Where mojo and money collide in Swiss pop

Ask anyone who are Switzerland’s pop pioneers and they’ll cite dance duo Yello and post-industrial group The Young Gods. Bands wanting to do the same today must first face the music industry blues. In a cellar shop in Bern’s old town, a record player is playing 1920s blues. Women’s panties hang from the ceiling touting rock ‘n roll slogans. Bibles jostle for space alongside jars of Brylcreem, racks of T-shirts and stacks of vinyl. Welcome to the world of Reverend Beat-Man, one of Switzerland’s musical entrepreneurs. The blues trash singer spent his teenage years running a bootleg cassette label before starting the bona fide Voodoo Rhythm record label in 1992, having found it hard to put his own unusual music out and seeing other bands with the same problem.  The label has since put out hundreds of releases by Swiss and international acts. “I think we’ve sold a million records. It sounds a lot, but we are still really small,” Beat-Man says. The … Show more
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Culture
– SWI swissinfo.ch