MPR: Top "white power" music label prospers from Twin Cities home base

The Twin Cities is one of the top music towns in the nation. But the same local scene that gave birth to Hüsker Dü, Prince, and the Jayhawks has also spawned one of the nation's biggest labels for "white power" music. Panzerfaust Records operates quietly from its home base in St. Paul, sending out racist CDs and merchandise for more than 300 bands. A look at one of Minnesota's lesser known exports. St. Paul, Minn. — White power music doesn't have its own awards show, or an aisle in most record stores. But it's out there -- bands like Brutal Attack, Whitewash and Rebel Hell. Some songs celebrate white racial pride; others glorify beating and killing minorities; some call for a global war among the races. The industry does not publicize sales figures, but the nation's 50 or so white power music labels will sell hundreds of thousands of CDs this year. St. Paul's Panzerfaust Records is one of the biggest of those labels -- the very biggest in terms of sales, according to the company itself. The label is named after a Nazi antitank weapon. It arose in 1997 from an active Twin Cities skinhead music scene, centered around one nationally prominent band called Bound For Glory. As it grew, Panzerfaust literally helped put Minnesota on the map: The map of national hate groups put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The two men who run Panzerfaust make the center's list of 40 figures who are the future of what it calls "the radical right" -- a category that includes neo-Nazis, klansmen, and confederate pride groups. One of those two men is Byron Calvert, who agreed to meet in a St. Paul park while his wife watched their three kids on the playground. "Calvert" is his middle name, and it's what he prefers to use; his given name is Bryant Cecchini. Calvert has been in and out of Minnesota since falling in with the skinhead scene here 16 years ago, at 17. Last year he left Panzerfaust's major competitor, West Virginia-based "Resistance Records", after a reported clash with its owners.