I'm an obsessive geek for books about indie rock labels. My interest in the subject was kindled over a decade ago by books like 'Our Band Could be Your Life' and 'Please Kill Me'. Those were great to me because I was used to reading bios about specific rockstars or an entire band at best. Those books delved into the shit that felt like my real life on a macro scale; including the in scene jokes, incestual band changing, sleazy shit pseudo rock stars did, etc.

Recently I've been obsessing over record label bios. Rutledge's bio on SST records, Ballance's book on Merge, even 'How to Start your own record label' because for the most part it's about the history of Lookout records -- a label I don't like a single band on but loved reading about nevertheless.

So it was disappointing to hear my favorite label, Touch and Go, doesn't have a bio as such. There's the collection of the early zines which is cool but I was interested in something more in depth about all the artists and backstory of every band that's made any of the great releases they've put out over the years, how they became a huge hub/distributor and why they had to stop, basically everything that I sort of knew about it but in depth.

I read a book about Alice in Chains a while back where the author bluntly states; 'I was listening to "Dirt" and thinking what a great fucking album it was -- why hasn't anyone written a book about these guys? And since no one had, I figured I would.' And while I'm not a huge Alice in Chains fan, he was totally right -- 1st off Dirt was a great fucking album and when I was 13 I listened to it non-stop (sometimes while playing d&d sandwiched between my friend greg and dave's other metal collections of sabbath and metallica), and I was really curious as to what happened to them. Layne, the quixotic but tragically ill and unable to deal with mass success, Jerry the prick, Mike Starr who -- well you get the idea if you wanna read the book.

And so without hearing about anything in the works or seeing anything popping up anywhere on the horizon, I figure why not me? I've been writing reviews and random Lester Bangs like rambles about say 'the math rock dichotomy and the forgotten foundation of amateur odd time signature hating based lo-fi side' for over 30 years now. And obviously like pretty much everyone here I've been playing in bands all my life, having unsuccessfully written and record dozens of records (none of which sold more than a 100 copies), touring, and running my own 'label' of sorts called 'no more labels records'. So if no one else is going to write the bio of Touch and Go but there's a demand for it (even if I'm the only one demanding it), I'd love to.

If anyone is on, knows, or can help me get in touch with anyone on or involved in management past or present of Touch and Go I'd really appreciate it. My friend Jeff said this might be a good place to start -- and since frankly I have no idea where else to start -- here I go! Any info offered would be great.

Have you seen these? Playlist of videos of their 25th Anniversary shows. Interviews interspersed with performances.

I've got little in the way of help, but I think this is a fantastic idea. I imagine that this kind of undertaking would require many hours of interviews, a personal space covered with a timeline/web on the wall that looks like a Charlie Day conspiracy theory and lots of tracking people down.

Do it!

Moving my post from the other thread here..

penningtron wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2024 6:20 am Check out 'You're With Stupid' by Bruce Adams, co-founder of kranky. He worked at T&G for many years, and talks about his time there along with many of the people he worked with. That's a good place to start collecting names of people to interview. From what I gather a LOT of people (musicians, future label owners) worked there at some point.

Also, Punk Planet did an extensive article on T&G vs. the Butthole Surfers in.. 1998 or 1999 that has interviews with Rusk, Albini, and others that serves as a pretty good overview of the label and its working methods. The PP archives can be found here: https://archive.org/details/punkplanet? ... &sort=week

This would be an excellent read, especially if done in the style of The Dirt.

penningtron wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2024 8:35 am Also, Punk Planet did an extensive article on T&G vs. the Butthole Surfers in.. 1998 or 1999 that has interviews with Rusk, Albini, and others that serves as a pretty good overview of the label and its working methods.

Dug around a bit and found a Chicago Reader article with almost the same content:
https://chicagoreader.com/music/touch-a ... buttholes/

And one about Urge Overkill:
https://chicagoreader.com/music/wheneve ... mitsville/

Also something made around the time of T&G 25 (I haven't read it yet):
https://stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=652

atomjackfuser wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2024 7:15 am Have you seen these? Playlist of videos of their 25th Anniversary shows. Interviews interspersed with performances.

I wish this would be released as a DVD set. I know they had a camera crew for the entire weekend. Corey, make it so.

This is really good stuff! Even if I can't finish the book this will get me started and is enjoyable either way. Keep em coming!