Dead Moon was an American punk rock band active from 1987 to 2006, formed in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populou ...

History

Fronted by the singer/guitarist Fred Cole, the band also included the bass guitarist Toody Cole and the drummer Andrew Loomis. Veterans of Portland's

independent rock Indie rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produc ...

scene, Dead Moon combined dark and lovelorn themes with punk and

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, o ...

influences into a stripped-down sound. Fred Cole engineered most of the band's recordings and mastered them on a mono recording lathe that was used for

The Kingsmen The Kingsmen are a 1960s rock band from Portland, Oregon, United States. They are best known for their 1963 recording of R&B singer Richard Berry's " Louie Louie", which held the No. 2 spot on the '' Billboard'' charts for six weeks and ...

's version of "

Louie Louie "Louie Louie" is a rhythm and blues song written and composed by American musician Richard Berry in 1955, recorded in 1956, and released in 1957. It is best known for the 1963 hit version by the Kingsmen and has become a standard in pop and ...

". Their early records, such as ''In the Graveyard'', were released on the Tombstone Records label, named for the musical equipment store the Coles operated at the time. Soon they caught the attention of the German label Music Maniac Records, and toured Europe successfully. Not until the mid-1990s did they tour the United States. Much of their following was in Europe. A U.S. filmmaking team (Kate Fix and Jason Summers) produced a 2004 documentary, ''Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story'', which played in independent theaters in the U.S. and New Zealand and at the Melbourne International Film Fest, and was released on DVD in fall 2006. Dead Moon has recorded for labels such as Empty Records, but most releases are on Music Maniac worldwide and Tombstone in the U.S.. The Tombstone label also provided cheap mastering and duplication for other bands, serving more as a co-operative