The dawning of a new type of indie label...

Over the weekend, I had the chance to watch the Lucero DVD, "Dreaming in America," (review coming soon) and there was an interview with Fred Feldman, who founded Triple Crown Records (Brand New, Scraps & Heart Attacks) and currently heads East West (Warner Bros.), and he talked about signing Lucero and giving the band their own label, Liberty and Lament. A similar deal was given to Nightmare of You for their Bevonshire imprint. As I was watching this, it reminded me of an e-mail that was authored by Lyor Cohen when he took over Warner Music Group, basically explaining the resurrection of the East West and Asylum labels and their plans. Shortly afterwards, Tony Brummel of Victory Records sent out a response bashing Cohen's plan.
Here's the e-mail exchange if you want to read it. (Courtesy of Punknews.com)

Much of DVD deals with Lucero's desire to own the master of "Nobody's Darlings," as well as have a decent record deal, and the formation of Liberty and Lament made that desire into reality. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that Nightmare of You probably has a similar deal with their label. Now while artist-owned vanity labels are nothing new, the ownership of the master recordings are, and labels almost always get the masters until the company dissolves and the recordings eventually end up in public domain, if not in a sea of litagation.

It's pretty funny that Brummel went out of his way to criticize (not to mention personally bash) Feldman and WMG's business practices when none of the artists on Victory own their master recordings, which is probably why Taking Back Sunday's debut has been released three times (first as a standard, then with enhanced content, and most recently with a DVD). Many of the bands don't even have publishing rights.

I'm not suggesting that all major labels, specifically Warner Bros., are perfect, but at least in the case of the East West and Asylum imprints, they're retaining artists' rights.

A few years ago, I had a chance to interview members of a defunct Victory band called Student Rick. The drummer at the time seemed displeased with the label. "They're only giving Taking Back Sunday a push now," he said. "They don't care about the bands that don't make them money." According to them, their tours were self-funded and often took place at churches or houses, while other Victory bands enjoyed sponsored tours throughout the U.S. in mid-sized venues.

I guess I wouldn't be writing this sort of thing if Brummel didn't go out of his way to publicly talk shit about major labels, when he can easily be exposed as a hyprocite for inflicting the same practices that people like Steve Albini and Ian McKaye have warned against. I just hope that the bands on his label will be smart enough to renegotiate their contracts, then again, they might be happy with the 10% discount from Hot Topic.

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