At the behest of Del Boy (via the SAS) to ABBA, we are encouraged to dare and take chances.
We at Store Corner Records have had a wonderful real work example of this trope in our search for new signings to the label.
Recently a “demo” dropped into our inbox which was recorded on an iPhone in a rehearsal room of the more, shall we say, industrial nature. A space somewhere between functional and falling down around you.
The sound quality as you would suspect was not exactly Abbey Road, more in the middle of the road and a particularly busy one at that. My first suspicion was that this may have been some kind of pocket dial recording, for the pocket think thick corduroy as sported by your ponytailed social studies teacher, which was only discovered at a later date.
Now all logic would scream that this is not something you would send into a record company in the hope of securing a deal. And indeed scream the singer did, at the speculative guitarist, who had somehow thought this was a good idea. The message exchange going something like this. “Do you think I should sent my rehearsal recording into this record label”? “ Are you fuckin’ crazy it’s shit!’ came the singers curt reply. The rather sheepish response being, “Hmmm I’ve sent it already”.
Upon hitting play our first reaction was, ah isn’t that sweet the wee laddies have made a wee recording. However, when the Bass line kicked in it could have been from the stabbing fingers of Mr Steve Hanley himself, (The mighty Fall). Then in amongst the corduroy muffled cacophony an actual song began to emerge from the dark recesses of the teacher’s pocket (now now, behave yourselves). “Why don’t we go along and watch one of their rehearsals”? So a couple of us set out for the badlands of darkest Whitburn to the above mentioned rehearsal room. And sure enough we discovered 5 young men with a very obvious, albeit very raw talent. A tentative conversation then ensued with us briefly explaining the ethos of the label. They all seemed to buy into our back to basics approach and after a very sketchy summary of how we see this going forward the band agreed to be our fist signing.
The encouraging words of Del boy, Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Benny and Bjorg are therefore not to be dismissed lightly. Sometimes making a leap of faith does not inevitably end in broken spirits and bones. The moral of the story then being that to find the “others” they don’t necessarily have to be emitting a particularly strong signal to be recognised by a fellow traveler.
The band in question are currently in our studio cutting their debut album. We’re keeping this on the lowdown at the moment, the more cynical of you out there no doubt surmising we’re simply trying to surround the band in some kind of mystique. The reality is in fact of a much more pedestrian nature, in that they only really have 2 complete songs at time of going to press. Plus, crucially, a handful of very promising song sketches.
Our search for talented musicians, to join us on this audio odyssey, continues a pace and we welcome your demo submissions via our @info email. As ably demonstrated by the above example, submissions don’t have to be of the highest quality, recorded at great expense in some shiny studio with George Martin at the helm.
FIND THE OTHERS
Kirk Maxwell-Sterling
Dec 2025