Founded by Dave Crider in late ’80s Bellingham, WA, Estrus Records was a dominant garage punk force in the decade to follow. The new book Estrus: Shovelin’ the Shit Since ’87, lavishly illustrated and extensively annotated by author Chris Alpert Coyle and designer Scott Sugiuchi and published by Korero Press, makes a strong case that the label was the crème de la crème. For those having soaked up the label’s stuff when freshly released, these pages will provide a vivid journey down a lane of good memories. Additionally, recent garage punk converts will gather a clear understanding from whence so much of the style’s contemporary flavor derives.
It should be noted straightaway that the output of Estrus Records is extensive, and to the point where this tome far exceeds a one-stop nostalgia trip. There will certainly be new information for everybody with a preexisting jones for ’90s garage punk, excepting the small handful of people who were involved in running the enterprise. And hey, it’s still a safe bet the operators have learned a thing or a few from this undertaking, if not about the discography (printed in full in the book’s back pages) than through the shared stories, often aligned with the copious consumption of booze, that are attached to the live shows and recorded output.
Records released by Estrus sounded raw, fully earning the punk tag, and the discs further benefitted from unified visual motifs, as the design work of Art Chantry was crucial to solidifying the Estrus identity. Fitting for the label’s moniker, the 7-inches, 10-inches, LPs (CDs were released but vinyl dominated sales until deep into the label’s run), fanzine ads and show flyers often featured sultry and buxom women, photographed or more commonly hand drawn by artists like Coop and Frank Kozik. Naturally, illustrated monsters and hot rods were part of the scheme.
Adding to the prolificacy was a singles club, the Estrus Crust Club, plus themed compilations that strengthened the label’s connections to the burgeoning contemporary garage scene. This later proved handy in fortifying the lineups of the annual Garage Shock festival weekends, all but one held in Bellingham but an increasingly international experience (drawing heavily on Japan, France and Scandinavia).
Estrus started in part to release music by Crider’s own band, the reliably terrific Mono Men, the act responsible for the label’s first 7-inch in ’89 (“Burning Bush” b/w “Rat Fink”). They also took part in the first Estrus full-length, the tribute compilation !!!Here Ain’t The Sonics!!!, which was about as sturdy a statement of purpose as this fledgling imprint could expect to muster. Into the ’90s, the label’s high profile bands included The Mummies, Man or Astro-man?, The Makers, Gas Huffer, and Mooney Suzuki.
But enough history; it’s all (ALL) in the book, including a devastating warehouse fire in 1997. Coyle and Sugiuchi do a fabulous job of assembling the history, with invaluable input from not just Crider, his wife Bekki, and Chantry but artist Alex Ward and musician-producer (ahem, Noisemaster) Tim Kerr. Tying it all together are recollections from band members and scene makers, leaving the impression that Crider, if head-strong, was and remains a stand-up guy and a class act in business and in life.
By extension, I’m left with the feeling that Estrus, while playing a major role in establishing the trash culture sensibility that eventually became something of a garage punk cliché, was also fairly inclusionary, as the band Gravel are a fine early example of a non-mold fitter. And while it was clear there was no interest in piggybacking onto the nearby Grunge explosion, there was also no antagonism of the Seattle scene, at least on the part of Estrus (The Mummies, however, are another matter).
And so, the eventual stylistic growth in the Estrus discography (much of it leaning toward punk blues and rocking soul) might not have pleased everybody in what the book calls the “bowling shirt crowd,” but it was never seen as a betrayal. The factor that ultimately slowed Estrus’ momentum wasn’t a refusal to evolve (or even that warehouse fire) but simply the emergence of digital over physical formats, though the label’s mail-order website is still active.
Estrus wasn’t the only garage punk game in town back in the day (there was Crypt, Norton, and Sympathy for the Record Industry, just for starters), but Estrus: Shovelin’ the Shit Since ’87 is a beautiful dive into why Dave Crider’s label stood out and persevered. Only a portion of the discography is currently available through the website, but for the stuff that’s out of print, there are always used store bins and internet sellers. Hunting for those records might make it seem, for a brief moment, like it’s 1987.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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