The Second Year of TLAL

In case you missed Part I of this post, please rewind to the first portion of TLAL history.

The second year is still when things were brand new, 2006 was full of fresh newness and peach fuzz of a greenhorn rookie. I had the luck of living in a house next to a house that could put on shows, which was incorrectly called Flint Street House. Life those days revolved around simple things, biking around, hanging with friends, doing stuff with music, and I had the unfortunate predicament of becoming a 8-5er, so I was the boring one of the batch because I couldn’t party that much… but that first IT job out of college in 2005 was the seed money that started and grew the label. Anyhow, started throwing some shows for bands I liked and had the luck of book I Object! along with a handful of other bands (including tight friends Magrudergrind who took me on a few day tour down to This Is For You Fest with them).

I Object! had a super cool veggie fueled decommissioned ambulance they drove around and I thought I was lucky to not be stuck in the vehicle that smelled of french fries. I Object! wasn’t signed to Alternative Tentacles yet but had adopted a similar touring pattern as Magrudergrind… tour as much as possible and also go to the ends of the earth with your music because DIY friends in places like SE Asia for instance, are so happy to have music come through to see. I became friends with IO and they asked me to do a split record for Macedonian band Forever Positively Obsessed (FxPxOx) with Ryan from the IO’s label and my newer friend Josh from Dead Tank. I became friends online with FxPxOx who tried to tour the US but couldn’t get over here due to the government there not allowing them over. The record is awesome and special, the one thing I was a little bummed on is the red/yellow copies were supposed to be one color on one side and another color on the other but they just look like a haze around the center of one color and the other outside of it.

After the IO/FPO jam I had been talking to a band called ARM from California about doing a record and then all of a sudden it became a split with one of my favorite labels, 625 Thrashcore. I wasn’t very familiar with Final Draft at the time (sometimes listed as FinalDraft) but compared to Apathetic Ronald McDonald’s weirdo off-the-wall spazz punk, I think the heavy nature of Final Draft ended up being the stronger portion of the record for my personal tastes. Working with 625 is a bit different in a few aspects but also nice in some others. Max has an artguy who gets things done and that record’s layout looks rad. The other side of that is the price of getting an artguy to do things. TLAL has had and continues to have a good history of doing layouts myself, and maybe I should either get better (although I’m self taught to keep the prices of my records down, so I basically do layouts for free) or hire a graphic designer myself. Any way around it, it was amazing to work and communicate with Max Ward aka Hirax Max aka Max from Spazz aka Max 625. In 2015 I’m reflecting on it and I’d do those splits with 625 again and again and again. In those days I had free reign to do trades and Max had Ebullition be his distributor so I traded them away and sold them direct and built up my distro hardcore with those.

At some point I formed a friendship with two people from New England… Will Toftness from CT and Paul Sunderland from Cape Cod area. These two guys were like if I had a formal business and had a board of directors. I’d add Ralph from Haunted Hotel in NY in that too, but that doesn’t related to this story. Paul and I tossed around an idea to do a skate comp tape. Paul magically had some cool artwork and I jumped on it to ask bands and I knew that Will is pretty active with skating so I asked him to give me some skateboarding sounds for the tape and that is what you hear opening and closing the tape.

Here I am with Sandro from RSR and Paul at This Is For You Fest and below that is Will with a TLAL sticker on his bass:

Paul nerded out and got Killed in Action on the tape, I got my friends from Shitstorm (Ricky pops up multiple times in TLAL history, but he plays drums on the Temper track, and apparently this kid who sings, this was his first time singing on anything ever), Street Sharks are friends from my town (one went on to the Sorry State Records band Whatever Brains who just broke up), I was approached by Indonesian band Makhlok Perosak and they ended up on there, homies ANS (Annihilate New School) of course made the cut as they are a great skate band and all of them pop up throughout TLAL and Raleigh punk history here and there, Nicktape gave me some Bail Out! songs (Nick is now in Coke Bust and a number of other bands), Concrete Evidence who I am totally spacing on who that is.. I want to say it was a band with Dub from Shitstorm in it, Common Enemy when Pat from Backslider was in the band, Badeatinghabits who had Dan Rossiter who did the Rhino Charge artwork and went on do keep doing awesome artwork, and finally one last band from Raleigh called Media Circus. Wow I guess I gathered all but KIA on this one. Paul got the infinitely long j-card printed for these and we got the tapes printed up for too much money in the US because neither of us wanted to give our SSN to get them made in Canada. Very cool tape, wonder when volune II will come out.

Nick from Bail Out! Skateboard action:

It would make sense to do a skate LP after a skate tape right? Right. Ended up putting a four way split LP together called Four Bands to Drain Your Pool LP featuring Badeatinghabits, ANS, NoComply, and Rat Byte. All homies bands and I think this is the first time I had talked to Justin from NoComply who stay a TLAL major supporter and bandmate. I feel like this also relates back a lot to This Is For You Fest because almost all these bands played the fest. Funny story I remember is how limited the red copies were and then ANS came through and played Raleigh and almost left a whole box of the red copies in the middle of the road.

This is for You (TIFY) Fest, there is Paul from Give Praise Records and Ryan from I Object:

Justin pops up again and so does Max Ward. This is my second 625 co-release of XBRAINIAX and NoComply. Solid release. I believe there was some major controversy with this release in the fact that somehow some weird information got snuck into the layout by the person doing the layout. I don’t really want to stir the pot here, it was a pretty juvenile thing and was overlooked in printing the record up. I have little to say on this one, was a great jam.. very interesting matchup of bands. I guess the 625 releases I didn’t touch as much because I was mainly just tossing in money and the pressing and art was handled. Glad I did this record though, its so good.

Last of 2006 was the Terminal Youth LP. I was low on funds and got this screenprinted promo for the band. I was familiar with the band previously because I knew their split from Moo Cow Records. When I tossed this into the CD player I was 100% expecting to say no and when I heard this I knew I had to say yes yes yes. Amazing Boston hardcore LP (the band went on to do Boston Strangler, Brain Killer, and Chain Rank to give you an idea). I so amped on this but so low on funds but was able to get Give Praise and De Rok to toss in. You know I should have done this myself because this was the first record I did that I sold out instantly of. So the pressing was supposed to be 400 black and 100 on actual metallic silver but guess what going through a new record pressing GZ broker gets you… “oops we didn’t communicate well enough with the Czech plant so there are no metallic silver vinyl copies”. So major disappointment there but the spot color metallic silver on the covers look great and we did some 11″x17″ photocopied inserts to save money. I could not have been more happy and proud of this jam. Funny story, Ryan from the band really sold me on doing a show for them in Raleigh. I was very excited. He told me he’d have a bus of Boston punks roll down with them and it would be a great show. It was a great show because not only did Seasick play, but Blank Stare ended up playing too if I’m not mistaken. It was a terrible show because not many Raleigh punks or much of anyone else showed up at all. Will Butler show booking failure for a band where this was supposed to be their big record release show in my hometown. You can tell I’m bitter about that even today. I got this cool full color Matt Gauck artwork for the flier too:

That pretty much sums up year two of TLAL. Definitely a great year of music and really making connections and staying in touch with some of my favorite people who would continue to make my label become an organic thing of supporting friends bands and putting out new bands that would become friends.

Go on to part III.

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