Mr P (DCxPC Live)
SPB: Was there a turning point where you knew you wanted to reshift your focus from livestreaming to becoming a label?
Mr P: DCxPC Live had started a year before the pandemic doing booking and promotion for shows in Orlando, FL. Mike Hellbound, my bass player in my band, Call in Dead, had suggested to me that since he used to book shows in Port Charlotte, and I used to book shows in DC that we should start booking shows in Orlando as DCxPC. The main goal was to help touring bands with shows and also do show trades for our own band. When the pandemic hit, we jumped at the idea to do a livestream. Since it was our first one, we did it with our own band and some good friends of mine, 2AMature, who are still kicking it hard in Florida. Our first space to do the live stream fell through, but then Joshua "Danger" Dobbs from Danger Room Recording Services offered to let us use his recording space in a warehouse behind a bagel restaurant and found us a dude to run the video. Since he had his recording equipment there, we figured we might as well record the show. Once we heard the quality of the recording, it was a no brainer to want to release the songs. But how to do it?
This is when I came up with the idea to turn DCxPC Live into a record label. Since I was a huge fan of the old V.M.L.ive 7" series from the 1990s, I wanted to do album covers that paid homage to them. After our first release with Call in Dead/2AMature, we did a live stream as a benefit for Orlando's best DIY venue, Uncle Lou's. This livestream featured TV Generation and The Sinema which became our second release. This livestream and the ones that followed were all due, again, to Joshua Dobbs, and also to RATH from No Vacancy Media / RATH & The Wise Guys who did all the video work starting our second live stream.
Rather than wait for the next livestream, I reached out to my old friend, Squeaky, who plays in Year of the Fist, and they agreed to do their own livestream in California and let me release it as a 7". I also reached out to old friends in Two-Man Advantage and The Goons who both had live albums that were only released on CD from ten or twenty years ago. For the Two-Man Advantage album side A features the CBGB recording I had contacted them about, and side B has their show from Punk Rock Bowling. The Goons album was turned into a benefit album to raise money for cystic fibrosis. My old friend, PJ Goon, passed away just a few weeks before the album's release show. It was crushing news, but I take some solace in knowing that we helped raise money in his name.
We did two more livestream shows that were released featuring splits with Grave Return / The Hamiltons and Curtains/ Swift Knuckle Solution. Those were the last livestreams we did. After that we started releasing live albums from all over the country. Some were reissues of albums that had never appeared on vinyl like Ann Beretta's “Live Like a Riot," and others were brand new recordings that Josh did at Uncle Lou's like FORTITUDE or No Coffin. And others were albums where the bands brought me live recordings they had done on their own such as Degenerates of Punk, Rebelmatic or Skappository.
Starting in April of 2021 we released four records that year. Now in April of 2024, we have already released nine bringing our current release count to 28 with so much more on the way!
I want to stress that we would likely not be a label if it were not for Joshua Dobbs recording that first show and so many more after that. Besides recording almost half of our releases, he most likely mixed and/or mastered nearly every album we have released. To say that I value him as a friend and partner is an understatement.
