Interview with Ken Sanderson (Prank Records)

Ken Sanderson - a founder of a legendary Bay Area based record label Prank Records, one of the most important American hardcore labels in my opinion. 

Ken has been deeply involved in the local hc/punk scene, starting as a long time contributor to MAXIMUMROCKNROLL, and also being a booking agent of DIY shows for touring and local bands.

Prank hosted their first Japanese Hardcore band to tour in the US in 1995. It was a brief mini-tour by Tokyo band ASSFORT, which opened the gate for multiple other bands, including the legendary GAUZE.
Prank also maintained a strong relationship with the Swedish scene, as well as many of the best crust punk / USHC bands there.
In 1997 and 1998 Prank hosted two ‘Prank Fest’ festivals in Atlanta, Georgia showcasing the strong Southeast punk scene and bands associated with the label.
The festival was relocated  to Austin, Texas in 2004 and transformed into the ‘Chaos In Tejas’ festival, which itself is a legendary, annual event now and I truly believe many of you would be aware of.

I reached out to Ken when I was setting up my record label and I was blown away by his exhaustive and patient response to my every question. 
I think kindness is very rare these days, but when I come across it I can easily recognise and appreciate it. 

I wanted to interview Ken in particular as I think his input into releasing and promoting Japanese hardcore in the US is beyond comparison. Also his stories about working with the bands are super interesting in many ways.
Just have a read...

Ken Sanderson (circa 2012)

1. When and how did your fascination with Japanese Hardcore start? Was it before you set up Prank records?

K: My all time favourite band is SEPTIC DEATH. I just absolutely love the original SEPTIC DEATH recording and interviewed Pushead for my small fanzine in 1985. It's also that early Pushead illustration still had influence from American Comic artists like Jack Kirby and Bernie Wrightson, and I was a huge comic book collector before getting into Prank, so I related to art and music. I followed Pushead's record reviews as Japanese hardcore was exploding, and would mail-order records like LIPCREAM, S.O.B. and CONFUSE when they came out based on his "And I could hardly eat my udon, as the tonsil destroying mayhem screeched over the savage explosion of ear drum detonating trash" recommendations. Sounds insane! Sign me up! Japanese records were really expensive in the 1980's because the yen was really strong against the dollar, and I was doing all this from a small town in Central Alabama, so only could order so much. (Alabama was pretty remote. While there were punk bands in the major cities, there were no punk shows in my town until I started putting them on in the late 1980's, there was no punk scene) I would drive two hours to Atlanta for shows but also to buy used American Hardcore records, trade them to Erica Beck at Record Boy and Profane Existance's Far East's Izumi Kubo for Japanese punk records. I did a radio show when I was in College and played a lot of this stuff in the air and even wrote Selfish Records and had them send me a tape of releases to play on the radio. (By 1992 I'd do entire specials, bombarding my town of 30,000 people and the surrounding farmland with 2 hours of non stop Japanese hardcore). Phil and Dean of Extreme Noise Terror were also pals, and sent me a tape of records they found while on tour in Japan. The scene was smaller then, everyone did their part to water it, let people know about stuff and help it grow.

2. Would you tell me a bit more about the history of how you set up Prank, how the idea emerged and how you managed to execute that?

K: Because of where I grew up, I just never made the transition to playing an instrument and in bands, never found a comfort level or enjoyment with it, and years of doing radio and setting up shows just made me happy to do behind the scene stuff. When I moved to California I booked Gilman Street for few years, but tired of internal politics and decided to start my project, which was Prank. Pusmort was my favourite label, I was a diehard mailorder customer of Pusmort from the beginning, and was inspired by it and this short lived label that was similar called OVER THE TOP I was pen pals with. I didn't have a set idea, wasn't a reissue label but would do reissues, was a US label but would do Finnish and Japanese releases, was a local label but would do bands from anywhere. Because I was in San Francisco I had people like Ruth Schwartz of Mordam Records and David Hayes of Very Small Records to give me advice, was able to find really key partners like having George Horn master the records, who was by that point an old master and could master great sounding, loud records efficiently and cheaply. 1990's San Francisco it was still a global centre of punk culture, with so many bands, labels, distributors and venues, so there were lots of people to ask for advice. I was lucky to work with East Bay Hardcore band DEAD AND GONE as a first band, they were an amazing band and still great musicians that have remained active throughout the years. They knew other bands that needed assistance getting records out, and it grew from there.

3. You organised tours and brought some legendary Japanese bands to the US. Do you have any particular story you'd like to share?

K: Other Japanese bands had come to the US before I started doing shows - Laughin' Nose had recorded on NYC, Machiro Endo from The Stalin had done a series of shows in California and on Native American Reservations with a backing band a year before I moved here, S.O.B. had played a CMJ one off showcase show in NYC, Gembaku Onanies and Blood Thirsty Butchers both had also played the west coast.
When Assfort first came to the US in 1995, and they were the perfect "Japanese hardcore" band to come to here as they were young, really great and had no expectations that an older, more established band might have. Their LP on Vinyl Japan was just about to be released. My favourite show they played was at the coffee shop in Santa Rosa, about 90 minutes from SF, on a weeknight. We had a friend who was a locksmith by trade drive us to the gig in his work van, squished among the tools as the keys along the walls rattled when the van hit bumps in road. Maybe 12 people showed up. Even people I knew there into Hardcore didn't come out, and Assfort absolutely did not care that no one was there, and completely leveled the place. The bassist at the time was a Muay Thai Kickboxer and at one point kicked a heavy bottomed microphone stand and sent it sailing across the room, full throttle show.
Punk in the 1990's was an interesting thing - it kind of presaged how culture would go at large as the scene plot into all these small sub scenes. Hardcore was really back to ground zero, so you played shows where you could find theme, so it was kind of funny to take these Japanese hardcore bands, who were professional, accomplished bands and then light them up like a blowtorch inside a pizza parlor, living room, coffee shop or wherever else we could find for them to play. Some of them were most in their element when it was more a club setting with monitors, lights and good sound, but all were really good sport. It's funny though one band was given a drum kit that wasn't set up and the drummer was completely at a loss of how to do it. Anytime this person played drums - at a practice rental or the live house - the drums are always already set up, so we had to help him. There's funny cultural things like that, band members wandering around a US 7-11 looking for "a fresh" and then having to explain that US 7-11 don't sell underwear like in Japan, listening to the OUTO 12" with band members and realising they didn't own the record and hadn't heard the songs in years... but knew all the lyrics and could sing along from seeing the band over and over again in the 80's, panicking when the bands walked by cops with open (beer) containers (ok in Japan, not okay here), just funny things.
These shows and bands were always super fun, but I wish I understood the culture a little more in retrospect so I could've been more supportive and understanding. Japan has very clear annual seasons, with festivals to mark them and the understanding of time, moments in time, culturally is a bit different than the west, it's really about celebrating and focusing on that once in a lifetime moment and making it special, and with that maybe I'd attended to details to just set the stage for that better. Some of the best moments of doing these tours were when the bands were so incredible you knew things were going to have to change - the Assfort show at Gilman Featured on the Prank 7" cover, Paintbox at Emo's in Austin, Smash Your Face in Atlanta, The Gaia, Gauze at Gilman Street...there was no going back from those, things had changed.

4. Have you ever been to Japan yourself?

K: I first went to Japan in 1995, communicating with Record Boy by fax about when there would be a particularly good show to go. GISM set up a show in Roppongi at a club called Jungle Bass which was unusual because they asked that DEATHSIDE and GAUZE support, and the time the bands didn't often play together. That seemed like a pretty worthwhile show to go! So I went to Japan to see that show, buy records and sofubi and sight see. I've been to Japan many times since and despite even speaking the most rudimentary Japanese, still don't fully understand it, there's layers and layers of culture, history and tradition. There's things in Japan that work amazingly well, and then there's things there that don't work at all and are totally dysfunctional, like anywhere else. People tend to become real Japan-o-philes, but there wouldn't be punk scene there if Japan was perfect...and there's a lot to explore and love about Japan beyond it's punk scene and record shops. There's few days that I don't wish I could go to an all day onsen for $8, go get freshly made, warm Senbei and Mochi, grab a beer or hot coffee from a vending machine, drink it in a park outside an 800 year old temple....then sit on the train and read a $4 weekly 200 page comic book.

5. Have you been following the new, young generation of Japanese hc/punk scene? Anything caught your attention recently?

K: When Prank basically ended in 2014, I just got badly depressed and basically stopped listening to music entirely. Sure, I'd listen to music, but the active, determined listening that's required to totally know what's going on, I wasn't doing that. When I sat in Alabama for years, doing weekly radio and writing people all over the world to get records sent to the radio show - I think that time, really concentrating, reviewing and thinking about records is how I was able to make really good records later. When I moved here I was working at Mordam distribution, booking Gilman and working at MRR, so I was just totally immersed in music and could build connections between things. It's only recently I returned to that kind of active curiosity and exploration, and would love to get back to doing radio and reviews if there was time.

Like a lot of Japanese art, Japanese hardcore is built upon a hyper-informed study of a style and then an enormous amount of energy, craft and attention to details. Japanese bands often approach their entry into a band with the same diehard, lifetime commitment that Salaryman have to their company, so there's lots of old lifers still actively playing live when they can. The only downside of this is I think it kind of frozen some of the interest of young people in playing traditional Japanese hardcore there, which already has its established masters, so often new bands go sideways, striking out their own path with something like "Polish styled hardcore but with lyrics in Spanish" or some kind of combination that isn't really possibly anywhere but the crazy cross global marketplace that is Tokyo or Osaka. There's good "new" bands I like: Ataraxia, Kloons, Disturd, Misiliski, C, Life, Skitklass, Solopaatoos, etc. But like in the US or UK, still waiting for a band that matches the intensity and meaning of the original bands of the 80's and 90's. That might be age though, where your taste sets long in the past and new kids have a different point of embarcation and reference. Japan and it's scene is relentless, positive energy is always rejuvenating and inspiring. The Japanese punk scene is very much a scene about live shows, and I think to really understand where it's at - and sometimes even actually understand the bands themselves - would require spending some time bouncing between live houses and watching bands.

It's entirely possible that the next great punk scene is from somewhere totally unexpected, because the barriers of distribution are gone; Punk used to be enormously difficult and take great effort to find out about, but now a new demo is worldwide on Bandcamp or YouTube hours after it comes out, Punk is a lot more global. I was enormously inspired by the Ukrainian Punk scene, a scene I didn't even know existed, which is massive and diverse, and the bands continued artistic efforts to record and release music even while their country under siege from Russia's war. Some of that is there's a lot of young people in Ukraine, and since they're not part of EU they probably don't leave for better paying jobs in Berlin or London. Japan conversely is an aging society with a low birth rate, so has less young people to pick up guitars.

6. What other projects are you involved in now apart from running Prank Records?

K: To supplement the label I began selling used records in 00's, it was work I could turn on and off around the demands of the label, but this took over to the point where I was selling at as many as 38 records fairs a year. When I look back on it now, it's weird I just didn't start a distro, but I had such old, hard set ideas against turning the label into an actual business or for profit entity.. it just seemed crazy to do all that work to make 50 cents a record in 2005, but the major record store here in the Bay Area had just competitively worked to shut down almost 10 or more small neighbourhood stores all over the area by basically undercutting all them both buying and selling. So I did used records, I could care less if I buy a jazz record for $2 and sell it for $300. I have no qualms about that like I do profiting off the scene. Used records can be lucrative, but it's unpredictable. I'll never be truly great at it, as really I don't care about Psyche, jazz, classical, Northern soul 45's or Private press oddities, I just care about hardcore and you need to be invested to know music to be able to sell it well professionally. During the pandemic I didn't miss this work at all.

I now supply Thrillhouse, a punk store here in SF, and one of the last punk spaces in SF with used records and help to keep their store open and strong. It's one of the few places young kids can throw a show and it's irrelevant if anyone shows up, which is what really young kids need to begin playing shows. SF is an expensive city now, there's few places you can buy a bunch of cheap stuff and Thrillhouse is a very cool store, with cheap punk records and a bit of a thrift store jumble sale vibe... It's kind of a throwback to 1990's SF, I really like the place and I am committed to help keeping it open so it can be used for movie nights, NA meetings, a punk hangout, people to screen shirts, housing a local online radio station, etc.

As I said before, Prank basically ended around 2014. I didn't realise this until I started actively doing the label again in 2020. It is constant non stop work, and being back inside that, feeling it again made me understand that yes, I was just completely and totally broken and spent and had to stop for a while. I regret that now, but just anything I would put out would put me thousands of dollars in debt and I'd taken a $25,000 hit leaving Rainbo Records pressing. Being back inside the label, there's not a lot of time to do other things, and anything worthwhile really commands that kind of total involvement and energy. If I had free time, I'd draw more and when I wrestle with bouts of insomnia I do work on a Science Fiction book I've been working on this year. It's my extension of my involvement with punk, dystopian and political and fun to do. 

7. What are your future plans for Prank? Is there any change of direction, especially after the pandemic?

K: It's been incredibly hard to get anything made, especially within California which is the most populous state in the US, home to a lot of the offices of major labels and heaps of indies. California had 7-8 major pressing plants when Prank started, there's now....TWO. Most new plants that have opened are east of the Mississippi. I do not want to make DMM records in Europe, where you just submit files and get back records, as I do understand how good a well mastered record can be, and while DMM is faithful, it's not the same volume and breadth as a well mastered, lacquer cut album.. My only current plan is to attend to old bands, catalog and lingering projects. I have no plan for a change in direction or sound and would eventually like to return to making new records, but will probably start small with a series of 45's. I really would like to make more well made, super intense, brutal records with new ideas.

The next Prank release are a new CROW 12", a re-release of APOCALYPSE (a side project of Crow from the late 80's); a co-release of the new AVSKUM LP  and a deluxe re-press of PAINTBOX "Earth Ball Sports Tournament".

8. How do you define DIY punk after all the years of being involved in it and what have you learned from being in the scene?

K: DIY punk is the right of self-determination and taking control of the means to do what you want to do. I think it was originally coupled with low cost to allow for distribution at a time when physical formats were the only means of distribution to a youth culture with limited financial means. But what I learned in the collapse of Prank is you need money to do what you want to do, and for that you have to respect money, be attuned to it, and be aware of it. It's not that that has to be your motivation, but you need to play smart so you can afford the next project or rebound if you take an enormous hit.....or five.

Prank's motivation has never been about making money, and honestly, to help the scene grow at the time I started the label, it honestly needed people to selflessly give as it was still rebuilding itself as a community scene. I have mixed feelings about the commitment to total low level not for profit DIY. The 80's bands played clubs, went through organised distribution - these bands still play clubs, and still are able to have a measure of financial support by playing and releasing their music. The 90's bands played houses and basements, they sold their music for basically nothing, and for many it was totally unsustainable as a long term thing, very few bands still play or tour. In the 00's downloading crushed music across the board, Indie and metal labels looked over and basically poached an entire generation of up and coming US DIY punk bands that were selling well, but many of those bands still play clubs and are able to continue making music. But also I guess that comes down to scale and what you're trying to achieve.. The victory of the 90's punk scene was the spread of the DIY ethos more than anything, it's biggest cultural impact was the spread of DIY ideas into society, from craft beer to sites like Etsy as well as all type of music. Hardcore no longer needs to argue for it's legitimacy, but in a broad sense continually needs to battle for it's relevancy.

All the best made things are paid for in time, effort, blood, sweat and incredible amount of obsessiveness.

This is why innovation often comes from youth, as they don't have the distractions and responsibilities of older people. You have to take uneven, first steps to reach these things......and you have to be willing to fall off the board if you want to ride the tops of the waves.