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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
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