Bobsled Builds Momentum
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Though his taste now leans toward guitar pop, Salerno’s interest in music began when he discovered Kiss in the 70s. At age seven, he begged his mother to buy him his first record. “She was going out to run some errands and she said that if I wrote the name of it down she would get it for me,” he says. “I wrote down ‘Kiss Alive II.’ She came back and I was really excited, yelling, ‘You got it! You got it!’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I saw that record cover. There’s no way on earth that record’s coming into my house. Here, I got you this instead.’” She handed him Barry Manilow Live. “Needless to say, Kiss Alive II was the second record I got.”
As his interest in the sport waned, he turned increasingly to music. Jim Powers, founder of Chicago’s Minty Fresh label, was an old friend–his family lived across the street from Salerno’s in Aurora–and he often discussed music with him. Powers advised him that it was a risky business for a family man: by the summer of 1995 Salerno’s second son was on the way, and Amy was splitting her time between school, waitressing, and child rearing. But with her support, Salerno approached Powers about a job. “I took a pay cut of about 75 percent. What I was making per month was only $100 more than my mortgage.”
Salerno insists that he can do even better, especially if he concentrates on his area of expertise–radio. Although at the moment his only assistant is an intern, he hopes to have at least three full-time employees a year from now, including one full-time radio promoter. “I think one of the reasons why a lot of indie records aren’t popular is that a lot of the labels don’t want to deal with the process of getting them on the commercial radio,” he says. “They’re more interested in creating their own niche. But I do believe that eventually some of my releases will be gold and platinum records.”
