To the music industry, or at least the parts of it based in California and New York, the gold record is a flashy symbol of success.
To Tony Brummel of the Near West Side of Chicago, whose independent record company includes melodic hard-core, thrash metal and ska bands, a gold record is a symbol of music industry self-delusion.
And this is why Brummel, founder and head of Victory Records, doesn’t want Taking Back Sunday, one of the bands he made famous, to claim the gold record it has earned for selling 500,000 copies of “Where You Want To Be.”
The complication, and the source of the dispute, is that Taking Back Sunday has left Victory, and its new label, the much larger Warner Bros. Records, has applied for and received gold-record certification on the band’s behalf for the album that Victory produced.Brummel, 34, isn’t proud of the gold-record status. He sees it as an affront to the integrity of Victory. He wants the certification revoked, and he is firing off scathing e-mails and threatening to sue.
“My animosity is based on principle, not anything else,” he said. “It’s about what is right and wrong in this business.”