“If you wanted to find out where the cooler shows were, you had to come and look at the fliers and the window,” he says. “I was a starry-eyed kid just kind of lurking on the wallpaper,” he says.īack then, he recalls, Wax Trax was a place to find out about live music. Duane is using his days here to focus on the live music, social media, etcetera, and we're hoping to build on that stuff.'Īs a teenager during the ’80s, Pete wasn’t “one of the cool kids” who played in punk bands. Probably one of the biggest collectible record brains this side of the Mississippi. My dad is responsible for how amazing the used store is. 'I'm working on setting things up so he can take it easier, but he loves the job and will be hard to pry out of here. 'My dad is working six days a week,' says Pete. Heck, they were likely pioneers in the realm of treating their dogs to cannabis products, which seems to have finally caught on with the main-stream world of late.Pete Stidman began working at Wax Trax when he was twelve years old, alongside his father, Dave, who has owned the Capitol Hill record store with Duane Davis since 1978. As much of the scene involved hanging around venues before and after the shows, this culture even trickled down to the pets that fans would bring along with them.

These bands cultured small groups of die-hard fans that were quite distinguished from the pack with colorful and aggressive hair styles, colorful and geometric clothing styles, and sobriety outlooks ranging from straight-edge to exotic substance use. In the nineties, the label signed Sister Machine Gun, Braindead Soundmachine, Excessive Force, Black Dog Productions, and Psykosonik. By the late eighties, acts that joined the roster included Fini Tribe, Front Line Assembly, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, PIG, KMFDM, and Meat Beat Manifesto. Other acts signed to the label in the early to mid-eighties included The Blackouts, Minimal Compact, Revolting Cocks, Wiseblood, Coil, Luc Van Acker, and The Young Gods. The band’s first club hit was “Headhunter” in 1988 from the label’s all-time top-selling album, Front By Front. A few years later Front 242 signed with European label Red Rhino then supported Depeche Mode in 1987 while maintaining its relationship with Wax Trax! Records. Front 242 then supported Ministry on their American tour as the opening act. Jourgensen, who worked for the label, encouraged the signing of the Belgian electronic act Front 242 in 1984. Wax Trax! Records had its most success in the eighties marketing 12 inch singles of cutting edge electronic artists. The following year Ministry signed with Sire and released a string of commercially successful albums. Then Ministry released several more singles for Wax Trax! Records including the legendary club hit “Every Day Is Halloween” in 1984. They went on to sign briefly with Arista Records for their debut album With Sympathy in 1983. The band steadily evolved toward a harder, more industrial sound. Ministry started as a synth-pop project based around Jourgensen’s experimentation with new electronic sounds. Initially, they suggested he play guitar for their band Divine, but then Jourgensen decided to make and submit his own demo and call it Ministry. In 1981 the label released Ministry’s debut single “Cold Life” after the band’s founder Al Jourgensen met Jim and Dannie. Some of the early bands they signed included Strange Circuits, Strike Under and Divine. Early Success with MinistryĪfter Jim and Dannie relocated to Chicago in 1978, they formed the record label that took the same name as their stores except added an exclamation mark. The Wax Trax stores became important local scene hangouts that helped expose countless underground punk bands and new wave acts experimenting with new electronic instruments. These stores helped promote British acts that didn’t get much exposure otherwise in the United States.

Trax wax