A Time and a Place: Prologue to A Pig’s Tale by Ralph Sutherland and Harold Sherrick

A Pig's Tale includes:

• 336 full color pages

• softcover edition

• a complete discography of the entire TMQ catalog of over 100 LPs and EPs

• well over 350 images of the albums, colored vinyl, and inserts

• the underground tale of how Trade Mark of Quality came into being

This book is essential for record collectors and dealers.

In that hot summer of ’69 two longhaired music freaks created an underground LP record album of unreleased tracks by one of their music gods and put it out on the streets of Los Angeles. No one had ever been crazy enough to do such an audacious thing before. The god’s official record label was not amused but the music fans were thrilled. Were these guys pirates or heroes? It was so much fun the first time, they soon pressed up even more records of forbidden musical fruit. They were on a roll. The following year, in 1970, one of the culprits put The Pig image in a circular logo with the name “Trade Mark of Quality.” TMQ and Pigman were born!

With a cast of outrageous characters, here is the story of Trade Mark of Quality aka TMQ aka The Pig, the first bootleg record label of its kind, spawning many later imitators. From the end of the '60s to the mid '70s, TMQ and Pigman led the way, trotting down a muddy trail, feeding the habits and needs of music addicts around the world. Who were these fellow travelers? Carl? The Greek? Merlin? Hans? Rob Snout? Casper? Sheldon? The Blue Hasslebeast? Ol’ Fred? (Not to mention, The Brooklyn Boys, The Record Suits and The Feds!) What was the connection between TMQ and the Viet Nam war, revolutionaries, guns, pot and the moon landing? It’s all here!

Included in A Pig’s Tale is not only the Trade Mark of Quality and Pigman saga, but reproductions of all the rubber stamped and illustrated album jackets from every genuine TMQ record release, including the earliest releases from ’69 right up to the last titles in 1976. Everything you ever wanted to know about the real TMQ label is here: A complete discography of artists and track listings, sources of recordings, catalog numbers, master tape and record matrix info, colored vinyl pressings, record labels, graphics, photos, vintage news clippings, articles and more, all collected together, at last, in one volume.

A Pig’s Tale by Ralph Sutherland and Harold Sherrick, with their unique point of view, guides the reader through the never before told history of Trade Mark of Quality. It’s all here for the music lover and fan, the hardcore record collector, and the just plain curious.

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WARNING! THESE EVENTS COULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IN ANOTHER TIME AND PLACE!

(Pigman says, “Be cool, put some sounds on the turntable and groove on with ‘A Pig’s Tale’!”)

Part 1: Prologue

A TIME AND PLACE

The 1960s was a unique time in history. It was an era of change and great upheaval in politics, events, and culture resulting in clashes between generations. There was a new generation coming of age with their own views of how the world should be. They were the “baby boom” kids of their WWII parents, who didn’t have a clue what was going on with their offspring, and it scared the shit out of them. It was a new world and their compass could no longer find north. Presidents and the government were lying to America and young men shouting, “Hell no, we won’t go!” were being sent, against their will, to the slaughter in Viet Nam. For what and why? It was a decade of protest, Black civil rights, revolution, riots, assassinations, anti-war demonstrations and, at the same time, a search for justice and peace expressed through free love and drugs, unprecedented creativity in new colorful art, design and fashion, innovative theatre and cinema, and most important to this story: music.

Music was a big part of this revolution. It was the glue that held it all together. It was the DNA essence in the minds of those kids screaming in the streets, making love or just stoned out of their minds at some love-in. Unlike now, music then wasn’t just some standalone tune you downloaded from “the cloud,” listened to with your earbuds, then just deleted when you tired of it. At that time, a long-playing record album was an artistic “concept” made up of songs. When one of the music icons of the day released a new LP, people couldn’t wait to storm the local record shop on that first day of release to grab a copy to take home, and to play it over and over on their stereo sound system, until every nuance on every track was etched into their brains. They held the album jacket looking at the cover, reading the back liner notes, listening to the lyrics and tunes, wearing out those LPs, until it became a permanent part of their psyche. It was part of their life. Even to this day, 50-plus years later, those music memories are deeply imprinted. Whatever was going on around or inside those young heads at that time, for better or worse, that moment is forever alive in that music.

The end of the decade was fast approaching. That groovy ‘60s “Summer of Love” airplane would crash land on December 6th of 1969 at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco. At a free outdoor Rolling Stones concert, as they performed “Under My Thumb,” an 18-year-old Black man was killed by a Hell’s Angel in front of the stage. It was an ugly finale to a decade of hopeful optimism, tainting the memory of Woodstock the previous summer.

Our story here begins earlier that year as two bizarre events occurred in that July of 1969. A brave astronaut in a white space suit stepped down a ladder and actually walked on the moon. Meanwhile, back on terra firma, two long-haired music freaks in Los Angeles had put together a strange double LP record album. What the hell was it? The whole world knew about the guy on the moon. But very soon, many who were into the music of that time would hear about this mysterious record album which would first hit those smoggy L.A. streets like a small explosion. The very existence of this album would have been impossible without what had gone before in the 1960s. It was the product of a particular time and place unlike anything before. Was it a statement against The Establishment and those who wanted to control and manipulate the minds and lives of a new generation? Was it a big “Fuck You!” to those who would dare to tell them what music they should or could not listen to? Or was it just some crazy scheme cooked up by a couple of wacko record collectors? Whatever it was, when these two guys created this “underground” record album, they really didn’t have a clue what they had unleashed, or that the world of music and the record business would soon be dropped on its ear….

This is just the beginning. A Pig’s Tale is available now.