404 RECORDS 404 records has a fairly banal story behind our name, i suppose. in the town of normal, il where the label was started, there's a house that was passed from rock friends to other rock friends for about 6 years. at one time or another it was a practice space for a number of central illinois bands, including traluma, tetsuo, brass knuckles for tough guys, supporting actress and others... i lived there for about three years which spanned the time during which we got the label up and running. and the address of that house? you guessed it - 404 (east cherry street).
AMREP Amphetamine Reptile- there is no meaning, it just sounds good.
ARBORVITAE RECORDS (Team AV) Well, I've always been an outdoorsman, so to speak, very involved in backpacking, trail riding, et cetera. I really like trees, and there were already labels such as Jade Tree and, of course, Tree. I have a tattoo of a Douglas Fir on the back of my arm that is from an image found in an old lumber company brochure, which was stuffed in the glove box of an old pickup that was parked on my grandparents' farm. It looks suspiciously like the old Tree Records logo, actually, but I'm not where Ken got that logo. Anyway, I like trees, and of course Arbor is the latin word for tree. Arborvitae is actually a coniferous tree of the cypress family, but at the time I named the label I thought it was the Latin name for the cedar family. The real Arbor Vitae is an ornamental evergreen with flat, closely fitted leaves resembling scales, and the Latin translated back into English is "Tree of Life". I thought that was pretty cool.
ART MONK CONSTRUCTION My original partner and I were getting a bit tipsy in an underground State College bar one night trying to think of a name that would just roll off the tounge. In our drunken stupor Art Monk Construction was thought up which completely went against our easy to say idea. This can be construed several different ways; for the artistic working class, each word stands for our politics. In the real world, Art Monk was a football player and it would be funny if he built houses.
BARSUK It was 1991, and I had been wanting a dog ever since I left home for college. On New Years Day, my partner and I decided to go visit our county's pet shelter, where we discovered the most adorable black dog that ever existed. He was six months old, and we were told that he had been given to someone as a Christmas gift, but this someone apparently didn't want a dog. Some people! We were also told that his name was Griffey (after Ken Griffey Jr., the baseball player), but that he hadn't really learned his name yet, so it was okay to give him a new one. Not being a baseball fan, I decided that he needed a new name. It was a tough decision -- took nearly two weeks to decide. We toyed around with the idea of naming him Fafnir, after the great Wyrm in Norse mythology, but that just didn't seem to fit. Being a Russian major, I would occasionally open my Russian dictionary and see if any words jumped out at me. 'Barsuk' means 'badger' in Russian, and since our new puppy _really_ liked to dig holes in the back yard, it seemed appropriate to name him after a burrowing animal. Despite the enormous number of funny nicknames (Barstool, Bunky, Barchunk, Chunkasaurus, etc.), 'Barsuk' seems to fit the dog. Several years later, my band decided to release a 7" single. We weren't affiliated with any record label, so we decided to put it out ourselves. Needing a name for our imprint, we chose the name of our beloved and inspirational pooch, Barsuk -- the dog who had to sit through every one of our practices, enduring the crashing of drums and cymbals, the blast and roar of the amplifiers, and the strangled off-key singing. He was, indeed, a noble dog, and well deserving of a record company. And that's the story of Barsuk.
BETTER LOOKING RECORDS On Vanity Economics: The Worse A Town's Economy Is, The Better Looking The Guys Who Work At The Local Gas Stations Are.
BIG WHEEL RECREATION Big Wheel Recreation as a name sucks...We really don't like it. We use the "BWR" to cover it up. A friend of our named "Sean Hastings" he drew this Big Wheel icon kind of new art style and it was cool... I wanted to name it something cool like "Hydrahead" or "Vagrant"
BLACK BEAN AND PLACENTA the name blackbean and placenta came about on a sunny weekend afternoon in ventura, california. my good friend sean was visiting my wife mary and i as we prepared dinner. mary, 7 months pregnant with our daughter lily, was cooking up some sort of blackbean soup and sean was talking about how she should save the placenta after the birth and bring it home and cook it for him. so we got to thinking that she could make a blackbean and placenta stew. sadly, we never had the guts to save the placenta. before our fourth kid was born, clement, i was seriously toying with the idea of saving the placenta and, after drying it out completely, cutting it up into little tiny pieces and including it with some dry blackbeans as part of a comp cds packaging. i truly regret not going through with this plan. it is a curse to be a chicken. incidentally, we learned a couple years ago that in some cultures women still to this day save their placenta after birth, dry it out, and make a tea from it that is supposedly therapeutic post partum. yummy!
BOXCAR RECORDS 1. In the months before my grandpa died he kept telling me about how he used to ride the rails as a young man, hopping boxcars across the country. He told me the same story again and again. I never got tired of hearing it and he was excited to tell it. He really enjoyed that time. The name is a tribute to him. 2. There is a song called "Boxcar" by Jawbreaker. For a while they were my favorite band. The lyrics dealt with being yourself rather than being pulled into other people's notions of what was cool or not. Even in the underground there are definitely still cliques with established rules of what's cool and what's not. "I'm coloring outside your guidelines..." I have varied interests and I'm happy that I do, so this song struck a chord with me. It went along nicely as the label name, seeing as how the things I release don't just follow one style. 3. My favorite book in second grade was "The Boxcar Children." All the reasons rolled up together made it seem like a really good name, but mostly it was about my grandpa. Another idea at the time was Register 9 Records. How horrid!
THE BUDDY SYSTEM We got our name because my brother and i are twins and we started our label with my old friend David fitch. He has since moved on but mark and i are still doing the label.
BURNT TOAST VINYL burnt toast vinyl was named that because i used to do an indie zine called burnt toast. and the first three releases from the label were 7". i liked the way that each word had 5 letters. now, the name burnt toast, just came to me, no significance whatsoever
CAULFIELD RECORDS I started Caulfield when i was 17, to put out a 7" by my band at the time, Sideshow. I had read Catcher in the Rye earlier in the year, and connected with the book. Anyway, I needed a name for this record label, and I decided to name it after Holden Caulfield. Perhaps a bit cheesy, or obvious. Anyway, 13 years later, it reminds me daily not to be a phoney.
CLAIRECORDS daniel's just always fancied the name claire. he sometimes mumbles it on the particularly sleepless nights as his mantra to cure insomnia. but there is no girl behind the name (as far as i know...ah, but isn't the wife always the last to find out?) back in gainesville daniel and a certain josh ran a super-small- scale indie mailorder named claire de leon! (exclamation mark included). josh had a dead cat named leon that he was paying homage to, and daniel wanted to tie that in with his love of claire. well, claire de leon! soon faded, and daniel and i were still interested in running a mailorder and starting up a record label. for lack of anything better, the name we decided on was clairecords. we really thought we were being clever, but so many people mistake it for claire records, that it has become something of a burden. someone else has even registered the url www.clairerecords.com! imagine!
COMING IN SECOND To tell you the truth, my brother just thought up the name "Coming In Second". He has a list of hundreds of names of bands, labels, songs, etc, and I just picked the one I like the best. If I didn't call it coming in second, I was going to call it "distance = time * cocoa", which was the second most appropriate name on the list.
DAMAGED GOODS It came to me on the toilet actually, i found myself humming Gang Of 4's first single which was called 'Damaged Goods' lucky really otherwise the label may have been called Groovy Pineapple!! Yuck, it was the 80's!
DEEP ELM several months before i decided to start Deep Elm, i had visited an area in Dallas, Texas called Deep Ellum. it's not a physical location, but the name of the art area in downtown Dallas...similar to "Soho" in New York (which is an acronym for South Of HOuston). i guess the ring of "Deep Ellum" stuck with me....but i did not know how to spell it. i first thought it was Debellum. anyway, several months pass. the morning after i decided to start the label, i was on a plane flying to Los Angeles and said "i guess we need a name and a logo." i started drawing on a manilla folder and out came a logo with the name Deep Elm. since then, the logo has been revised twice. there was really no planning...it just happened. as far as meaning, to me it describes that feeling you get when you are listening to a favorite record and for just a few minutes you are in another place...where all you can feel is the music / lyrics and nothing else matters. that place i call "deep elm." i know it sounds sappy...i'm so emo.
DIVOT I'm a golf nerd, I like to play and I like to watch. For those of you who don't know, a DIVOT is referred to the chunk of ground that comes up when hitting the golf ball. they can be very small or as big as your hand. divots are cool!!!
DOGHOUSE When trying to come up with the name for the label we would release my band's first 7" on, we looked on software packages for logos that would be cool to use. There was a logo collection that included a little dog with his head sticking out of a doghouse and said "I'm in the Doghouse". It was in 1988 and it was a crappy looking logo, but the name stuck.>>>>
DOGPRINT dogprint, as some of you may know, started as a zine in the early 90s ('92 to be exact). as the publication evolved to a more professional magazine, i also started to feel the need to release music by some of the bands that meant a lot to me at that time. dogprint records, started in '97, is nowadays an international indie label, having released records by artists from all sides of the globe - US, Japan, Australia, Europe -and as a label it's devoted to pop and electronica and things in between (easy listening, lounge, trance, dance). the name dogprint came to existence due to my personal love for animals in general, especially dogs. when i started my activity i wanted to step away from the usual names used in the business, so with no hesitation i thought to combine my love for dogs and my passion for the printed matter - hence the words 'dog' & 'print' seemed like a perfect match! the label carries the same name as dogprint is two things under one umbrella. ironically enough, my current logo shows the face of my cat, Seneca, who's the official dogprint mascot.
DOUBLE ZERO RECORDS I named my labe Double Zero after the 00 slot on the roulette wheel. I like to gamble and I used to like playing that game, now I play craps.
DRIVE THRU RECORDS No meaning really. Our friend Tim who owned Liquid Meat Records came up with it. It's kind of cool because the logo is everywhere you go. We hate fast food, by the way.
EENIE MEEANIE We wanted to have a name that was fun and unique and playful. When we were kids, we used to do eenie meenie miny moe when we were choosing something. We want people to choose our music like that. We hope people think "eenie meenie" has a lot of good bands, just pick any one. You know what i mean?
FANTASTIC POP there's nothing juicy behind the name i'm afraid. i started the label in, um, '95(?) with this boy sterling. he had been planning to start a label for a little while before we met, and had actually already selected the name Fantastic Records. i liked it, we ran the label together for a few releases, he moved to boston, i kept it going and briefly considered a name change but decided that was silly. it's taken from a 60s sci-fi publication - the type part of the logo was stolen from the masthead of the publication. the name doesn't mean much of anything other than that, well, everything on the label is fantastic! :)
FILE 13 Happy to oblige with an explanation behind File 13's moniker origination. It came from a vision. Spacing out on some pure-grade LSD in the late-80s, label founder, Captain Taco La Bang, watched his cat's right leg turn into Jerry Garcia's face. Absorbed in the (American) Beauty of the great, fingerless one, visions of 13 (thus, the "13") cheeseburgers began filing (thus the "File") out of Garcia's mouth . After watching the cheeseburgers wisp away into the night's sky, Captain Taco La Bang felt impelled to translate these visions through the music of his band, Hatful Day. Thus, the genesis of File 13 began to unfold.
5 RUE CHRISTINE We wanted to call it gerturde records after gertrude stein, but there was already a label called gert rude.
GRAND THEFT AUTUMN The name Grand Theft Autumn was a song title from Braid, my old band who the label was partnered with at the beginning.
GREY FLAT RECORDS The name presented itself to me after seeing the two words "grey" (spelled with an 'e') and "flat" used together in two separate profoundly moving literary sources in the span of a few days. "...not wanting to go out to that flat grey that seemed endless..." as written by the brilliant Albert Huffstickler, in his poem "Shelter" about northern New Mexico. "I refuse to lisp along with its grey-flat melody," a line from an essay written by Armilite P. Rifle called "Dick-Sucking Fool at Pussy-Licking School" which was reproduced on a record album I am fond of.
HAPPY COUPLES NEVER LAST As one could probably guess, the name stems from a doomed romance. I dated this girl for a couple of years, I thought things were going great and I started to think about her in ways that I hadn't thought about someone since the very first girlfriend that I had ever had (because you are always insanely crazy about your "first"). To make a long story short, I was all about her. She would always talk to me about how she really wanted to travel all over Europe so I started working a second job (unbeknownst to her) with the sole intention of using all the money for that job to finance a European extravaganza. Well, I finally saved up all the money and got everything arranged for the trip. Then the day before I was going to spring all of this on her, she dumps me. I really don't know why to this day. Maybe I just didn't spend enough time with her because I was working so much. Maybe I'm too selfish or I just wasn't "the one". It is really a moot point to the purpose of the story. So basically, I took the $$$ that I had saved up, bought a ticket to New Orleans, and went on a week-long drinking binge. One night in a bar, I met this guy whose wife had just left him and basically he was telling me about how his life was ruined. Then he told me that he was going to go home and kill himself and the last thing he said to me before picking up my tab was "Oh well, Happy Couples Never Last anyway..." He probably just went home and slept it off but the name stuck with me. I got back to Indianapolis and used the rest of my money to start the record label and that phrase was still in my head. I'm tired of the name now, maybe I'll change it to "Happy Couples" someday because things are going pretty good for me. Anyway, that's the story, provided that I didn't just make all of this up...it is all true though, maybe.
HAS ANYONE EVER TOLD YOU? Actually, this is a pretty cool little story. Let me preface it by saying that my girlfriend, Jennifer, also my label partner, has had people tell her many times that she looks like Molly Ringwald, ever since she's been a kid. I remember us discussing this at about the same time we began discussing starting a record label, although we didn't put the two topics together at that time. One night we went to a local coffeeplace here in Austin called Flipnotics. On the way there, we were throwing names for our new label back and forth. We still hadn't decided when we ordered our coffees. After giving us the change, the girl behind the register, looking at Jennifer, asked "Has anyone ever told you you look like Molly Ringwald?" We giggled a little bit, and went outside to continue the name game. One of us blurted out, "Let's call it 'Has Anyone Ever Told You?'!" and that was it. No doubts about the name. We knew it was perfect. So, when it came time to put out our first release and we needed a catalog number, we opted for "MR-01" - MR meaning "Molly Ringwald".
HOPELESS RECORDS Hopeless Records first release came out in December of 1993. It was more of a challenge or dare then a conscious decision to start a record label. I was in my senior year of collage at California State University Northridge when I directed music video’s for NOFX and Guttermouth. During the making of the Guttermouth video 1,2,3 slam the band asked me to put out a 7 inch for them since they were no longer going to be on Dr. Strange records and Nitro was not yet in existence. The name Hopeless simply came from the name of the first song on the7 inch. I had never thought of releasing a record but the challenge intrigued me. The next couple of releases were also related to filmmaking. Schlong Punk Side Story was a video rap party dare and Cinema Beer-te was the first of our video compilations which featured 4 of the videos I had directed. The Label actually became a label in 1995 when my vision became poor enough that it seemed unrealistic to continue pursuing directing. The other and probably just as significant change in making the label turn from a hobby into a real business was the addition of my first co worker Darren Edwards (a UCLA student who wrote a letter to the label asking for an internship.) As we released more records and reached more people, I realized that we were in a unique position to influence a large number of people. The awareness of this position, along with a desire to make a positive difference in my community and in the world as a whole were part of the motivation in starting Sub City in 1999. Sub City was launched in our attempt to raise awareness and funds for non profit organizations (who are fighting critical issues) while still having fun and releasing great music. It is our hope that the success of our bands and label can translate into a better future for our generation and those to come.
HUSH There was actually a short lived and now collectible west coast label in the 60's called HUSH. I don't know much about it and I've never heard from them. I just liked the way it (HUSH) looked in the logo (which is a red cross type graphic). I also have a tendency to out out anti-rock indie so it seemed apt that way.
JAGJAGUWAR A dungeons and dragons character name generator was used, and "Jagjaguwar" was the first result that popped up that had absolutely no presence on the internet. (i.e, if someone searches for Jagjaguwar, that is all they get - stuff about Jagjaguwar.)
JEEPSTER The name was chosen by my business partner Stef. The name was taken from the T-rex song. Apparently a Jeepster is a vampire! On one occasion I had Karokeed "Get It On" whilst extremely drunk with my partner. So when he came up with the name I liked it as it sounded like a person rather than a corporate company.
KILL ROCK STARS in the winter of 1990-1991 i bought some watercoler paints and painted the only painting I have ever painted in my life, i don't know why. the painting was called "kill rock stars." it was late at night and i was hungry, so i went downstairs to get some yogurt, but it was too runny, so I had to drink it. the ghost of john fogerty appeared in the window and told me to name the label after the painting.
KINDERCORE it arose as a play on the old punk tradition of adding the suffix -core to the end of just about any word to create a subgenre. I was from a punk background and I quite jokingly thought it would be a good way to describe the music that was going on in athens at the time kinder-core = children's hardcore. It still had a punk ethic, but it was much less serious and more care-free.
KRANKY My partner Joel Leoschke and I started the label in 1993. At first we considered using "curmudgeon," but decided it was too long of a name. Joel's ex-girlfriend suggested "cranky," and that seemed to fit with both partners' predominant personality characteristics. We changed the spelling to "kranky" to put our company in the grand tradition of american brand names like kleenex, rite-aid, etc. And, by the way, it is "kranky" - there is no "records" connected to our name. Never has been, we've never used "kranky records" on our logo, stationary or on the recordings. But people always assume that "records" belongs at the end of kranky. We tired of that, so tell the world to stop doing it.
LAST BEAT RECORDS Our record label grew out of an independent record store located in Dallas (Deep Ellum) , TEXAS. The store's name was also Last Beat. The name comes from the title of a song, Last Beat of My Heart by Siouxsie and the Banshees. We wanted a name that came from a song but that wasn't too obvious. Siouxsie was a great inspiration to me. The name Last Beat worked because it had different connotations, beat of a drum, music beat, etc. etc. etc.
LE GRAND MAGISTERY It is believed that the concept of Le Grand Magistery may have originated in Alexandria; this was an imaginary substance capable of transmuting the less noble metals into gold and also of restoring youth to man. As a record label, Le Grand Magistery has only existed since September of 1996, but in truth it is an idea that has been around since the beginning of time and it will last long after time has all but disappeared...
LOTUS HOUSE RECORDS because we live on lotus street....
LOVITT My name is Brian Lowit and I started the label. Somewhere along the line, I got the nickname Lovitt as people would get my last name mixed up and call me that instead then it just kind of stuck with me. Lovitt started as a small mailorder distro and I didn't know what to call and some one suggested that so I meant with it and lovitt grew into a label but the name stayed the same. Looking back, i would probably have named it something different but people seem to like it as they think its cute for whatever reason and that we are nice people with a cute label name. I'm not sure if that really answered your question. let me know of you have any more. I hope all is well!-brian/lovitt
MADE IN MEXICO When I was 19 I was partying in Tijuana and got drunker than I think I have ever been since. I went to a titty bar and ended up taking on of the dancers to a room in the back. Afterwards, all night, I kept yelling "I just got Made in Mexico!!!". The next morning I woke up with a pounding headache. I didn't really remember much of what happened, but my buddies sure wouldnt let me forget. For weeks afterwards they teased me with "You got Made In Mexico!!!"
MARCH RECORDS March Records got its' name out of complete desperation. The label was formed in early 1992 and we had finished our first release. Problem was, no label name or logo. A quick brainstorming session took place. Wanted something short & sweet, something that wasn't cute, that sounded like an old 50's label like Dot, Sun, etc. It was the month of March, St. Patrick's Day, a Michael Penn record called March was just out, the march on Tianamen Square, and the fact that it sounded like a strong word, forward thinking, we picked it. It was calling to us. It was also an anagram for CHARM which we thought was cute. Hopefully, we won't ever have to pick a label name again.
MOMENT BEFORE IMPACT The actual label name is a rip off of a song by the Holy Rollers (Dischord, circa late 80's/early 90's) of the same name. I guess I have always liked the idea of the moment before impact, something about the physics of it. Also, after our third release, our first three releases were released under a different name, we (I) received a cease and desist order from a lawyer. So after spending about 3 monthes without an identity, we just kind of picked this one. Not too much to it.
MY PAL GOD My Pal God takes its name from the Australian band God's "My Pal" 45. The name doesn't have a religious connotation but that does not stop submissions from people and bands who don't realize this. If you haven't heard the single that MPG took its name from, try and track it down. A great song, worth building a small business around.
NO KARMA I was in a band called Pieglue in 1994. Our English teacher, Joanne Krcmar, looked like a duck who wore a helmet. For some unrelated reason, we often said to each other "Joanne has no karma"--I have no idea why; we were in high school and it sounded funny. When Pieglue made t-shirts, the sleeve print was a duck wearing a helmet, encircled by the words "Joanne has No Karma." However, someone in the band was afraid she might see the shirt and somehow realize we were talking about HER, so he made me take "Joanne has" off the screen before I printed them. The shirts became a hit and everyone in our high school still got the joke (though I'm not sure *I* get it anymore). A couple years later, when Pieglue was going to record and I was going to release it, I noticed that the sleeve print looked like it was supposed to be our label's logo. So when the label started in 1997, I decided it was only right and natural to call it "No Karma." People ask all the time, and I usually them it doesn't mean anything because (a) it's easier to say that and (b) it doesn't really make sense anyway! But now I've gotten it off my chest and I feel much better.
OMNIBUS Omnibus got its name from a short film by the same name, basically about a man on a train that he can't get off of no matter how hard he tries. It was one of 4 short films showing together at the Crest Theater in Sacramento, sometime early in my sophmore year of college '93-'94. We (my bandmate Jennifer and I) had finally found a permanent drummer for our band, so originally we were going to rename the band Omnibus, but decided that it would fit the label I was starting better, so the band remained Shove. I've had people ask me if I got it from the one-cent stamp, or a stupid line in a Belle & Sebastian song, but it was neither. There is an Omnibus Press out of the UK that published a lot of books on the Smiths & Morrissey, but I didn't know that then.
PEEK-A-BOO Peek-A-Boo started out as a lengerie modelling agency, babysitting service and independent record label. I couldn't stand the kids and the lengerie business failed, but the record label took off. It's just impossible to make money off kids & sex these days, but anyone's willing to throw away a few bucks to support obscure rock bands.
POLYVINYL It's no secret that Polyvinyl Records is a huge, evil corporate company. At their conception, the stockholders had to be pleased with the name. So they sent a team of marketing and research specialists to find a name that would be ubiquitous with the company. After hundreds of test groups and polls, Polyvinyl Records became Polyvinyl Records.
QUALITY PARK There is a paper manufacturer by the same name, and a friend thought it fitting for the label. At a loss for anything else, I went along with it.
SADDLE CREEK Saddle Creek is a road in Omaha, NE that let to N. 55th St. There were a couple houses on 55th St. that we, as younger bands, practiced in. We all traveled on Saddle Creek a lot in order to get between our homes and our practice spaces. Naming the label Saddle Creek only seemed logical.
SANDWICH Well...this friend and roommate of mine in college always used the word sandwich when he felt like it was appropriate or not. Just insert the word sandwich into any sentence and it seems to work out just fine, that was his motto. Example our answer-machine said " Hello were not here we are out having a sandwich, please leave a message". He also spent plenty of time drawing pictures of sandwiches. So when it came time to come up with the name for my record label it was easy just add the word sandwich, and get my friend to design the logo.
SECRETLY CANADIAN I've been asked this question a couple times and the truth is...Secretly Canadian is my mother's maiden name.
THE SELF STARTER FOUNDATION I think a lot of the answer is the simple ages-old formula: panic + deadline = label name. I knew I had like 6 months to come up with a name, and the parameters were pretty simple: I didn't want the word "records" in the title, and I wanted something that had the ring of something bigger/more than a record label, as I wanted to also do concert promotion under the same title. (therefore it also couldn't have the word "presents" in the title). The Karate 7" was confirmed....they were going in to record, I had the p.o. box....and nothing. Months go by. Horrible horrible horrible names get jotted down on little pieces of paper like "Baked Alaska". Another month goes by. The Karate tapes arrive. Still nothing. Another month goes by. The Karate artwork arrives. Still nothing.
That weekend at a Goodwill in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania I find a series of 4 boxes of small books / pamphlets from the 50's and 60's. As far as I could tell, there were about 50 of these little manuals, titled things like "Writing A Better Business Letter", "The Key To Being More Organized", etc. I buy them all and take them home and pretty much forget about them. Another week goes by, and I really need to send the Karate artwork off to the printers. Procrastinating, I start flipping through the boxes of books. 2nd box, halfway through...."How To Be A Self-Starter" Within a day it became The Self-Starter Foundation.
I don't really know how / where the "The" and the "Foundation" came from...but it just sorta made sense in that moment.
SIESTA The name siesta was conceived to reflect our affinity for dreams, pleasures and fantasy. Apart from the hidden symbolic aspects we also love its sound. Of course I also mean the "internationality" of a concept which is very Spanish and mediterranean. Corresponding to the tea ceremonially taken by the British Royal Family we are entitled to a daily siesta. It has ironic implications concealed beneath the elegant velvet glove of the style.
SIX GUN LOVER "Quin es"............"Quin es"......BOOOMM!! "i never stole a horse from a man i didnt like". Soundtrack begins, "Wake up in the mornin and i raise my weary head....................". it all started when my fascination for gunslingers grew and exploded. this occured between ages 17 - 25. from books to movies, i have collectibles among other things. thank you to jon bon jovi for the name.
SLOWDANCE "slowdance" came to be when ezra and mike used to watch "soul train" in high school, while they would pop valiums. thus the motion of the dancers on the t.v. was altered, as were there brains. "dude" was a common reaction to these events... and when they ran out of valium and discovered cocaine, they decided to start a "record label" as a cover for their drug racket.
SLUMBERLAND the name Slumberland is taken from the turn of the century (the previous century, that is) comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland" by Winsor McCay. Brilliantly executed and effortlessly surreal, McCay's strip cataloged the sleepytime adventures of a young boy named Nemo. It's hard to describe how amazing these strips are without being able to see them -- the combination of breathtaking color (the sunday papers back then used a multi-color lithography process associated with art prints), alternately euphoric and terrifying storylines and precisely stylized art has never been equalled. McCay defined and deconstructed the comic form before there really was such a thing, and to compare his fiery dreamscapes to what's in the sunday papers nearly 100 years later is instructive and disappointing.
SOME RECORDS Some Records was a hardcore record store in the East Village where all the kids would hang out and listen to 7"s of their friends' latest bands. When Walter, Matt and Sammy decided to start a record label in 1997, they called up Dwayne (who owned the store which by then had been closed years) to ask him if they could call it Some Records. He said yes.
STAR TIME INTERNATIONAL In until 1963 soul artists never really released full length records. It was a singles dominated business. The 12"s weren't coherent artistic statements, just the packaging a couple singles with other throwaway songs to fill out the sides. In 1963, James Brown who had been touring endlessly for six years wanted to record a live album of him at the Apollo. The owner of King Records (his label) thought it was folly and refused. So James Brown paid for the pressing himself. The album "James Brown Live at the Apollo" made him a superstar (and rightly so.) When you drop the needle on thee record the MC is introducing the band. He states . . . "Ladies and gentleman, it is StarTime. Are you ready for StarTime?" The International part is just a jokey riff and makes it sound more like a reggae label. I like Jamaican music a lot.
THICK AS THEIVES Nothing is more important than the name. We wanted a name that matched our situation. The situation was: two good friends who wanted to release really good music. Well, there is this song called 'thick as thieves' by the Jam (one of my favorite bands). Thick as Thieves is some sort of slang for really good friends. To our knowledge it has also been the moniker for: a bad alec baldwin movie that went straight to video, a gay porn, an eighties new wave band, and a couple hardcore bands around today (we have the trademark, watch out guys!). One juicy little peice of gossip is how THICK records sent us a cease and desist letter, just cause we have the word thick in our label name. It was troubling when we, completely legaly naive, got this letter, but it turned out to be a bluff. All I can say is: when did indie rock get litigious? Anyhow, check out that Jam song sometime, it fucking rocks!
TIGER STYLE We'll let's see..I got the name Tiger Style from kung fu movies -- I am obsessed with old school Hong Kong cinema flicks and Tiger Style is a type of kung fu studied at Shaolin temple. Are you disappointed? It's not a sex thing or anything like that -- I just love Shaolin kung fu flicks!!
TOUCH AND GO Word has it, Corey Rusk (owner and president) got the name from a fanzine that Tesco Vee (of the Meatmen) was, at the time, putting out. He and Tesco are old pals from way back. That is the story! Would be cool if it was really scandalous and sordid, but alas, 'tis not to be.
TRACK STAR RECORDS When I was in 5th grade, I started running Track for MiddleSchool. After that I ran as much as I could. Cross Country, Winter Track and Spring Track all through MiddleSchool, HighSchool, and College. When I started the label, I wanted to mix running and music. For my first 7 releases or so, I used to put a short bio of a runner in the record. I thought it was bad-ass, but nobody else seemed to care, so we stopped doing it. But we are still very involved in getting our label and music involved with the running community. We are starting a running team, and will start official practice May 1. 2001. That is when we relocate to Philadelphia, Pa. We hope to have a USATF registered mens and womans teams to compete on the circuit. It is gonna be so boss. But don't worry, the music still comes first, and we will continue to put out stunning records.
TROUBLEMAN UNLIMITED i got the name TROUBLEMAN from a famous film/soundtrack by the same name. i added UNLIMITED because the label isn't limited in any scope- whether it is musical genre, format, etc.. its limitless (get it?). rad.
URININE RECORDS In college I dated the Dean of the University's daughter. She was (of course) in a sorority (though alumn at that point) and thusly I ended up with her at several fratty events. At one of them I hid in the corner (as I'm not very confrontational) and watched two couples meet. I didn't follow the grrls' conversation but after a drink, the boy's began to rate each grrl that would walk by. "She's a three" "She's an 8". Well this of course bothered little fay pc me. When the grrlfriends turned around and learned what their boys were up to, they too seemed upset, but only in a "you scamp" sort of way. After one grrl was done deriding her boyfriend she quickly turned and asked "So what Am I?". "Your a nine; if you had bigger tits you'd be a ten." So why did this stick with me? Well the fact that the grrl obviously didn't approve of the activity, but then needed the reassurance of this guy. It was just memorable.
WESTERN VINYL Essay by Erich Fromm "Love and its Disintegration in Contemporary Western Society."
YOUR BEST GUESS The story behind the name 'Your Best Guess' is kind of a lame one. I guess it's not really lame so much as it is open to accusations of pretension. When I was sixteen, I went to the Whitney Museum in New York City to see the Beat Generation show. It was an awesome show. There were a ton of prints and posters, original manuscripts and first printings of books from Ginsburg, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti, Corso, etc. So one of the things they had on display was the original manuscript of On The Road. When Kerouac wrote On The Road, he wrote it by sitting down and typing the whole thing out in one shot on one continuous roll of typing paper. Obviously, this is a totally unheard of process in the writing/publishing field. It's as if he took Hemingway's idea of stream of consciousness writing as literally as one can take it. This elicited a lot of criticism from his non-Beat peers. Truman Capote famously said in an interview that Kerouac "can't write so much as type" (which should be a familiar line to all of you Jets to Brazil fans). But I digress. As I stood in front of the plexiglas case with the original roll of On The Road typed on it, the phrase 'Your Best Guess' popped into my head. I have no idea why. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with Kerouac at all. But I felt like if this was the name that hit me as I looked at the original work of one of my idols, I'd best use it for something. I was doing a half-size print zine at the time and I decided that for the next issue, the name was going to be 'Your Best Guess'. Well, the zine stopped after one issue and the label was born shortly thereafter. So that's why Your Best Guess. Either that, or I'm lying and the real story is that when I announced to my friends that I was starting a label, one of them asked me what the name was going to be and I answered, "Uh, I don't know dude, your best guess is as good as mine."
