Tim Davenport

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Tim Davenport (Oct. 1, 1961 – ) is an American writer, music collector, and historian of Marxism and the labor movement.  He is most known for The selected works of Eugene V. Debs.  He is the creator of the Marxist database Early American Marxism and a long time contributor to the Marxists Internet Archive.

Davenport publishes Mutant Pop, a music newsletter dedicated to the pop-punk sub-genre.  From 1995 to 2002 he issued limited runs of collectible pop punk artists under the name Tim Chandler.

Personal life

Davenport lives in Corvallis, Oregon, where he runs the family shoe business, and collects and distributes vintage music.  He has a degree in economics from Oregon State University, and a background in Russian history.  He is 6’4″.

Pop-punk

Davenport describes pop-punk as “harmony-forward post-Ramones three-chord.” Its ancestors are rock and punk.

Davenport makes specialty CD-Rs for the fans of the pop-punk sub-genre. These are now known as “7-inch vinyl”.  They used to be called “45’s, or “singles”, but since many of them play at 33 rpm or have more than two songs, they are now just referred to by the physical size. These are bootlegs, a type of underground music.

Tim Davenport c 2000:  “Duluth is a Cool City”

“Bootlegs are fun!” says Davenport. He describes what he does as “a parallel universe to the major label music industry”.  “Normal releases involve a label or band paying for a recording and then converting it into marketable stuff.” he says. “There are statutory royalties set by Congress (currently 9.1 cents per song per copy) that absolutely nobody in the underground music world adheres to.” The bootleg recording of a band’s music is converted into marketable stuff.

According to Davenport, there are probably tens of thousands of bootlegs in the world these days. A Canadian book “Hot Wacks” used to give ratings. These days, the Live Music Archive of Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive has more than 25,000 bootleg recordings, about a tenth of them of Grateful Dead shows.

Back in 2015, ArtWorks Gallery had a retrospective exhibit of Mutant Pop Records, which was founded by Tim Davenport. It was described as an exhibit of “archival ephemera and related artifacts of sonic consequence from the vaults of Mutant Pop Records circa 1994-2008”.

These must be the vaults.

Back then, it certainly looked like the Mutant Pop label might be consigned to dustbin of history.

But now they are back.

Aficionados of women musicians will be pleased to note that in his personal collection Davenport has a not-for-sale Holly & The Italians called Forty Years late — he did one twenty years ago called Twenty Years Late.  He is also starting to collect some early punk tracks by The Go-Gos.

The last I heard, Davenport was looking forward to his first release with a British band, the Werecats, of “My boyfriend is a werewolf” fame.

But it looks like the album has already been released, and even has a review already.

“Unafraid to try and sell CDs through mail order in this age of downloading, Timbo has revived his short-run compact disc series with a fine mix of old favorites…Hands down, the coolest release of the lot so far has been a compilation of songs from London foursome Werecats. To the best of my knowledge, Werecats Are a Very Colourful Band is the band’s first release on an American label. It’s also the very first Mutant Pop release of a band outside North America! This disc collects the entirety of the band’s self-released debut EP (2014) as well as its Monster Zero 7″ My Boyfriend’s A Werewolf (2016) along with the rare comp cut “Murder Beast”. Listening to these songs, I am shocked that this band was not on my radar already.”

Oooh, some nice words for the Werecats and for Timbo.  You can hear them at https://werecats.bandcamp.com/

Publications

Academic journals

Tim Davenport (2007) “The Early American Marxism Website”, American Communist History, Volume 6, 2007 – Issue 2, 221-228, DOI: 10.1080/14743890701645308 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14743890701645308

Online

Books

  • The American Exceptionalism of Jay Lovestone and His Comrades, 1929-1940. Dissident Marxism in the United States: Volume 1, edited by Paul Le Blanc and Tim Davenport, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018.  The fundamental documents of Lovestone’s “Communist Party Opposition by such prominent activists as Benjamin Gitlow, Bertram D. Wolfe, Will Herberg, Charles S. Zimmerman, Louis C. Fraina (Lewis Corey), and Ellen Dawson.  “Lovestone and his comrades briefly controlled, and then were dramatically expelled from, the Communist Party of America. The so-called “Lovestoneites” struck out on their own, forming a new Communist political organization….”

Eugene Debs series

The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs is a six volume collection of the writing of American union organizer Eugene Victor Debs (1855-1926.) Three volumes have been published so far. The fourth volume of Debs is currently in house with the publisher. The series is available in paperback and hardcover, links to the ebook versions are given below; they have extensive preview and search functions available.  Projected future volume titles are:  Volume V: Breakthroughs and Breakdowns, 1911-1916  [Research beginning. 2022.], and Volume VI: The Perils of Pacifism, 1917-1926   [2022]

A synopsis of the volumes to date, from the introduction to Debs volume 3:

Sources

Labor history

Pop-punk

Social media

External links

Authority control

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