The Shield Around the K: The Story of K Records
2000 film directed by Heather Rose Dominic
The Shield Around the K: The Story of K Records is a 2000 documentary produced and directed by Heather Rose Dominic about the independent record label, K Records. The film profiles the birth and growth of the punk rock DIY label based in Olympia, Washington.
Co-founders, Calvin Johnson and Candice Pedersen are interviewed along with over 20 K artists and peers including Michael Azerrad, Timothy Brock, Gerard Cosloy, The Crabs, Steve Fisk, John Foster, John Goodmanson, Toni Holm, Rich Jensen, Peter Kember, David Lester, Bret Lunsford, Ian MacKaye, Lois Maffeo, Patrick Maley, Rose Melberg, Slim Moon, Jack Rabid, David Raugh, Ira Robbins, Jean Smith, Winston Vidor, Wandering Lucy and Dean Wareham.
Included are Super 8 music videos of Beat Happening, The Halo Benders, Lois, Mecca Normal and Tiger Trap directed by Patrick Maley and Lois Maffeo. The film also contains rare footage from the International Pop Underground Convention, a six-day festival held at the Capital Theater in Olympia, Washington in August, 1991.
Production
The film was shot using a Panasonic PV-810 camera.
The majority of the film's footage was captured over two weeks in the Pacific Northwest. Interviews and locations were shot in Anacortes, Washington; New York, New York; Olympia, Washington; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; Vancouver, Washington and Washington, D.C.
DVD special features
IPU Footage
Beat Happening: Cast a Shadow
Beat Happening: Revolution Come & Gone
Mecca Normal: He Didn't Say
Mecca Normal: Walk Alone
Reception
The film played to a sold-out audience at the 2000 New York Underground Film Festival and went on to receive invitational screenings at over 20 film festivals in Canada, England, Germany, Sweden and the United States.
The Shield Around the K garnered favorable reviews from over 50 national and international publications including Spin, Jane, Record Collector, and Time Out New York.
The film was referenced in Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991 written by Michael Azerrad and published by Little, Brown and Company, 2001.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Shield Around the K: The Story of K Records” is 2000 film directed by Heather Rose Dominic. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Shield, Around and Story, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “2000 film directed by Heather Rose Dominic” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7763806. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 1991, 1981 and 2001.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Shield Around the K: The Story of K Records” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.