Part of the Ngaro collective (www.ngaro.com), an umbrella organisation that can encompass all forms of media, Green Bullet Records is a brand new internet label, set up especially to give internet presence, and a global means of music distribution, to unsigned blues, and blues-related, artists. They are committed to helping their acts in every way possible, including finding and promoting gigs. There are no up-front cost whatsoever to the artists and no exclusivity requirement.

	Juke Joint Jones rockin' the steel at the launch party

Founder, Rod 'Juke Joint' Jones, says, "When the idea of forming the world's first exclusively internet-based blues label was mooted, it quickly became obvious that Green Bullet would be perfect for Ngaro, and vice versa – both entities are the stronger for the collaboration. Putting together an internet blues label just seemed such a natural thing to do. There's such a wealth of blues talent out there, which is never going to get signed by any conventional record company, so I thought cutting out the middle man and giving bands and individual players direct contact with their audience via the internet and downloads seemed a great idea. And of course, it’s global – your potential audience is everyone on the planet. Why blues? Well, for me the answer’s obvious – the eternal truths of the blues will always be there- the blues is a great, timeless music, which the music biz will never acknowledge. There’s a great blues scene out there, both in London and beyond – it’s time somebody gave it a break.

"Each of the individual labels within Ngaro is run by a label head – what you don’t see on the site at present, for example, is that there are Rockabilly and Bluegrass labels being developed by experts in those fields. I'm the label head for Green Bullet, and I'm greatly indebted to our founder member artists, who've been our guinea pigs if you like. I want to especially mention Steve Morrison, who's helped, and continues to help, in many different ways. In the back room is Chris Farmer, who does the website construction, web formatting of artist's work (which we do completely free of charge, unlike other internet labels) and the general Ngaro administration.

Chuck McQuillan

"The initial roster of artists that you see when you visit the site is deliberately small at present – we are in this for the long haul, and we want everyone out there in cyberspace to equate Green Bullet with quality. Something you could almost buy sight unseen. We’ve had a lot of interest already in the month since we launched (including a fine guitarist/singer from New York) and several CDs will be going up on the site as a result of that, but we are not going to be hosting mediocre or cliched music just to grow our catalogue quickly. Our plan for the future is to do a lot of A+R legwork in London and other areas such as Essex, where there's a strong band-based blues scene that we’re very interested in, and also a lot of internet research leading us to make contact with bands, artists and organisations around the world.

"We staged our launch gig last month, supported by bluesinlondon, and it went down a storm – the place was packed, the joint was jumping, and audience and artists had a great evening. Steve Morrison recorded the whole evening, and is mastering that at present – highlights of the evening will be available to download very shortly. The first ten bluesinlondon fans who e-mail greenbulletmeister@gmail.com with the password "Jack's in Cuba" will receive a free copy of the CD. No-one, frankly, who hears the music will be able to doubt the talent that already exists at Green Bullet, or what a great evening it was. We're going to be doing Green Bullet evenings again in the future, and they’ll be publicised, of course, on the bluesinlondon site.




Steve Morrison and Blues Abuse (L). Al Richardson (R)

"Green Bullet aims to become not only the world’s first specialist download-only blues label, but also the best. If you're a musician with a decent quality CD of blues, or bluesy, songs which have your distinctive stamp on them, send an e-mail, to greenbulletmeister@gmail.com. If you’re a fan, please support the website www.ngaro.com . It'll be well worth your while."

Photos by Katje Ford