What is K Records?
How did K Records Start?
What was the first release on K Records?
What is the International Pop Underground?
What is Knw-Yr-Own?
Do you accept Demos?
Can you help me play a show in Olympia?
K press kit
Subscribe to the K Records monthly Newsletter!
WHAT IS 
?
: a conspiracy of gravediggers, spies,
swim instructors and international pop stars.
There are hangmen and there are saints. as a label has released cassettes, phonograph
records and compact discs documenting the audio works of over 150 artists. The main focus
of has been artists working in and around Olympia, Washington, where is based, but has
included comrades from acrossthe U.S.A. and as far away as Japan, Scotland, Australia,
Canada, Germany and England. Yes, explodes the teenage underground into passionate revolt
against the corporate ogre world-wide.
Colleagues in the International Pop Underground collide at the vanishing point.
The sounds cross back and forth through a number of genres, some known and some less so:
punk, hip hop, atom-powered folk-pop, haunted garage, restless singer songwright, epic
soul shock, noise exp., blurred-eye visionary psychedelica, roadhouse mod and the silent
film soundtracks composed by Timothy Brock, as performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra.
In describing to a friend, you might say: Hit the streets to the motorbike beat of
the cranked and crush crashpop. Raise the standard and hail: a revolution come and gone
behind your eyes. Blood and sand and sidewalk. Radio blast the punk pop implosion that is
the new breed: a bee in your bonnet, love in a goldfish bowl, zombie rockin’ behind the
iron curtain. Hey, love rocker, pull on your slacks and Mexican army boots, get ready for
some sonic pogo action. Jazz the glass, here they come, screaming and clawing, scooters
and dune buggies roaring. Bless. Can you dig it? Collaborators. King loser and teenage
underground. Screech and saw. Buzz. Cut. Spin. Slice. Crush. Squirt. Sweaty basement rock
and rule. A crown of barbed wire for your hooded throne. Lose it on the ball and chain.
Hey, gravedigger: ignite.
HOW DID START ?
Calvin Johnson formed
in Summer, 1982. The impetus to start such a label is complex.
At the time he lived in the Capitol Theater Building in downtown, Olympia, next door to
Stella Marrs’ studio, the original Girl City. Together they played in a band, 003 Legion.
The project of the summer was the Sub/Pop fanzine #8. Calvin had been working on the Sub/Pop
fanzine with it’s founder, Bruce Pavitt, since 1980; important tasks assigned to Calvin
included “late-night peanut butter and jelly sandwiches”. At this time, Bruce was on tour as
Road Manager with Pell Mell, and Calvin was left to mind the front. The motto of Sub/Pop was
“Decentralize Pop Culture”. It drew a lot of inspiration from the Olympia music magazine Op
(founded by John Foster), which focused on music available through independent and artist
owned labels, and the Olympia community radio station KAOS-FM, which had a music policy that
prioritized such independent and do-it-yourself music. Both Calvin and Bruce worked with Op
magazine and hosted radio shows on KAOS. Two issues of Sub/Pop were released as cassettes
compiling underground music, mainly originating from Sub/Pop’s focus regions, the Northwestern
and Midwestern United States.
This concept of cassette fanzine was inspired by two radio DJs at 3RRR in Melbourne,
Australia who founded a cassette fanzine Fast Forward in 1980. The cassette was just beginning
to make sense as a format; up to this point, LPs dominated the music consumer landscape. The
walkman and ghettoblaster were just emerging, as cassette technology made giant advances in
audio fidelity. Building on these ideas, began as a cassette-only label, focusing on Olympia’s
embryonic downtown music scene. Prior to this, there had been one label in Olympia, Mr. Brown,
which released four singles and two compilations. The releases were on a much more modest scale
another advantage of the cassette format: you could manufacture titles at a reasonable
cost per piece in much lower quantities. The usual run of a
release was around 100 copies.
soon took on a life outside of downtown Olympia. Calvin was once quoted on the subject thusly
in a well respected journal of popular underground culture:
Let’s skip the well crafted puff piece and redirect the center of gravity because it bears repeating:
1) I care about tummys
2) I care about art
3) Sonic Medusa, please break my heart
We are not in the entertainment biz. is a library card for the culturally
deadpan…hometaping is a required course. Johnny Appleseed had the right idea: homegrown
tastes best, decentralize the means and distribution of your sustenance, cultivate strains
outside the petridish of corporate culture.
Decentralize your tastebuds. The emperor has some new clothes but guess what? They fall apart after the third washing. Why wait? Turn the hoses on them and street party scenic. We’ve already got Lady Godiva on a Trojan Horse and nobody’s looking. So check it out, the overdue fines have been paid.
Sub/Pop Fanzines and Northwest Bands from the '80s
WHAT WAS THE FIRST RELEASE ON ?
The cassette-only release by the Olympia trio the Supreme Cool Beings was the first
release on . Entitled Survival of the Coolest, it debuted in 1982. Comprised of Heather
Lewis, Gary Allen May and Doug Monaghan, the Supreme Cool Beings played around Olympia and
Tacoma for about six months before Survival of the Coolest was recorded during a live
broadcast the band performed on Calvin Johnson’s Boy Meets Girl radio show on KAOS-FM,
Olympia’s community radio station. The Supreme Cool Beings were seminally Olympian in a
number of ways: they often did not use a bass guitar, had both male and female vocals, a
female drummer, and played in multiple bands at the same time. Though now commonplace, these
features were quite unusual in 1982. The cover of Survival of the Coolest was designed by
Heather and each was hand-painted by the band.
The following year, Heather Lewis began playing with Laura Carter and Calvin Johnson in Laura, Heather and Calvin, which became Beat Happening when Bret Lunsford joined in August, 1983.
During the year 1983, released it’s first compilation. Danger Is Their Business,
an a cappella collection collated by Calvin Johnson and Rich Jensen that featured Olympia
area artists such as John Foster, Heidi Drucker, Twin Diet, Robin James, Lorraine Tong;
Calvin and Rich also each contributed a song. The cover was a white spray-painted cassette
box hand stamped with a carved linoleum block design.
In 1984 released several more cassettes: Rich Jensen The Animal Box (a cappella
songs and found sounds with hand spray-painted covers); two five song collections by Beat
Happening, Beat Happening (produced by Greg Sage of the Wipers) and Three Tea Breakfast
(recorded on their trip to Japan that year); Let’s Together, a compilation collated by
Bret Lunsford and Calvin Johnson, which documented the emerging Olympia underground (Beat
Happening, Young Pioneers, Wimps, Wild, Wild, Wild Spoons, John Fosters Pop Philosophers),
artists from around Washington state such as Melvins (Montesano) and the Public Service
(Anacortes), all-female hardcore band the Wrecks from Reno, Nv., two pop rockin’ combos
from Tucson, Az. (Rotte Kapelle, Seldoms) and two punk bands from Tokyo, Japan’s Rebel Beat
Factory label, the Loods (featuring Nissie) and Kyah (an all-female band that Beat Happening
met while living in Tokyo). Also released that year was a sixty-minute cassette by John
Foster’s Pop Philosophers, which featured an electronic epic “The Kennedy Saga”, a thirty
minute exploration of the Kennedy family, adapted from a paperback biography. “The Kennedy
Saga” was also the debut by frequent artist and producer Steve Fisk.
1984 was capped by the release of the first record on , the Beat Happening 45 “Our
Secret” b/w “What’s Important”, two Greg Sage produced songs which had been included on the
Beat Happening cassette release earlier in the year. The cover was a Bongo & Maraca design
by Heather, hand coloured by the band.
Read an interview with The Supreme Cool Beings HERE.
WHAT IS THE INTERNATIONAL POP UNDERGROUND?
In 1987, launched a series of 7” singles called the International Pop Underground.
The series is intended to feature artists emanating from pop rockin’ catacombs around the
globe. To date, there have been 100 volumes in the series. Some of the artists included in
the International Pop Underground are bands closely allied with who have toured with other
artists and are making a guest appearance on the label such as Unrest, Versus, Shadowy Men
on a Shadowy Planet, the Gossip, Pork, the Pastels, Melody Dog, Bonfire Madigan, Teenage
Fanclub, Seaweed. Others are artists who have released albums on : Lois, Some Velvet
Sidewalk, Mirah, Microphones, Make-Up, Beat Happening, Thee Headcoats, Heavenly, Karp, the
Crabs, Built to Spill, Modest Mouse. Releases in the International Pop Underground series
are denoted with a catalogue number that begins with “IPU”.
HERE is an article about the International Pop Underground Convention, which took place in Olympia in 1991.
Two compilations of material from the International Pop Underground series of 7" records have been released on compact disc:
International Hip Swing / Project: Echo
WHAT IS KNW-YR-OWN?
Knw-Yr-own is a label founded by Bret Lunsford (Beat Happening, D+) in 1987, as an outlet for Anacortes, Wash., area music.
Bret grew up in Anacortes and lives there currently with his family. He operates a book and record store called the Business, which hosts frequent events at the in-house eatery, Cafe Adrift, and is home to a small studio where some of the Knw-Yr-Own recordings are produced. Started initially as a cassette-only label, the first releases on Knw-Yr-own were the series of local compilations Sore Optimists, To Go Nowhere and Too Sore to Move. In its current status, Knw-Yr-Own operates as a loose collective releasing CDs by Little Wings, Nate Ashley, Karl Blau, Dennis Driscoll, Khaela Marricich (pre-Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano). The exemplary compilation Remote Wing was released this past Autumn featuring Microphones, D+, Mirah, Little Wings, Nate Ashley, Karl Blau, Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano, Laura Viers and much more.
Located on Fidalgo Island, on the San Juans, Anacortes has a long history of cultural
exchange with Olympia. Besides Bret’s involvement with Beat Happening and the downtown Olympia
scene, the Anacortes artists Public Service, the Few, Pounding Serfs, Gravel, the Crabs, the
Microphones, D+ and Karl Blau have all released material on K , and Olympia bands have always
received a warm welcome when playing in Anacortes.
For further info on Knw-Yr-Own and Anacortes, visit:
www.knw-yr-own.com, www.AnacortesOnLine.com.
Demonstration Records, Acceptance Policy of; a.k.a. Do You Accept Demos?
Every day we receive in the mail copies of cassettes and compact discs containing unreleased recordings, as well as several electronic mail messages asking if we “accept demos”. The easy answer is “no”. That’s the easy answer because without going into the details, the reality is that “demos” just sit in a pile unlistened to; it’s easier to say “no” than to go into long involved explanations about how no one here has the time, energy or inclination to respond to the mountains of unanswered mail. To begin the process of explaining this to a total stranger is to invite an unwanted dialogue that includes going into the same details about why/who/what all over again, with the two parties ending up unhappy and frustrated, maybe more so than before it began.
Play A Show
We don't book shows or tours here, sorry. But the following places are possible venues in Olympia...give 'em a call:
Le Voyeur: (360) 943-7029
China Clipper / Audrey Henley: audreyhenley206@msn.com, audrey@pioneermusic.com or (360) 943-6300
Art House: (360) 943-3377
Capitol Theater: (360) 754-5378
Midnight Sun: elord23@hotmail.com
Rang Dong: (360) 534-9085
Brotherhood: (360) 352-4153
Traditions Café: (360) 705-2819
Eagles Hall: (360) 357-3722
Jake's on 4th: (360) 956-3247
4th Ave Tavern: (360) 480-9550 Jason or Chris