Here is a poster I designed for a show with these two bands in it, Scarce and Great Slave.
I wrote to Terry Pulliam the other day:
I suppose that’s what killed the band in the end. Trying to find a way to get a label to notice us. I was always against that strategy and I think time has proven me right. Look at labels these days, in complete disarray.
And so it goes.
Are you in a band and reading this? You know what you should read? You should read this: The Problem With Music by Steve Albini
Then save your money and build a home studio. Find a friend who screenprints to print your t-shirts. Burn your own CDs. Build yourself a website. Be nice to your fans. Be nice to your peers. Book your own tours. Play live like your life depended on it.
I don’t know how many times I’ve directed young whippersnappers to that Albini article - it might be less cogent now that MySpace, etc., and wholesale piracy have made big labels nigh obsolete, but it’s still a good read.
Here’s the thing on Great Slave, though. I always hated the name Bubaiskull. It was originally a name we made up for a joke metal band, then Tim Brennan refused to play with us unless we used it. Then he quit the band after one show. But that one show was so well received we got another one, and then we were stuck with the name no one could pronounce or spell. It wasn’t so much that I wanted labels to accept us as that I didn’t want what we were doing to be dismissed out of hand because of an ungainly, incomprehensible name.
Great Slave originated as a side project Tim and I talked about. We were going to sock ourselves away at his parents’ cottage for a couple of months and do new stuff based around Killing Joke, the first Death Cult record, the Birthday Party, and the first couple of PIL records. It was going to be tribal and spaghetti-westerny, and the name “Great Slave,” in my mind, was supposed to evoke Swans, not (the band) Great White (as, in retrospect, it was bound to do.)
In the end we just used it to rename the existing band, which was dumb. I remember after our first gig with the new name, Tracy coming up to me and saying, “Hey Chris, Great Slave - good name.” (Logan brightens, is about to say “Thanks, man.”) “FOR A LAKE.” (Logan is deeply embarrassed and wishes to melt into floor.)