Can you give us a bit of a back story about Revelation? How it came about? How you and Ray met? Etc...
Ray and I met in high school in English class, but it was years later that we talked about putting out a record. After high school, Ray moved to New Haven where I lived at the time and started Youth Of Today. At some point we just talked about putting out a record for Warzone, and within a few months we got that to happen. Once that came out Ray had an idea for another and it continued from there.
What is your position in the hardcore scene currently? Do you still attend shows regularly?
I only occasionally go to shows at this point, but most of my friends came from my involvement with hardcore in one way or another and of course running Revelation keeps me in touch with a lot of people.
Who's idea was it to start up the distro? Did you ever imagine it would get as huge as it has?
It wasn't really an idea, but something that came from the fact that a lot of people into hardcore also have bands and labels and zines and the people that worked here had stuff they they needed to distribute the way Revelation's stuff did so it just made sense to ship everything together. We tried getting some Dischord and other labels' stuff in the mid 90s but that didn't really go anywhere. A couple of years after that, a guy named Brian Probart who worked at SST before, came in to do some sales and suggested we do some other distribution I think. By then we'd also started doing distribution for Indecision probably too. That is when the distribution really became a big part of what people here spent time on.
Do you yourself have a personal collection of all the classic/rare releases(Chung King, Warzone Lion attacking the horse, etc...)?
Of course. I think I have one copy of every pressing of almost everything we've put out.
Is there a Rev release that you are particularly proud of? Is there a single release that you would consider your favorite?
Every one of them has a certain memory attached to it and I'm proud of a lot of them for different reasons.
Greg told me to ask you about video games, so, what have you been playing lately?
I've actually not been playing video games as consistently as I used to. I used to have a pretty specific list of games that I would play every Saturday and Sunday: Missile Command, Centipede, Super Breakout, Star Castle, Pac-Man, Millipede, Stargate, Crazy Climber, Tempest and a few others. MAME is one of the best things that ever happened in the world of computers so for the past 12 years or so that I've known about it, it's been fun getting to play all the games I remember from my jr. high years. Steve Hertz (former co-owner of Ambassador Records and brother of Frosty from Chain Of Strength) runs a group of arcade game collectors called SC3. Last weekend I went to their semi-annual party and got to play some gems that I haven't seen in a long time and some that I'd never played. It's great.
Are there any upcoming games you are excited about?
I don't devote any time to looking into new games so I don't really know what's out or coming out, but any classic emulation is sort of interesting. ...although MAME seems to cover everything I care about.
What's in the pipeline now for Revelation? Any upcoming releases we should know about?
By A Thread is finally releasing a new record this year. We have a compilation coming out soon where newer bands cover some of the older Rev bands songs. Tony Rettman's book about Detroit hardcore "Why Be Something That You're Not" will be out in July. Popeye from Farside and Jeff from Gameface have a band called You're Favorite Trainwreck and I've been talking to them about putting out a record. Hopefully I'm not forgetting anything.
Lastly, any final words?
Thanks!
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