Rob Miller's "The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low"

Rob Miller is the cofounder and former co-owner of Bloodshot Records.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low: A Curious Life in Independent Music, and reported the following:

I think Mr. Ford Madox Ford would be reasonably pleased with his hypothesis in this instance.

Page 99 finds the reader in the latter chapters of the first half (or, as I call it, this being a book about music, “Side A”) as I stumble along the circuitous path that led me to start an independent record label, Bloodshot, that became internationally known as a home for a curious blend of punk and roots music. Jumping back and forth in time between an adolescence in the 70s that looked upon what is now “classic rock” with a mixture of horror and boredom, and the origin story of the label in mid-90s, the book to this point devotes itself to the important idea of finding freedom, identity, and community in the music of the underground. In my colossal leap from comedy records and AM radio baseball, to hardcore punk rock---skipping any incremental steps in between, I discovered an openness to exploration, without foreknowledge or judgement. It was in this manner that I started to hear whispers and echoes of the music that came before, the weird underbelly of Americana. One particular band that had a powerful impact was The Cramps and their song “Human Fly.”

The Cramps were the mysterious distant uncle I secretly wished would come to family reunions. He’d tell stories about knife fights and scoring with showgirls, hand me a shrunken head he bought at a bazaar somewhere in the East and then wink, give a boozy, smoky laugh, and let me take a pull off his flask if Mom wasn’t looking. And while both sides of the family of rock and roll sang about the virtues of wanting to kiss your sweet lips, the Cramps aimed a little lower, and a little closer, to the truth than most spoke of in decent company. “Human Fly” was a baptism in the murky waters that course past us unseen, but not unfelt. Thanks to that pulsing, aural equivalent of an opening rusty crypt door, I have taken the road more strange and less popular, and that has made all the difference.

After an ornamental section divider in the middle of the page, I describe the insidious creep of tribalism and intolerance I started to experience in the punk rock scene, the very qualities I was trying to escape in the first place.

By the end of high school, the bloom had, as they say, fallen off the rose of much of punk’s promise. A friend of mine once remarked that hardcore had the shelf life of unpasteurized buttermilk, and many aspects of a scene that had arisen from a dissatisfaction with conformity quickly slid into the age-old traps of tribalism and self-destruction. One orthodoxy was traded for another; boots and braces became the new IZODS and boat shoes. Hair too short at school was now not short enough at shows. I’d been to this movie before, and I didn’t get into punk and hardcore only to feel out of place again.

At the bottom of page 99, I draw a throughline from my distaste for conformity and the stifling expectations of codes and rules to my reflexive impulse to blaze my own trail.

Worse, there was an emerging absolutism regarding the music itself. It was hardcore or it wasn’t. There were “right” albums to have, and “wrong” albums to have, “right” shows to go to and “wrong” shows to go to. Wearisome What is versus What is not arguments of authenticity--which I’d encounter ad nauseum in a different context later with Bloodshot--overtook the conversation with Talmudic gravity.

While page 99 does not deal with the any of the specifics of the growth and development of Bloodshot Records, nor the issue of the business of independent labels in general that takes up much of “Side B,” it is an informative glimpse into the tone and beating heart of the book, and highlights a theme that reverberates throughout. That is, as another band I cite as an influence, Crass, put it, “if you don’t like the rules they make, refuse to play their game.” Be it in the usual pairing of punk and country, or in the way I chose to run the business.

Visit Rob Miller's website.

--Marshal Zeringue