they see that featured artist page. That's interesting to me. I know there are PiL fans, Killing Joke, Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Pigface, Murder Inc. fans who will seek out The Damage Manual and that's great. But I like the idea of exposing other people to the music. The idea of subverting people who are not already subverted appeals to me. And I think that the Internet is one way of doing that. It's one way of marketing the band. We've got a free download up there at the moment. You know, "Hey, have a listen. Live with it for a week. See if you like it." I think that is valuable because people don't have fifteen dollars to throw out the window.

[Martin's kids come home and he excuses himself for a minute to catch up with them.]

Where was I? Oh, yes, there are people who say that record stores are dead and it's all the Internet and that is just silly. There are massive problems on the Internet as far as getting noticed. The thing that is interesting to me at the moment is that a lot of people are believing that they don't have to tour anymore. "Hey, I'm just going to do a streaming video from my backyard and I'm touring the world." Yes, you are delivering your musical message to the world, to anyone that happens to tune into your website, but the difference is this: you know when there is a difficult pause in a conversation--you're sitting and talking with your dad or your friend or someone you just met--and the conversation just stops. Well, in real life--face to face--you work through that and get to another level of intimacy with that person. On the Net, you can just log off. It's easy to have a surface intimacy with everybody--like a Pigface kind of thing--but what is missing is a deeper connection. And so I'm interested in seeing how all of that pans out.

No better or no worse. Just one of the tools.

Martin: Yeah. It's frustrating when you deal with the physical world of CDs. You manufacture five thousand copies of something and send five copies to Coral Gables, Florida, and another store in Texas gets ten copies and so on. But it's the guy in Montana who wants to get it and can't. You've got people all over the country who can't get the record and want to, and you've got other stores who have too many, and you end up only selling two copies when you could have sold ten thousand. The world of physical distribution on a worldwide basis is frustrating as hell. I think it opens the door for labels to say, "I don't know if I want to manufacture your album, make posters, promote the record on the Internet and college radio, enable you to tour and deal with immigration issues and van rentals and hotels, and all the rest of it. But I will put a couple of your songs on a compilation and give you access to our website." It's definitely a way to test the waters--for labels like Invisible--if we want to work on something new. Every artist we sign doesn't have to be a ten thousand dollar question. I think that there are a million opportunities.

There's a company flying up from Australia that are going to broadcast live the last one or two days of rehearsals and then a couple of the warm-up shows in England across the web. There's an increased surface intimacy there because maybe I'll be filmed backstage having cortisone shots in my kneecaps--which is something not many people know that happens to me when I'm drumming and kicking my drum kit around--I'm crippling myself at the same time--there's that surface intimacy that can be broadcast around the world. And that's a good thing. But I think it is a better thing when it is followed up by the actual band. We're touring now until Christmas. We've got offers from Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, America, and all over Europe. I think it is better when it is followed up with the band in person, especially a band that is happy to talk to people in and around the venue of their live performance. Then it is really a fantastic thing. Does it replace every other means of marketing and promoting the band? No, it doesn't.

It's just a means of getting the information out there. The Meg Lee Chin and Jared Louche tour was the first time I had ever seen performers do their thing and then just hang out with the audience for an hour or so afterward. I think it was wonderful and I think they did some amazing things for their fanbase by doing so.

Martin: Well...[pauses]...that cost a lot of money. They flew all over the place, they drove all over the place, they took a train from Minneapolis to Seattle--I've always wanted to take that trip--it was a lot cheaper than driving or flying and I just booked them sleepers. They covered so much ground. It would have been so easy to just do a postcard mailing instead or to just take out a half-page ad in Spin. But it would have been meaningless. Just meaningless. I'm always trying to think that whenever we are in a position where we are directly competing with major labels, then we're losing. If we try to attract attention for our artists in Spin, we're fucked.

Martin: Yeah, because we can't afford a double-page foldout scratch-n-sniff ad in Spin. And Invisible is a double-page foldout scratch-n-sniff label in every other way. Except in the pages of Spin, if you see what I mean. By entering into the world of Spin, we're leveling the playing field. And eroding the things that are important about the label.

I notice that you've got a mix of American acts with European licensing. The F. M. Einheit stuff, the stuff from Matera, that kind of thing. Is this assortment a mix that you strive for? Do you feel that it is balanced?

Martin: It's balanced in the sense that as an American-based label there are bands like Test Department, Sheep on Drugs, whoever, who have primary relationships with European-based labels. That's how the nature of the business is then, you just license the record. And I think what has happened in a lot of cases is that we have licensed the record and then become the primary label. We've waded in and dealt with problems and helped when the band has had problems with their European labels because we felt that if we didn't and the European label lost the band, then we might lose the band as well.

I don't think there is any attempt to balance. We just license and release and work on what we're interested in working on. Or what people we like and love and respect are interested in putting out. I hope there is a broad base to the label and I think it is good to have a diversity of content. Sometimes it's a drag. People think we're an industrial label from Chicago and they don't get Matera or Phylr or different things. But it is important for me to have the diversity in the label. Otherwise it would be boring. But I think for the people who get it, it certainly isn't boring.

There's a certain thematic thrust underneath. It's just unusual music. It's not nailed down. Which makes each new release a question: "What has Martin discovered out there? What has he found that is going to make me sit up and take notice this time?"

Martin: Yeah, yeah. Dave and I enjoy it. We had Test Department come over to the States. They hadn't toured in years. It wasn't the most successful thing that we have done, but other labels have tried and failed to have Test Department tour America and we succeeded. And it was enjoyable.

Looking back on the roster, is there anything that was a surprise? Something that didn't do as well as you thought or did much better?

Martin: I think you could say that pretty constantly things don't do as well as I think they will. [Laughs] I grow attached to things, especially the things I'm working on. I forget that everybody in the music business is swamped with hundreds of releases a day. It just makes me continue to try to draw as much attention as I can to the worthwhile things that are going on at the label. I think--I know--that Meg Lee Chin is coming on tour with us, and I think that Dave Wright from Not Breathing is also coming as the opening barrage of The Damage Manual tour. So any chance that I get to wave a flag, I will wave a flag.

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