On March 28th 2007, after a bizarre month-long exchange of email, LP jacket information and two CDs – one from Japan and one a bootleg – Suzan from Universal Music assured me that, once the “metadata entry process” was completed and the “Digital Scheduling process” had “moved ahead”, she would give me a “targeted release date” for the first and last Trooper albums released on MCA/Universal. Counting the two months that have passed since then, it’s been three since I asked Trooper’s first record company to complete the seven-album MCA portion of Trooper’s iTunes catalogue. I emailed Suzan about this, again, today. I received an “out of the office” automated reply.

Back in February, Universal Canada quickly determined that the two albums in question were “not in the system”. They wrote and asked me if I had “finished CDs” of the albums that I could send to them. And the front and back cover artwork. And, uh … could you copy some information off your vinyl versions of the records and send us that too.

Fortunately, The last MCA album (the one that had no name – or any other information – on the cover) was re-released, in Japan only, on CD, and I had ordered one in the nineties. I sent it to Universal. The first “LP” – the orange one featuring the hideous seventies plexiglas construction – was never ‘officially’ released on CD. So I sent them a bootleg made by a fan.

Universal wasn’t hoarding these albums in a vault somewhere, refusing (or simply neglecting) to make them available. No one at the company knew they existed. It is brutally ironic, and fundamentally sad, that it is against the law to copy and share this collection of songs that cannot currently be purchased anywhere, from anyone.

Trooper recorded their first seven albums while under contract to MCA Records. In December of 2006, Universal Music (formerly MCA) released five of those albums to the iTunes Music Store where they can now be purchased and downloaded.

Two albums remain conspicuously absent from the digital music store. Trooper’s first album was not part of the iTunes offering, nor was the seventh, and last, album released by MCA/Universal.

In the non-digital world, products with marginal sales are discontinued. Manufacturing, shipping and storage expenses eclipse potential income. For this reason, the first and last MCA Trooper albums (ironically, both titled “Trooper”) have not been available in stores for years. But digital replicas of those albums are not encumbered by the brick-and-mortar paradigm. They require no warehouse space, no shipping – and can be cloned, like magic, from the master recordings. The tracks from the missing albums could have been prepared and uploaded with minimal additional effort. I am cursed with a mind that cannot help but ask why they weren’t.

I’ve emailed the record company asking them to upload the additional albums, but I am obliged to accept whatever action, or inaction they choose to take. Notwithstanding the fact that I wrote and sang the songs, spent months in the studio recording the albums and months on the road promoting them – Universal owns all seven records and can do whatever they want with them. This can include, sadly, making them disappear off the face of the earth forever.

Very few people understand the relationship between a band (or singer, or musician – the contract refers to us all as “The Artist”) and their record company. Many still believe that the artist owns and controls the recordings they make. In most cases, nothing could be further from the truth.

Most record company contracts ‘loan’ the artist money to record an album. In exchange for this recoupable loan (and promises of promotion and distribution), the record company takes ownership of the resulting recordings. The artist is promised a royalty – a small percentage of the retail price of the finished ‘product’. BUT … before the artist receives any “artist royalties”, they must first PAY BACK the record company the total cost of the recording (and, usually, the video) – not from the total profit on the sales but from their artist royalty. If you have not paid off your first album debt by the time your second album is released, the difference is simply brought forward and you continue to pay back the accumulated amount.

Although it feels like dropping single grains of sand into an ever-enlarging beach bucket, Trooper eventually, with the help of a greatest hits album that required minimal recording costs, paid back all of their recoupable loans. Nonetheless, we still do not own those recordings.

Many people would ask why someone would sign on to a contract like that.

Because, for years and years, it was the only game in town.

In 1994, “The Artist (get it now?) Formerly Known as Prince” inked the word “SLAVE” onto his face. He told the press that he had become “merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Brothers” (his record company).

In 2000, Courtney Love delivered a scathing, landmark rant to the Digital Hollywood Online Entertainment Conference in New York. She began by saying:

“Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software. I’m talking about major label recording contracts.”

She went on to say that:

“The system’s set up so that almost nobody gets paid.”

Most major recording artists rely on their major record labels for their major money, but, because Ms. Love had developed an income from films, she could afford to bite down hard on the hand that ostensibly fed her. Everyone with even a remote interest in the future of recorded music should take the time to read the transcript of her speech.

Prince and Courtney Love kicked open doors that have since been pinned wide open by a growing storm of discontent. The digital world now looms large and threatening over once arrogant and implacable RIAA executives. Not unlike Courtney Love, I have very little to lose by talking candidly about my former record companies. The royalties I receive have gone from pitiful to laughable and I haven’t had a new record hanging in the balance for many years. I have a list of grievances – real and possibly imagined – that could, no doubt, parallel hers. Like many of my peers, I believe that the reign of record company control over recorded music, and the artists who make that music, should and will end soon. I can say this with confidence and a reasonable certainty. But talk is cheap.

One way or another, Connor will be recording his first album this year. He’s been thinking a lot about how he’ll get it out to the world. Questions about the feasibility, morality, and, for that matter, longevity of record companies have become, suddenly, non-hypothetical.

As the old paradigm dies … what will rise to replace it?

The longer I leave it, the more I have to write about, and the harder it is to begin again. I’ll start by trying to pick up where I left off.

‘Lee’ from Universal Music Canada came through with digital downloads. Half of our recorded output is now legally available online. There are still two unreleased albums that Universal owns but seems to be unable or unwilling to offer to the public. Once I muster the appropriate energy, I may bring this up.

‘Lee’ worked hard for us. He was friendly, positive and professional. He was a pleasure to work with and I told him so in an email at Christmas time. I wrote to him again this week, asking about download-related royalties and how they compare to our non-digital penny-rate. I also asked if he could look into our royalties for 2003 – which we have not received. Occasionally, I morph into a jaw-locked, mouth-foaming dog, tenaciously dragging behind a leg I’ve bitten into. It’s embarrassing sometimes.

Both my mothers have been to the hospital and have returned to us healthy. My Mother has moved from her house in Langley to a much smaller place here in White Rock. Her house sold last night. Our families have all weathered a series of emotional, worrisome, physically and mentally taxing, stressful, but ultimately positive sea changes lately. Those seas appear to be calming as the days begin to lengthen and grow warmer.

Today, Connor and I bought an Apex 460 tube condenser microphone and a ‘Groovetube’ vacuum tube so we could perform the mod that, according to a panel of audio engineers at a prominent Vancouver studio, will make the 460 the rough equivalent of a Neumann U87 – a revered, and much more expensive, mic. Connor’s downstairs now, using it. I can hear him singing.

I am trying to remain free of cynicism as I watch an annoyingly familiar scenario unfold. Is this new hold-up a final and easily overcome hurdle, or is it the most recent laceration in a death by a thousand cuts?

After reporting that they were “fully up to speed now” and “alert to get this done”, “Lee” from Universal Music Canada emailed me, on November 3rd, regarding a problem with the Trooper digital downloads. He says that they will be good to go on November 21st with “all the albums except Hot Shots”. Our greatest hits collection – all the songs most people would want to download – cannot, for the moment, be included because of “a US system issue with incorrect info”.

A US system issue with incorrect info.

He says they’re trying to “get it fixed” for December 5th and that he’ll keep me posted.

“Lee” from Universal responded within a day of my last correspondence with the company, describing a four week Trooper-on-iTunes timeline. This “should put us at Nov 21 for a release date”, he wrote. He went on to say that “everyone is on the alert to get this done”. This seems like a clear assertion that Trooper downloads will be available in about a month.

Back in the eighties, Chuck from Universal sent me “finished” recording contracts with release dates on the front page. Much of what those contracts contained was different from the terms we had agreed upon, so I reluctantly returned them, requesting the necessary changes. The compilation project passed through at least three promised release dates before disappearing forever from Universal’s agenda.

I manage to maintain a reasonably hopeful and positive approach to the world. I’m not fond, or proud, of the cynical doubt that Lee’s promise has engendered in me. Regardless, a month must pass before I can know for sure what will happen next.

PS

An ironic and unintentionally funny email followed a few days later. It was from a Universal employee responsible for the iTunes upload. Although he was writing from the Universal building, from which seven Trooper albums have emanated, he was asking if I had hi-res copies of the CD cover art work – presumably because he didn’t know where else to find them.

During my protracted ‘Trooper compilation album’ negotiations with a Universal Music representative (let’s call him Chuck) ten years ago, I would often wait for months for a response to my faxes. Occasionally, Chuck would offer an excuse for the gap; a holiday, for instance. More often than not, though, he would pick up communication as though only a day or two had passed. This glib pretense was usually belied by the fact that he seemed to have completely lost the plot in the intervening months.

In those instances where his memory appeared to have failed him, I would attempt to bring him back up to speed on what had already transpired. Then I would wait, for weeks or months, for his response. It was like trying to walk up an icy hill. Sometimes I would take two steps upward and slide back one. Sometimes, momentum would propel me down the slippery hill and back across level ground, leaving me helplessly looking up at the place I thought I was.

This went on for an unbelievable twenty-seven months.

And nothing was accomplished. No contract was finalized and no explanation was given as to why. At the end of Chuck’s final communications gap, I wrote, in exasperation, to the company president, who had originally conceived the project. He replied that Chuck was no longer with the company. Although the compilation was ostensibly passed on to another, communication from Universal simply stopped in 1998.

While negotiating with Chuck, I researched Trooper’s contracts with as many Universal representatives as would talk to me. It soon became clear that nobody at the company wanted to discuss royalties. Royalties also seemed to be a stumbling block with Chuck. My clear and pointed questions about what we would be paid, per unit, for the supposedly imminent compilation were side-tracked, ignored or, during the above described gaps, seemingly forgotten.

I have just experienced my first month-long communications gap with Universal in what is an uncannily similar engagement. Instead of championing the release of a two disk collection of the best Trooper songs, I am now simply trying to solve the mystery of why Trooper recordings can not be legally downloaded.

During the ‘Trooper compilation’ negotiations, packaging, pressing, album art, distribution and other old school “brick and mortar” sales issues offered significant – but by no means insurmountable – contractual challenges. Ten years later, though, in preparation for digital sales, all that seems necessary is the creation of the MP3s.

‘iTunes’ was launched in Canada on December 1st, 2004. ‘Puretracks’ went online exactly a year before that. Since Universal owns the copyright on these recordings they do not have to ask our permission to proceed, they merely need to pay us royalties on the sales. They can charge ninety-nine cents a pop for Trooper recordings that will cost them virtually nothing.

So why haven’t they?