Touch & Go record label S&D

and right, i'd forgotten about *cows and beer* when i mentioned die kreuzen. but honestly, october file might be the most beautiful pigfuck album in human history.

Mekons:
The Edge of the World
Devils, Rats & Piggies -- A Special Message from Godzilla
I Have Been to Heaven and Back: Hen's Teeth and Other Lost Fragments of Un-Popular Culture Vol. 1
Where Were You?: Hen's Teeth and Other Lost Fragments of Un-Popular Culture Vol.2
Fear and Whiskey
Punk Rock

Angry Red Planet
Gawker's Paradise

Urge Overkill
The Urge Overkill Story...Stay Tuned 1988-1991 (touch & go promo EP, not in catalogue, ignores their pre-t&g debut EP which I kinda miss)

Virgin Prunes
The Moon Looked Down and Laughed

Various
Process of Elimination EP

if you like Silkworm but stopped paying attention after Firewater I'd definitely check out Lifestyles and esp. Italian Platinum

Urge Overkill's Supersonic Storybook, Polvo's Cor-Crane Secret

I liked Rodan's Rusty back in the day but now probably appropriate for only the most dedicated post-rockin' Slint fans

You Can't Pray A Lie is by far my favorite Laughing Hyenas record.

Necros, Die Kreuzen, Mekons, Big Black, hell yeah. And I like those !!! records.

Not familiar with 90% of the new catalog. I heard Don Cab the other day and it was great tho.

Oh, yeah - I was wondering why nobody had mentioned the Buttholes yet! Thought it was like a conspiracy.

Not really a T&G band, but that Chrome Alien Soundtracks/Half Machine Lip Moves twofer is an essential item.

Didn't T&G have to destroy all the Surfers back catalog records they had? seem to recall some article about them being run over with a bulldozer but maybe I'm just wishing that was what happened.

I have that Hose EP, it totally sucks. It's pretty funny though. The imprint is actually Def Jam, if I recall! That and God's Fave Dog the only two appearances I know of.

Me too.

I am shocked by the lack of love for Pegboy on this thread.

Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought Pegboy were on Quarterstick.

For this thread, are we talking just T&G the label or T&G the distributor, too, because some releases mentioned here were not technically released on T&G but were released by labels who were distributed (exclusively?) through T&G like Quarterstick.

It's interesting to see how T&G has changed over the years. They definitely have "softened" their aesthetic a bit. I know some of the newer releases are decent. But, when I think of T&G, I think of the hardcore stuff to the midwest, grunge, noise, thing (Big Black, Jesus Lizard, and Hyenas), which kind of died out shortly before the rise of post-rock (Something I never really got into.) I mean, the fact that T&G put out something like the Delta 72 record is a sure sign of some kind of decline. Hell, I'll take a rather boring Tar record over sub, sub, sub Jon Spencer fashion dorks. The only newer T&G releases I have ever purchased were the Monorchid/Skull Control stuff. As for the past three to four years, isn't just indie rock and pop. Maybe I'm wrong!

not unless corey changed his name to ed roche.

Might listen to that now.

The short version, though, is that they also released a single (Def Jam #1) that includes a pretty great Flipper-esque track called Mobo, later covered (very nicely) by the Dustdevils on their first Matador album.

i love love love jesus lizard, but even now i would seriously consider getting a die kreuzen or necros tattoo. close to my heart.

I gave the slight nod to Italian Platinum b/c I'm partial to Bourbon Beard and the "story" type songs (LR72) but it's pretty much a toss-up vs. Lifestyle, both are great

So very sad if this is true - the demise of Touch and Go -

http://www3.timeoutny.com/chicago/blog/out-and-about/2009/02/rip-touch-go-records/

My fave ever label ...

That is depressing to hear. The label hasn't thrilled me much in recent years, but back in the mid-90s when I was first delving into lolindie and discovering bands like Seam, Slint, and Jesus Lizard, I thought the label could do no wrong. I loved flipping through someone's record collection, flipping over an unfamiliar title, and seeing this...

http://www.southern.com/southern/label/TCH/pics/logo2.jpg

Yeah it was a similar seal of approval for me - digging through 2nd hand CDs if an unfamiliar band had that logo on it I'd consider buying.

Too bad but I guess they haven't released much lately that's been all that interesting? Perhaps someone might like to update this thread with post-2000 T&G essentials?

The last two Shellac albums and the last Ted Leo album, off the top of my head

Considering this is one of my favourite labels ever I'm curiously unbothered by this TBH

This will be as polarizing at !!!, but Pinback's Summer In Abaddon from 2004.

T&G never really figured out how to thrive in the 2000s, seems like. Just funny because a couple of other semi-regional labels with a similar amount of weight behind their names have done really well over the same time period.

Considering this is one of my favourite labels ever I'm curiously unbothered by this TBH

it's more desensitized for me than not bothered. Also, T&G's not completely dropping off the earth. They'll be around to keep certain titles in print, but allegedly won't be signing new bands or won't be "moving forward" for lack of a better term. All the rumination here was already rumination several years ago, tbh.

xpost

uh they did sign a couple of bands by the name of yeah yeah yeahs and TV on the radio.

fuck me. this sucks.

It is sad because even in the crooked 80s, artists on T&G (except for one obvious example) talked highly of how fair the label was in royalty deals. It was really hard to find any label like T&G once upon a time, so I can imagine the emotions in the Chicago music circles are running high right now. :(

holy shit holy shit holy shit! silly me, i thought they were doing well, for some reason. like matador and maybe close to sub-pop well. guess they never got teh subsidy $$$ like those folks. major bummer. though our tastes diverged in the 00s, i still respect the shit out of them guys/gals.

who's gonna put out the crystal antlers LP?

this is a bummer, but as long as they keep their old records in print I won't be as bummed.

Wow to Kirk Gibson introducing Negative Approach! That Laughing Hyenas piece was good too. RIP Larissa

John Brannon: Larissa had never picked up guitar, she just kind of learned her own way. She wasn't affected by learning Eric Clapton or Led Zeppelin, she did it by feeling.

Hey, they're on Bandcamp:

https://touchandgo.bandcamp.com/

Most excellent.

Kinda disappointed the early Shellac singles aren't up there, though.

I have a feeling those are coming "soon", which is Shellac terms means anytime between now and 5 yrs from now

Good to see they went with this pic of Killdozer

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0019944862_36.jpg

Always loved that photo. It's like they out-Urge Overkilled Urge Overkill.

the shirts alone are incredible, yes

Thanks! That's good to see.

I wish they'd put their old yearly sampler compilations up, although I concede that maybe there isn't so much point in comps in the new online/bandcamp era. But a couple of those really changed the shape of my record-hunting in the late 90s, and now I can't even find them listed on the T&G website.

Guess I can look up the tracklistings on discogs and just listen to the individual tracks & buy whatever artist's albums take my fancy, which I suppose might be what a sampler was supposed to inspire, rather than being listened to on loop as an album in its own right by broke students who excitedly picked them up because they were cheap and had a lot of tracks on.

(Some of them were coproductions with their sublabel Quarterstick Records, who have their own bandcamp: https://quarterstick.bandcamp.com/ )