VANCOUVER (CUP): In the late 1980s, Randy Iwata and Bill Baker were a pair of UBC students working at their university radio station. They liked to party, they liked good music, and they had no idea they were about to create one of the most successful and enduring record labels in Vancouver’s independent music scene.
But now their story has been immortalized in Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records. The creative force behind such acts as the New Pornographers, Neko Case, the Evaporators, Hot Panda, the Smugglers, and The Pack A.D. finally have a chance to tell their story, in their own words.
The pair are humble about how far they’ve come. “We haven’t had a very exciting 20 years, I think it’s safe to say,” Iwata says in the first interview of the book.
“Like, it’s not the Mötley Crüe book, you know?” he adds.
But their rabid fan base, including Fresh’s author Kaitlin Fontana, begs to differ. The nearly 400-page book details every step (and misstep) Iwata and Baker took along the way, and illustrates what a unique and revolutionary musical force they have become.
Starting with a punk riot at Expo ’86, Fresh tracks the pair through their university years, and introduces us to the larger-than-life characters that helped shape the local music scene. One of those characters is Nardwuar the Human Serviette, who wrote the foreword to the book and still has a regular radio show at CiTR.
“Mint Records never really should have stood a chance. Both Satanists and art legends alike would have found the notion to base an indie record company out of Vancouver frankly stupid,” Nardwuar writes. “But Mint Records is still in the game after 20 years and 160 releases.”
In their first ad for the label, which appeared in Discorder magazine, Mint advertised themselves this way: “We love trash. We’re the unhappy folks at Mint Records. Anything dirty or dingy or dusty. Vancouver’s newest label. Anything ragged or rotten or rusty. We’re accepting demos. Yes, we love trash.”
But for the fans that have made Mint the musical powerhouse it is, their music is anything but trash. Whether you’ve followed Mint since the early days or you’ve never heard of them before, Fresh at Twenty is a fast-paced look at a golden age of Canadian popular music that still thrives today.
And if that’s not enough to sell it, the book also comes with a free playlist sampling of Mint’s artists.
Party on.