Skullman Music, Skullman Records

How Chris conceived it: Skullman Music was his music publishing business. Skullman Records would be the label where he released and distributed his music.

In 2009 I/we decided to simplify it all under the moniker Skullman Records. However, it’s pretty clear by now that the way media is going, physical media (“records”) is a fluid thing, while the music goes on. Also, as archival materials become more available, I now see how often Chris used “Skullman Music” (not “Records”) on his hand-made cassette labels.

At some point in this journey (maybe around 2016) we tried to shift from “Skullman” to “Newman Music” as a means of distancing from the camp horror imagery and some of the not-so-camp baggage that came with it, projected falsely on us. But it turns out that none of this is without baggage, not even the name “Newman.”

For all these reasons, I’m leaning back now to calling the business Skullman Music, as Chris did, beginning around 1984.

Rock & Roll Hell now available to stream

I’ve made the 2002 Zeno version of 1983’s Rock & Roll Hell available to stream via all the usual sources. Full album downloads can be purchased from Amazon. This is the long version, combining the 1983 cassette with the New Years Eve 1982 “Napalm Beach – Live At the Met” (where they opened for the Wipers) CD and some songs from another performance opening for Wipers at the 13th Precinct.

The Wipers set from New Years Eve 1982 was released in 2018 by Jackpot Records on a separate album. This seems to have been a pretty important night because from what I understand it would be – unbeknownst to Chris at the time – the last night of the club. The Met closed New Years Day 1983. This – along with other club closures in Portland and Seattle – became part of the motivation for Napalm Beach leaving Portland for San Francisco later that year. Fittingly, the first song of the Wipers’ set was “Alien Boy” with the lyrics “go and get your gun because you got him on the run, he’s an alien…” The last song of the Wipers set is “Mistaken Identity.”

“Target – to be a target for reaction… to be a target for destruction”