| Fat Wreck Chords | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Parent company | Hopeless Records |
| Founded | 1990; 35 years ago (1990) |
| Founder | Fat Mike & Erin Burkett |
| Distributors | The Orchard (US) PIAS (Europe) eOne Music (Worldwide) |
| Genre | Punk rock |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Location | San Francisco, California |
| Official website | fatwreck |
Fat Wreck Chords (pronounced "Fat Records") is anindependent record label based inSan Francisco focused onpunk rock. It was started byNOFX lead singer Michael Burkett (better known asFat Mike) and his wife at the time, Erin Burkett in 1990.[1] As of 2009, Fat Wreck Chords released over 300 studio albums.[1]
Fat Mike started his record label Wassail Records in 1987. He put out two NOFX records, The PMRC 7” in 1987 and Liberal Animation in 1988. In 1990, he and his wife Erin Burkett co-founded Fat Wreck Chords, and re-released NOFX's 1987 EP,The P.M.R.C Can Suck on This. In 1992, Fat Mike went on to produceLagwagon,Propagandhi, andNo Use for a Name. In 1993, the label released records byRancid,Face to Face, andStrung Out.
The label grew during the 1990s selling over a million records per year. It had 18 employees and four offices.[2] A documentary about Fat Wreck Chords calledA Fat Wreck was released on October 25, 2016.[3]
In 2025, the back catalog and operations of the record label were sold toHopeless Records, with Fat Mike and Erin retaining ownership of the trademarks which are licensed to Hopeless for physical and digital releases.[4]
The label has had two subsidiaries over the years,Honest Don's andPink and Black. Honest Don's released records fromChixdiggit andTeen Idols amongst others, while Pink & Black released albums from female-fronted bands likeFabulous Disaster andDance Hall Crashers.
Fat Mike advanced $50,000 to Chris Hannah and Jord Samolesky ofPropagandhi which he recouped within months from sales of Propagandhi records to help them start up their own label,G7 Welcoming Committee,[5] though G7WC is independent from Fat Wreck.
Fat Wreck Chords regularly releases compilation albums, often to promote bands signed to the label, but also, since 2003, to raise funds for various charities. The earliest Fat Wreck Chords compilations have titles with some reference to fatness.
Shortly afterFat Music Volume IV was released, Fat Wreck Chords released a similarly titled album,Short Music for Short People, which features 101 songs, all averaging approximately 30 seconds. The shortest song ("Short Attention Span" by the Fizzy Bangers) is only eight seconds, and the longest ("Out of Hand" byBad Religion) is 40 seconds. Some of the songs were commissioned and recorded specifically for the album, while others were from the bands' pre-existing repertoires.
Since the lastFat Music album has been released, the Fat Wreck Chords compilations have been explicitly for charitable causes.Liberation: Songs to Benefit PETA is abenefit album for theanimal rights organizationPETA, andPROTECT: A Benefit for the National Association to Protect Children is a benefit album for thechildren's rights groupPROTECT. BetweenLiberation andPROTECT, two other compilation albums were released in protest of PresidentGeorge W. Bush andhis administration:Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1 andVol. 2. To celebrate 20 years of business Fat Wreck Chords released the 3-discWrecktrospective compilation on December 8, 2009. Disc 1 is composed of the label's greatest hits, disc 2 is composed of unreleased demos and rarities, and disc 3 is composed the Fat Club 7" series in its entirety.[6]
Live in a Dive is a series oflive albums recorded by Fat Wreck Chords.[7] In order of release:
| Title | Artist | Release date |
|---|---|---|
| Live in a Dive | No Use for a Name | September 11, 2001 |
| Live in a Dive | Bracket | February 26, 2002 |
| Live in a Dive | Sick of It All | August 13, 2002 |
| Live in a Dive | Strung Out | June 22, 2003 |
| Live in a Dive | Subhumans | February 10, 2004 |
| Live in a Dive | Swingin' Utters | June 29, 2004 |
| Live in a Dive | Lagwagon | February 8, 2005 |
| Ribbed: Live in a Dive | NOFX | August 3, 2018 |
| Live in a Dive | Face to Face | October 18, 2019 |
| Live in a Dive | Rich Kids on LSD | June 3, 2022 |
In addition to the Live in a Dive series, Fat Wreck Chords also released the Fat Club series of 7" vinyl records during 2001. The series was only available to mail-order subscribers which received one single every month. Fat Wreck Chords did not publish any information on the upcoming releases so subscribers would not know what they were about to receive until the record arrived in the post.
Although the Fat club series was limited to 1,300 copies for each single, the songs contained on the records were later released as the third disc of theWrecktrospective collection.
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