The Touch & Go Thread

As many people around here know, T&G are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. With a weekend of concerts. Old bands like Big Black and Scratch Acid will be re-uniting for the performance. A mindboggling list of other great bands, old and recent, are also slated to play: Shellac, Uzeda, Arcwelder, Seam, Pegboy, The Ex, Brick Layer Cake, Pinback, Enon, Calexico, The Shipping News, Ted Leo, and others. For many of us who cut our teeth on these bands, this is a big deal.

Having lived in various parts of the midwest in the early 90s, I can tell you that for us, located where we were, there was no other label that garnered more respect, loyalty, or enthusiasm than Touch & Go (and by extension, Quarterstick - they were the same thing to us). By the mid-90s, the presence of Touch & Go dominated all guitar & drum music in our region. Whether you played in a band that aspired to release with them, or worked in the local independent record store selling their records, or ran sound for one of the venues where T&G bands played, the opinion was the same: Corey Rusk was a legendary mensch on account of his high musical standards and personal honesty; Touch & Go was the gold standard for bands; and the existence of all of those Albini-produced albums made the very dark darkness just a little bit brighter.

The reason I mention this is today's interview with Corey Rusk at Pitchfork - thanks to pokinatcha for directing me to it. Considering that Corey doesn't really give interviews . . . thought it might be an occasion to start a thread on the label.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/38254/Interview_Interview_Corey_Rusk

Girls vs. Boys are an interesting case. In today's climate, one would think that they'd find an audience. But they never seemed to catch on. I remember well when Cruise Yourself was released, fall of '94, people were excited. They had serious cred too, had been touring with Jesus Lizard and Brainiac. The album was solid, and it did get college radio play, had some catchy tracks on it. They seemed, for a few years in the mid-90s, to enjoy pretty constant "next big thing" status but never managed to do so. One of the last things I remember hearing about them was that one of the members was dating MTV personality Jenny McCarthy . . . and that was yeeeeears ago (like, ten). Am sorry to say that I never saw them live.

petergunn said:

shame on you for posting this and not mentioning that Negative Approach is playing!

Click to expand...

Lol, word. Well it's a bit trickier with Negative Approach, since their performance won't be by all original members. But yes, they are legends, obviously. They were already legends by '90 or '91, which meant they had a different meaning for us than the bands coming through at the time, bands whose futures were in the making before our eyes (Jesus Lizard, Rapeman, Rodan, Tar, Don Caballero, Bedhead, Seam, Pegboy, Arcwelder, Die Kreuzen, Mule, G v. B, and later Shellac, June of '44, Blonde Redhead, Uzeda, Pinback, Silkworm, the Ex and many others) (if you include Quarterstick with T & G, which Corey always himself did) (and with the additinal caveat that Big Black and Slint, by then both deceased, still influenced basically everything).

But you are quite right, there's a lot of history there with Negative Approach, the Necros, Corey Rusk, the beginning of T&G, and 80s US hardcore; and the fact that NA are playing again is really something.

So here's a great little piece about the history and methods of the label: