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In the
past, Empty has released records by Portland bands Jr. High,
Crackerbash and Satan's Pilgrims, as well as by scene stalwarts
such as Gas Huffer and the Accused.
Dead
Moon's Destination X charted at No. 176 on the CMJ
200, while the Dickel Brothers' Volume One peaked
at No. 190.
Wright
and Smith decided to publicize their struggle with Musical
Tragedies after Raimond tricked the major American punk
'zines--Maximum Rocknroll, Punk Planet and Hit
List--into printing his ersatz Empty ads.
Neither
Wright nor Raimond has been able to copyright the name "Empty
Records" in the United States because a band called the
Emptys already has the copyright.
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At Seattle's Empty Records, it's the best of times
and the worst of times.
After pimping high-test punk rock on a chastity-belt budget
for 12 years, the indie label has an untouchable gang of
bands in its current stable. Portland's own Dead Moon,
Dickel Brothers and Fireballs of Freedom lead
the obstreperous brood. Critically acclaimed recent albums
by the Dickels and Dead Moon cracked the College Music Journal
200, a chart tracking indie rock sales--good news for label
founder Blake Wright and second-in-command Megan
Smith, who run Empty when they're not busy at their
day jobs.
So how are things at Empty HQ? Ask Smith, and she'll tell
it to you straight: "It's a pretty big fuckin' mess."
After three years of behind-the-scenes struggle, last week
Empty went public with a trans-Atlantic legal nightmare
that could ruin its business and its hard-won identity as
a pillar of the Northwest music scene.
According to Wright and Smith, a Germany-based label aptly
named Musical Tragedies is suing Empty in German
court, claiming to own the Seattle label's name and logo
and demanding that Blake and Smith stop selling records
in Europe. Wright says that Musical Tragedies' threats to
his main European distributor and the major German punk
magazines have already effectively cut off Empty from the
Continent.
In interviews with WW and an Aug. 1 letter to the
San Francisco 'zine Maximum Rocknroll, Wright
and Smith laid out the tale.
In 1984, Wright started a label called Masking Tapes in
San Francisco, a hobby operation he ran with two friends,
Joe Raimond and Volker Stewart. "For the first
year or so of the label, we'd just do cassettes," Wright
says. "Someone would order one and we'd dub it off for 'em--we'd
make, like, 10 copies of a release. There are no records
of that stuff."
In 1985, the Army stationed Wright in Germany, where he
was shortly joined by Raimond. The pair continued to release
music under a variety of names, all preserving the "MT"
motif: Mongo Throb, Musical Tragedies, eMpTy, and so on.
In 1987, Wright got out of the Army and headed to Seattle
to join Stewart. Raimond stayed behind in Germany, running
his now-separate label, Musical Tragedies.
On the other side of the world, in soon-to-go-pop Seattle,
the 1988 release of the Accused's first 7-inch set
Wright's operation on a more professional road. Stewart
soon took off to start his own label, leaving Wright as
Empty's sole proprietor.
"From that point, everything we did was independent of
each other," Wright says. "He was hot to license my records
for Europe, because for a while, you could pretty much slap
'Seattle' on anything and it would sell."
By 1994, though, the Jet City feeding frenzy had died.
Empty soldiered on with a handcrafted punk catalog now considerably
less attractive to Raimond. At the same time, Wright wanted
no part of Musical Tragedies' oeuvre --Raimond's
taste ran to compilations of German bands singing Irish
drinking songs and comeback attempts by Brit skinhead has-beens
Sham 69. The relationship soured.
"The buzz was gone," Wright says. "And everything I've
ever done has pretty much been up-and-coming bands--bands
that me and my 10 friends thought were huge but that no
one else had heard of, so he wasn't really selling those."
Raimond stopped licensing Wright's releases for the Euro
market but continued to press his former partner to carry
Musical Tragedies' product in the States. Wright continued
to refuse, and in 1996, Raimond attacked. He quietly copyrighted
the Empty name in Germany and began using it, along with
Empty's time-honored logo.
Raimond's threats to importers and magazines wrecked Empty's
small European trade. Raimond, now using the Empty name
as well as Musical Tragedies, issued records with the same
cover art used by Wright and Smith for similarly titled
releases. At the same time, he filed his copyright-infringement
suit in German court.
According to Wright, the suit demands about $11,000 in
compensatory damages with possible disciplinary fines of
up to $275,000 and/or two years in prison. With a decision
expected any day, Empty's legal bills total over $12,000--a
bill that's crippled the label's ability to promote its
releases. While Wright claims Raimond's suit is completely
without merit, he says a decade of punk rock business practices
complicate his case.
"I'm not the most organized person in the world, and I've
been digging through the basement looking for old letters
and all this stuff," he says. "And my lawyers are amazed:
'What, you didn't have contracts?' They don't understand
that at all."
While Empty's informality shocks lawyers, it's par for
the course in an underground that's long subscribed to a
business model straight out of Mayberry--work with your
friends, seal deals with handshakes, respect yourself in
the morning. That ethic has been good enough for hundreds
of labels, thousands of bands and millions of records sold.
In a world of legal skulduggery, though, it might not be
good enough much longer.
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Willamette Week | originally
published August 11,
1999
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