One Eye Goes Back; The Other, Forward.

Hello hello hello,

I dug out our old "blogspot" in order to, hopefully, more efficiently communicate over the next year. We've got two points of discussion to get through today, one "small" and one BIG.

Let’s get the "small" one out of the way first, though this speaks more to the quantity of info, not the quality. The modern masterpiece Blackie by Roy Kinsey is and has been available on vinyl for some time. It was an honor to work on this with Roy and Mike and, after a very long sabbatical on our part, have the chance to get it into your hands. It’s joining the webstore accompanied by some other “recent” acquisitions, as well as almost everything in our inventory at the lowest price possible (a sale that will largely last until those products have been cleared out). Please follow the link above to one of our storefronts and scoop it up.

What comes next is long, it's BIG, if ya dig, so if you stick around, take the time, and follow us through it, I thank you for being what you are: a True Believer.

I borrowed this term, from the Man, the late Stan Lee, father (grand-father? Great grand-father?) of modern comic books, the head of the House of Ideas. He used it as I use it, to describe a group of fanatics who just can’t seem to get enough of what most would write off as kid shit, those in pursuit of alternative modes of expression, those who fumble and falter through one bad idea after another until, finally, it clicks!, and you find the good one. I like to think that is the legacy of Not Normal Tapes. That the dead space and silence, what little of it there was between each release was a series of fumbles ‘til we face-planted into that out of the way sort of genius I believe constitutes an NNT release.

Since the last broadcast of Not Normal Quarterly, I did what I always do: overloaded myself. I swore I would take it easy and then just couldn’t do it, proceeded to drop a slew of releases, which I regard as highly as those first steps taken over ten years ago: the Floor Above, true outsider hardcore punk from Nashville; CB Radio Gorgeous, the best punk band this city has produced since the turn of the century; the Lipschitz, the hardest working, hardest rocking duo since Fred and Toody and/or Lux and Ivy; two releases from Roy Kinsey, the most focused, brilliant, and thought-provoking artist I’ve had the fortune to work with; Deodorant, who could not possibly cater more directly to my musical tastes if they tried; Dagger, THE fucking band that reminded what was special about my home and, I believe, rekindled the fire in the region; CT-85, a necessary explosion; all followed by the “big” reboot, the extension into infinity that brought us Bughouse II (mk. 1, for those counting); Jocko, a monumental expression of, well, Expression; and, finally the collaboration between Mike Jones and Spoken Thought, two of the big brains that helped bring Roy’s vision to fruition just a short time prior.

This last year has seen a tremendous amount of support for what we do from some wonderful people and I’d like to take time to acknowledge that. We held three anniversary shows in honor of our 10th year, held at places as varied as Bric-A-Brac Records, Paul Henry’s Art Gallery, and Slippery Slope, all attended to capacity. I thank Jen & Nick, Kenny, and Liz, respectively, for making sure said events went down, for allowing me a place to celebrate a plateau not many other DIY Hardcore Punk labels have been fortunate enough to reach (though not for lack of trying.) I was also interviewed twice, once by NWI’s own Musically Meditated Podcast and again by Golnar Nikpour for MRR, which appeared in that hallowed punk rag’s penultimate issue. To be allowed to opine on such a grand scale by someone I so fully admire, who so fully embodies the punk ethos as I understand it is something I will be thankful for until my dying day.

So we’re here now, in infinity, pondering these auspicious happenings. It was a fucking goddamned year like most of our fucking goddamned years. Exhausting, but remarkable. But then, I again ponder that penultimate issue of MRR, and the final issue as well, and how well they no doubt sold, and how things possibly would have been different for the most important running document the underground has, or had, but you get it, if that sort of full throated support had been consistent. And I’m also pondering the recent article in Rolling Stones magazine informing whoever still reads that hackfest that vinyl is poised to outsell CDs for the first time in a couple decades, a high tide that was never gonna raise all boats. The mainstream confirmation of CDs as a soulless format is a truth the underground has known for decades, and all this means functionally is that major labels found a way to offset this discovery by clogging the arteries of vinyl production with Beatles reissues, repackaged as collectible knick-knacks for the check out line at Forever 21. So yeah, I guess it’s notable that those honkeys in Imagine Dragons moved some vinyls through Target or some dad scooped up a killer NOFX scratch and sniff picture disc RSD exclusive, but that doesn’t move an American Hate LP out of my fucking house. And all that makes me ponder, not necessarily the function of all DIY labels at this point in space-time, but definitely the function of mine.

There’s two of me writing the forthcoming revelation: Ralph Rivera, the co-founder and business owner of Not Normal; and Ralph Rivera, the True Believer. I’ve run this label at about 20% the former and 80% the latter for the entirety of its existence, a percentage I think is about consistent across the board for any DIY label worth mentioning. None of us got into this to live the good life, ya dig?, but you can only run on just this side of financial ruin, spend a few grand on a record you know to be perfect just to watch it sit on the shelves and collect dust, or have a release coincide with the dissolution of the band so many times before the mental toll beats out even the most superhuman of constitutions, something I’ve never been accused of possessing in the first place. And those conditions? Things just change, and I’m chief among them. It’s harder to take risks on the creative endeavors of others when to take them means perpetually delaying your own.

I won’t flatter myself by thinking anyone was waiting around for this, but, for my own sake, it was something I needed to get out of my head and onto paper, digital or otherwise. I’m thankful for the opportunities I’ve been given and the love and support I’ve received. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and have no regrets, except five, give or take, but that’ll come later. I’m just at a distinct juncture and I’ve grown enough behind the scenes to know it for what it is. Over the past six months, I’ve ran over every conceivable scenario, to the point that I informed a member of CBRG I would no longer be able to release their record, that I was packing it in. I thought I could just call it now and be content, but that’s a choice I’m too high diva to fucking make. No, no, everything’s gotta be a fucking production with this one, so although I don’t see many years left of this label, I can see exactly one. One year to tie up the loose ends of this big multi-issue arc we’ve been working on.

Behold, True Believers, the final era of Not Normal. The finite infinity that stretches before us, that fate dictates exactly like this:

NNI#004 Tums - Old Perverts & Horse Fuckers CS

NNI#005 Bughouse II mk. II CS

NNT#047 HJD - Demo ‘84 CS

NNI#006 CB Radio Gorgeous EP

NNI#007 Mister - Espejismo EP

NNI#008 Absolute Bughouse II CS & Zine

Not Normal 0

I’ll be back with more words (though considerably less than this), weekly, every Thursday, until the last day, 10/10/20. I hope you follow along with us until that point.

Thank you, True Believers,

Ralph/NNT