Jesus Christ People, Stop Burning Everything Down!

I was blown away by some of the pictures of the riots in Vancouver, Canada following the Canucks' loss of the Stanley Cup just two months ago. Something like ten city blocks were set on fire in that incident, and that was just over a game. Now in London, an on going (as of this post) riot has been taking place resulting in a pretty good chunk of the city getting burned. One building in particular caught media attention in the states today: a warehouse owned by Sony and PIAS records was burned TO THE GROUND.


PIAS is one of the largest distributors of physical forms of music media in the UK for several major and independent record labels. Pitchfork has listed well over 100 labels affected by this fire, but here are the ones I'm familiar with:

• Drive Thru Records -- Hands down my favorite emo/pop punk label before I got into hardcore and metal. It featured artists like: New Found Glory, Senses Fail, Finch, Early November, Hidden in Plain View.
• Matador Records -- A little indie label that's been flying under the radar. The only current artists I'm familiar with are Fucked Up and Cold Cave.
• SideOneDummy Records -- A great little puck rock label. Known for releases by Anti-Flag, The Casualties, The Gaslight Anthem, Flogging Molly, 7 Seconds, Title Fight and Broadway Calls.
• Sub Pop -- Originally known for making grunge popular with Soundgarden, Nirvana and Mudhoney, it later signed some bigger-name alt rock artists like Sunny Day Real Estate, Mogwai, The White Stripes,  and Death Cab for Cutie.
• Touch & Go Records -- The only label I know that's famous for noise rock. It's a very specific sub-genre, but Touch & Go signed some of the biggest names in this style: The Jesus Lizard, Big Black, Shellac, Rapeman, Scratch Acid, Butthole Surfers, and Slint.
• Victory Records -- These guys used to be known as a pretty respectable name in punk rock and hardcore back when Hatebreed and Snapcase were among their biggest bands, but they quickly became a label that just signed flavor-of-the-week bands like Hawthorne Heights, Atreyu, A Day to Remember, Dr Acula, Emmure... The list just gets more pathetic as I go on.

Maybe these aren't the biggest labels out there, but the impact will certainly be felt in the UK. According to that Pitchfork article, many of labels are already starting to tally up the damages, with several of them reporting several hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. From one fire.

This is like kicking the music industry while it's already down. Right in the nuts.