ALL THE CORPSES HERE ARE CLEAN

Posted over 2 years ago

About a year ago, Ed came to me with the idea of killing the label, once and for all. He was sick and tired of all the bullshit and having just completed grad school, he was on the verge of jumping headfirst into the “real world” and starting a career as a full-time graphic designer.

Half of me couldn’t blame him. He had gone through a lot of shit with the label, both personal and financial and simply did not have the time it takes to run a full on indy record label. Ed had set his sights high, yet he wasn’t having fun with where things were headed. I asked him if he had ever considered taking a different approach with the label; maybe trimming things down a bit, going back to the basics and focusing on what he truly enjoyed. I told him how cool it would have been if Glenn Danzig had never stopped doing Plan 9. He could have released all the full length Misfits, Samhain and Danzig records on whatever labels, had those other labels deal with all the general promotion and distribution, but released limited EP’s, shirts, posters, stickers, etc. himself, on Plan 9. So what if it all sold out? How cool would it have been if Glenn was releasing limited Danzig EP’s and shirts that only the people in the know had access to? All the skimmers that didn’t bother digging deep would miss out, but for the diehards, they would get their hands on the cool and limited stuff. Why shut it down completely? Why not just scale it back to a more manageable level? It’s yours, you don’t owe anything to anyone. You don’t have to do things a certain way. Don’t worry about selling 5,000 records and dealing with all the bullshit that it takes, sell 200 and have fun with it. I guess my little speech sparked a fire.

Although it’s been over a year to get it to this point, it’s finally happened and Livewire is back; having never really left. New releases are in the works and not just the talking stages, a completely new website has been designed and things are moving forward. There are no time constraints and no deadlines. It’s all about being creative, releasing records that you want to release, doing things on your terms and having fun doing it. It’s pretty much the same way I look at our band Triple Threat. We’re all a little older now, have families, have responsibilities, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do a hardcore band on whatever level we want to. When we can all pull our time together to tour, we’ll do it. When we want to write a new record, we’ll do it. There are no guidelines or rules we have to follow. We do what we want, when we can, and how we want to do it.

My involvement with Livewire has always been there. Although Ed is the guy with the majority of the weight on his shoulders, I’ve been there every step of the way. Whether it’s consulting, helping with decisions, coordinating projects, dealing with bands, collaborating with the design end or just answering emails, I help wherever and however I can. With over 20 years of what hardcore has given me, I’m more than happy to continue giving back. Doing a band, helping with a record label, it’s all about staying involved and trying to represent everything that I’ve always loved and cherished about hardcore. I can only hope that what we’ve said and done will amount to something in the end. —Tim McMahon