College Issue: Hit Patrol
IN SUMMER BURKE’S ideal world, she would be running her own record label and radio station. As it is, the twenty-one-year-old is a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which is actually not a bad place to be for someone who dreams about records. With local bands like Superchunk, Polvo, Metal Flake Mother and Dillon Fence getting national press, Chapel Hill is being touted as the next Seattle, or as Burkes puts it, “the next indie mecca.” Burkes devotes a lot of energy to spreading the faith: writing for the entertainment section of the school paper, working as a DJ at the campus radio station, running sound for local shows. Oh, yes – Burkes, a voice major, also sings in a band.
It’s a Sunday evening in November, and Burkes is watching Greg Humphreys, Dillon Fence’s lead singer, play a solo set at the Cat’s Cradle, a popular campus haunt that’s shaping up as Chapel Hill’s CBGB. Most of the guys who work at the Cradle know Burkes – but only as an ardent supporter of the town’s music scene, she stresses, with a disdainful nod to a group of preening young women making goo-goo eyes at Humphreys. (“Why do girls do that?” she says. “I just wanna shake ’em!”) Clad in jeans and a casual jacket and tossing her long hair with tomboyish insouciance, Burkes gets a hearty welcome from several local musicians who will play their own sets later that night. They know she’s there to hear the music, not to check out the cute blond guitarist. They also know that in addition to her many school-affiliated activities, Burkes works as a field rep-resentative for EMI Record Group.
EMI is only one of several major labels that use students like Burkes to help promote their records. CBS Records, now Sony, started the first program for “college reps” in the early Seventies; other majors currently hiring students include PolyGram, BMG and Capitol. College reps are the slave-labor force of the industry: Usually handling two or more states, they hype artists to college newspapers, radio stations and record stores. For an EMI rep like Burkes, that could mean putting up an Arrested Development display in the record store down the block or phoning a radio station in Kentucky to see if the new EMF album is getting airplay. “It’s hard to do in between classes,” she says. “It’s like, you get a lunch break, and you run to a pay phone, call some radio stations.” The pay is low, but the potential to make those elusive music-biz contacts is high, and the perks range from getting free records to meeting musicians. “I don’t think we’re underpaid,” says Burkes, who earns eighty-five dollars a week for her efforts, fifteen of which is intended for expenses. “There are plenty of people who would do this for free. It’s a great way to make connections.”
Record companies typically recruit reps through college newspapers. As a sophomore, Burkes spotted an ad in UNC’s paper, The Daily Tar Heel, reading, “Major label seeks local representative.” Although she hadn’t considered pursuing a career in record promotions, the idea of getting to work with and support artists directly was intriguing. Dealing with the folks who push and play the records, she admits, was less appealing initially; the thought of making a pitch to a radio programmer or going to New York to meet an EMI exec made the normally ebullient student a little uneasy. “That’s ’cause I really hate to schmooze,” Burkes says. “But now I’m learning how – this sounds pitiful, but I’m learning how to schmooze enough to get by. A few months ago, if I would have gone to EMI’s main offices, I wouldn’t have made a good impression. But now I feel comfortable around those people.”
So comfortable, in fact, that when Burkes got to visit the New York office last year, she marched into the office of executive vice-president Fred Davis and presented him with a cassette tape of Metal Flake Mother. “I waited for him to get off the phone, and I told him all about how Chapel Hill is the next Seattle, blah blah blah,” Burkes says.” ‘Cause this band, they’re such artists that they don’t care about marketing themselves – which is cool, but they’re so great! They should be exposed to the masses!” When Burkes told others around the office about this impromptu meeting, they were aghast. “I said his name, Fred Davis, and it was like I’d said E.F. Hutton – clink! It was just so funny.”
College Issue: Hit Patrol, Page 1 of 5