I thought I might get away with not getting all retrospective, but I’m sort of a sucker for this kind of stuff. In bullet point format, here are years 2000-2004, with the rest coming in the form of Part II tomorrow (image is a screenshot from August 2001).

- 2000: Still in its humble HTML simplicity, Pastepunk sold its first ad in the spring of 2000. Vagrant records, a pioneer of internet marketing among indie labels wanted to know what it would cost to put an ad up on our splash page (remember those?). I picked a nice sounding number out of my head, and they agreed. I immediately called my Dad, who asked, “Why would they want to do that?” It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship with Vagrant and many more labels. After 20 months, my dorm room hobby was sprouting wings.

- 2001: This was the year that I went to more shows than any other in  my life. During my junior and senior years of college, I attended at least one show a week in the Maryland and DC area, and on occasion, many more than that. Looking back, I’m wondering how I handled that, though it was easy to become a regular at venues like 9:30 Club and The Black Cat. It also explains my unfortunate (but thankfully minor) loss of hearing. An hour long interview with BAD RELIGION’s Jay Bentley was a milestone, as was as a very fun and inspiring interview with Toby Morse of H2O right around the release of their ‘controversial’ full-length Go.

- 2002: Graduated from the University of Maryland this year and then began law school at George Mason in the fall. It was the end of my frequent show-going days which started in that capacity in 1994. Pastepunk however was on a tear this year, adding several staff members, and pumping out more content than ever, and releasing our first CD compilation “Broken Lamps and Hardcore Memories.” (with art designed by GLASSJAW’s Justin Beck). The compilation sold well in the US, Europe and even Japan. This was also the first year of our content being in a MySQL database, and shortly, the design and coding curve would explode far beyond my DIY skills.

- 2003: Buried in schoolwork and living 300 miles apart from my fiancee, Pastepunk became a huge refuge of sanity this  year. We did close 50 band interviews and profiles this year, posted at least one review a day and added (and lost) some staff along the way. For better or for worse, I landed an unpaid legal internship with a division of the RIAA over the summer that involved research into international royalty agreements concerning ancient “home taping” legislation. I was miserable and my personal interest in copyright law faltered.  My #1 release of the year was THRICE’s Artist In The Ambulance. Still love that record. CAVE IN’s Antenna also came out this year and I’m still shocked that “Inspire” didn’t become the huge radio hit that I thought it was destined to be.

- 2004: This year saw the release of our second CD compilation, a joint release with Suburban Home Records titled “Broken Lamps and Hardcore Memories Vol. 2″ (apt, eh?). Financially, we took a bath on it as we hoped to sell it as a super low-priced comp in all of the big music stores and also on all of Warped Tour at the Suburban Home Booth. Outside of a few local Warped dates, there was no SH booth. Distributor returns were huge, and the end of an era of cheapo CD comps was in full swing. Despite the ugly business history to it, I really love this CD. I spent an insane amount of time sequencing it, and I think you’ll have a hard time finding a better opening 10 or 11 hardcore and punk songs to a 70+ minute release. My #1 release of the year was BAD RELIGION’s The Empire Strikes First, and in the year’s closing days, I got married to my high school sweetheart.