The last dozen years have not been particularly kind to the record industry. At this point, you’d have an easier time tracking down a mint copy of Detective Comics #27 for under a million than weather the sea of free downloads, leaks and overall reduced value of today’s music. So it’s nice to see a label like GC Records, run by awesome people and based right here in Vegas, continue to thrive. We recently talked to GC heads Shahab and Heela Zargari about the label’s origins, and how it has changed over the years.
Can you tell me a little bit about GC Records? How did it start and where did the name come from?
Shahab: GC Records stands for Geykido Comet Records. Comet is what my name translates to in Farsi. Geykido is this whole other story.
There was a Japanese foreign exchange student in my class, so I asked him what my name would be to in Japanese. It didn’t really translate, so he picked Geykido, and the reason for that was because we had to give a presentation in that class about revolting against the King of England during the Boston Tea Party. So I drew a picture of the king on the board and ran up and hit myself against it. Turns out geykido means “ultimate anger.”
The label started shortly after I met one of my good buddies, Dave Small, at UCI where Heela and I had gone to college. Back then it was kind of boring. It was a pretty competitive school and no one really talked to each other. I saw this guy walk out of some class with a Crass patch on his jacket, and I had one on my bag. We were like, “Hey!” So that spawned a friendship. He was doing this one-man project where he was constructing oi music using digital means. He was looking to put out a 7”. That’s how it started—with an Intro5pect 7”.
Heela: We weren’t together when he first met Dave, but by the time the 7” was pressed, I had gotten involved with the label. I remember our first record stuffing party!
We all have those favorite labels from our youth. What labels influenced what you do today?
Shahab: Lookout Records and Recess Records come to mind as labels I grew up loving. Not only the output, but the business stances as well.
Heela: Definitely those. Mint Records out of Vancouver, too.
Outside of GC Records, you’re also very active with photography and filmmaking. How does that passion influence what you do with the label?
Shahab: If I hadn’t started the label, I probably never would have become a film director and producer. Putting together promo photos and music videos for our bands (and trying to convince the world that our releases were worthy of spending hard earned money on) was my first introduction to video editing and the techniques of persuasion. I’ve been honing my skills ever since.
GC comes off as very family-oriented, with you running the label with your wife and having your brother in law’s band signed to it. What do you like about working with family and are there any unique challenges that come up with doing things that way?
Shahab: Actually, when Heela and I moved to Vegas in 2008, we brought all of our inventory and merch but were about to close up shop. It was Zabi, Heela’s brother and bassist of HOTS and now Illicitor, who asked us to keep it going.
He knew we were trying to recoup from the crashing economy, the faltering music industry, and being new parents. He took a lot of GC onto his own shoulders and came onto the team. So even though we have released his bands, it’s no different than Billie Joe releasing Green Day on Adeline, or Mr. Brett putting out Bad Religion on Epitaph.
We’ve had falling outs with friends and label collaborators due to changing ideals and whatnot…
Heela: But with family, ours in particular, if we fight, we quickly make up. We always have each other’s back, no matter what. That’s the glue holding our little label together.
GC started right at the cusp of the internet drastically changing the musical landscape. How has the rise of mp3s, iTunes and later the resurgence of vinyl affected how you run the label?
Shahab: When we first started CDs were the craze. But we did CD and vinyl. Mostly Europeans would buy our vinyl and Americans would want CDs. Then 5 or 6 years into it, file sharing brought the entire music industry to its knees, and while piracy didn’t affect small indie labels like ours, the closure of three of our distributors (lots of stock never returned to us, tons in back pay up in smoke) was really hard on us. We went from releasing three to five EPs and LPs a year to one or two because of the lost capital.
We then started going back to treating each new release as its own project, sometimes co-funding releases with other labels or even the band themselves. Really just depending on what the band needed and what we could offer. Now there is a resurgence of vinyl and people actually paying for digital copies and/or streaming on Spotify, etc. Last year we made more on digital sales than physical sales. While as a record collector that makes me a little sad, it’s great because there was no shipping costs involved and that little bit helped us keep our doors open and bands happy.
We aren’t necessarily selling more vinyl to Americans now that vinyl is making a comeback, but I can tell you one thing we do feel: vinyl pressing turnaround times have tripled since we sent in the Intro5pect 7” to get pressed back in 1998. There’s such a long line of folks pressing vinyl you just have to queue up and hope the records are pressed sooner rather than later. It’s crazy.
Thanks, Shahab and Heela! For more info on GC Records, check out their official website here.
GC Records photo by Aaron Mattern
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