Founded 2002 | ||
Tarantulas Records was a punk rock record label generally owned by the band The Explosion and run by their then manager Rama Mayo (and other members of bands involved in the label). It was officially established in 2002, as an art movement and a protest against record labels constantly signing bands that are merely rehashes of what has already been done before. Its mission statement is to "sign bands that go against what you believe to be cool." The most prominent and active bands amongst the Tarantulas (besides the Explosion) were The Distillers, The Bronx, The Static Age, and Darker My Love. At its height, Tarantulas became less a label and more a movement of people across the US sick of what was happening to music and counterculture—a number of non-musicians (for lack of a better term, fans) identified themselves as Tarantulas, many tattooing themselves with the label logo—and bands turned down other, much bigger labels, to be a part of the group. Unfortunately, the label/collective ceased to be in 2005/2006 due to disagreements with distributor The Platform Group (a link to Fontana) and other tensions (many rumors and myths persist about all sorts of clashes around this time, centering on 2005 in Silver Lake, LA), but a couple of the label's main bands at the time continued on to other labels and situations, namely The Static Age and Darker My Love.