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Roomrunner

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"I Was Losing You All Along" - R.I.P. Lookout! Records

A significant chunk of my youth has curled up and died for good this week. I just read this from punknews.org, which they read from Ted Leo, that the iconic California pop-punk record label, Lookout! Records is out of business.

Lookout! is probably best known for being the first home to a bunch of nobodies called Green Day. In the early ninetees, Green Day sold copies of their two Lookout! albums out of a van, and played at 924 Gilman Street, along with two of the first bands I ever got into, Operation Ivy and The Mr. T Experience (also on Lookout! Records).

Lookout! was the first label I ever really noticed, let alone payed attention to. I would be more inclined to buy punk albums if they had that logo on the back of their CD. They seemed to take more risks with their pop-punk roster, like Green Day, MTX, The Hi-Fives, and The Queers (who were at the time, a bit subversive to the punk scene by not fitting the tough and/or political attitude). I loved these bands as a kid, and was so into their cartoony and snarky approach to Ramones style punk. I take a little bit of pride on growing up in with Lookout! rather than the next generation (Drive-thru records / Vagrant) of pop punk.

Lookout! probably also played a bit role in my discovery of Ted Leo & The Pharmacists (one of my favorite bands ever, and the first band that got me out of my "punk bands only, everyone else GTFO" music mentality.) Ted's first two (AMAZING) LPs were on Lookout! According to Ted, he now owns the rights to those releases. Which may be a good thing in the end, because here's the shitty thing about Lookout! After managent changes, the record industry changing, and perhaps pop-punk changing so much that production finally started to matter, Lookout! went into money troubles. So much to the point that they weren't even paying artists their share of record sales. That sucks. No defending that kind of dickery. They got their comeuppance though. Artist and fan backlash left them to shut everything down except digital distobution in 2006. And now, in 2012, they have given up the ghost.

Thanks to the past ten years of shitty shenanigans, Lookout! won't be missed, but to me, won't be forgotten either. Fuck, I have no idea what my life would be like today if I never had those copies of Energy and Love is Dead to get me through high school. So why am I posting this here? Well, Giant Bomb is San Fansisco based. Ryan Davis has mentioned a few times he remembers the Berkeley punk scene (not sure if it was fondly or not though). Maybe some other member here quietly went "fuck yeah" during those moments too.

Goodbye Lookout!

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