Founding Ideals

K records was not created with intention to make a profit. Calvin had an idealistic vision. His goal focused on the musicians making enough profit to allow them to solely concentrate on their music. Yet, at the same time he advocated the distribution of music and creating a musical documentary without commercialization and the influence of fat cat executives. (Bradly, 3)

“ I’m very much a follower of Andy Warhol and I believe that some of the radical ideas he championed are within the framework of the consumer. What I think K does is we ride a very fine line in that consumer’s world, because we are brought up in this culture to be consumers. That is our role in American society. . . And, as a company, as an entity, our role is to create a product to be consumed. That is the role of a company. And what K does, that is different from those companies, is that we don’t create products to be consumed, what we do iswe document artwork to be appreciated by those who are intrested in appreciating it. And it’s packaged like a product, but it’s not a product, it is a work of art. And we disguise it as a product.” –Calvin Johnson- (doorbell,4)

Calvin worked to develop a music factory, based on ideas adovocated by Andy Warhol. He and Candice worked to bring music back into the community, he promoted; art should belong to everyone, and he began reforming the social conception of music and its place in our culture. The combination of punk philosophy and Warhol ideology started as a radical seedling, and grew, to inspire people across the world to form independent labels much like K.