Linus Gelber is founder and Home Officer of the New York City indie record label Home Office Records, which opened shop in late 1996. His outsider's history in independent music began in high school when he ran sound -- both channels -- for a pretty dreadful Village cover band named Sweetfire; he was an associate producer of the New York City Folk Festival in 1980, working with a young inspired and penniless team that mounted a week-long concert series at Town Hall and the dear departed Folk City (the festival featured artists as diverse as Don McLean, Buffy St. Marie, Odetta, Richie Havens, then-unknown Suzanne Vega, Christine Lavin, and Carolyn Mas). In college Linus hosted a stridently unformatted weekly radio show on WHRB 95.3 FM in Cambridge, MA, and he has performed as an actor and a reading poet in New York, Boston, Dallas, London, Paris, and Berlin and points between. He has studied writing with Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and Pultizer Prize winners Frank McCourt and Mark Strand, among others. Linus was a founding board member of the Arden Party theatre company with Karin Coonrod, and he can still be found reading his poetry now and again down in the East Village. He refers to himself periodically in the third person as Mr. Cyrano, which is his occasional Nom de Web. Don't worry about this.

Home Office Records arose out of Linus' abiding love of music, and his desire to turn the joyous dreams of working musicians into a tangible and meaningful alternative to the cookie-cutter music that surrounds us in this strange modern life. As of early 2000, Home Office has released recordings by long-standing indie artists The Cucumbers and baby bands Pawnshop and RAW Kinder, as well as a new-music compilation, "Burner," which features jazz and post-modern post-classical tracks in easy repose with music by emerging East Village pop and rock bands. HO's newest release, "Natural Selection" by The Dan Emery Mystery Band, is currently going to press. Linus was not named after the Peanuts character, but thanks for asking.

Contact

Home Office Records
173 Clinton Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Phone: (718) 858-3174
www.web-ho.com/