Hey everyone, Jose “the internet intern” here. If you hadn’t heard TSt closed its doors in 2011. There isn’t really a point to following this blog, since it will most likely not be updated again. If you wanna contact Sam, look him up on google. He is going by Sammy Thrashlife these days. He’s not putting out records anymore. But if you’re interested in buying some original artwork, he’s doing a lot of that these days. If you wanna get contact info for bands, I can’t really help you. For all your Traffic Street-esque pop punk needs look to Dead Broke, It’s Alive, John Wilkes Booth, Bloated Kat, Kiss Of Death and probably a few other labels that are currently slipping my mind.

Take care.

Hey, everybody-

Just wanted to give you a heads up re: the new Sundials full-length. You’ll find all the info on the releases page of the website, but here’s the scoop:

Early in 2010, a new band from Richmond recorded a six song EP that took me completely by surprise. That band was Sundials and their virtually flawless debut was a prime example of how to play confident and catchy ’90s influenced indie/punk with charm and attitude. Each song was distinct, memorable, and exciting, and within a day I must have listened to it fifty times over. When I heard just a few months later that the band had already written an entire full-length’s worth of material to follow up that first EP, I got on board to release it without a moment of hesitation. If you love Kudrow, Cheap Girls, or any of the other upstarts taking cues from bands like Archers of Loaf and Superchunk, this is your album for 2011.

Never Settle is currently available for pre-order and will be ready to ship on CD in mid February and LP in late February.

There’s a few different options on it.  For $6.99 you can get the CD, for $9.99 you can get the LP, or (by far the best deal) you can get the CD, LP, a t-shirt (brand new design, not yet on the site), 11x17” poster, pin, and sticker - all for just $19.99.

In other news, the new EP from Rational Anthem will be out in March. It’s called Bread Line and the art was done by Corey Ayd (of Banner Pilot and The Manix). I haven’t put any of the info for that record on the site yet, but you can check out the art on our Facebook page.  I’ll get the art, tracklisting, and all that sort of stuff on the website soon, along with an mp3. Rational just keep getting better and better and I’m pretty confident you guys are all gonna get a kick out of these new songs. My personal favorite of the batch is called “(The Weight of the World Is) Shitting On My Shoulders.”

Even more exciting (no offense to Rational Anthem), House Boat’s sophomore full-length is getting mastered and we’re putting together the artwork / layout. The album’s called The Thorns of Life and the art is just as thoroughly original as the title. I don’t care how early in the year it is, nothing is going to top this album in 2011. It’s hands-down the best record to ever come out of the Steinboat McMurder camp and I couldn’t be more excited to be releasing it.  While the album won’t be out on vinyl until March or April, we may do an earlier CD / digital release or maybe do an advanced thing where you get the mp3s emailed to you for free right away when you pre-order (like we did with their EP last year). Either way, I’ll try to get some info / artwork on the website soon, along with a couple of songs. For now, you can check out an unmastered version of “Throwing in Those Weird Chords Did Wonders For The Copyrights and The Dopamines (Theme From House Boat)” on the band’s myspace page. I’m gleeful to report that as awesome as this song is, we intentionally chose it because it ranks right in the middle of the album (in other words, if you think this is good, just wait until you hear the rest of the album). It’s fourteen songs in all and there’s not a skip-worthy track in the bunch. Get excited.

Outside of those two records, nothing’s definite ‘cause things are still pretty fucked up over here in my little corner of the world, but some possible future releases for the first half of 2011 include…

The Brokedowns / Vacation Bible School - Split 7”Unwelcome Guests / Sick Sick Birds - Split 7”Like Bats - s/t CS (a cassette reissue of the band’s out-of-print CDEP)Turkish Techno / Dude Jams - Split 7”V/A - Dangerous Intersections VIII 7”The Humanoids - CD/LP
All else that comes to mind is Moonquake. For those of you that aren’t familiar, Moonquake is a CD label that we’ve been handling distribution for. Just about everything they’ve released thus far is pretty perfectly in tune with what I try to do with Traffic Street. So far they’ve put out CDEPs from Vacation, The Manix, Backpocket, Strait A’s, Boilerman, Unfun, Billy Raygun, The New Warden, and they did a CD version of our last House Boat release -the Processing Complaints 7-inch. All of those releases are definitely worth your hard earned cash and you can find all of them in the Traffic Street distro.
Before I go, I just wanna thank all of you for continuing to support Traffic Street.  As I’ve mentioned on the site a couple of times recently, some pretty debilitating personal bullshit just seemed to pile up and up as 2010 came to a close, and as awful as it was, it would have been about 50 times worse had it not been for all of the supportive emails and outreach I got from a lot of you guys offering to help out in whatever way possible and just generally being friendly, stand-up people. You guys are seriously the fucking best and not a day goes by that I don’t get an awesome message from one of you that brings a smile to my face. I can’t thank you all enough. You rule. Plain and simple.
Hope all’s well with everybody and hopefully I’ll get a chance soon to get out of DC and out on the road to see some shows and hang out with everybody again. In the meantime, take care of yourselves and talk to you soon!Sam

Sundials - Never Settle CD/LP
Rational Anthem - Bread Line 7”
The Brokedowns / Vacation Bible School - Split 7”
Unwelcome Guests / Sick Sick Birds - Split 7”
House Boat - new full-length CD/LP