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Hi Jordan, how and why did you end up in the hardcore scene ?
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My friends growing up in Putnam County, NY were all punks. They watched Eraserhead, First Blood, Clockwork Orange, read Soldier of Fortune, wore biker jackets, got kicked out of school for having the Anarchist Cookbook etc. I hung out with them all the time, but I didn't really like much of the punk music that I'd heard. My friend Chris Guiguler (not sure about the spelling) and I were talking about it one time and he told me about this kind of punk called "hardcore" that he'd heard on a college radio station from Connecticut and this one band that he thought was great. I don't remember the name of the band he mentioned, but that summer my family moved thirty miles west across the border to Danbury, Connecticut and I soon found out what he was talking about. The radio station was WXCI and there was a hardcore show on there that played local bands as well as more well known punk and hc. It was 1983, I was in a new school and had absolutely no friends. Ray Cappo was in English class and was in one of the bands that got played on WXCI and was friends with the guy who did the radio show (Darryl from No Milk On Tuesday). Ray noticed a weird mix of AC/DC, Yes, punk and Pink Floyd scribblings on my notebook (a notebook "covered in anarchy signs" as he remembers it I think) and started talking to me about music. After that I was pretty much indoctrinated into the CT hardcore scene by Ray and his friends.
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What did hardcore mean to you at that time ?
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At first hardcore seemed like a weird urban tribe with loud fast heavy music, aggressive dance, ripped up clothes etc. Then it slowly took over my life and became one of the most important things to me. To look back and describe what I liked about it is difficult because it's all been said before. The hardcore scene in CT was a free, hidden subculture where people had a different view of the world and a lot of the social norms and opinions of the larger culture didn't matter. It was a new tribe with no leader, centered around music that made you a part of it.
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How do you feel about this era of your life more than 20 years later ?
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Like anyone, I see different things in the past the further I get from it. It was a lot of fun, it shaped my life.
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What were the most important 80's bands for you ?
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I'm not a good historian because I've got a terrible memory and only started going to hardcore shows in 1983. I believe the early bands were the most important because they defined the whole thing. My knowledge isn't terribly deep, for example, if you asked me to name the people who were in Teen Idles besides Ian, I'd have to guess or check the record. In my mind people like Ian, Tesco Vee, Harley, Roger, Brian Baker, Jello, Henry, and hundreds of other people were the ones who created hardcore in the beginning. Hopefully someone will document how it all started at some point.
Why did you choose to create a music label ? Why not another job ?
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Ray and Jordan, 2011. Photo Larry Ransom.
There's more information about how we picked the name in my interview in "All Ages", but here's something I wrote in an interview for Tim from Awake zine (but I think the interview might have been for something called 3 chords). I came up with the name Schism. Ray was hung up on the idea of things being "positive". He was actually a little religious too (I was an atheist) and I always suspected that had something to do why he prefered the name Revelation to Schism. The reason I didn't mind the name was because I thought the idea of revelation coming from experiences was coll. Despite that, I insisted on Schism and even got as far as having labels for the Warzone 7'' designed using that name. In the end Ray told me (still haven't gotten around to asking Matt if this is true or not) that Bold would do their album-that was supposed to come out on Wishing Well, but was taking forever- with us, but only if we used the name Revelation. I said "ok" and that was it.
How about the logo ?
Here's a fun fact I wrote up about the logo. We haven't used it yet, but we probably will at some point so you might want to pull some info out of it and edit it down to what you need. We used stars on the first few releases as a background which was Ray's idea. He liked how Dangerhouse had black and yellow bars as their background on the labels so he wanted us to have something to identify Rev with like that. We got a Letraset sheet of stars and used it on the first three records we put out. The fourth record was going to be the Gorilla Biscuits 7" and their friend (who would later join the band as a second guitar player), Alex Brown offered to do the layout for them. Alex took the star concept and put the letter "r" in a star and had the label name under it inside a box. Ray, Alex and Porcell all lived together in Brooklyn at the time so Ray saw the artwork before I did. He really liked the idea and called me to tell me about it. From his description over the phone I re-created it. That was the logo we ended up using because we had already used it on a few things (probably flyers, catalogs and ads). We used it on the GB 7" and the Side By Side and No For An Answer records and repressings of the Sick of it all 7" too. Then we were working with Dave Bett at our main distributor Important on the layout for the New York City Hardcore-The Way It Is compilation and he offered to clean it up for us. He did and that's basically the logo we've been using ever since.
Did you see straight-edge as a sort of "revelation", I mean like you found your way ?
These are great in depth questions. Most people don't ask this kind of stuff for some reason. I personally didn't see straight-edge as a revelation, but I tried to imagine that it was for some people. I wasn't straight-edge; to me revelations were always psychological shifts in the way I saw the world. Drugs sometimes helped in opening my eyes to things, sometimes talking to people or reading something did, so to me revelation didn't have to do with straight-edge at all. I did keep in mind that it might be a huge revelation for other people so I tried not to be critical.
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Were you influenced by some philosophy or was it something you just did and created on your own ?
I'm not sure if you were asking what philosophy influenced me with respect to straight-edge, but as I said, i wasn't so I can't answer that. I was not well educated or well read, but there were a few people who influenced my philosophy then, most were friends, but some books and bands lyrics helped shape my thinking of course.
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Who decided to sign the bands at first ?
I wanted to release a 7" for Warzone and after that I think Ray picked most of the bands for the 7" compilation and the next few releases (with some input from me). Then on the LP version of the NYHC compilation "The Way It Is" we both decided on the bands. After Ray got into Krishna, I ended up taking over the label and had to start making the decisions on who to sign on my own. I relied on friends like Porcell and Dylan (Schreifels) and the bands themselves (for example Alan Cage from Quicksand was also in Burn and told me that Burn should be on Rev) for a while and then by the time I got to Huntington Beach I was pretty used to it.
What about the 90's bands ?
The group of people that the label had worked with in the late 80's was large enough to provide the label with new bands and input on other bands through the early 90's. Every band has a different story so I can't take credit for signing any of them purely on my own. Walter (Schreifels) was friend with Farside so they ended up on Revelation. Someone told me to get the Sense Field demo from Zeds which I did. By the time I got to listening to it, it was months later and they were already pretty popular, but luckily they agreed to work with us. Iceburn had a friend, Stormy Shepherd, who really tried to get me to listen to them, which I finally did and ended up working with them. They were friends with Engine Kid and that's how they ended up on the label. Similar stories behind Texas Is The Reason and Elliott.
Did you feel the same "revelation" for these bands ?
Most music takes time to really get to me so it would be wrong to apply that word. My favorite bands have all been ones that I listened to once, put away and then for some reason came back to and played it constantly until I had the entire record memorized. That's what happened with Farside. Walter decided to have Crisis put their 7" out and I heard it a few times but when it came out I listened to it non-stop. The same thing happened with Sense Field. Someone told me to listen to their demo, so I bought one at Zed Records and played it a couple of times. Then a few months later I started playing it everyday and wrote them a postcard asking if we could put them out.
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Sense Field
Sense Field
Which bands were your favorite at this time ?
I love all the bands of those years and the time I spent with them. Sometimes even now those records are played I realize that there are things I didn't even appreciate about them back when that was pretty much all I was listening to. The word "revelation" didn't really apply during that time. At that point I wasn't in a flexible state of mind and was just focused on putting out records and running the label. Farside, Engine Kid, Texas Is The Reason, Sense Field, Shades Apart, Into Another, Quicksand, and probably a few other bands that I'm forgetting (and who may or may not have been on Rev) were my favorite bands at the time. I was lucky to work with them and grateful to have them as friends. I don't know that any of those bands had a cohesive philosophy. They definitely didn't write as if they did. Slow John from Sense Field laughed about it to me when I asked him if they had any sort of central idea behind the band. As I recall it, he said something like "there's nothing that really sums".
Why did you create Crisis Records ? Because of the crisis of the straight-edge philosophy ?
Hardcore was my religion and my life from 1983 through the late 1980's. After going to Europe with GB in 1989 I was getting into different music (mostly Swans and Coil) as were a lot of people who were "hardcore kids". I saw it as an identity crisis where you had a very clear idea of who you were and all of a sudden it wasn't enough anymore. The name was supposed to be half serious, no clear mission, just something different.
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Crisis Records #1, 1990.
Crisis Records #1, 1990.
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How do you see hardcore towards music in general ?
I loved it. I'd always loved music and hardcore eclipsed everything else for years of my life.
Do you see hardcore dead or alive today ?
It seems like it's still going. I'm not really listening to a lot of new stuff, but there seem to be just as many bands now as ever. The funny thing to me is that in 1982, hardcore was really new and Led Zeppelin seemed like ancient history, but more time has passed between 1982 and now than had passed between the time Led Zeppelin put out their first record and 1982. Somehow hardcore is not yet a dinosaur probably because it never really got that big.
How do you see Revelation in music history ?
Not sure what you mean here. I think Revelation's place in hardcore is pretty clear. It came from the scene that Ray and Porcell helped form around Youth Of Today when they moved to NY that included some really amazing people who formed some really great bands. From there the connections continued and evolved as those people's music changed and evolved. In the 90s when Rev moved to California there were new people involved and that brought in some different bands.
What are your favorite Rev releases ?
That's too hard to answer.
Why did you stop putting out hardcore bands in the early 90's ?
That's a funny question because I never thought that we stopped putting out hardcore. When Quicksand and Into Another and Farside and some other records started coming out, I guess people thought that wasn't hardcore anymore and I guess in a way that's true. My standard answer for this question is that my friends started making different music, I (like a lot of people) liked that music and either asked to put the records out or said "yes" when the bands asked if I wanted to put the records out. Also, my tastes and other people at Rev's tastes changed over time (just as everyone's tends to) and that led to some different releases too.
What is the future for Rev ?
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We're putting out a few discography records (Mouthpiece, Verbal Assault, Underdog) and a compilation of covers of early Rev bands' songs. Brian Peterson is doing a book about 90's hardcore. Tony Rettman is writing a book covering midwest hardcore and how it influenced hardcore all over. That's about it.
Who are the most important people you met in your life ?
What kind of question is that ? To keep the list short, here are only a few of the people who changed the way I think: Tim Yohannon, Stacey Murray, Syd from CCM, Ray Cappo, Vern and Gavin Young, Christy Colcord, Richie Birkenhead, Porcell.
What are your greatest memories until now ?
I'm pretty old so that list is long. I'll just mention a few of the best Rev-related memories: The Youth Of Today tour in 1985 with 7 Seconds, and again in 1989, the GB tour in 1989.
What kind of music catch you today ?
I mostly listen to older music. I'm playing Mouthpiece right now, but mainly I've been listening to Rush, Grand Funk and Yes for the past few weeks.
Do you still feel "out of step with the world" ?
I never really thought of that term applying to me. I usually think of myself as an outcast even among outcasts. But to answer your question; more than ever.
How do you feel being an american today ?
Better than I felt four (or eight) years ago, but shit, what a mess.
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