With "Guitar bands are on their way out", Decca Records-A&R-man Dick Rowe justified in 1962 why he didn't sign the Beatles who were offered to him - thus committing the greatest showery act in pop history. This pod is fondly dug up to show how proficiently bizniz pundits can err when it comes to discerning zeitgeist or great art. And, of course, it's fondly recounted to point out how Guitar bands are perpetually considered to be out of touch: Dick Rowe apparently felt, even more than five decades ago, that there was nothing left to be gained from a couple of guys and their guitars, that the form had outlived its usefulness; a leitmotif that still gets trotted out with reliable regularity.
In fact. Much of the vast field of guitar-pop-rock/indie is treading water in terms of both content and aesthetics, but how little this has to do with the mere form, and how much with the artists who fill it, is something Maurice Summen's benignly radical Staatsakt label has proven time and time again in recent years as it tracks down bands and releases their records that wring something new and awesome from what at first glance seems an outdated form. And now please welcome: ISOLATION BERLIN.
