No Record Co.

From Sean Dolan of Blue Meanies: "Okay so the idea originated with Blue Meanies in the early '90s. It was born out of being unsigned and deciding to self-release music and fully control one's own destiny instead of worrying about attracting the attention of real labels. When people would inevitably ask what label you were on or look at your packaging or marketing, the answer was, well, we have no record label. None. So that morphed into slapping the name No Record Co on your shit and selling it yourself. Pretty certain the first time this was done was the 7″ Grandma Shampoo, b/w Dickory Dock. On bubble gum pink vinyl, to boot. Anyway, the Meanies used the No Record logo for the full length , too, and eventually MU330 decided to use it when they put out Press, and they added their hometown to the name to distinguish from the Meanies slightly. So they were No Records St Louis. I know the Meanies again used it for the Pave The World release. After that, the Meanies signed to Fuse Records, which released Kiss Your Ass Goodbye, and that is the first Meanies full-length that actually was on a label, and we never put anything out after that which wasn't on a label, so No Records just kinda eventually petered out as an idea. There is still no claim to owning the brand name, no trademark or copyright to it — anyone can still use it to this day and no one would stop them. The label personnel and all that stuff is whoever was in or associated with the band that used the label name."