CRYPT

Crypt Records is an independent record label founded by American-born Tim Warren in 1983. The label has been headquartered variously in Hamburg, Germany and in several locations in the United States. Crypt is perhaps best known for issuing the ten-volume Back From The Grave Series of 1960s garage punk compilations, although its other reissues and releases include surf, rockabilly, punk rock, exotica, garage punk, original rhythm and blues, and soul music.

Crypt Records was launched in August 1983 by the New York-born Tim Warren (b. 1960), who had spent his boyhood with his family in the Philippines and Greece. The family moved back to the United States in 1974, when Warren was 14.

Warren spent his first four years as a young adult working in a record store in Amherst, Massachusetts before moving to main to work in a gas station — a job which allowed him to save a modest amount of money. In October 1980 Warren returned to his New York City birthplace to take a job in another record store. It was at this time that Warren first became interested in garage punk and other underground music of the 1960s.

The label’s first release was a compilation LP dedicated to raw 1960s garage rock. Over the next three years there would be a total of 17 releases, focusing on rare 1960s garage and 1950s rockabilly music.

In the fall of 1986 the label moved towards the reissue of contemporary punk rock with a reissue of 1970s band DMZ. A mix of releases followed including pioneering bands from the 1950s and 1960s as well as modern punk groups.

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