Mike Huguenor knows the world inside “Elvis Is Dead, I’m Still Alive” because he has lived in it — playing guitar in the bands, sleeping on the floors, watching the records get packed and shipped from the same suburban garage where they were born. Tonight, he brings that world to Vroman’s Bookstore.
Huguenor’s debut book, published yesterday by Clash Books, chronicles 30 years of Asian Man Records, the independent label that Mike Park founded in his parents’ garage in San Jose in May 1996 and built, one release at a time, into a catalog of more than 400 albums. At 7 p.m. Wednesday at Vroman’s, Huguenor will discuss and sign the book in conversation with Jeff Rosenstock — a musician and label founder in his own right whose band Huguenor plays guitar in. The event is free.
The pairing is not incidental. Huguenor has played in Shinobu and Hard Girls — both of which released music on Asian Man Records — and is a current member of Rosenstock’s touring band. Rosenstock, a singer-songwriter from Long Island, New York, has his own history with the label; his work has appeared on its roster alongside releases by his former bands Bomb the Music Industry! and The Arrogant Sons of Bitches. His solo career has produced albums including “WORRY.” and “HELLMODE,” and he founded Quote Unquote Records, which has been called the first donation-based digital record label.
The two are not author and moderator. They are collaborators, drawn from the same scene the book documents.
Asian Man Records’ roster over three decades has included early releases by Alkaline Trio and Less Than Jake, along with albums by Joyce Manor, AJJ, and The Lawrence Arms, according to the publisher’s description. Park, a Korean American musician who previously played in the ska band Skankin’ Pickle, ran the label largely by himself, with help from his parents and a small circle of volunteers. The book’s publication falls in the same month the label was founded — its 30th anniversary.
Huguenor began interviewing Park in 2022, and the book draws on what the publisher describes as over a hundred hours of interviews with musicians, producers, booking agents, label owners, writers, fans, employees, volunteers, friends and family. Park himself noted his involvement in a statement on the Asian Man Records website: “I spent many hours going on walks with Mr. Huguenor telling my story,” Park said. “He even convinced my mom to do an interview.”
The title comes from a Skankin’ Pickle song. “It’s almost like a diss track from the perspective of an Asian American,” Huguenor told the Substack newsletter of author Dan Ozzi. “Basically being like, ‘You think you’re so bad? Elvis is dead, I’m still alive!'”
Huguenor, a musician and writer from San Jose, told Ozzi that the label turning 30 this May made the timing right. The label “has broken bands into the mainstream, survived huge upheavals in the industry, and done it without really playing by many of the industry’s rules,” Huguenor told Ozzi. “That is really something that’s worth documenting.”
Publishers Weekly noted that Huguenor “highlights Park’s ceaseless ambition and brings the history alive with exacting detail.” Dan Ozzi, author of “Sellout,” described the book in a blurb as “the unlikely story of a punk kid who started a business in a garage and somehow wound up being the last man standing 30 years later,” according to the book’s listing.
The label will mark its 30th anniversary with a four-night residency at San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill from September 2 to 5.
The event takes place at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Admission is free. RSVP is available through the Vroman’s website at vromansbookstore.com. “Elvis Is Dead, I’m Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records” is available in paperback for $24.95. For more information, call 626-449-5320.
Thirty years of records, packed and shipped from a garage. Tonight, at a bookstore that has been part of Pasadena since 1894, two musicians from inside that world sit down to tell the story.
