Publication:
MaximumRockNRoll

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

MRR #196
First off, it has come to my attention that a White Power band from Florida is using the name Code 13. OK, if any of you nimrods are reading, here is your cease and desist order. I won't be calling my lawyer, I won't be filing a complaint with the copyright control commission, I will be coming to Florida this winter. The name is taken, a metal band in California already had to change their name because we had a record out first. Now that was no big deal, they wanted to avoid confusion just as much as we did. However, using our name on white power shit is something I take personally. This has already caused some confusion is regards to the Street Punk '99 fest in Kansas City. (That was us, the real Code 13 that was scheduled to play, and we didn't because our drummer couldn't get out of work that weekend, sorry to anyone who came to see us. Hope you got to see NOTA!) So you upstart Code 13 guys had better change your name, because I am coming looking for you and I ain't afraid of whatever your master race can dish out. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

I am frequently asked why Code 13 has never toured Canada. We actually were going to once but most of the gigs cancelled and our van broke down in Boston. But here is one of the major problems: the Canadian border. After touring all across Europe with equiptment and even passing through Israeli customs which are supposed to be the strictest in the world, I still think the worst treatment I ever got was at the Canadian border. For those of you who don't know Canada has a powerful Musicians Union which has lobbied the Canadian government to make it very difficult for American bands to cross the border and play in Canada. To play legally in Canada you need some sort of visa or permit or some shit which I'm sure most punk bands could never get. I believe you can be rejected for lack of "merit" or some such shit. The Canadians are also very strict about bringing equipment across the border. They fear that you will sell your high quality American equipment in Canada and thereby undercut makers and sellers of Canadian equipment and also forgo paying Canada's outrageous taxes. Therefore they often make you put a deposit on your equipment to prevent you from selling it in Canada. They also search the fuck out of your van. They must have a list of suspicious types in the little booth at the border, one of which I'm sure is "punk band." Its not just punks though, 80's pop group Loverboy got so fed up with Canadian Customs giving them a hard time crossing back into Canada that they quit playing Canada altogether for a while. Grace Jones was arrested for bringing a "weapon" across the border, the weapon was a studded bracelet. Rob Halford had a bunch of his stage gear confiscated as "weapons" at the Canadian border in the mid 80's. Soul Asylum were crossing the border once and the pigs found a small quantity of pot in the van. They proceeded to tear the van apart, the even went so far as to pull the engine. They found no drugs, Soul Asylum's van was in pieces and they had to have it towed to a garage which charged them a fortune to put the van back together and get it running, they missed their gig. As for me I was on tour with Destroy in 93 when we crossed into Vancouver. We brought no equipment, no records, no band t shirts, nothing but a few toiletries and some skateboards. We still got searched and questioned as if we were the Islamic Jihad trying to cross with a nuclear warhead. They looked up my criminal record on their computers, they tore the van apart, finally they let us through. We had to play on Insult to Injury's equiptment in Vancouver which meant no distortion pedal, regular tuning and no double bass. I hate to sound like a cry baby but playing heavy grind/thrash with out that equipment is pretty abysmal. I know that a lot of bands tour Canada by using bogus recording contracts and saying that they are recording in Canada and then get across the border and play anyway. But I've also heard that many border crossings are wise to this scam and will try to call the studio etc. so you better have your story straight. I had an easier time getting into the Soviet Union when I visited there in '91 than the last few times I've gone to Canada.

MRR will now be deluged by letters from patriotic Canadians saying that the border controls are necessary to protect Canada's unique culture from American cultural imperialism etc. Who are you trying to fool? Punk is THE international youth culture. Punk has spread from the USA and Europe to the farthest reaches of the globe. (for example right now I'm listening to a 13 band punk and oi compilation of bands all from Jakarta Indonesia!) National borders are complete bullshit and I refuse to buy this nationalistic crap about protecting your culture. We live in a global economy in an era of mass communication. We are rapidly approaching a world culture, that culture will of course be the culture of Amercian, Japanese and European multi-national corporations. At best punk is a counter culture of resistance to this cultural hegemony, at worst it is loud and annoying subculture for bored middle class teen-agers. But either way its not a threat to Canada's unique culture the way Canada's multi-nationals are to the underdeveloped nations of the world and their cultures. Free trade in rock! Open the borders to the musicians!

In the tradition of the Scumbag file I've compiled a few distributor and label dirty tricks which I'd like to share with everybody, especially bands and small distributors.

The Bait and Switch. Extreme Noise has had this one pulled on us a few times lately. A distributor advertises something and sends you something else instead for instance. They tell you they've got copies of the new Flaming Placebo LP at five bucks each. Then the order shows up and its five copies of the Flaming Placebo CD at ten bucks a piece. Or Flaming Placebo's earlier album which nobody wants anymore. The distributor counts on you not bothering to call them up and returning the CD's since you ordered the same title or artist anyway. One that was pulled on Extreme Noise recently was sending us a bunch of stuff COD that we didn't order at all. The person who accepted the order wasn't the one who had made the order so they wrote the check and put the records into stock. It wasn't until later that the person who make the order double checked the invoice and found out there was several hundred dollars worth of stock we didn't order added on. Once again if no one had double checked or just not bothered to send it back we would've been scammed. We also recently got shipped a COD order that we never even ordered. The distributor admitted it was a mistake, an order for another store accidentally shipped to us. But getting our money back was a long involved process as they already deposited our check. It took weeks of calls to get our money back. An honest mistake, or maybe they were counting on us to forget about it or blow it off. I think a lot times mistakes are made in this business, but sometimes a shady distributor can push some product on you that you didn't order, or don't need and count on you being too busy or disorganized to return it and get your money back. Its in everyone's best interest that you check your order in carefully and cross reference it to the invoice. It's easy to make mistakes filling orders, but its also easy to scam someone who is too busy to double check everything.

Another shifty distributor trick is the hard sell. This is the pushy salesman who pretends to be your friend and calls all the time, makes small talk and then tries to pressure you into making an order. "So, can I put you down for five of those" is a favorite line. Or "Don't worry you can pay me for them later" then the order shows up COD anyway. Everyone I know who works at a record store hates this approach. Unfortunately we used to have some guys at Extreme Noise who were a little to chummy with their sales reps at some distributors and we got conned into taking five copies of every no name record on every two bit label. If you want any of them come on down to Extreme Noise, they are in our 50 cent discount dungeon to this day. Don't let yourself get talked into ordering something you don't want. I think its always best to write out your order and fax it to the distributor rather than take an order over the phone. That way if any misunderstanding arises there is a written record of what you ordered.

Similar to the bait and switch is the unsolicited trade. This is one that really pisses me off. The label that sends you a zillion copies of something you didn't ask for and wants you to send them a bunch of your stuff in trade. Sometimes they send it out of the blue, like "here's 25 copies of my latest releases, now send me 25 Aus Rotten eps." Once again they are counting on you being unwilling to send it back even if you can't use it, or just eager to get your stuff distributed by trading even though you know you'll never sell all 25 copies. Don't be afraid to send stuff back, most labels can deal with a letter telling them you are sorry but you tried to sell it and no one in your area was buying. And ask them to send you something else you can sell. If the label can't deal with it, screw 'em. Another related scam is the trading bait and switch where you send off your stuff for some great new releases on a label but instead of the new releases they promised you they send you one of their dud releases instead. Enclosed will be a note to the effect that, " we are out of the hot new releases, but here's the shitty CD nobody wanted instead." Again, they count on you not having the nerve or the motivation to send their stuff back, especially if you've already mailed your stuff to them.

Then there is the not so exclusive "exclusive item" a distributor tries to get you to order a new release at a premium price that is exclusive to that distributor. Then a few days later you find out that everybody is carrying it, so what made it so exclusive? Except that you paid extra for it.

One issue that has had Extreme Noise in an ethical dilemma lately is Street Dates. Distributors often fix street dates for releases before which you are not supposed to sell the releases. This means that there is enough lead time for the distributor to ship copies of the release to everyone so that they all get them in time to start selling them on the same date. That's why stores sometimes stay open until midnight so they can start selling a really hot new release the minute the clock hits the release date. In reality a lot of stores start selling things before the street date, this means they have it first and get lots of extra sales, and if one store in town does it then everyone else has to do it too or lose out on a those sales. For example if Dripping Orifice's new CD has a street date of the 15th and starts shipping on the 10th a store can order it next day air or second day air and get it three or four days early. If the store has big posters in my window advertising the new CD and people come in asking for it. Now the store can start selling it before the other stores in town who ordered it by UPS Ground even get it from the coast, and well before the street date. I'd say that in a lot of cities the street date system is totally ignored and everybody starts selling everything the moment they open the box. So why do distributors even bother anymore?

A famous shifty label trick is under claiming sales as to avoid paying royalties. A label press up 5,000 copies of a record and pay the band their 20%, then if the record sells well they press up another 5,000 and keep selling them all the time telling the band that sales are low and they still haven't sold out of the first pressing. Another one is doing a re-press without telling the band. This one was pulled on me. I didn't even know that Relapse was planning to re-issue the Destroy CD on a CD split with Disrupt until I saw it advertised in MRR. Now, I'm not so hard to track down since I've been using PO Box 8585 since 1988 and that address has been on every record, tape and zine I've ever worked on. But Relapse said they didn't know how to get in touch with me so they put out the CD without asking me first. I did eventually get some copies of this CD, but I still don't know how many they ever pressed, or if Disrupt ever got their copies.

Dodgy labels like to get out of paying royalties by claiming high costs. I know lots of bands who did a release that sold pretty well and never got any copies or royalties. Their label would say that the release still hadn't sold enough to break even. The label will blame the band for spending too much on recording, wanting expensive packaging etc. and then try to push the blame back on the band. You can avoid this by making sure every thing is communicated about expenses and break even points in advance. I know some bands who have had to call up the pressing plant to find out how many records were pressed.

Some bigger labels can really exploit up and coming bands who really want to be on that well known label. Some bands have actually wound up paying to be on a bigger label just to be associated with the hype surrounding that label. This is of course under the assumption that there are a lot of people who will buy anything on a label if its good or not. And really, its all about hype and marketing these days anyway so you can see how a young band would be willing to do this. Some labels treat new bands like they are doing them a big favor by releasing them, and dodge out of ever paying royalties by claiming high costs and low sales, or just by dropping the issue and hoping the band never gets up the nerve to ask.

All this said I still think we've made a lot of progress. I mean from what I hear none of the bands on Mystic ever got paid for anything. I also know from experience that miscommunication and lack of communication lead a lot of people in the scene to jump to conclusions that they've been ripped off. My advice is make sure everything is written down and agree on things in advance. Don't let your eagerness to push ahead with a release make you sign your music away to someone else to make a fortune off of. As has been pointed out, there are some real scumbags in the music business.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1988

Previous | All articles in this category | Next