Mint Condition

Surviving for 20 years is a remarkable feat for even the most business savvy indie label. So it's a minor miracle that Vancouver-based Mint Records was able to break that mark this year, given the anti-careerist attitudes of its founders Bill Baker and Randy Iwata. Their story is chronicled in Kaitlin Fontana's new book Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records. Exhaustively researched, Fontana tracks down almost everyone ever associated with the label, chronicling its early success with cub, the subsequent growing pains and partnership with Lookout! Records in California before their turn of the century renaissance on the backs of Neko Case and the New Pornographers. Never hip nor passe, Iwata and Baker survived by denying their own success and releasing records they love.