Lookout! Records, the famous Bay Area punk label, has officially closed it doors. While it was home to many great acts, unfortunately the label fell apart due to horrible mismanagement, book-keeping, business decisions, and owed a fortune in unpaid royalties. Though it survived through the 90’s and most of the 2000’s, it unfortunately was only surviving on old reissues of their Green Day and Op Ivy catalogs, among others. Regardless of that, it’s sad to see this come to an official close. Former Lookout! artist Ted Leo explains that all his old Lookout!-released records, now belongs entirely to him and that he’ll try to get them back up online as soon as possible.

“I’ve been getting a lot of Twitter questions about why a bunch of my records have disappeared from all the digital services (Sportify, iDudes, Mandora, etc.). It’s because our beloved Lookout! Records, which ceased releasing new material in 2006, but carried on keeping the catalog in print until this past December, has, sadly, shuttered it’s windows for good.

A better eulogy should be forthcoming, but just to answer these questions, this means that these records have reverted to my complete ownership, which is kind of cool in some ways, I guess, except that it also means I have to basically run my own label for them now unless I wind up licensing them to someone else in the future. In the immediate, I have to go through some legal stuff with the digital services to get the records back up online, and I’m hoping to have that all taken care of very soon. Physical records are now officially out of print and will likely not be repressed for a while (but I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually). I do have a bunch of stock laying around with no plans to tour for quite a while, so if there’s interest, maybe I’ll set up a web-store so you can buy direct from me if you want. Please feel free to email or tweet me with ideas for that. All entertaining ideas will be entertained!

And thank you, seriously, for giving a crap. I’m not happy to see Lookout gone, but having complete rights of usage and total and direct revenue from sales now, can ultimately turn this into a positive situation. I just have to get creative about it. Might try to bang one out more specialTyranny of Distance event before the 10th anniversary year is over this spring…”
– Ted Leo

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When Henry‘s not busy working for the corporate machine, updating this page and speaking in third person, he’s busy shooting and editing pictures from concerts, designing logos for bands, setting up interviews and trying to develop a podcast.