The entire Nick Drake catalog is coming out through UNI (Universal) on May
6. 

Chris Blackwell is now running Palm Pictures, which has produced some very
cool indie film-type of features, including the Academy Award-nominated One
Giant Leap. They also have an offshoot music label (also called Palm) which
has only released a handful of titles. Included are a few of the excellent
KCRW comps.

Ryko is still around. They've lost some of their big name artists, such as
Bowie, Costello and Mould over the years (although they still distribute all
the Zappa stuff). They're now distributing a new video line called
Plexifilm, which has just released the new Wilco documentary.

Chris


-----Original Message-----
From: David Pearlman [mailto:dap@vrtx.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 4:22 PM
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Nick Drake out of print??? (Also Chris Blackwell and Ryko
Records)


Hmmm...Just checked Amazon and it appears the Nick Drake catalogue is
currently
out of print in the US...I believe Ryko lost the rights to the catalogue
sometime last year (Polygram/Universal owns the catalogue through their
aquisition of Island; they licensed it to Ryko in part because Joe Boyd
was associated with Ryko; but Boyd is no longer associated with Ryko, so
Universal didn't extend the license). I would have expected the catalogue
to reappear immediately on Island/Polygram/something, but I just read a
review somewhere that implied they were coming out on Columbia (????)

At any rate, is this the first time the catalogue has gone out of print, if
only temporarily. There's some story, perhaps urban legend, that Chris
Blackwell
(head of Island until it was purchased by Polygram) promised the Drake
catalogue
would never go out of print, regardless of how poorly it sold...

And what about Ryko? Are they still viable? What's the deal with Chris
Blackwell and Island? He bought it then sold it and moved on, or something
like that?
They fired a lot of their staff a while back and told the rest to move
to New York state...and now they're back in Mass??

dap