Best punk album

When Dischord started, it was a seat of the pants thing like any other indie label. Over time they got organized, which is why they were able to survive, not to mention having a good catalog and loyal fans. 

One problem a lot of labels got into in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s was a Production and Distribution deal through a third party distributor. Companies like Rough Trade U.S., Dutch East India, or EFA would have an arrangement with a bunch of indie labels to actual oversee manufacturing and distribution of physical releases. Gradually it became a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul for those distros to stay open, and when they collapsed a lot of labels went with them and were owed money, since the distros also took care of things like accounting and royalty payments. A huge mess. 

I didn't know the guy personally, but in a lot of situations like this what happens is the label owner is just a regular guy that has no idea how to run a business, doesn't try to get help, and ends up in over their head. I've seen this many times with a variety of small businesses, and at the end of the day, record labels are just small businesses. 

In the case of CTW, the owner got into a very public spat with two different bands on his label at two different times. One band ended up re-releasing the recording on their friend's label and went out of their way to tell folks not to buy the CTW version. This was in the mid-90s so mostly played out in zines and advertisements in distro catalogs, and so on. 

After the label closed the owner formed a MySpace marketing agency for bands - no idea what he is doing now. 

The label (CTW) that put it out used to have a travelling distro (this was common back then - other labels had them also) and would appear at many shows I used to go to with records and CDs for sale. For some reason I never picked any of the Shoulder stuff up. Later on the label developed a shady rep and closed in the early 2000s, and by then most of their releases were very difficult to find. I still have a couple releases on the label on CD (Thoughts of Ionesco) that I repurchased years after I sold my original copies.