Words are just something that make you think obtusely. We are no greater than the sum of our words. No greater, no smaller. Anything gets in our way we smash it good Destroy oh boy. Destroy oh boy. — Mousetrap, 1992.

Work at any job for too long and the burn of boredom can become overwhelming. Be it telemarketing, tending bar or shoveling sheep dip, over time the monotony of the daily grind is as hellish as a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Ponce de Leon Records was born in an attempt to stave off killer boredom by taking a different approach to my daily grind. I work as freelance music journalist and have been writing about music for more years than I can accurately recall (maybe 12 years).

I was a music fan long before I was a writer, and it was music that brought me to journalism in the first place. But before I discovered the legacies of music writers, like Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau and Lester Bangs I spent many of my days in the late 1980s and early 1990s bumming around record stores in Omaha, Neb., obsessing over the most obscure records I could find. Of course punk rock was the staple, but on any given day I would go home with an armful of mismatched records spanning everything from Public Image Ltd. and Throbbing Gristle to Black Flag and the Birthday Party. Although these sounds were all over the map, to me they all came from one big undiscovered country, populated by various tribes, all of whom were bound by the common thread of cultural nihilism. All of which dovetailed nicely with the general sense of teen angst that comes with growing up as an alienated kid in the Midwest.

One of the most memorable records I ever plunked down $3 for was a 7-inch by a local group called Mousetrap. It was the “Superkool” b/w “Fubar” single on an Omaha label called One Hour Records which was run by a grouchy old record store owner who methodically attacked my tastes with every purchase.

The two songs on the clear-vinyl single were bulging with a frenetic energy that much like the Minutemen encapsulated an artsy, pseudo-intellectual blast of wide-eyed power punk. It was the first time I had ever seen colored vinyl, and the first time I had seen a record made by a bunch of guys I saw around the neighborhood everyday after school.

On the B-side “Fubar” builds around a sloppy, off-key ramble that culminates with the chorus, “ennui is down with me.” Although the song doesn’t last more than two minutes the experience of being kicked in the head by the song left an impression. In retrospect it’s a pretentious preamble to what would soon become known by the masses as grunge. But for me it was a big bang of sorts that started a chain reaction. Back then local groups put out cassette tapes that came wrapped in cover art that was printed on some pastel shade of green or orange paper - whatever color was cheap at Kinko’s.

Bands that put out an actual record were playing on a much higher level and living in cities that had been blessed by some super hip magic wand that had passed over the big .O. Remember, this was1992. Conor Oberst was just stepping out of his diapers.

The Mousetrap record rocked my world. I even had to go look up “ennui” in the dictionary. Plug it into dictionary.com and you get the following definition: “n: the feeling of being bored by something tedious.”

Fast forward 14 years. After a solid six-year run, lobbying for stories in weekly papers and monthly magazines around the country, that old familiar sting of ennui came creeping back. One can only write so many record reviews before questions arise: “eHave I written this before?” “Do I use this phrase too much?” “Does this sound like I’m writing a book report?” Other factors like editors not responding to story ideas, dumbing things down or worse inserting errors into pieces was all weighing heavily on my mind. Topping it off, being passed over for a few choice job positions at a paper with whom I had been freelancing had sucked away any joy I had gotten from writing about music. So I retraced my steps from the beginning and asked myself, ‘Why am I spending a lifetime writing about music?’ Because I love music, right? Partially. I don’t love all music. My tastes are pretty diverse. But there’s way more music that I despise. In reality I started writing about music to help bring some of the great stuff I was hearing to the attention of others.

Great music has the disadvantage of not being very marketable, so it’s up to folks like me to put it into perspective for others. But in time it had grown tedious.

Over the years I have watched other music writers get obsessed with bands and churn out weekly rants, gushing over how great they are. For me, it’s embarrassing to watch a writer get a crush on a group and just draw it out for everyone to see. At one point I had an editor who was absolutely obsessed with OutKast. I watched another local writer start pining over some shitty band from Athens, called the Whigs.

When you sit back and watch the battle field from afar it’s easy to say “I’ll never do anything like that.” But in reality my gaze was already fixed on Hubcap City.

The group possessed everything I was looking for. There was history: Bill Taft was in Smoke, the Jody Grind and many other great obscure groups that more people have heard of than actually heard. Will Fratesi had also played drums with Cat Power. But when I saw Hubcap City these influences were an afterthought. The first time I saw the group play was at the old Eyedrum on Trinity Ave. circa 2000. Bill and Will played as a duo that night. There was a smoke machine and a strobe light pumping away while a grotesque, middle-aged man dressed in drag danced around the room. He was one of only about six people in attendance. The shows felt very much like a scene from a David Lynch film.

When I was standing there watching them play, something felt all wrong. What is this music? Folk? Industrial? Bill’s lyrics exuded a strange take on Southern, junkyard Dada. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I wrote about HC more than a handful of times. I got to know them all fairly well and even started booking them to play a monthly gig at the book store where I work. The relationship had grown well beyond the realm of nepotism. So rather than fall into the trap of the bewitched writer and fawn all over the group in the paper each week, I put out a 7-inch.

Calling the label Ponce de Leon Records came naturally. In part it is somewhat of a nod to Saddle Creek Records and the same DIY aesthetics with which that label was built from the ground up in my old stomping ground. But also because I live on Ponce De Leon Ave. It’s a somewhat dangerous, totally alluring street that cuts right through Atlanta. On my walk to the coffee shop in the mornings, I step over chicken bones and syringes. I dodge crack heads, business men, prostitutes and little old ladies on their way to get their hair done. I even see CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta jogging down the street from time to time. It’s all very fascinating to me and I very much wanted to capture this fascination with the label.

I’m also very interested in packaging music in different ways. I buy more records than CDs, because I think of them as big chunks of art. There’s more to look at, and many more ways to do cool and inventive things with the design. I’ve always stood by Public Image Ltd.’s Metal Box as the greatest record ever. Yes, it is Pil’s greatest record hands down, but the metal film canister is what drew me to it in the first place. Other things like Susan Archie’s graphic design work for Table of the Elements, Revenant and Dust to Digital is totally inspirational and I’ve always bought records by the likes of Zoviet*France and Edward Ka-Spel who also do very cool things with packaging.

One of my most prized possessions is a Zoviet* France double cassette, titled Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music. The release consists of the two tapes in a porcelain jug packed with sticks, string a few pieces of random art textures and a burlap flag. The whole thing was stuffed with feathers that were picked up off of some beach in Ireland that at the time was supposed to be the most contaminated place in all of Europe and sealed in wax. Art that can cause you bodily harm is always an excellent value.

When I showed the jug to Bill I could see the cogs turning. We had brainstormed on ideas for making a sleeve that captured the not-mass-produced aesthetic — or in Bill’s words, “not just another record sleeve designed by some dumb ass with Photoshop.” We agreed on stenciling and gluing photos to the covers. Some looked better than others. Some looked really bad. In a panic, I did a quick layout on the computer, snuck into a friend’s office when no one was there one weekend, hi-jacked the printer and ran off 300 sleeves.

I thought they looked great, but when I showed them to the band I could tell they weren’t so pleased. Some tension was apparent. But before it came to a head I realized that this is not entirely my vision. This was Hubcap City’s vision and I needed to accommodate that. They hadn’t let me down in the past and I needed to step away and let them do what they do. I’ve always heard stories of bands fighting over the name of a record or the label wanting them to change the cover art and it occurred to me that I was unwittingly becoming that label. In the end we agreed on doing half of the stenciled sleeves and half of the printed ones and everyone was happy.

The night before the record release party Bill took 10 records home to personalize them for the show. Little did I know that he was devising his own take on Zoviet* France’s Deadly Feathers.

When he showed up the next evening the 10 records he had taken all had crack bags stuck to the sleeves. Inside the bags was what appeared to be a blood-soaked bandage. As he explained, what could be more representative of Ponce de Leon than crack bags and bloody band-aids? At the release show people cringed and recoiled in disgust when they recognized what it was, but those ten records sold within an hour, and since then I’ve had at least a dozen requests from people wanting to know how they can get one. Bill never would tell me if the blood was real or not. He only addressed it once between songs at the release party when he said, “I have never seen my father bleed like that.”

None of this would have ever happened had the ennui not pushed me to look at what I do from a different perspective. And as I slip that Mousetrap single on my turntable, right after listening to my first 7-inch those words take on a much greater significance. They’re not just a cool punk rock sound byte, but a mantra that resonates louder now more than ever, “ennui is down with me.”

Chad Radford is an independent music journalist and founder of Ponce De Leon records. He can be reached at chadrad@bellsouth.net.