Interview with Mike Harding by Rebels in Control, July 2004  You
began as enthusiasts who found an audience.  When we started
out, the system that supported the underground was flourishing.
Seventeen percent of UK sales were run by Rough Trade and the
independent scene. There were small record shops in every town,
a thriving underground. But I think that these days, the
underground is too divorced from and cannot challenge the
mainstream. Instead there is a collection of groups, such as the
goth market, the nu-metal market and so on. They used to be part
of a collective underground.  Each group is servicing itself
with its own niche publications, niche websites, niche forums…
With so many fragmented niches, it is hard for any of these
groups to reach a large audience because the retailers have been
concentrating exclusively on the biggest selling artists.
Meanwhile the distributors are owned by massive, megalithic
companies. There used to be lots of different major labels, some
of whom were quite small, labe