Round 2 Q&A with Jordan Cooper

As part of a continuing piece, we went back again to Jordan Cooper with more questions and baited breath, in our eternal quest for all information that is Revelation Records. -DCXX

NYC The Way It Is LP Poster: was this in fact the first 24"x36" poster produced by Revelation and made available for sale? When exactly did this come out? Was it a big project, and what gave the idea to do it? Obviously Rev was growing and this made sense, and it definitely created a pattern for future releases...which all of us can thank you for, as this artwork has been adorned on our walls over the years.

I think the posters were something that our distributor told us to do. It was probably just standard operating procedure to make posters when you put a record out. We did various flyer/photocopy posters for the first few 7"s but when we were working on The Way It Is, Dave Bett was doing the layout, we had regular LP jackets being done and printed posters seemed to be the thing to do. 24x36 was probably also a fairly standard poster size for the time, but somewhat on the bigger side so that's what we went with. Thanks, I really liked that poster and wish I still had one! The GB and Bold posters were cool as well. I don't remember if we did a Break Down The Walls one in the same style, but I don't think so.

Gorilla Biscuits "Hold Your Ground"/Cover Art Revelation t-shirt: Obviously, other Rev bands before this and at the same time made their own t-shirts and Rev may have even sold them. This was the first shirt with the Rev star logo though. Was this simply a case of Wally and Co. throwing it on, or was this more of a Revelation-involved thing? Simply an incredible design for a great era of the band, do you have any memories of this shirt or its creation?

I have a lot of memories of getting shirts done, but not specifically what the first band we made them for was. It probably was GB though. Sick Of It All were probably already doing their own shirts or something because I don't think we ever did shirts for them. Same with Warzone, they were doing the iron cross shirts before we put their record out. So it would make sense that GB were the first shirts we did for bands and then Side By Side, No For An Answer and Bold. GB always had great art because everyone in the band seemed to always hang out together or live together and stuff just got done. The shirt with the vines and plants and gorilla surrounding the GB logo was done by Alex in what seemed like just a few minutes. We were talking about a new design and he just walked away and came back a little while later and said "how about this" or something like that. I think that was one of the best shirts we ever made. Regarding the Hold Your Ground shirt, that was probably the first GB shirt we made now that I think about it.

Gorilla Biscuits "Hold Your Ground" hooded sweatshirts, Youth of Today "Youth Crew" hooded sweatshirts and Judge "Bringin' It Down" hooded sweatshirts: Were these European exclusives? I've never seen them advertised for sale through Revelation and they seem to be some what prevalent through out Europe. What's the story?

I don't know. I think the guys in the bands had some dealings with a shirt company or two because of the tours they did so maybe they let some people over there make some shirts for them. They could also be bootlegs. We made hooded sweatshirts over the years too, but it sounds like you're asking about designs that we didn't make or something.

Revelation Sticker Set: The elusive sticker pack, packaged as a 7", often sent away for by young fans, seldom received. Whose idea was this? How many were made? What was the idea for it? Which bands were included in the pack? If I break into the vault, how many of these sets might I find?

It was either my idea or Ray's...hard to say. There were probably less than 1000 made of the original ones, but we made several different versions over the years depending on what we had. I can't remember every band that had a sticker, but GB, Supertouch, Bold and probably all the other early bands were on there. There are absolutely none in the vault unfortunately but we do have one sheet of all the original stickers that wasn't cut. I think Anthony and Nate took some pictures of it for their book so hopefully it will show up in there.

Youth Of Today Youth Crew '89 t-shirt: Printed for the 1989 European Tour (supposedly), this seemingly rare shirt replaces the original back design with a gigantic REV logo. Interestingly enough, the band was under contract at the time with Caroline, and wouldn't have a Revelation release (the final seven inch) come out for almost another year. Do you remember how this shirt thus came to be? Do you remember having YOT officially back on Rev? Any other recollections about this oddity?

Ray and Porcell were pretty closely involved with Rev and so probably just wanted to use the logo for that shirt. I don't remember, but we had reissued Break Down The Walls on Rev and Porcell put out "Can't Close My Eyes" on Schism through either Caroline or Venus (can't remember which). Judge was on Rev. I think they just looked at it as their label. Ray may have even still been part of Rev at that point as well, though that was around the time he started to get pretty serious about Krishna and may have been thinking about what would end up being Shelter.

The Rev Record that should have been: What was a band, from the Rev 1-20 era, who was supposed to do a record on Rev, but for some reason or another, it didn't happen? I'm sure there had to have been a few - who can you remember and does anyone stick out as someone you wish you would have gotten on the label?

There were too many. Straight Ahead seems like something that would have made sense since Ray we were friends with Tommy and Craig. Underdog was a band I loved from the True Blue days but for probably the same reasons YOT went to Caroline, so did they. Luckily I got to be better friends with Richie (through Into Another) and later Russ so we got to release the Demos. There were probably a lot of other bands I would have wanted to work with, but obviously my hands were pretty full anyway so it's probably good that we didn't take on any more projects or mailorder would have taken even longer.