Lookout Records, the Berkeley, California label that first brought

the world Green Day and Rancid, will open a retail store in downtown Berkeley

next month. Lawrence Livermore, the founder and president of Lookout (as well

as a member of one of its bands, the Potatomen) says the store aims to be "a

gallery and a museum. Its purpose is to display old posters and art as much as

it is to sell records.

Livermore started Lookout in 1987 to document the

burgeoning East Bay punk scene. Green Day released two albums on the label

before they signed to Reprise in 1993 and brought the distinctive East Bay pop

punk sound to a national audience. Lookout was also the original home of the

punk-ska band Operation Ivy, whose members went on to form Rancid.

"One of

the main functions of the label from the beginning was to document what went on

here," says Livermore, "This specific music, this specific culture." The East

Bay punk scene spawned dozens of bands and records that never gained national

prominence. Lookout has preserved the work of some of the area's lesser known

acts through its Punk Retrospective Series, which re-releases out of print

albums by East Bay bands. This month the label issued the latest record in the

series, Sweet Baby's It's A Girl. Last July Lookout re-released the Mr.

T Experience's second album, Night Shift at the Thrill Factory, and it

will repress MTX's third effort next year.

"The Mr. T Experience and Sweet

Baby are the best illustrations of why it's important to document and archive

the music," says Livermore. "They pretty much single-handedly created the East

Bay pop punk scene, and very few people got to hear those records.

The

label founder explains that he sees the Lookout store as a matter of civic and

cultural pride for the community. "This side of the bay never got respect; all

of the attention was focused on San Francisco. We've been looked on as working

class, bumpkins in the suburbs...they used to call the East Bay 'East Berlin.'"

He says that the area is still "somewhat depressed," and he hopes that the

Lookout shop will bring some measure of revitalization to Berkeley's

downtown.

Livermore likens Lookout's success to that of Motown Records in

the '60s, albeit on a smaller scale. "It's like when I was a kid in Detroit

with Motown--those were local people with no special training or special

skills, and they were shaping culture. Now we're creating images that are

shaping pop culture.

"There's a gratification in having your culture

recognized.

Lookout's store at 1940 University Avenue opens for business

on November 16. The shop has plans for an in-store concert to be held on the

evening of the 15th.