When I was a young punk growing up in South Florida, an older friend named Gary Costa gave me a stack of records, including classics like Group Sexby the Circle Jerks and Pushead’s Cleanse the Bacteria comp. I think these were records he wasn’t into anymore. However, Gary pulled out a couple of records he decided to keep before the handoff was finalized, and one of these was Vicious Circle by the Zero Boys on Toxic Shock Records. I remember studying the record’s cover art before Costa put it up, seeing the Toxic Shock Records logo, and thinking it all seemed so radical and underground.
Vicious Circle went on to become one of my favorite records of all time, and a similar blue-cover Toxic Shock version permanently resides in my record collection today—along with many other monumental Toxic Shock releases. The truly radical underground nature of these records proves that the title of label purveyor Bill Sassenberger’s autobiography Toxic Shock Records: Assassin of Mediocrity is right on the money.
Toxic Shock Records is more than the story of a label. As Sassenberger graciously greets the reader in the intro: “ … so thanks for reading my life story!” The ride begins with a semi-dysfunctional upbringing leading to an adolescence of standard experimentation, with Sassenberger ultimately becoming part of the Yippie counterculture whose distrust for authority leads the author to the punk scene.
Sassenberger goes from working in a head shop from where he distributes radical literature, to opening a one hundred percent independent punk record store, to starting the label and releasing vital punk/hardcore records by Raw Power, C.O.C., Dayglo Abortions, The Stupids, Sloppy Seconds, et cetera. Bill and his wife/cohort Julianna Towns relocate the entire operation from Pomona, to New Orleans, to Tucson, Ariz., while simultaneously starting various offshoot labels to keep pace with their ever-expanding tastes.
Toxic Shock Records pulls off a heavy twist of chronology where each chapter begins with a dated diary entry documenting the physical and emotional aftermath of Julianna’s devastating 2011 stroke. These diary entries obviously do not correspond with the timelines of the main body of each chapter (which are more standardly autobiographical, changing topic from one chapter to the next), but they provide a reflective organic quality in the sense that the hard times make you appreciate the good times—even if the good times are sometimes also hard as hell—allowing the story of Toxic Shock Records to come to life.In Toxic Shock Records, Sassenberger balances the rock’n’roll storytelling aspect of his tale with the heavy content within, and he does so without any pandering or bullshit, proving that he’s a serious man to be treated with respect. While any book that mentions Wade Driver by name is a good book, Toxic Shock Records: Assassin of Mediocrity is fucking magnificent.
Bill Sassenberger's brilliant book, 'Toxic Shock Records: Assassin of Mediocrity, A story of love, loss and loud music' has now been updated and greatly added to. The new version will be published by Earth Island Books.
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