Vandal Children Records

Why Vandal Children Records?In the days before the internet took over like a bully at the school playground, vinyl and cassettes were about the only way to spread a band’s sound beyond the ears of the folks who were lucky enough to catch the music live and in person.That’s where Vandal Children came in. The purpose of the label was to take the raw sounds of the emerging punk scene and commit them to vinyl, so they could be digested and enjoyed by an audience beyond those who packed into the basements and hall shows of eastern CT where these songs were born. Punk wasn’t just happening in the East Bay, Washington, DC or NYC; there were many local bands that deserved greater exposure. For a few years in the early 1990s, Vandal Children tried to give a few of those bands an outlet to the world.I took the name for the label from a poem by a Puerto Rican-American poet by the name of Martin Espada. Strongly political, the poem is titled “Federico’s Ghost”. It’s about the death of a migrant farm worker because of poor work conditions who exacts a measure of revenge on his masters--and thereby continues to live after death--by inspiring the other laborers to acts of outright rebellion:"After Federico died, rumors at the labor camp told of tomatoes picked and smashed at night, growers muttering of vandal children or communists in camp, first threatening to call Immigration, then promising every Sunday off if only the smashing of tomatoes would stop."I’m glad I had a chance to be a part of the punk music scene through Vandal Children. My thanks to all the good people who played in the bands, listened to them and bought the records. I hope when you hear these songs, whether for the first time or for the ten thousandth, they’ll enter your head like a postcard of sound from a far away but interesting place, a place where you’d want to live if you could find a way to get there.