The problem with Sarah, of course – as the music press insisted on telling everyone every week – was that we had no ambition; we were just happy in our bedrooms, mailing out 50 copies of everything to people we knew personally. Sigh. This is a quarter-page ad from the NME, 9th Feb 1991. The thing below it is a quarter-page ad for My Bloody Valentine’s Tremolo EP on Creation. Ah, Creation – they wore leather trousers and did drugs and had a photocopier and everything, just like a proper label (James Brown – journalist, not Godfather of Soul – once mocked us, to our face, for not having our own photocopier). Is Tremolo one of the good ones? – I can’t remember.
Category Archives: Adverts
Missing The Moon advert, September 1991
Half of a quarter page strip ad from NME and Melody Maker, September 1991 – the other half was an ad for Glass Arcade. I think what we can all conclude from this is that artwork based on a purple and yellow sleeve doesn’t tend to reproduce that well in black and white newsprint. It cost us a couple of grand to learn that; you can have it for free.
Even As We Speak, Feral Pop Frenzy advert, January 1993
I’m always surprised by how many adverts we actually did, considering how expensive they were (this was a quarter-page in both NME and Melody Maker, so we’re talking four figures) – though clearly we were trying to cram in as much as possible, including a list of “recommended stockists” (not sure what the thinking behind that was, but I’m sure it made sense at the time). Note that Feral Pop Frenzy was a “mid-price LP/CD”, despite having 17 songs; that’s because we were feeling guilty about breaking our usual rule and including both the band’s last two singles… which we did because the singles hadn’t been available in their native Australia, and there was a vague chance that the album might actually make it down there…
Aberdeen, Fireworks advert
This was actually part of a longer advert shared with other labels distributed by Vital… the quote is from David Quantick’s NME review of Ivy’s Avenge…
For Keeps & Missing The Moon advert
A quarter page ad in NME and Melody Maker from October 1991. The railway platforms are at Clifton Down, our local station in Bristol. The last date on that list of gigs – 21st November at the Dome (Boston Arms) in Tufnell Park – turned out, of course, to be the Field Mice’s last ever performance.
Five years anniversary advert
This was the advert we took out to celebrate our fifth birthday; I think it amused us to use a quarter of a page in NME and Melody Maker to write the words “seven inch single” and “CAPITALISM” as big as we could, though in retrospect “seven inch” should have been hyphenated.
A Day For Destroying Things advert
We took out half-page adverts in NME and Melody Maker to announce SARAH 100 and the end of Sarah. It was also the first time we’d used the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol’s most famous landmark, on artwork. Given the price of half-page ads, you’d think it would have stopped people saying we’d gone bust… sadly, it didn’t. Clare was nineteen when we started Sarah, in case you’re wondering.