Longshot Music’s 30th anniversary celebrations get underway Thursday, Oct. 8 with a Punk Rock Kickoff Party at the Fox Theatre.
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Longshot Music’s 30th anniversary celebrations begin tonight, Thursday, Oct. 8, with a “Punk Rock Kickoff Party” at the Projection Room, upstairs at the Fox Theatre.
The event runs from 8 p.m. to midnight and features DJ Longshot and Jeffrey Pop of the Tranzmitors on turntables.
Friday, Oct. 9, the label’s anniversary festival moves to the Cobalt, with Toy Tiger, Pagans of Northumberland, Reckless Upstarts, and Los Angeles-based headliners Castillo.
Saturday, Oct. 10, more bands take the stage at the Cobalt, including the Buzzers, No Heart, First Attack, Hard Evidence, the Prowlers, and Calgary’s Knucklehead, the night’s headliner.
Sunday, Oct. 11, DJ’s Our Man Flint and Big Punch Sound host a “Reggae Recovery” afterparty at the Irish Heather (downstairs at 248 E. Georgia), running from noon to 6 p.m.
Longshot Mike runs Longshot Music, describing it as both a distributor and, since 1996, a record label. He says the distribution side began in 1994 while he was living in Kamloops after he wrote to labels and distros in the United Kingdom.
He describes operating without a brick-and-mortar shop, with “drop-ins welcome” for people ordering by mail, and says the distro arm later moved to Vancouver, then Brooklyn, then San Francisco, before returning to Vancouver and currently settling in Tacoma, Washington.
By 1996, he began releasing bands he liked on the Longshot Music label, and he notes that two of those bands—First Attack and No Heart—will be part of the weekend’s programming.
For the festival, the scheduled acts also include bands and projects he has been connected to over the years, including the Buzzers and other groups he says he has played in, along with local collaborators who have helped with shows.
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