DJ Mario Orduno

DJ Mario Orduno, founder of Art Fag Recordings, says “It all really does stem from being an obsessive record collector — I’ve been collecting since I was 15. I just wanted a place for my friends and I to be able to hear the records we love, whether it be between bands at a show or at a small bar hanging out."

Art Fag released its debut album in late 2005, a three-track collaboration between Kill Me Tomorrow and Long Beach’s Dance Disaster Movement. “The response was pretty good, but I didn’t really know what I was doing — it was a learning experience. I was bored and wanted to do something meaningful. I guess I always wanted to have a label or be involved in organizing a music project in some capacity. I’ve set up shows and DJ nights for years.” Orduno’s second release featured The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower’s cover of David Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging.” He went on to release records by Dum Dum Girls and Crocodiles, as well as Best Coast, whose frontwoman Bethany Cosentino met Orduno while on her first date with Nathan Williams of Wavves.

Orduno also organizes tours with collaborators CS Touring and Zoo Music. He releases vinyl from a growing roster of garage, noise rock, and other musicians influenced by punk and ’50s–’60s retro — other Art Fag associates include Psychic Dancehall (based in England), Las Robertas, Colleen Green, Young Prisms, and locals Raw Moans, Heavy Hawaii, and the Plateaus (whose frontman Jon Greene runs sound at Art Fag events). Creating shows and recordings, along with filling orders, has become so demanding that, in 2010, the former Off the Record and Record City clerk had to give up the room he rented from a downtown law firm and get his own office space. He then moved the entire operation into his two-bedroom North Park home, near where he grew up. As of 2011, the Art Fag moniker is now used by Orduno for his regular DJ gig at Kadan in North Park on Tuesday nights. “Tuesday nights have gotten so busy that it’s kinda hard to track what's going on,” Orduno says. “There was actually a couple caught having sex in the boys’ bathroom recently.” [San Diego Reader]