by Tim Frommer

The Jesus and Mary Chain. The Pastels. My Bloody Valentine. The House of Love. Ride. Swervedriver. Primal Scream. Oasis.

For many of us, this extremely abbreviated list of bands defines some of the better sounds emanating from Britain over the past two decades. Capital letter genres like "Shoegaze" and Brit Pop are well represented by the archetype bands in some instances. Not surprisingly, all these bands called Creation Records home at one time or another. Late last year, co-founder Alan McGee announced that he would leave the label in June 2000. That set off an avalanche of press and desertion from the label of its remaining stalwarts. Today, Creation is no longer.

Elsewhere in this issue of DAA, my colleagues talk about the cult of various labels and how some are singularly associated with a certain sound or genre. Rightly or wrongly, labels like 4AD or SubPop were branded as such earlier in their respective existences. Rather than considering that a crutch or a back-handed compliment, I found it astonishing that they could continue the spirit of 60s labels that cranked out narrow cast singles through full-lengths. Derivative? Well, there are a finite number of chords in the musical language and perhaps a smaller number of Thurston Moores.

Labels come and go by the hundreds with nary a second thought. Every once and while though, it's a worthy to recognize the efforts. McGee, the outspoken persona behind the label, founded Creation with Joe Foster and Dick Green in 1982. A decade later, the label entered into a distribution arrangement with Sony who owns the imprint name today. Eventually, like Sire and Slash under the Warner monolith, Creation will basically fade away. True to his form, McGee succinctly commented in the British weekly music newspaper NME, "I just got bored running a corporate fucking record company which Creation had ended up becoming."

Creation truly was unique. A singular sound doesn't define the label during any period in its life. Simply put, it relied on talent. On the shoulders of songwriters like Kevin Shields, Guy Chadwick and the latter-day Glimmer Twins of the Reid brothers (or the Gallaghers if you like your pop distortion-free), music critics ran out to coin cheeky new genre names. And music hacks ran to imitate. And, with the way music copyright law works, American acts needed separate protections and representation in UK and abroad. So Creation took its pick from the roster of American independents and distributed the work of bands like Sugar outside the US.

For nearly two score years, Creation was anything but corporate, a leader, not a follower. At 40, McGee has spent half of his life bringing the music to the discriminating masses and has no plans to stop. Not surprisingly, he sees the musical future tied up in the ether. "The way that I perceive the future is having a record company, having a publishing company, having my internet start-up compnaies, having a film company and having a management company. The future for me is multi-media." The creator has launched a new web site, www.clickmusic.co.uk. It's one of merely four projects McGee is currently plotting with Foster.

In due time, I'll point my browser that way and you would be well advised to do the same before some internet music scribe has made a portmanteau surrounding a half-dozen super cool new bands. But for the moment, heavy rotation on my hi-fi has been reliving the sonic truth. As noted by Super Furry Animals' leading man Gruff Rhys, "Nostradamus predicted that creation would come to an end in 1999 and everyone thought he was talking about the world. Nostradamus' vision came true when Creation came to an end."