WAY OF THE WEST, on ITUNES!!
In case it hasn’t been spotted on the music page, Way Of The West are finally on itunes!!
Here’s the link: One Time, One Life
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WAY OF THE WEST - and nothing but the truth... 
March 26, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I was listening to an old tape last night of a WHFS broadcast (Tom T’s show) and he played “See You Shake”, I always loved that song. That led me here. Thanks!
April 3, 2009 at 9:34 pm
i am so happy, i have been looking for years. i have an OLD cassette ready to fall apart. thank you so much. im back in high school.
June 14, 2009 at 10:37 am
I´m a fan since the first single and I have to say thankyou, whoever made real that we can buy your songs in ITUNES.
When in CD?
June 15, 2009 at 11:56 pm
The CD thing isn’t straightforward sadly. As I’ve said before, the record company won’t return the rights to wotw so we can either,
a) Make a CD and risk getting into trouble or
b) Make a CD and give most of the money away to the record company or
c) Hmmmmmm……?
September 17, 2014 at 6:28 pm
sue the record company. How about releasing any live shows or MORE unreleased material. Is there any more unreleased songs?
September 14, 2016 at 10:03 pm
No more unreleased ‘finished’ songs, no. In my diggings around if I ever come across anything not too rough I’ll put it up here.
Pete
June 16, 2016 at 2:42 am
Pete: I’m late to the blog party here, but I would definitely look into calling a good entertainment/int. property lawyer and look into getting your masters or rights to back from the old record co. I’m assuming this would be MCA/Universal? I have no idea, but I think it would be worth it to look into since they probably have no right at this point to claim ownership to the masters, also, if you now have your publishing reverting to you, that is a major plus in your favor.
I guess it depends also on what the original contract(s) specified in terms of master tape ownership and for how long a period.
The thing is, if iTunes already released some of your music, and nobody objected, I wonder if anybody would really notice if you released a box set or anthology or CDs, vinyl reissues, etc.,
but I would say it’s still worth calling a few attorneys.
I was a huge fan of the old 80s indie jangle-roots folk rock
band Winter Hours from New Jersey, (Lyndhurst), sadly their old lead singer Joseph Marques passed away quite young in 2004 or so, but, later Michael Carlucci the guitarist and one of the songwriters of the band, told me after he’d released his own CD compilation (and soon after, an official CD remaster of their Chrysalis final album) on his own small label, that he at least, owned all the publishing and retained ownership of ALL of his old masters and retained the actual tapes of all of it. Also helpful was that most of it was on a now-defunct small label LINK which is long bust. The Chrysalis material was with a major, yes, but even THAT
I believe, later reverted to the band’s ownership, so Michael
has control of all of that stuff, which is very good for the band
nowadays as far as retaining control of what use it’s put to.
Sadly, Joe didn’t live long enough to see the resurgence of interest in the band that was just beginning just before he passed.
I guess the moral here is, don’t leave it to chance, get
a lawyer on the record co.’s case and make them
either revert ownership to you and/or the band,
or allow reissues and e-distribution and CD/vinyl releases,
etc. on your own terms. Then again, it might be nice
to get a major to do some proper remasters and
(finally!) put out all the Way of the West material
in style. Wouldn’t that be weird? Stranger things
have happened. But there are countless small
imprints around now that would be happy to reissue
your music. Cherry Red UK is one that comes
readily to mind. I just bought their wonderful
box set of The Long Ryders (complete works)
that just came out recently, and they did a stupendous job.
Have you released any of the material on the unreleased
album at all? Was any of that material heard? Were any
of the earlier singles or cuts on the album, or intended
to be, or was it all new fresh material at the time?
Yours,
Scott Briggs
LI NY
September 14, 2016 at 10:33 pm
Hello Scott
Thanks for all that info and interest.
There are many and wondrous reasons why our particular situation is complicated, not least because, although everything (like the whole world) is now owned by Universal, our first few songs were on Mercury/Phonogram. When I last checked, a few years back now, they couldn’t locate our first single or B-side in their tape vaults. After a bit of encouragement to try harder they admitted it had probably been over-written as 24track tape was expensive and who’d be interested in that old 80s stuff anyway?
I have original acetates of all the singles, some mint singles and some 1/4 inch safety copies but that’s it.
We put out the iTunes stuff without showing up on Universal’s radar as, at the time no-one could imagine such distribution and it’s a grey area whether it’s included in early record contracts anyway, but still.
We don’t have the money to be hiring lawyers I’m afraid but we’re going to try to clarify the situation over the next couple of months and I’ll let everyone know how that goes. But don’t hold your breath. Record companies these days are looking for every way to increase their earnings and if there’s a sudden surge in 80s music the companies will suddenly get very interested too.
Yes, we remember Spit in Levittown very well. I think there was a Firefighter’s event on at the same time we played so God knows what they made of some skinny Brits playing weird music.
They said they liked it though so appearances can be deceptive, both ways….
Pete
June 16, 2016 at 2:56 am
I seem to remember hearing that you guys had played
SPIT in Levittown, L.I. NY, (again, on WLIR FM) my hometown. Good grief. Can’t wait to hear that stuff! Also, The Ritz was a great,
great venue. I only got to go a few times to the old Ritz,
and then a good deal to the later, midtown Manhattan
New Ritz into the early 1990s. In case anybody cares,
SPIT was an legendary (infamous) new wave dance club
that was only open one or two nights weekends at the
old Uncle Sam’s L.I. Levittown disco that was otherwise,
quite cheesy. Other nights later they had classic rock
and metal nights, as well. Then it either shut down or
burned down in the early 1990s, I believe.
July 8, 2016 at 4:55 pm
To all the people who’ve been commenting on here for the last couple of years and wondering where their messages had gone or why no-one was replying. I’m afraid the answer is that I managed to lock myself out of my own site, partly a broken password and partly a change to the way the site worked. Whatever, it meant that I couldn’t approve any of your kind and interesting views or get into any dialogue at all.
Here’s hoping I’ve managed to fix the problem permanently and everything now works as it should. Anyway, I’m blaming the Ghost In The Machine till I hear otherwise. Meanwhile I’ll work through and try to answer any questions that need answering.
I’ll put this reply on all the pages so we know where we are.
Many apologies to our loyal WOTW fans out there
Pete