February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
On July 3, Green Linnet Records, an independent label based in Danbury, Conn., and L_nasa, the group it signed to a three-album contract in June 1999, came to an agreement on some key issues regarding “Redwood,” the band’s fourth recording overall and final studio release for the label.
The original points of contention involved the sonic and packaging quality of “Redwood” and payment of a $39,898.92 balance from a contractual advance of $100,000 owed the band by the record company for the album.
L_nasa and Green Linnet have now agreed on the following:
? A check for $20,000 will be sent to the band on Green Linnet’s behalf by Yoko Nozaki, owner of the Music Plant record label in Japan and the licensee who manufactured and released “Redwood” there, without formal Green Linnet or band permission, to tie in with L_nasa’s April tour of Japan.
? The remaining advance money owed the band will be made up in product credit. That is, credit for L_nasa’s purchase of 2,000 “Redwood” CDs, 288 “Merry Sisters of Fate” CDs, and 200 “Otherworld” CDs at a rate of $8 each by the band for sale on tour.
? An additional $5,000 will be sent by Nozaki to Green Linnet to remit the latter’s legal expenses incurred over the allegedly “illegal bootleg” release of “Redwood” in Japan.
L_nasa and its management also claimed “Redwood” was sonically “faulty” or “defective” in its first Japanese pressing and in Green Linnet’s subsequent initial pressing, which was mastered from a commercial copy purchased by the label from HMV in Japan. According to Chris Teskey, Green Linnet’s chief operating officer, the label’s first commercial North American pressing of “Redwood” was 6,000 copies, made available on June 3, the album’s street date (official release date), plus 1,500 promotional copies.
Teskey said that Green Linnet replaced the allegedly “substandard” CD in its first pressing with a CD manufactured from a “correct” master received from L_nasa on June 4 that the label used for its second and then third pressings.
“We replaced our master with theirs because the band wanted us to, and we have no problem with that,” Teskey said.
At the time this column was written, Green Linnet had no intention of replacing the label’s allegedly “poor quality packaging,” or artwork, for “Redwood.” The artwork in the Green Linnet pressings was commissioned or overseen by the label itself and is not the artwork commissioned and authorized by the band. Teskey, Green Linnet president and owner Wendy Newton, and L_nasa manager Stuart Ongley of SGO Music Management in London all admitted the label is under no contractual obligation to use band-authorized artwork, which Teskey said was never sent to the label.
L_nasa also contends there are some misspellings or minor text mistakes in the initial Japanese and in all Green Linnet pressings of the album so far.
Allegations go public
In a press release e-mailed during mid-June by Niamh Burkeneff of NB Publicity, a publicist hired by L_nasa in Ireland, the band and its manager, Stuart Ongley, had alleged the following:
? “Green Linnet have knowingly manufactured ‘Redwood’ from a sonically substandard copy.”
? “They [Green Linnet] then further compromised the album and band by producing artwork consisting of a downloaded ‘royalty free’ image as the front cover [and] a two-year-old photo of the band.”
? “Green Linnet did this to avoid having to pay L_nasa.”
Responding to those allegations, Teskey said: “L_nasa approved and released a copy to our Japanese licensee, the Music Plant, and provided [band-authorized] artwork to the Music Plant, who released it. So we obtained a copy and released from that.
“When they release a copy for a commercial use anywhere in the world, that is an approval, according to the legal advice we have,” Teskey added. “Further to that, the band allowed the record to be released in Japan, did not object, and, in fact, purchased copies from the Music Plant to sell on their Japanese tour.”
Teskey called the Music Plant’s Yoko Nozaki “a total pirate” and claimed that “under pressure from our attorney in Japan, Music Plant says they had permission from the band” to release the album there.
Regarding the sonic quality of the initial North American pressing mastered from a Japanese commercial CD, Teskey said: “We’ve listened to it [North American first-pressing CD], and the differences are not discernible. We want to put out the best possible product. We have no reason to do otherwise.”
Teskey also said Green Linnet paid $2,500 for the artwork used in its “Redwood” pressings. “Our cover is nearly identical, and ours was not a free Internet download,” he said. “We wouldn’t have put their artwork out in any case because we thought it was substandard, especially the photography inside.”
On the matter of balance of advance payment due, Teskey said: “That is triggered when they deliver the master, and they delivered a master to us on June 4, 2003. If they had delivered the master to us last year when they finished it, they would have had about $60,000 in records purchased from us, and we would have paid them the balance in cash or let their record bill keep going up.”
Amplifying that remark, Wendy Newton said, “We had agreed on a combination of check and product credit in writing.”
Lunasa’s argument
“They hadn’t paid us the advance for this record, the CD copy they put out is faulty and they were told that several weeks before it came out, and they used the wrong artwork, which is just a cheap, shoddy piece of work,” said Cillian Vallely, L_nasa’s uilleann pipes and whistle player.
“The most important thing is that the CD is not full quality.
“This album was conceived in October 2001 and mixed in July 2002,” he continued. “The band paid for the recording of ‘Redwood,’ and we wanted to get paid by Green Linnet.”
On the subject of the first North American pressing’s sonic quality, Vallely said: “I don’t think his [Teskey’s] standards are the same standards we have. We’re musicians, we recorded the album, we spent a lot of time mixing and mastering it, and we wanted it to sound as good as it can. I think another record company would have had the decency to pull this faulty record.”
Kevin Crawford, L_nasa’s flute, whistle, and bodhr