History of Moo Cow

Moo Cow came into existence in 1992 while I was living in Burlington, VT and going to school at UVM. I suddenly had the urge to do something, anything, connected to hardcore that I could do while being stuck in northern VT where at the time there were no shows or bands (for all practical purposes). I had grown up in the Boston (I used my Massachusetts address for mailing for the zine because I moved so often in VT) area where there were plenty of shows and moving to Vermont was a culture shock for me. So I decided to start a zine. Fanzines are a great way to get involved where little, almost no money, is needed. You can photocopy just a few dozen copies, and steal most of those copies from copy centers working on the honor system or through work, or whatever. When it came time to name said zine I narrowed it down to two choices, "Vein of Bitterness" and "Moo Cow". Well of course Moo Cow won out. I ended the zine run in about 1997 after 17 issues of Moo Cow Fanzine. It grew from about 4 dozen copies of issue number one, to 3,000 newsprint copies of issue number 17.

After about a year and 3 or 4 issues of the zine I got the bright idea to do a record with local hardcore band The Champions. They already had one 7" out, I was eager to do something more in the scene, and we were friends. The Champions "Once and Future King" 7" was released in May of 1993. The name "Moo Cow" was tacked onto that record. It just didn’t seem to make sense to create a new name. I already had gained some mild name recognition in the scene for doing the zine, so why start all over again trying to create a name for myself? Every so often, especially when I moved to Madison, WI in January 1995 I considered renaming the label. Most recently I gave it serious consideration when after a couple of years hiatus I moved back to Boston and am getting the label up and going again. But once again I run into the issue of already having name recognition (for better or worse) and not seeing the need to create that name recognition all over again. True, the name is pretty dumb, but it is just a name, purely something to address the mail too. Being associated with great bands such as Cave In, New Day Rising, Fall Silent, Disembodied, etc more than makes up for the silly name in my opinion.

Moo Cow has been, and always will be, an extension of myself and my tastes. I listen to several sub-genres of hardcore/punk including emo, straight edge, mosh, powerviolence, crust, grindcore, etc and I am willing to release any "type" of punk/hardcore on my label. The only condition being I have to like your band, and if I know you as people, I have to like you/believe in you.

Moo Cow Fanzine cover image gallery