Re-Creation

Alan McGee is, reckons Louder Than War, thinking of bringing back Creation:

Rumours have increased in the last hour though as Gun Club Cemetery (who we featured as a New Band of the Day yesterday, interviewing Alex Lowe) tweeting they have signed to Creation.

It’s rumour at the moment with the only signs the legendary label, once home to Oasis, Super Furry Animals and others, is back in business coming from the band and their manager.

A revival of Creation? Wasn't that what we were all praying for? Admittedly, we were praying for it at the time it was still going and mostly just churning out Oasis records and hanging out with Tony Blair, not recently.

There is a pressing problem, though: if you look at the back of any Creation re-release, it states clearly that Creation is wholly-owned by Sony.

Admittedly, they don't really care for it overmuch - never mind that the Creation Soup albums are out of print, Amazon have lazily lobbed all the Ride re-releases into the store under the impression that each record is called, erm, The Catalogue:

But own it they do - McGee got, apparently, £30million for the bit Sony didn't own when things were wound up, and although the soundtrack to Creation biopic Upside Down was supposedly released on a revival of Creation last year, it was really just Sony being adorable and pretending, like when Kelloggs put a 1950s version of Snap, Crackle and Pop on the cereal packet to frighten kids.

Is McGee going to, then, buy back Creation? At the time Sony bought it it was apparently worth £60million - clearly the value would have sunk since then, and he could buy it back without the catalogue, but even so that seems like a lot of investment just to allow Gun Club Cemetery to put out a record with a word that meant something to their fathers' generation in the middle.

I imagine McGee could turn up at Sony's offices and resurrect the label from within its failing empire. But 'wholly owned subsidiary of an electronics manufacturer' wouldn't really be the Creation myth that anyone would expect to be played into, would it?

McGee could follow both Branson and Tony Wilson and, with his baby off working for the conglomerates, he could create a Creation form of V2 or Factory Too. This sort of thing always ends in disappointment, though.

Like the time Harry Corrbett had sold Sooty to his son, decided he didn't like retirement and started doing the odd show. Matthew sued his own dad's ass.

Because Matthew knew, once you've flogged your dream to the highest bidder, it's been flogged.

So there's ways Creation could come back. But the real question would have to be: why would you bother?

On the other hand: if he revived Elevation, that would be audacious.