At its core, punk rock is uninterested in fame.
Most bands that subscribe to this–admittedly–unreliable categorization would agree, and with their anti-establishment ethos and jagged-edged personas, it’s hard to not see why.
So, after The Cribs–a punk-sibling trio based out of Wakefield–re-released their first three albums at the end of July 2022 they were shocked–yet uninterested–to find that every single one of them sat cozily in the UK’s top-ten charts next to Harry Styles and Beyoncé.
“We find it funny and weird to be in the charts with all those popular artists,” Ryan Jarman, the band’s lead guitarist, said, “but it genuinely isn’t why we do it. The thing that means the most to me is that people still care about the records after 20 years because you don’t know if that’s going to happen.”
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Jarman and his two brothers, Gary and Ross, reissued the albums because the vinyl editions had been out of print for a while, but aside from this pragmatic reasoning, the re-release served as a bookend to a saga that began nearly two decades ago when they signed with their first, long-term management company.
But, before the three brothers found themselves wrapped up in the legal drama that led to their reissues, the Jarman brothers were just three young men roaming the aisles of Wakefield’s second-hand music shops, looking for bootleg copies of the Sex Pistols and Ramones, and while one may be tempted to describe and, in part, reduce their work to an artifact of the indie sleaze movement of the early 2000s, The Cribs have proven themselves to be vital and enduring to the world of music.
Their secret? It’s impossible to say for sure, but there is something profound in their experience as brothers–something that sets them apart and speaks to the punk ideal that informs their music.
“It really does go back to our youth,” Ryan Jarman said, “it’s hard for me to remember a time where I wasn’t in a band with my brothers. I haven’t really been in a band with other people, but I think it works really well for us. With us having the same influences and being into a lot of the same stuff growing up, it’s really intuitive. If I write a song, I know that they’re going to put exactly the kind of parts on it that I’m really looking for and the same goes for them.”
Their trust for each other is apparent in the way their styles and voices effortlessly blend together. It's a thrill that many bands never get the chance to experience before the bickering, blaming and egoism eventually gets in the way of that.
For The Cribs, the small quarrels amounted to nothing, and the big ones–well–didn’t exist because when it came to all the major issues, they put up a united front. And in 2017, after they released their fourth top-ten album in the UK, they found themselves facing their biggest challenge yet.
Coinciding with their album release, The Cribs left their long-time management group and decided to dig into their business affairs and regain possession of their masters.
This issue has been on the minds of many people recently since Taylor Swift’s well-publicized bout with her former manager and record label, but unlike Swift, The Cribs’s former record label released their master’s to them without much of a fight.
“They didn’t want us to look into it,” Jarman said, “so they agreed to give us our masters back, and that immediately set alarm bells ringing for me.”
Shortly after this apparent win, two of the major record labels each took out lawsuits against The Cribs, claiming that they had the rights to their catalogs.
“As it turns out,” Jarman said, “the previous label we had been with had sold our rights to two different major labels at two different royalty rates for longer than they technically had a license for, so we got bogged down in the situation with the major labels.”
With lawyers on retainer and a bundle of cash the record labels had two things that the brothers didn’t, but that didn’t stop them from putting up a fight.
They took to the books, read up on torts and built a case where they would be representing themselves.
After a few, tough years the brothers won the case. It’s a story pulled straight from the pages of any great underdog story, but it wasn’t until then, when all was said and done, that Ryan Jarman truly realized how important it was to own your rights.
“The rights to your own record, that’s what you have done with your life,” he said. “That’s why it’s important, I think, to own your rights because that’s what you did. That’s the physical proof of what you spent your entire life working on, so it’s really disheartening to me to think that there are so many artists out there that don’t have the rights to their records and will never get them.”
“I think the business models in the music industry have been so heavily weighted in favor of the record companies,” he continued. “That was the established business model, but because we’re in a different paradigm, we’re in the streaming age now, we have to be different. Those old deals don’t make sense anymore, and I’m not sure they ever did.”
For years, the music industry has deceived artists with the appeal of a good time. Artists make the music and perform; labels handle the business. There’s no crossover. But, once musicians like the Jarmans decide to shift with the paradigm, the establishment begins to fracture.
Punk rock is largely defined by its DIY attitude and its indifference to titles, categorizations and other types of boxes. It’s part of why punk is so appealing, but there are few artists that express that ethos off-stage. Those that don’t, tend to fall into obscurity, but those who do remain eternal.
The Cribs stayed true to the punk ideal and refused to let the music industry take away the rights to their own music, and they did it themselves–three brothers, each separated by thousands of miles of land and sea–coming out the other side clean, strong and above all, honest.
The Cribs will be supporting Modest Mouse at the Pepsi Amphitheater on September 1. If you’re going, the doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the show starts at 7 p.m. But, if you haven’t bought tickets yet, head to pepsiamp.com and grab a ticket for a great night of punk and indie rock.
