by Joe Wallace

During the London riots, I heard some horror stories about the effects of indiscriminate looting and burning. Some were true, and some were not.

Fortunately for indie record shop Dub Vendor, the reports of their demise were wrong, as evidenced by the picture I found courtesy of Reggae.com which shows Dub Vendor (the shop with the blue sign) coming out more or less unscathed compared to the unlucky tenant right next door.

But SonyDADC didn’t fare so well–it went up in flames resulting in untold numbers of vinyl records being destroyed–including a lot of stock by the awesome Ninja Tune label. Others affected include Sub Pop, Secretly Canadian, 4AD and other names.

According to several online reports, many labels lost “most or all of their stock”. How this affects the bands, the record sellers and the fans? Well, do the math. Indie artists who were counting on all that vinyl now have to figure out not only how to get the records out there, but how to recoup the costs associated with any reprinting needed to get the release to the shops.

Lots of people were screaming in August about “revolution” and how people were getting something back via these riots that they might have felt entitled to…but the burning also wound up affecting musicians and indie businesses too.

This little screed might be a bit late, but it’s also the sort of thing you don’t really think much of when events are literally blowing up–how does the insanity on the streets translate into crippling or destroying somebody’s livelihood–someone you would never make a target of for any reason if you understood what you were really doing?

I was grateful to hear about Dub Vendor surviving the riot for a variety of reasons, and while it’s easy and fun to point fingers at the record industry and companies like Sony for being the clueless dinosaurs they prove themselves to be time and again.

But at the end of the day there are still a LOT of non-corporate, indie friendly people working in and around this business. And when you torch the SonyDADC plant, you’re also setting fire to some of those people’s hopes and dreams, too.