A fun thought experiment I like to engage in with friends, neighbors, and peers concerns what particular public figures are doing right now, at this moment. Last week on FaCeBoOk, I played “What is Sarah Palin Doing Right Now?” with everyone. Many of my cohorts left decidedly excellent responses – everything from cleaning muskets, to shooting polar bears, to grilling mooseburgers, to Wikipedia-ing “VP,” to activities and extracurriculars that I dare not reprint here. Despite my penchant for making cusses every now and again, I try to keep this blog PG-13.

Time to play again! What do you, dear reader, think that Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records, is doing right now? My educated inference: he’s probably still waxin’ on why and how much he, with the fury of colliding galaxies, loathes Kevin Shields. Dude hates Kevin Shields

Kevin has never struck me as an unsavory fellow – manic maybe, but always polite – so one could assume that McGee is still sore from him spending all of his cheese on an album that McGee never really saw much money from, and subsequently played a factor in his meltdown around that time. The two-year Loveless recording cost a quarter of a million pounds (spent mostly in payments for 18 different engineers who worked on it), eventually bankrupting Creation and prompting McGee to sell half of his enterprise to Sony. Creation was laid to rest in 1999, and McGee has stated that, to this day, he can still only stomach listening to Oasis (ahoy!), as they were the only Creation group that recouped their expenses. Take a gander at this sneer of unsurmountable bummed-outness. As often indicative of the times in which we live, the least culturally significant of acts often corollate to the most commercially viable. Not trying to be a snob here, but it’s futile to ignore the sweeping smorgasbord of dongs that Oasis sucks upon (that might be one motive as to why Noel Gallagher got his ass sacked last week). Despite the critical lauding and undeniable musical impact of Loveless and other earlier Creation releases, the means did not justify the end for McGee, financially or emotionally.

From the Guardian:
“Loveless was a factor in my personal meltdown,” McGee [said]. Creation, he explains, dropped My Bloody Valentine after the album’s release because he couldn’t face working with the temperamental band-leader again. “It was either him or me,” says McGee, who was reduced to tearfully pleading with the musician to deliver the record before the whole enterprise went bankrupt.

You would never suspect that behind Shields’s unassuming exterior lay such a monster. “That,” says McGee, “is called passive-aggressive.” Legend has it that Shields, infuriatingly, would respond to demands as to when his magnum opus would be finished by blankly reciting My Bloody Valentine song titles: To Here Knows When. When You Sleep. Sometimes. Soon.“

McGee is still bitter, and has already condemned the MBV “reunion” (I use reunion in quotes as the group never, technically, broke up):

“My Bloody Valentine were my comedy band,” McGee said in 2007. “Ride were different – they were a rock band, really, a fantastic rock band – but My Bloody Valentine were a joke, my way of seeing how far I could push hype.“

All things considered, this isn’t a particularly unfair reaction. It’s hard to buddy up with someone who, directly or indirectly, sank your company and squandered your investment, regardless of whether the product was a masterpiece. No one except Kevin and Alan know the complete story, and as such, I maintain an equal respect for both men and their contribution to music. The quotes and general Behind the Music worthy anecdotes are fun nonetheless.

Of course, McGee has a lot else going on right now, from DJing around the UK as Death Disco, to writing for the aforementioned Guardian, to teaching and consulting. It’s good to see him making lemonade. It’s unfortunate, though, that he doesn’t sit back in his recliner and say “man, Creation was pretty brilliant.”

Because it was! Creation, for all intents and purposes, was the most important record label of its time. Creation, named after the mid ’60s English psychedelic pop group, singlehandedly created a second psychedelic age in the late ’80s.

OMG… DID SUMONE SAY ’80s?! I LUV TEH 80s!!!11!!!one!1!

Irrelevant sidenote: Sorry, I have to make fun of ’80s obsessed morons whenever I have the chance. At the music venue I worked at, we had ’80s night every Friday after whatever concert was that night. It usually started around 1a.m., and you felt the room get stupider around that time. But hey, I can’t say too much as this event’s bar sales average pretty much funded my modest paycheck.

Okay, where was I?

Oh, yes, Creation in the ’80s. Primal Scream, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Slowdive, Swervedriver, The Boo Radleys, Teenage Fanclub, The Telescopes, House of Love, and of course, My Bloody Valentine, all called this label home at one time or another. Very few musical ventures ever boasted as flawless, consistent, and vital of a roster as Creation. When you need to namedrop a group to cultivate cred with some hipster douchebag, bring out the big guns with a Creation creation of your choice.

Creation was shoegazing, and visa versa. Creation was as important as Motown and Sun, the only other record labels that actually originated a whole new genre, celebrating it with each and every album they distributed, and offered a community feel between each artist on the label and the fans themselves.

Thankfully, Creation still functions, just not as a label. The Creation website archives a vast array of amazing recordings, documentaries, history lessons, rad schwag, and tasty morsels for people like me who would’ve preferred to come of age during this time period.

Oh, and you can witness some of the madness unfold in this recent documentary about Creation and McGee. McGee’s cockney is a challenge to discern, for me at least:

I bring Creation up today because I discovered not too long ago that I still have the Creation Records sampler Patron Saints of Teenage, originally released in 1994 (and may or may not still be available). I use the verb “discovered” because I never purchased it. It ended up at my house sometime during my senior year of college. I used to throw myriad soirées and theme parties at my house wherein marathon drinking ensued. Big surprise, huh? Anyway, I found it in the living room after cleaning up, and held onto it. Though I love every song on this album, I would certainly give it back if the owner ever claimed it. So, if you:
1) attended a gathering at my house circa Februrary of 2007, give or take a month
2) are missing your copy of Patron Saints of Teenage, and
3) are known by me or my roommates (you can’t invite people to your house you don’t know, you see – so don’t try to swipe a free jam hive) – feel free to contact me about it.

Enjoy some smatterings from Patron Saints of Teenage below. Biff Bang Pow, to connect some dots, was Alan McGee’s band, and consequently, the first Creation band. The Jesus and Mary Chain isn’t included on this particular compilation, but since Creation is the sole force responsible for “Upside Down,” I felt it was appropriate to include.

And for shits and giggles, there’s a “Which Creation Records Band Are You?” quiz, which is hilarious to think about. I love these quizes, especially when someone decides to post their results all over the Internets since they reveal, I guess, something insightful about themselves or whatever. Turns out I’m Slowdive, and hence, discovered a whole new facet of my personality.

MP3 :::
The Pastels – Baby Honey
The Telescopes – High on Fire
Biff Bang Pow! – There Must Be a Better Life
Meat Whiplash – Don’t Slip Up
Revolving Paint Dream – Flowers in the Sky
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Upside Down