Located in a nondescript strip mall in Fullerton, Calif., Burger Records is a throwback to an era when record labels had a unified sound and vision — or at least a unified aesthetic. Co-founded in 2007 by longhairs Lee Rickard and Sean Bohrman, a couple of self-described “squares,” Burger began as a hyper-local, aggressively DIY endeavor. That it is now putting on things like the only slightly tongue-in-cheek-titled Burger Records Caravan of Stars is unlikely but not something its founders couldn’t envision.
“It’s like religion or something,” Rickard says of the label in a video clip about Burger’s history called Between Two Buns: The Burger Story. “It’s our way of spreading the gospel. People who love Rock & Roll love Burger, because it’s real.”
Burger — which also opened as a record store in the same space in 2009 — has released music at an alarming rate from bands like Cherry Glazerr, whose lo-fi Garage Pop is reminiscent of Rock & Roll’s unpretentious roots. The label put out 300 releases last year, the majority of which were cassette-only runs.
“We started doing cassettes after our friends AM, who are a band from around here, put out a cassette and the sound quality was super-good and the packaging was great,” Rickard says in the video. “It just turned into something that we never expected.”
See BURGER RECORDS CARAVAN OF STARS perform at Southgate House Revival Saturday, Oct. 25. Find tickets/more info here.