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Sources allege Lumberjack Mordam shutting down

Posted by aubin on Monday, July 6, 2009 at 12:00 PM (EDT)

As yet-unconfirmed sources are reporting that major punk and indie music distributor Lumberjack Mordam has shut down. The website appears to be down as well.

Please note that the distributor has made no statement as of right now, but one distributed label - Jailhouse Records - has issued a press release with some allegations about what is happening. You can find that here.

Requests by Punknews.org to Lumberjack Mordam for comment have not been returned and phone lines are not being answered.

News (74 comments)

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Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Seriously.

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alpod4 (July 6, 2009)

"Requests by Punknews.org to Lumberjack Mordam for comment have not been returned and phone lines are not being answered"

they prolly have caller ID

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red_eye_inc (July 6, 2009)

That sucks. They should have distributed their records by carrier pigeon, the punkest form of distribution.

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Jimmy_the_Saint (July 6, 2009)

Do you think the caller ID reads "Punknews.org" or just "The Org".

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Angiepants (July 6, 2009)

"McBeardington Esq., Plaidy"

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dlangl4 (July 6, 2009)

Very nice.

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red_eye_inc (July 6, 2009)

That sucks. They should have distributed their records by carrier pigeon, the punkest form of distribution.

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InstantDharma (July 6, 2009)

yeah, uh, still not funny.

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jacknife737 (July 6, 2009)

eh, i kind of chuckled.

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TheOneTrueBill (July 6, 2009)

Woah, this is huge. I really hope it's not true.

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Banal242 (July 6, 2009)

What labels use this distributor?

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warped (July 6, 2009)

The only one I really know of is Asian Man.

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Dante3000 (rich) (July 6, 2009)

Lots of smaller labels, Red Scare (I believe) was also included in that.
-Dante

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RedScare (July 6, 2009)

"Small"?!?!?!

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Rudy87 (July 6, 2009)

sorry to point out your "insignificant size" package :(

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Dante3000 (rich) (July 6, 2009)

SmallER. That could be in relation to anything. Like, "Redscare's sales this year were smaller than the amount of debt Lumberjack/Mordam acquired".
-Dante

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MattRamone (July 6, 2009)

At least you do it out of your own place instead of your mom's.

Say that next time Mike Park dunks on you at the Punk Rock/And 1 tournament.

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throw_away (July 6, 2009)

mike park is the punk rock spud webb.

let it be known.

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InstantDharma (July 6, 2009)

Apparently Red Scare guy doesn't think a one person label is small...

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dave2313 (July 6, 2009)

if you count his ego, it's huge!

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TheSandwiches (July 6, 2009)

After knowing how they have fucked many great labels out of multiple thousands of dollars I can't say I'm surprised.

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warped (July 6, 2009)

Asian Man also accused them of never paying them $50,000 in their weekly newsletter. Should be interesting to see what happens... $50,000 is a lot of food.

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Dante3000 (rich) (July 6, 2009)

Reading comprehension cat is not present.
-Dante

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SloaneDaley (July 6, 2009)

nice job, keeping it real hush hush there budday.

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Angiepants (July 6, 2009)

Haha what? Mike posted a myspace bulletin about it.

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SloaneDaley (July 6, 2009)

actually, maybe that portion of it was sent out to myspace but it was also part of longer message saying to keep it off places like this. Could be wrong.

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Angiepants (July 6, 2009)

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId =17084578&blogId=497063600 Looks like you were right. But this news was bound to break eventually.

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abracadaver (July 6, 2009)

"And I ask that you please don't post this on newsgroups like punknews, etc.. I
just wanted to share this with the ones who support asian man."

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Banal242 (July 6, 2009)

Punknews doesn't support Asian Man? That's insulting.

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Angiepants (July 6, 2009)

"Looks like you were right."

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abracadaver (July 6, 2009)

I fail at reading.

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Jimmy_the_Saint (July 6, 2009)

Karma's a bitch. Unless something recently changed, Mike never paid out any money to musicians behind the Bruce Lee Band (Less Than Jake).

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Dante3000 (rich) (July 6, 2009)

I thought everyone kind of knew this was happening. Like I thought there was a story on this already for some reason.
-Dante

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AdamVMS (July 6, 2009)

there was BUT you had to know what you were looking for to spot it

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MiguelHernandez (July 6, 2009)

Wasn't Mordam the distributor of Alternative Tentacles and Lookout?

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Avi (July 6, 2009)

Lookout yes, Alternative Tentacles switched to Revolver a while back though

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SloaneDaley (July 6, 2009)

looks like we're gonna have to go back tothe old method handing out burned cdrs at shows.

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MisFit4Me (July 6, 2009)

You mean cassette tapes, right?

You're so not punk.

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SloaneDaley (July 6, 2009)

each cdr contains a special encoded messages that reveals secret locations and times for you to pick up your poorly dubbed casette tapes.

punk enough?

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ExtraCheesePizza (July 6, 2009)

Only if all the secret locations are dumpsters behind coffee shops, or on the shelf behind the 40's in a deli that will serve minors.

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dlangl4 (July 6, 2009)

The sub sandwich for this one is gonna be big enough to feed us all.

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SloaneDaley (July 6, 2009)

I have a six inch veggie on whole wheat for lunch, if we are all portioning or if someone here happens to be Jesus of Nazareth then it may feed us all.

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ExtraCheesePizza (July 6, 2009)

Good thing it's the middle of Hoagie Fest.

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MattRamone (July 6, 2009)

I get free hoagies. It rules.

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Angiepants (July 6, 2009)

Fie dorra footrong?

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fossilcamel (July 6, 2009)

The servers at LMMG are down so their b2b, email, and phones don't work....

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Brock_Vond (July 6, 2009)

That's what happens when you don't pay the bills ...

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fossilcamel (July 6, 2009)

That actually has nothing to do with it...the servers just crashed and their IT guy joined the peace corps and moved to Africa, shitty timing that's all.

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Vulture_Dude (July 6, 2009)

Asian Man and Red Scare - the two we probably care the most about on this site that would have been effected - are now distributed by IODA according to their label pages on emusic. So don't worry.

however, the old back catalogue for Doghouse Records was done by LM, so we'll see what happens with that.

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I_Rock_Hard (July 6, 2009)

What a crock of shit... Tell these pussies to stop whining. I've had LM distribute my label's releases for 3+ years now and I've made a very nice living off of it. Their service has been superb and this is definitely a personal conflict between them, not a business one. LM is fantastic.

myspace.com/hobochilirecords

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dave2313 (July 6, 2009)

haha,

What label do you run, Doghouse?

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party-animal (July 6, 2009)

I didn't realize this story was "whining", thought they were just stating that they could be shutting down.

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MattRamone (July 6, 2009)

This is shitty. I hope no one goes under as a result.

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party-animal (July 6, 2009)

This story reminded me of MRR. Does anyone still read that? I used to swear by it but it seemed to get a little ridiculous. I just never hear it mentioned on here at all. I also really miss BYOFL that came out every year, the interweb just isn't as fun.

-party

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Hex (July 6, 2009)

My label had been distributed by them and they owe me a sizeable chunk of change. The digital issue is still unresolved. Two of the guys that were doing most of the day-to-day stuff there have formed Independent Label Collective and have been fairly informative regarding the LMMG issues. I think the big problem is at the top (i.e. the owner of LMMG), who seems to really have lost all interest in it and therefore affects labels getting their due... which, in turn, filters down to the LMMG employees who sort of have their hands tied. It's unfortunate, and hopefully I can get all my stuff sorted out with them quite soon.

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Nineden (July 6, 2009)

It sucks that a lot of small labels are gonna get screwed. Speaking of Jailhouse Records, didn't that label take preorders for Moral Crux LPs and never deliver? Prolly shouldn't be throwing stones.

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dave2313 (July 7, 2009)

I'm sorry?

I suggest you take that up with the label instead of trying to be the town crier for some sort of horseshit your trying to start.
If a pre-order is made, and you never recieved it, the best course of action from any sane, normal person would be to contact the label, and have it re-sent. That's what I would do...

I'm not even going to attempt to respond further to your horseshit.

Fucking E mail the label, which I own, and settle any sort of bullshit feud that you are making up in your mind.

If a mistake was made and a refund is in order, than fine, shit happens, although this would be very rare to happen. If something got lost in the mail, fine, if we simply forgot, and it fell through the cracks, than get it rectified.

I believe your post is just plain bullshit, just to try to start shit. But

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Icenine (July 6, 2009)

I run a label that has worked with Lumberjack for more than 10 years. Needless to say, we're still in shock over this mess and we were pretty blindsided by the entire disaster. It has taken us over a month just to get the digital issues resolved and we're out of a ton in unpaid digital/ physical sales. It's a huge, heartbreaking mess for all the labels and tons of artists who were involved with LMMG.

For what it's worth: Lumberjack (up until around 3 months ago) has always been very good to us. They always paid us and they even fronted us money to get the label going in 1998. Once Dawn Marshman left (around 16 months ago) things started to change a bit. By May 2009 they were down to only a few employees and we finally got the call that they were going to "stop distributing physical product". We didn't know they were going to stop sending us checks for prod

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Jimmy_the_Saint (July 6, 2009)

Statement from Jump Start Records dated June 15, 2009:

So yeah, once again it seems as if the Rock Gods have shown their ugly side. For the second time in the past ten years our exclusive distribution partner has decided to go belly up. AWESOME. What does that mean for Jump Start? Well, aside from probably losing a buttload of money because awesome things like bankruptcy courts, it once again means that we're without a solid means of getting our relatively unknown records and ones and zeros out into the free world. That being said, you can definitely say that the Lighten Up record won't see much distribution until we get this situation sorted out, and digitally, we're sort of fucked for the time being. It also means our release 'schedule' for the rest of 2009 is probably going to be even more delayed than we would have already made it. EVEN MORE AWESOME!

show rest of commentStatement from Jump Start Records dated June 15, 2009:

So yeah, once again it seems as if the Rock Gods have shown their ugly side. For the second time in the past ten years our exclusive distribution partner has decided to go belly up. AWESOME. What does that mean for Jump Start? Well, aside from probably losing a buttload of money because awesome things like bankruptcy courts, it once again means that we're without a solid means of getting our relatively unknown records and ones and zeros out into the free world. That being said, you can definitely say that the Lighten Up record won't see much distribution until we get this situation sorted out, and digitally, we're sort of fucked for the time being. It also means our release 'schedule' for the rest of 2009 is probably going to be even more delayed than we would have already made it. EVEN MORE AWESOME!

Ironically enough, this all comes at a time when things here at Jump Start have been shaping up. We're finally starting to settle into our new, and most likely, more permanent home; it only took us four months to get everything sorted out and shit cleaned up. I still need to bring a ton of stock out of storage in my garage, but at least we've got some space to work with now.

Mailorder is back up to date, which I'm stoked about. A big factor in that is the help from former intern and now full fledged staff member Kevin Day, or as he is affectionately called around the office, K-day, K-dizzle, Lil' Kevy Disco, or Lil' Kevy Distro. So, welcome Kevin back into the fold, and also wish him a huge congrats on finally graduating college. Maybe now he'll move out of his parents house.....yeah, I don't see that one happening either.

So, I'll keep this one on the shorter side, but I do have a ton of fun things to report about, most likely within in the next week or so. Thanks for your support and patience! Without it we surely wouldn't have gotten through the past 13 years.

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jumpstartrecords (July 6, 2009)

up until about four months ago, everything with lumberjack, as far as jump start is concerned, was on the level. they had gotten behind with payments on product and digital prior to that, but nothing that i would call unusual for a distributor, or nothing that really made me nervoius. it's just a part of the 'game'; shit happens. it just sucks that dirk really isn't doing anything to remedy the situation or really doing something about releasing labels from their digital deals in mass, because that's where the majority of the problem really lies. it sucks to have that digital catalog out there and still being sold all the while the chances of any of that money coming to the label and the independent bands we work with is pretty low.

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Icenine (July 7, 2009)

I should also add that while the transfer of goods has been a bit more complicated than we were expecting, Dan has been easily accessible and I'm confident that we will have all of our physical and digital releases in new hands shortly.

As far as the unpaid loot goes? That should be a scary movie to watch for lots of folks like myself who are now working part time jobs to supplement lost income.

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Blake_Empty (July 6, 2009)

Yes, I would guess its true and good fucking riddance. I was on the old Mordam and the new Lumberjack version and it started to go down hill from day one that Dirk took it over. They have owed me about $4,000 for about a year. I kept cutting them slack about paying me as I knew they were having trouble. But I couldn't even get Dirk to personally respond to me. In the last month I finally got a lawyer to deal with it. A little too late it seems as they are now hiding out somewhere. It's too bad for all of us that will be fucked financially but I wont miss them.

-Blake
Empty Records

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TreMcCarthy (July 6, 2009)

I guess I'll add to this list.

Lumberjack has owed Deathwish over $30,000 for over 3 years.

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LushJ (July 6, 2009)

LMMG owes Alternative Tentacles a lot of money, and has since before we moved to Revolver in December of 2007.

Without going into too much detail, they have made payments of about 3% or 4% of the total since then. I think that's a generous %, but I don't have the exact #s in front of me.

We've been attempting to work with them on this- like many of our fellow labels- for many many months.

I really hope the new Independent Label Collective is successful! Has there been a news story about them yet? If not, there oughta be! It's really cool & positive, unlike this one.

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LurkingAsshole (July 7, 2009)

It's nice that the Hemsaths are able to enjoy a lavish lifestyle while refusing to meet their financial obligations. They've profited on the hard work of a myriad of labels and ruined years upon years of hard work in their fruitless attempt at becoming a "contender". Too bad you can't buy integrity.

Maybe they could sell some of their cars or boats to pay back what they owe?

Yeah, right.

Karma's a motherfucking bitch, though.

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fossilcamel (July 7, 2009)

Those pictures of cars and boats that you posted belong to Mark Hemsath not Dirk (read the email address at the bottom)

So many people are quick to bitch but only Charles has pointed out that these people have given many labels a great start, and there's so many small indie labels out there that would not have gotten anywhere if it wasn't for the Hemsath's and LMMG.

I agree this whole situation blows but I also think there's a few too many people who don't know what they are talking about posting on this thread. Just my opinion!

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Amazingthemike (July 7, 2009)

They also owe Fractured Transmitter a ton of money too. Last I talked with Jason, the owner, he said he didn't think he'd be getting any of that money any time soon, if ever.

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fossilcamel (July 7, 2009)

Jason is NOT owner, he doesn't even work there anymore.

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fossilcamel (July 7, 2009)

Then I realized your talking about the owner of Fractured, not LMMG...I'm just gonna shutup now.

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A_Double (July 8, 2009)

Rumor confirmed. Here is the email that D. Hemsath sent out:

"I want to give everyone an idea of where things stand with LMMG as of now and where things will be in the future. At this point LMMG will not be able to continue to provide distribution services for labels. We had hopes for the last several months that we'd be able to find a way to move forward but the triple hits of an expensive merger, a dying business and a bad economy have made it impossible. We are hoping to be able to get some money to labels, but I'm not sure how much or when as we have to try and collect money from customers. If you have not yet moved your distribution to another company, please make arrangements to do so as soon as possible."

Sounds like people are really frustrated with this and taking it personally. But, I'm not sure how much personal blame you can put on

show rest of commentRumor confirmed. Here is the email that D. Hemsath sent out:

"I want to give everyone an idea of where things stand with LMMG as of now and where things will be in the future. At this point LMMG will not be able to continue to provide distribution services for labels. We had hopes for the last several months that we'd be able to find a way to move forward but the triple hits of an expensive merger, a dying business and a bad economy have made it impossible. We are hoping to be able to get some money to labels, but I'm not sure how much or when as we have to try and collect money from customers. If you have not yet moved your distribution to another company, please make arrangements to do so as soon as possible."

Sounds like people are really frustrated with this and taking it personally. But, I'm not sure how much personal blame you can put on the Hemsath's for the three issues that are cited in their email. Plus, the Hemsaths distanced themselves from LMMD years ago to focus on Doghouse and turned day-to-day control over to others. You could argue that they didn't reinvested sufficiently to allow the business to grow/evolve or that by being less engaged in managing LMMD they allowed the business to fail, and that would definitely be their fault. But, to blame it on malicious intentions is weak and unfounded.

I think when this is put in the broader context of a business model that becomes obsolete and is forced to reinvest and evolve or liquidate, you can get a better perspective and take it less personally. Yet, I'm sure it's difficult when your label is owed money and your business is reliant on that money to stay afloat. Basically there needs to be a new distro model as technology, consumer preference and sales channels evolve. Along the way the conventional distros who fail to acquire the financial resources, talent and creativity necessary to evolve will go out of business as their services/products become obsolete. Lumberjack was a great service provider when they model was based on shipping physical inventory. But that changed and the company wasn't able to change with it.

Honestly, there is little difference between this and any other bankruptcy or liquidation. The cash flow into the business from stores is less than cash owed, so the owners try to work on credit for a while, hoping things will improve. The situation often gets compounded and then you end up owing your accounts payable (i.e., labels) lots of money. Think of it like any other business ... like GM and Chrysler filing for bankruptcy and owing their suppliers tons of money. It's a sad situation all around.

Again, maybe there were some poor business decisions, but I think you'd be hard pressed to actually demonstrate that there is personal ill-will or malicious intent to "fuck labels out of their money".

Anyway, thanks to LMMD for the services that they did provide, and my sympathies to those who are owed money. Bad situation.

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dave2313 (July 8, 2009)

I would have disagree with that comment.

First it's lmmg, not lmmd.

Dirk Hemsath knowingly and willingly refused to disclose any information to any of the labels about what was going on, and refused to settle his accounts.

Why does he refuse to allow any labels digital be returned to them? If he really cared, he would have clued people in before they closed.
The only reason he even posted the letter, is because he was called out on it publicly.

Plus, it's not like this is an isolated incident, labels have been getting fucked by him for years.
Right before they went down, they started signing every tom, dick or harry that would come around, knowing that they were going under.
I found out they were going under back in May. Why are other labels just finding this out now, in July.

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fossilcamel (July 8, 2009)

Where are you getting that he is refusing to give labels their digital back? That is completely false and absolutely ridiculous.

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dave2313 (July 8, 2009)

Not to mention, of course we all know that he is being absolutely truthful and honest in his E mail.

What about customers from years ago, that have already paid? Where is that money?

He's not having as much trouble getting paid from other companies as he is claiming.

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TreMcCarthy (July 9, 2009)

This statement is filled with half truths and lies.

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ironspatula (April 13, 2010)

I guess I'll add to this list.

Lumberjack has owed Deathwish over $30,000 for over 3 years.

I know this is super fucken late but I just had to do this!!!!

ROTFLOL! Karma IS a bitch aint it Tre/Fuckwish?!?!?! 30 fucking thousand bucks!! And all this while, you thought the "3rd world-credit card scamming-inefficient asian postal service-orders too diffcult to handle-exchange rate is a bitch" bastards were trying to cheat Deathwish outta their merchandise and releases. Well, you got fucked up the ass in the good ole US of fucken A. Aint that nice! We sure hope you feel much better you didnt get cheated by some slitty eyed-gooks now huh? Thank Lord for karma and illegal downloads!