"Same Team, No Games" wsg David Kozin

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Welcome to Season 4, Episode 4, of "Secondhand Talent: The Podcast"!!! We're so happy we're here and so, so incredibly grateful for all of your love and support along the way. On behalf of all of us here at Secondhand Talent, Steiner & Steener - WE LOVE YOU, FRANDS!!!

This week we have the pleasure of releasing to you our expansive interview with David Kozin. David is the founder of no sides records no sides records is a Chicago DIY record label started in 1997. Label CEO David Kozin likes refer to it as a "mini-major" label because the vast array of major bands and artists on the roster, coming from many different genres and also many different parts of the United States and abroad. Early releases from the No Sides record label were from Portland Oregon spazz-punk legends Tuman's Water, Detroit Michigan hooch parlor cabaret duo Terror At The Opera, Chicago nu wave of superband Miss High Hell, and Twig Harbor of experimental electronics duo Nautical Almanac.

In 2003, the label released the VGM mixtape "#8" compilation CD, showcasing chiptune and video game music bands and composers from around the world. In 2005, David began full-time studies at Northeastern Illinois University and No Sides records releases started to become more infrequent, less professionally produced, and with many of the regional and national music distributors going out of business in rapid succession at the time, they became much more difficult to obtain outside of Chicago. After years of school, post-grad poverty, near feral insanity, bed bugs, and a book about Ike Turner published in 2018, the label was basically done and what was left was a stone's throw away from the trash heap.

Suddenly, sadly, in January 2022 came the tragic announcement of the death of the frontman of Miss High Heel, and, more famously, To Live And Shave In LA, Tom Smith. When he passed away from cancer, it shook the avant-garde music community and shattered the ice within David and No Sides Records was reborn. By the years end, the label put out 14 releases on cassettes and CDs, which is more releases in one year than any of its 5-year period in its prior history.

Cut to now and the label will be releasing no less than 18 records in 2024,  including albums by: one-man-band performer The Lonesome Organist. Chicago Punk legends Silver Reviews, free-jazz saxophonist Paul Flaherty, classical pianist Charles Joseph Smith and dungeon synth slayer Alkilith. No Sides Records can be found online at their Bandcamp link below:

No Sides Records Bandcamp

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Steiner & Steener