Indeed, as Svenonius would be the first to note, the indie record label is, in the end, just a small business. This is where Tsunami’s message on A Brilliant Mistake—basically the Sgt. Pepper of small business management—seems so remote today. With Bandcamp, GarageBand, iTunes, Spotify and so many other ways for musicians to record and distribute their music, the old world of duplicitous record execs wielding sexy contracts and Tower Music, Clear Channel, and Target zealously guarding access to the narrow channels that once reached listeners on radio and in retail feels very far away. The problems of musicians remain today—notably, Toomey moved on to defending the rights of artists as head of the Future of Music Coalition—but in many ways they differ from the ones that Tsunami narrated on their ode to exhaustion, “Double Shift.”

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