Posh Boy as a label was started in the summer of 1978 when I was 25 but it was only afterwards that you could point out that beginning. At the time, I was an artist manager putting out a record by a group because nobody else would and the group was breaking up and I wanted to make sure our work had not been for naught.

Well, it was definitely not a decision to have a punk label! I think that sort of thinking would not figure for a few years, until opportunists could see that there was actually a punk market. In the late 70's, people were consciously trying to have DIY labels as such. The records I released were determined by the groups, F-Word! and the Simpletones that I was working with. It could have just as easily been characterized as a new wave label. Why did I later gravitate to what became known as punk or hardcore? That was where the most exciting groups and appealing songs were. I felt those groups had the edge creatively over the metal groups that were actually doing better business at the time. And I had been a big Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, so I wasn't necessarily hostile to all metal type music. If go through my releases, I was always open to releasing records outside the "punk" box.

F Word!, Rik L Rik's group was that first one. Oh no! Being a manager meant I had to meet the deficits of running a band! I think it was partly to recoup some of my losses that I recklessly decided to do that first record. I had ZERO money. Really nothing. A family friend lent me $250 and somehow I got the suppliers to go along with my scheme. I was working various jobs, including as substitute school teacher, restaurant publicist, restaurant maitre d'. And at the time, there was no DIY manual, this was the very beginning of the independents. But the people at the manufacturing end were very supportive; in a way it was nostalgic for them to see a revival of the bootstrap mentality that had prevailed a generation earlier in the 50's. The recording studios seemed a closed world, very expensive and exclusive. That would change over time but at first the California recordings suffered greatly in comparison to the UK recordings.

Besides selling out of my car's trunk for years to local stores, we were lucky at that point in time by the existence of Jem Records who were making their money as importers and distributors of English records. When the rug was pulled out from under underneath them in the mid 80's by a certain U.S. copyright court decision, the greater part of the distribution system went down the drain and there was a horrific down turn. As there were so few people doing what we were doing, we actually had a lot of support from the local record store chains, particularly Music Plus and Licorice Pizza. Many of their employees, both in the stores and at head office, were just as bored with the major label scene and wanted to get something going. So we were able to do fantastic promotions with them. The best opportunity came in 1980 or so when the majors introduced mid price records. $4.98 or $5.98 list as opposed to $7.98 or $8.98 list. Music Plus promoted these very heavily at a lead price of $3.99. By reducing our wholesale price 20%, we were able to reduce the retail price by 50%. My aim was to sell as cheaply as possible. Someone like Lisa Fancher at Frontier may have been smarter in charging the most the market would bear, especially as it kept her artists happier with higher royalties. But I took a more idealistic approach.

There were contracts right from the beginning and quite formal agreements from 1980 onwards. My typical agreement was for a 7 1/2 percent royalty with no deductions. The competition were offering 50% royalties, in fact, 50% of their net profits. So the groups felt short changed by me. As well, I saw no sense in coming up with large advances rather than ploughing the money back for the huge number of releases that I wanted to do. That would cost me, too. And, whenever, I did come up with, say, a $10,000 advance, it proved a mistake.

By and large, I preferred working with bands that NO ONE else wanted to sign. I was capable of trusting my own instincts and at the time, I had reasonably good marketing skills. I think the posts in my guest book give a pretty thorough understanding of the situation. The salient fact of the Shattered Faith case was that they wanted out of their recording agreement mid way through the recording as they had found a financial backer for them to do their own record. They then negotiated a bad faith settlement that they never adhered to. It became a cultural thing for the California groups simply not to honor the agreements that they entered into. It was not a matter of holding them to a multi-year contract, you could not hold them for a multi day agreement! Even though I had a high powered lawyer (and hence the contracts that have stood the test of time), I never sued any of these artists for breach of contract as a major would have. But I will say, Channel 3 did honor their contract, about the only group who did.

What a joke! Agent Orange has TWICE re-recorded that album. The first time they did it was for Restless and it was never released and Mike Palm cried to me years later that he had been a fool for doing so as he had to pay the recording costs out of his own pocket. Then Mike does the same crappy thing again, re-recording the album for Cleopatra, this time acing out Levesque and Miller with whom he has to share the Rhino royalties. For 10 years now, Agent Orange have received their artist royalties directly from Rhino, so it is not a question of whether they get paid, but how much. If Mike wants to thrash his own artistic legacy, that's his call.

The only significant amount I owe right now is to The Vandals. Other than The Nuns, I have forgiven/written off most of the debts owed to me by various, lesser known groups. After all, other than Agent Orange, there's nothing left in the Posh Boy catalog that sells particularly big. Probably the next biggest seller would be Channel 3. I get royalty statements from Nitro for TSOL and even they sell a fraction of what Agent Orange sell, quarter after quarter.

We always printed jackets in multiples of 5000. The minimum initial pressing run was 1000, 500 of which went into the legendary Posh Boy promotional mailings. A record like TSOL would have sold 2000 in its first year of release, 1000 of which might have sold the first weekend! The Rodney On The Roq compilations sold 10,000 copies almost immediately but did not have "legs". A compilation like Punk and Disorderly became a steady seller

It was probably the early 1990's pressing, not the fabled one. There were 10 or so of those original 1981 test pressings and I doubt if more than 1 or 2 survived and maybe, none.

When I did the Posh EP's boxed set in the early '90's I was able to use the stamper from the "A" side but we had to re-cut the "B" side. But what was the label? We did test pressings in 1990, too!

How much did it go for?

Who sold it?

Todd was not around in 1981.

Al, one of the truly good guys

Owing to my stupidity! I liked Mike Ness very much and when we got into a fight over artwork or something, I just decided that it would be best to part company "friends" rather than bitter enemies. At the time, the sales would have been tiny for an EP from them but in the mid 80's I could have sold 50,000-100,000 rather than 10,000 of their single. But, when S.D. became huge the first time I used to ask their KROQ fans if they knew their early material and usually there was absolutely no knowledge, this from kids wearing SD t-shirts. And when Offspring did "Self Esteem", very few spotted their lift from "Playpen". BTW, I have never mastered the collectors' market. It has always been others making the big money from selling my stuff.

No, Social D. was a complete buy out of my rights, both master and publishing rights and I was not able to negotiate a producer royalty. At the time, 1993, I was quite poor, living in the Palm Desert projects and the deal was done very gracefully by Guerinot, whereby I felt I was doing the right thing and pocketing some much needed dough at the same time.

Jim Guerinot has been looking after Mike Ness for many years, and has been manager for Offspring, Rancid and many others. I understand his Time Bomb label is closing down. Joe Escalante tells me he is picking up some rights for Europe. I still own a lot of masters and nearly all of the publishing rights that I originally owned.

Well in the late 80's a huge collectors' market developed in Germany and suddenly I went from being piss poor working as a travel agent to being able to semi-retire in Palm Desert. Up until August 1991, we were able to sell any vinyl we had sitting around in the warehouse and the Germans kept asking for more, more and more.

I just got this idea in the summer of 1990 that I could raid my vaults and do a series of 25 or so singles, using a cookie cutter approach. I got the artwork costs down to a ridiculous level and I knew I could make money on selling just 1000 singles. And I had these amazing archives of photographs to raid. Do you think the effort was successful, up to the traditional PB standard?

The 7" box set was done by a German company and it was that release that prompted me to do my own series of singles.

There were a few like Amoeba that had 2000 runs, otherwise just 1000.

The sleeves were flimsy. To go back and do the original cardboard sleeves would have been prohibitively expensive. Back in 1981 I was lucky that my then printer cut me a fantastic deal on printing those sleeves but it called for a minimum of 5000, which would not have worked with the 1990 series. The 1000, 2000 figures refer to printing runs. The pressing runs could be just a few hundred at a time, hence the different colors. The singles would be pressed in whatever color they were running that day.

Many times! But the last time would have been after 1995 when I had my last solid attempt to re-establish PB with groups like Glue Gun and Das Klown. When nothing from about 6 CD releases sold, I realized everything had truly passed me by. You see, I was lucky in that I signed a bunch of deals just before Offspring became huge in 1994. Afterwards, the money to sign anyone became huge. Instead of trying to sign Offspring in 1991 (probably impossible, anyway, even then), I was courting Voodoo Glow Skulls but as they wanted to retain all of their publishing, we could not reach an agreement. I would have definitely wanted to have helped them with their material. Hugely entertaining group, but where are the hits, 10 years later? I should add that I met Bryan Holland in '91 and we talked for a quite a bit outside Spanky's club in Riverside. It was a night that I was also re-united with John Macias of Circle One and we were all set to do the record that we never made in 1981 when he died a few days later.

Sure, shocked but not surprised. After Epitaph gave me a copy of Smash, I told Brett that it would be huge. After it sold a million, I told Brett he should look into anti-counterfeiting stuff as the sales were not going to stop. Green Day did surprise me, and I am chagrined to say that when Brett introduced them to me in Las Vegas prior to a Bad Religion show, I was only impressed by how young they looked, nothing else. The Offspring did surprise me by their second coming with "Pretty Fly". That is a HUGE achievement in the music world to get 2 bites.

I have mixed feelings. I am very anti major label so I like the guerilla war aspect to it. But I am just as opposed to those who have built a business model predicated on theft. We wanted to introduce a peer to peer solution at Posh Boy but that idea fell by the wayside. I wanted to sink some money into a stand alone server that would offer gratis all of the PB catalogue. You see, most of the money generated in the music business is NOT from record sales. 10 years ago, it was calculated that top artists only generated 12.5% of their income from record sales. Now it is far, far less. Merch is huge and we don't participate in that at all, yet our income from films and video games far outweighs royalty income. So it is to our advantage, as in 1981, to make our music as readily available as possible. I mean, I was not making money in 1981 selling records that sold for $3.99 in the stores. The groups would complain of low royalties but do you think I was making net profits on sales of 10,000 units? But by building a punk factory I was able to build a catalogue that keeps me in clover today. The groups who worked with me and had careers are generally extremely friendly with me. The groups that peaked with me at age 18 somehow, irrationally, feel cheated of a career.

Brendan Mullen dubbed me, Posh Boy!

One reason was that I used to rush from my job as a Maitre D' and go to the punk gigs wearing a suit and tie. In 1977, I had a plumy English accent and that might have been a factor. Nearly all of us in the early days had these noms de guerre. Mine stuck. Jane Drano reverted to being plain old Jane Wiedlin.

No, I don't have much time for Brendan.

You got it. I have known Brendan for a very long time and I just feel he's a user. I just hated his liner notes for those Masque live CDs, where he recounts other people's sex lives, people who may be married now.

He came to me 4 years ago to get my input for the book you mentioned and all he had was a scrapbook, no text. I threw him out after a while, accusing him of trying to get others to write his book for him! His mind is totally fried.

The next day, the following exchange:

Robbie,
I was offering you a small section in the book to actually talk about the label and the artists you recorded... you know ... something about the actual music ... (the real "legacy" ... stuff people really might want to know about) as opposed to everything being all about you, babe .... Instead you publicly blow me off on the Internet and by so doing you settle for one paragraph in passing ... so be it ... as you will ... your choice ... just don't bitch about being left out, or being unrecognized in November when this thing comes out ... consider this documentation that you blew it off ... meanwhile, what did I do with that old chamber pot you once gave me ??
B.
If you change your mind ... there's about a week left ... going ... going... GONE?

Brendan,
Thank you for your offer of 200 words. I'm not sure of the difference between a small section containing that many words and a "paragraph in passing".
To give you factual answers :

1. The label came into being in mid 1978 due to Dangerhouse's failure as promised to record and release a F-Word! single, the (first) band I came to manage.
2. The second group I managed, The Simpletones, was the first I came to produce in late 1978 after having had Mike Corby of The Babys mis-produce demos for me.
3. In 1979, once I had Rik L Rik (ex F-Word!, then Negative Trend), plus The Simpletones and Huntington Beach's The Crowd all having recorded for me, I conceptualized "Beach Blvd." as a aural document to tie in quite different sounding suburban punk groups. In a time of New York black leather and London safety pins, the "beach" remained a cultural icon that the suburban kids would still relate to. Now they had their own music, courtesy of the nascent Posh Boy label.
4. In early 1980 I failed miserably to repeat the success of Beach Blvd. with another 3 group compilation, The Siren. However, that album spawned Red Cross (later Redd Kross). My doing the Rodney On The Roq series allowed me the luxury of cherry picking the best songs from a slew of new generation California punk groups. By this time I was collaborating with a top class recording engineer, David Hines and our efforts established a benchmark for both A&R and recording quality; we provided Rodney with the hits and he played them!
5. The last Rodney album (# 3) was released in late '82 and by '83 the vein had played out.
6. Other than a $250 loan from a family friend, I bankrolled the label myself from my working odd jobs. My well to do father was vehemently opposed to my activities and offered neither emotional nor financial support. The people who ultimately made the label possible were the pressing plant(s), label and sleeve printers, studio owners, all of whom extended credit to me and knowingly provided deficit financing for the label.

There are dozens of anecdotes recounted on my site; they can be found by sifting through the discography section.
Fuck you,
Robbie

Mike, this exchange happened 2 years after the incident where Brendan showed up with the scrapbook. As I had thrown a wake for Rik L Rik in L.A. (even though I was Thailand at the time) and Brendan had attended, he thought that it was safe to approach me again! So you'll have to tell me whether I figure in Brendan's book or not.

But I would say that Brendan is definitely a fair weather friend, only showing up when you can line his own pockets at your expense.

You see, most of these books do not bother to have any one vet them for accuracy, but this was the other extreme where Brendan had very little grasp on what was going on beyond the extent of his dick and nose. I practically punched him out on account of his earlier "work".

He was acting so friendly towards me and I questioned him why he had aced me and my brother in law from the history of the Masque.

You see, I got my lawyer brother-in-law to do essential legal work for him pro bono that kept him afloat. A lot of the people from the Masque era had problems with my rise in the music business, from being a publicist in 1977 to happening producer in 1981. But then some of them like Brendan got marginalized or stuck in a time warp. It's one for thing for Brendan to ask me to vet his manuscript for accuracy, it's quite another thing for him to tacitly admit he cannot remember an effing thing. I mean we were close, very close, collaborators during this time.

Nothing that I am aware of. I can understand his position but Brendan was a prick/flake at the time. History smiled upon him in that he was at the right place at the right time as many of us were but I would hazard to say that most of us actually accomplished/created something afterwards.

Mike, they all have their particular axe to grind. As an educated person, I am horrified at all of the distortions. It's not history.

I do, when people interview me, but I had a serious problem writing about it in my memoirs. I suppose I don't want to make hay. All of these other characters are trying to land film deals. I think the way to go is Tom Hanks' way, from an innocent's perspective rather than the Oliver Stone's Doors treatment.But time did catch up with Brendan ... he always looked much younger than his age and now ... he looks like an old man. Brendan was supposed to release the Masque tapes in the '70's but it took him 20 years. Just like his clubs, everything was done half baked. You can stumble along with a live club for a while but eventually you'll get closed down as he was, but with recording projects, there are plenty of people who turn on the tape machine but it's quite different actually managing to release something. Anyway, most contemporary critics were hostile to my releases and it has been the test of time that has proven that they have some worth. I am the beneficiary of fans like you who decided on their own what was best and worth keeping.

I doubt that, Mike!

Besides putting out material that only appealed to me, I made a lot of deals just to keep things going and after a certain while, back in the mid 80's, I was as clueless as anyone else. I wanted to move on from Posh Boy but found I could not.

Exactly but only the first TF was mine! My later weakness was always working with people later in their careers after the first inspiration, the Jack Grishams, Jeff Oleners (The Nuns), who could never get back to what made their first recordings so great..

That's all later stuff, the group had broken up long before they ever recorded with me. The Nuns were awesome, just like The Avengers, in their late '70's heyday. The problem for them, like The Screamers, was that there was no Posh Boy to make sure they got recorded well AND released.

No, Decadent Jew was first ... I didn't do it, and that makes my point.

Well, both groups wanted a big record deal and ended up doing demos that just gathered dust and during the frustration of not going anywhere but to the bathroom to do drugs, the groups broke up in the studio. I think hindsight shows my business model was better, from an artistic point of view, if not from a $$$ one. You have to remember that I was totally in awe of Dangerhouse and never thought I could emulate what they were doing. But they were more preoccupied with drugs, so much so they lost the road map.

Which guy from CD Presents?

Oh, yes, not many friends.

At least public opinion is split 50/50 in my case.

You see, this is where my memory is shot as I used to know the whole story, the legal background. David used to get acts appearing at his shows to sign incredible contracts giving him PUBLISHING!

I saw some of his agreements and my jaw dropped. The musicians had no idea what they were signing and didn't care. Usually the agreements were in conflict with previously signed agreements. What was the TSOL song that he released on one of his CDs?

I saw his agreements and they gave him publishing but he never followed through. It didn't help that it was the group's manager signing! I now have the publishing on "Weathered Statues", "Sounds of Laughter" is with Lisa (Frontier). But the Avengers thing is amazing, he managed to get a lot of valuable rights that have turned mainly to dust. That is why his agreements are so questionable because the grant of rights is/was so broad. You see, all those groups that have had a problem with me have all seen lawyers over the years, even my "friends" like CH 3. But my contracts were always limited in scope, nobody was held under contract for a protracted period. In fact, the worst fights were when I tried to assert my rights after a group like Shattered Faith jumped ship.

Yes. But no publishing on groups like The Crowd and UXA, and it has hurt them.

What about the GTA release?

No, GTA, does not want to cooperate with me at all. I have offered my tracks to any one doing a release. You should search my guest book for the entry from Spencer Bartsch. If you want to hear good rap from me, talk with Joe from The Vandals, Jay Lansford from Simpletones, Ena Kostabi (Youth Gone Mad), Steve Soto and Rikk Agnew.

Pre 1981?

Rik's gone. Besides occasional e-mails, not many. Ginger Canzoneri and I have gotten together in recent years. It was I who introduced her to the Go Gos and it was she who managed them so brilliantly as they scaled the peaks of the pop business. Jay Lansford is in touch with me almost on a daily basis. Of the original Go Gos, Jane is always very sweet towards me. As I have not lived in the L A area for many years, I don't see old timers, except at the very occasional reunion gig, the last one being the "Forming" exhibition in 1999.

It was! They thought of including me at the last moment and then used my artifacts to beef up other people's sections.

Gee, Mike, cheer me up some more.

Most things were priced NOT to sell. Did you go to the concert?

I was thanked twice from the stage to sustained applause.

When I saw how my artifacts were arranged, I almost pulled everything out. They finally pacified me by changing one or two descriptions on the wall, one of which claimed that Lisa Fancher discovered the O.C. scene. In the late 90's, Fancher made this ridiculous attempt to follow up her stealing artists from my label by then getting me written out of the punk histories. Just pathetic. About a year later, I would have been eclipsed anyway by Enigma who started raiding. That's what happened to Shattered Faith, they were offered a p&d deal, potentially far more lucrative and only a distributor can offer that. Jem were far more ethical, they never went behind a label's back to offer a group a deal. The first album, which had that live side, was done as a pressing and distribution deal through Greenworld, who owned Enigma that became Restless; for most of these deals they used the name Thunderbolt but the Shattered Faith one used a different name. But it was 100% Enigma. Is the second album the GTA one?

So that's the real story why SF jumped ship after having started to record and my having advertised their forthcoming album on Posh Boy.

I don't know that release.

I have not heard of the Erika pressing plant for 15+ years!

I wonder if your pressing of the Raincross Live album is a later pressing.

I know that it was done through Enigma, but it did not sell at the time. The stories of my not paying royalties started with the Crowd in late 1980, which was a little odd as I had just put out their album. All the time they were saying nice things to my face, they were saying vicious stuff about me behind my back, but then there were 5 of them and each had their own trip.

The Crowd? No, not at all. I think we re-printed 1000 or so jackets some time after the first 5000 and that was that. They were totally eclipsed by the Adolescents and then TSOL. Probably never appealed outside of H.B..

Two original members, Jim Decker and Jim Kaa. Group Sex took off like a rocket, of course, especially with "Wild in the Streets" getting airplay. Of course, it was not on Group Sex but it made them. Then TSOL carried on with the allegations of non payment of royalties within a month of their record being released and used that as their rationale for having secretly recorded for Frontier while they were supposed to record a second EP for me. Hence, our nasty spat that went on for 6 years, until finally settled at a party thrown by ... Lisa Fancher.

I think Jack had sobered up for a few minutes, and instead of punching me out as he had done before, embraced me in a bear hug and we were very good friends again as we had been in early '81. You see, they knew they were wrong so it was easy to settle and fortunately, we all had currency to trade. They needed money and my distributor at the time was very understanding. They had the second EP to satisfy my demands. Their manager at the time was a total rich kid idiot named Mike Zoto, and he had enough knowledge of the music business to know that 7" were dying at the time, so he basically gave me the rights to the Weathered Statues EP which had reverted to the group from Alternative Tentacles. It had never crossed his mind that I would compile all the tracks into a new release. TSOL were not angry about it, only Zoto. Eff him.

Oh, sure, they received a $5,000.00 advance plus another $5,000 in back royalties.

No, I sold all my TSOL masters to Nitro but I kept the publishing. I licensed the TSOL masters to Rhino in 1992 but the release did very poorly.

It is only doing slightly better now through Nitro. The new TSOL album has not set the punk world on fire, unfortunately.

She sold one then licensed the rest and, as you say, has now reclaimed those others. I was also trying to "pimp" my stuff to Epitaph in the early 90's.

For a long time, Brett had the master tapes for Agent Orange and TSOL on his desk, even giving me some money for some re-mastering costs. Eventually, the dispute with Epitaph over "Come Out and Play" derailed everything else, even though I kept saying to Brett, let's stay friends and compartmentalize this.

I would see Brett in France and we would be chums still, then nothing would ever get resolved. Then Bryan did a huge thing by covering "Bloodstains" for a movie soundtrack and that ended the beef as far as I was concerned. Mike Palm remains very bitter. The dispute was over Bryan being heavily influenced by "Bloodstains" in his composition "Come Out and Play". All Brett had to do was pay us a penny per record which he would have done at a drop of a hat if it had been a third party involved, but he took the claim from us as an personal affront (as well as a challenge to a very valuable copyright). Bryan did compartmentalize the issue as he later bought the TSOL masters from me. But I am still hoping for Bryan to celebrate his birthday with me. We share Dec 29 as our birthday. Ultimately, what went against us in the dispute was that musicologists were so effing ignorant. Our report which cost us around two grand stated that Agent Orange had been influenced by Nirvana.

You can only go to court in a copyright dispute if you have the expert witness on your side and they had not only theirs but also ours!

I remain exceptionally friendly with Cherry Red in England that originally conceived of the project. I think because of that comp, people like Beki Bondage actually have a career now playing punk reunion shows. Without those comps, those bands would have been forgotten.

I left L.A. in 1987 for Palm Desert and have been drifting further and further afield since.

I inherited some money a few years back and one of the few investments that I made that did not go down the drain was a prime piece of South African land, overlooking the Indian Ocean. When I became homeless last year and at the same time the local currency went through the floor, I decided to build a house here. Construction costs were about 10% of comparable California prices. At the same time, it is a wonderful place to raise my 3 year old son as a single father. It took me over 45 years to get here but once you come, it's an enchanting country.

"Everything Turns Grey" has ALWAYS been my favorite production. The TSOL EP was always the release I was most proud of, in terms of artistic cohesion, fantastic Ed Colver photography, sublime lay out by Kevin Walker, effortless performances by the group, and great mastering. It was a "statement" record and I knew it at the a time, even told the group that I wanted their record to be a scream rather than a long winded LP and I preferred doing 2 EP's a few weeks apart, as though hammering the public. Unfortunately, they did not have the patience and immediately jumped ship for Frontier. The least favorite was The Siren but it gave the world the first glimpse of Red Cross.

Upon release, the first 2 ROTR were huge, in a small geographical area, but over the years, Agent Orange is 10X ahead. TSOL was ahead up until mid 80's, then fell way behind. Even after the initial 1979/1980 success of "Bloodstains", A.O. could not sell. They did their own single, 1000 copies and were sitting on them.

I helped both Dangerhouse and What? and regarded them as my friends. I thought helping Frontier after her disaster with the Fly Boys would be a nice thing to do. But it backfired horribly. You see, I backed the Circle Jerks when they only had 2 fans. I took them into the studio in early 1980, but keith was always too drunk to sing. Then when I came back from England in August 1980, Greg told me he had made a spec deal with a studio and they had recorded an entire album's worth of material, all 17 minutes of what would be the Group Sex album. And would I mind paying the studio bill? I told Greg that I wanted to produce the Jerks in a particular way, as with "Wild In The Streets", but if they did not want to it my way I would help them out by finding someone else to pay their studio bill. And so incredibly, I actually put Greg and Lisa Fancher together and she got Group Sex and I put my money into The Crowd's A World Apart album. The Jerks for their part refused to finish the other tracks they had already recorded for me, except for Wild In The Streets which went on ROTR. It was only on the second album that they re-recorded "Wild In The Streets". Worse was to come, when I went to England for Christmas 1980, behind my back Lisa offered this $10,000 deal to the Adolescents (it really wasn't, she was counting all the costs!) and I felt stole them from under my nose. She then followed by poaching TSOL from me. Incredible, and I had put her into the punk business. I was the simp who produced the group's hit and really made very little off of it until the anthology craze of the mid 90's.

I have repeatedly tried to settle all our outstanding disputes but she is a very mean spirited person. We have had running battles for 20 years over some of the TSOL song copyrights. I can tell you there must be bad blood between Epitaph and her as Epitaph actually recognized my claim on TSOL's "Peace Through Power" rather than hers. My personality is such that I loved collaborating with people, love community. Unfortunately, this is not a good way to run a business in L.A. where most people are out for themselves. These days, the label that I hang with most is Kung Fu.

SST and Posh Boy were very close until they became top dog. Whereas, Kung Fu have remained the same regardless of their success or failure. It was just that SST no longer wanted to collaborate with me nor did I want to deal with their strong arm tactics, so we severed all ties. There was no legal action, no correspondence, just a couple of heated conversations with Greg and Chuck. I felt very betrayed by them as I had helped them when they were literally in the gutter.

"Louie, Louie" was their short lived way of thanking me. No, the key help that I gave them was printing the first 10,000 jackets for the Damaged album that never came out, due to the injunction from Unicorn. Printing and paying for them! Sure, we all helped each other but that was real money out of my pocket. They were going to let me have 500 records for me to sell to recoup the money but then they could not deliver the records. I understood their predicament and took my lumps. They thought I had done a deal in Europe behind their back (when I had not!), but they refused to believe me and that hurt a lot, too, as I thought we had a great relationship going, that we were allies. But as soon they got to the top of the heap, they showed they were as much Hollywood as the next label. So my re-sequencing the compilation was my way of saying, I don't need YOUR material to have a great comp. They were very hypocritical, they did not mind Posh Boy promoting their stuff when it suited them but god forbid I make money off their efforts. Greg and Chuck, can't we all get along? I loved those guys so much, they were such outsiders. And they got themselves in so many costly, almost ruinous fights.

Right now, just licensing, but if I get inspired, anything is possible. I feel I am caught in this syndrome now of waiting for the dust to settle in the collapse of the music industry and actually, it may continue in an extreme state of flux for eons to come.