Janek's weblog where all posts go to Eleven
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Wow, this is big news in punk rock land: Green Day pull their early two records from Lookout Records. In response, the label lays off 6 of it's nine employees. Lookout used to be a huge independent label and was responsible for the pop punk explosion in the mid-Nineties.
Apparently, Lookout hasn't been paying Green Day for ages. Given the fact that the early Green Day records were Lookout's cash cows, this is incredibly stupid. Of all artists on Lookout's rooster, Green Day should have been the ones who always receive payments on time. But they did not. After years of not being paid, it seems that Green Day felt they had to do something about it.
This is not about money. In an interview with Green Day, I read that their major label debut Dookie sold more than 30 million units. These guys are multi millionaires, they don't need the money. In fact, according to MTV, Green Day did not file legal actions against Lookout to recoup the payments. They only took control of the CD masters.
One can only wonder what the management of Lookout was thinking. You can't run a business by not paying artists and using the money for funding the operation and new releases that nobody buys. The label published an open letter, but it still leaves me with questions.
What really makes me mad is this: Lookout is the home of MTX, one of my favorite bands. I guess the plans to release a new CD together with a greatest hits record in 2006 just got scrapped. Damn.