Mad Dog La Belle

Mad Dog La Belle was a record label I created in 2001 to manage the flourishing bands of Kilcoole, and to help any other bands that I could. After releasing one CD and having participated in a couple of related courses I decided that if the label was to concentrate on managing income and profit it would loose focus on the real goal of promoting underground talent. So I decided to create a collective.

Mad Dog Collective was created in April 2003 with a gathering of band members and others who wished to help. This became the open committee that decided on the policies I had laid out before hand. These were departments that would have one member as a coordinator for each. I was to be an overall coordinator. The departments ranged from art production, recording, releasing, zine production, gigs and touring, etc. The committee agreed that it would be open to all who wished to join and that there would be no leader. Everyone would voice their equal opinions on issues and if conflict arose it would be settled by discussion leading to unanimous conclusion. The finances would be managed by way of a central fund. All money made and donated would be placed here and it could only be drawn from after discussion with the open committee that would meet once a week.

We all believed this was all we had, that this was our jobs and we had to go for it. Six months later many had concluded that the collective had died. Over the summer of 2003 only a handful of meetings were called, production was slow and many felt there was nothing to produce. People lost faith as many didn't seem to want to put the effort in. I believed that it was just a bit shaky because it had just begun and it was, after all, the summer time. Beside, if people wanted something to work on, I thought all they had to do was think of something, use their imagination! But instead they spent their efforts moaning.

As time went by there were many comments made that I felt were not in the spirit of a decentralized collective. Power struggles seemed to be forming and the system seemed to be morphing in a nature I did not like. Of course it was not for me to like or dislike but it was up to the committee to decide changes, yet there was no committee!

I lost faith in the whole project and, after I realised others had also, I decided to begin thinking about forming a new collective. One where I would not expect or depend on people to join, I would do my best to fulfill my own goals, and maybe others may help. Hence Await the Phoenix. And here it is.

I realise that many may stay with MDLB and I may retain a position in the committee, unless of course it decides to no longer be an open one. I understand that even band members, and bands I wish to carry on working to promote may remain with MDLB. I don't feel that in the future I shall offer any input to the label, but do hope that this collective and the label can work together.

The media promotion wing of the collective will probably be quite similar in structure to that of the original Mad Dog Collective and will be discussed later. It will cover many forms of media from the beginning: art, music, video, literature, and its main aim would be to promote with DIY ethics that may possibly be more extreme than MDLB. It depends on what we come up with of course.

To conclude, it will be interesting to see how both organisations will develop, and I do believe this new collective will be a far better explanation of what I had in mind with the original one.

So, here we go.

-- Ed Whitfield, December 2003

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