Curtis From Taang! Records Responds to the Sam Black Church Interview in Issue #39 (Oct. ’97)

transcribed by Scott Hefflon

I understand there are “factual inaccuracies” in the Sam Black Church interview you’d like to address. The interview made it sound like the reason they took you to court was to get off your label, but you say this is not exactly true.
Well, they sued us for allegedly breaching the contract. If we were found to be in breach, they would retain the rights to the back catalog. They also were asking for $40,000 in damages, which they thought they were owed for their pain and suffering. The outcome was that there was no breach of contract. We retained the rights to the back catalog and we were not required to pay $40,000. They were also trying to have us pay their legal fees, which was also denied by the court. They even tried to get former Taang! employees to testify against us but no one felt the SBC story was legitimate . So, they are definitely off the label, but after this, we had no interest in doing their next record anyway. If they consider that a victory, that’s great. I consider it a victory too, because I don’t ever want to work with this band again.

I think the reason Sam Black took us to court was the fact that the person at Geffen who wanted to sign them was let go from their position & the deals went with them; one of which was Sam Black Church. Sam Black no longer had any interest from Geffen added to the fact that TAANG! had no interest in working with a bunch of ungrateful individuals. They wanted to save face in Boston by trying to find a breach in their contract. Now they’re making it seem like they wanted to put out their own records all along.

What exactly was your deal with Sam Black Church?
Our deal was a simple one: two full length albums and first right of refusal. Which means, if during that two album deal, the band wants to go to another label, Taang! would be awarded points on the new release. The same would be true if we refused the third record. Taang! invested in the neighborhood of $50,000 and the band had not even sold 15,000 records. We have their back catalog, which is nothing, but maybe over the next 10 years we’ll be able to make back the money we invested.

What exactly happened with the Geffen deal?
They never told us about the offer from Geffen. We had heard rumors, but when we asked their attorney if the band had received any offers from other labels, he flat out denied it. It wasn’t until we got into court that we actually learned about the deal. Their lawyer had made some pathetic offers to us to terminate the contract, that was all we heard from them. The band never contacted us directly like they claim. To quote Richard in the Oct. article, “Geffen just couldn’t wait any longer….” Do you think for a minute that if Geffen wanted to sign a band they would not contact the label to buy out the existing contract? Do you think they would leave the negotiating up to the band? I don’t think so. If there was a serious offer, we should have heard from Geffen. From what we saw in court, they had a good offer. Unfortunately, the offer was never made to us; apparently they never let Geffen know about their contract with Taang! If I had known about this, I would have gladly let them out of the contract. SBC completely screwed up a deal where everyone could have made out. Instead they wanted to find a loophole in our agreement to cut us out completely. They were really stupid in doing this. Now we’re stuck with this back catalog taking up space in our warehouse, a huge debt on the project and SBC is putting out their own records. Nice move, guys!

In the beginning, you seemed to get along just fine.
When we signed the band, they had a 7″ and a cassette which we made into their first EP. There had always been a problem with the band’s lack of material: “Infernal Machine” has been recorded like three times and there are always covers. They recorded one real full-length, Let in Life. A year after that release, it was time to put out another album, but they didn’t have enough material. Superchrist has only 4 original songs and a cover. The band claims they had plenty of material, but we would only give them the money to record a few songs. This is completely ridiculous; I mean, we had five other projects out at that time and no other band complained that there weren’t enough funds to go into the studio. If they had so much material, why are their only eight songs on their new release and they’ve been working on it for two years? Anyway, when they went into the studio, probably after the Geffen offer, they pulled this really interesting move. They put extra songs, hidden live tracks, on the record, without my knowing. This brought the record to a couple of seconds over the 30 minute requirement for a full-length record. However, they only listed the 4 original songs and the Queen cover on the CD artwork. My graphic artist called and informed me that there were extra songs. So I said (to SBC), “Guys, this is an EP, you’re trying to pass off a full-length record with four songs, a cover, and hidden live tracks? You want us to charge $13.98?” And they said, “We didn’t know it was over 30 minutes.” So I sent them a gentlemen’s agreement stating that the release would be treated as an EP, not an album. It must have taken them two weeks to sign this one sentence agreement. From then on, they must have felt that this was something they could break. Technically, there were loopholes even though we marketed and sold the record as an EP all along.

What bad memories do you have about Sam Black Church?
Well, the band walked off stage at a show in Chicago because there weren’t enough people in the audience. But they made up for it by playing the best show of their career in court April 25 in Boston. I thought I’d signed a street hardcore band, and now they’re walking off stage like a bunch of rock stars. We lost a lot of money marketing this band, hiring these ridiculous heavy metal radio people they wanted, stupid shit I never do. I don’t usually hire someone that does specifically heavy metal radio. That’s not what I’m about. I signed these guys as a hardcore band… They want to be Rock stars.