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Dodgy record labels/artists?

eevo1969

pfm Member
Going through some old house and techno records got me thinking about quality issues and some downright dodgy behaviour.
The one that immediately came to mind was Trax Records (Chicago), dodgy pressings could include parts of cigarettes, paper and even hair and other detritus and some pressings were unplayable and would hop skip and jump whilst the next could be just about be navigable with a rough enough cart, many artists never received any payments whatsoever from label boss Larry Sherman and credits were open to interpretation. Many were re-stamped from old records, you could often hear the old music from the original pressings at the beginning of the tracks but we carried on buying them regardless, you just had to have them.

I have a CD by a “artist” named Joe Lewis released in the mid 90s, contains 11 or 12 tracks of which Joe only made 3, the rest were stolen from a demo tape handed to him by one Jaime Read with the promise of release on Relief or Cajual Records in Chicago which obviously never materialised. The cheeky bastard even dedicated the album to his deceased brother.

Lots of similar artistic thefts abound in dance orientated stuff especially late 80s house and techno music, straight thefts and non recognition of credit due to contributors were commonplace, Discogs in the days when only electronic submissions were allowed was a riot with artists arguments going public in the forum or submission notes all the time. Very funny when the artists were attempting to change the release data to suit their own agendas and threatened the site with legal action if they didn’t alter the displayed information. Fun times.
 
Another member recently alluded to a saga regarding reissues of some Coil titles.

It's an eye opener about how some labels operate. Aside from the royalties etc it makes you wonder whether they actually had access to any sort of master.

edit: decided to remove link to the allegations in case label is feeling litigious.
 
I did have a Jamaican pressing of an L.P. that was dire. No amount of cleaning made it look healthy, although it wasn’t scratched to hell. It would play, but the sound wasn’t tolerable for me. Stuck it in the charity shop. Can’t remember what it was .
 
Roulette Records:
According to Tommy James of Tommy James and the Shondells, whose "Hanky Panky", "I Think We're Alone Now", "Mirage", "Mony Mony", "Crimson and Clover" and many others were released during his time at the label, Roulette was a front business for the Genovese crime family. James estimates that the label kept $30 million-$40 million of the group's royalties but afforded it total artistic freedom, whereas another label would have tampered with its formula and might have dropped the group early on.[4] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Roulette was one of the industry's major distributors, handling records for many leading labels.
 
Transmat Records has become notorious in recent years for fraudulent credits, not paying royalties and putting out titles without permission - Dr Motte and Cisco Ferreira both have tales to tell. That's in addition to the far more serious stuff swirling about Derrick May latterly.
 
Bizarrely as I read this I was listening to a remix of ‘Losing Control’ through headphones (Colin Dale Outer Limits Vol.2). Made me realise I’d completely merged this in my head with the Winx tune, so that I thought it was one song. Definitely some heavy influence going on there.

My original pressing of ‘Acid Trax’ has a ghostly mid-80’s soul tune playing underneath it. Just adds to the spooky, trippy atmosphere, and I have at least three cleaner pressings here, so I can live with it. Off topic, but there’s an early bootleg, of Acid Trax, long before the ‘mash-up’ craze, that has a Ben E King vocal laid over the top.
 
And people still laugh at Chuck Berry's demands for money before he played...
Very sensible. I was a DJ manager for a while in the days when it was all cash on the night. Most of my time at the gig was spent playing hide and seek with promoters.
 


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