For those of you who don’t know, I’ve had ten million problems with making Sinister’s Chicago comp. So I thought I’d write about it, and for anyone who does a label or will in the future, maybe it will help you out. It all started when I worked for Victory Records my sophomore year, so 2 years ago. One of the guys who worked there with me, Chuck, gave me an idea to do a Chicago comp with hardcore bands. Then in the fall of 1999 I started asking bands to be on this. By this time it turned into a punk/hc comp instead of just hardcore, I dig all types of shit so I thought it would be cool to make it eclectic. Everyone was pretty awesome about getting back to me and setting up recording time. We were going to give the bands their own page to do whatever they wanted to in the book. I got in touch with Mike Ech (Landos 45 and Story so Far) to see if he wanted to do the cover art, he said yeah. He emailed me a rough sketch of what he was thinking and it looked pretty awesome, I was amped. I got all the recordings by early summer and sent them to get mastered with Jeff Merkel. He finished it, it sounded amazing, and I had it in my hands August 16th. Now we had to wait for the art. I set up a show in October in conjunction with Supersleuth for their record release and the comp release. Supersleuth, Frontside, John Brown Battery and Myopia were playing. The show came around, but the comps didn’t, but the show was amazing. It was Brett’s, from John Brown Battery, last show with the band. In fact I didn’t even send off a copy of the art to the pressing plant yet, so I felt like a big fucking idiot. Mike eventually got me the art and I sent it in to the pressing plant. They couldn’t use it because of the format or something along those lines. The girl who was working on the project at the plant just left so Mike talked to the boss to see what he had to do. He told him what to do, Mike did it, and we resubmitted the art, still no good. Mike did everything the owner wanted, however the art guy they had working there now said the boss didn’t know what he was talking about. So we resubmitted the art again, some files were corrupt, we sent another zip, and another, all together about 7 or 8 zip disks went over there. There were a couple of times they told me it was all good and it will be going to film and then called me a few hours later saying it was all fucked up again. It was one headache after another, and all the bands were pretty awesome about the problems so that was a relief. Finally I talked to Doug Ward, he usually does the films and mastering for my projects but he was in Russia when we were going to be getting this done. He said he’d help out, so I was relieved that someone I knew, that knew what he was talking about was working on this and maybe he could mediate both sides and figure out what was going wrong! I resubmitted another zip, the last zip before Tim and I were going to drive to Virginia and break some heads, and Matt the art guy, got it to work. I thought it was strange that the moment I talked to someone else about doing the films, shit got done. Whatever, finally months after it was supposed to come out, we’ll have a CD soon. If your band or label is planning to do a record make sure that you talk to the pressing plant about the art. My first 7”, I had a print out from a computer and gave it to the printing place. I had no idea what 4 color processing was. Learn about it and/or ask someone who has done it before for pointers. People who know what they are doing: Doug Ward, www.maximummac.com(sound and art, in Chicago), Jeff Merkel www.mach8.com(sound). If anyone needs anything regarding this kind of thing, email me, I learned a lot through this experience and I can probably point you in the right direction if I don’t know what to tell ya. The only thing I will miss from working on this comp is Sig Transit Gloria collectively and individually asking me “where’s my fucking comp”. Yeah! Craig’s spring playlist, Saves the Day, Alkaline Trio, Frontside, Sig Transit Gloria, AFI, Boy Sets Fire, Grade. For the lastest breaking Sinister news visit www.sinisterlabel.com. Thanks Ryan!

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