Crazy OH/MI DIY HC gig with Backbiter, Those Hounds, Hu-Mid, and Methstain. The compelling case for Gridiron: The long tail of 2020s hardcore strikes again. Michael Cera Palin, Weatherday, Oolong, and Avery Springer. Ben Quad, New You, Camp Trash, Feels Like Heaven. Hitting a Mets game as NYHC praxis.

This week, we’re looking at the short but massive history of Drive-Thru records, a label that’s completely impossible to disentangle from the conversation about Pop Punk and Emo as we know them today. The label made a huge impact by picking a few exceptional bands and flooding the market with their CDs. Not a strategy to sneeze at.

What we find is that the bands that got huge on Drive-Thru got huge because they were good. Like really good. Unlike some other labels like Trustkill or Victory where the catalogs are bursting at the seams with s-tier releases, the gems on DTR are a little fewer and further between. That being said, the bands that rose to the top on DTR made a Punk/Emo flavored impact on mainstream culture that completely dwarfs anything we’ve talked about so far.

The heavy hitters are undeniable and come as no surprise: New Found Glory, Midtown, Dashboard Confessional, The Starting Line, Finch, The Movielife, Something Corporate, and The Early November. Honorable mention to I Am The Avalanche, who went on to build a world of their own in the 2010s.

Come for these takes, stay for the crazy story of how New Found Glory ended up getting signed to Drive-Thru and the story of how Jim saw dashboard for free in 2005.

Companion playlist, as always:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YqBtcveJmgA5ZavqrrAgq?si=e997406317da45fc