Yesterday the band Nothing spoke out regarding Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceutical who acquired the rights to an AIDS drug called Daraprim earlier this year and raised the price from $13.50 a tablet to a whopping $750, being behind the record label that Nothing is currently on. Before we continue, and in the interest of fairness to Shkreli, a recent story on NBC News does state that Shkreli will be lowering the price of the drug after all this outcry. The price has not yet been determined.
The band was very clearly disgusted by the actions of Shkreli and made a very informed post about the whole thing… but what's all this about Shkreli being behind Collect Records? Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly, who is the man behind Collect Records, sat down with Noisey and explained how Shkreli even got around to knowing Rickly and starting up the label.
Martin contacted me on Twitter and bought my guitar, the one that I wrote most of Full Collapse on. As a musician, steady income is hard to come by, so sometimes you do things to make ends meet. When I met him, he was charming, he was goofy and he was a fan of Thursday. It’s hard for me to come to grips with all of this because this was my first impression … He sort of asked me if I was able to scale up and “do it right,” would I be interested in growing the label. My thoughts were that if I could do it my way, at my pace, and with bands that I believed in, I would definitely be interested. This was the start of our relationship, and he chose to be a silent partner in Collect going forward. He has never asked to see the bottom line and there has never been any check and balance with him. His only goal was to further my vision.
Rickly paints Shkreli as a pretty decent guy throughout his interactions and even during their business partnership. Now Rickly seems a little more leery of his current business partner, though he doesn't exactly throw him under the bus.
My head is still spinning, and though I want to believe that there is some reason that he would do this that is some remotely positive way, the only thing I can see is that it is totally and completely heartbreaking.
I can’t see my future at all in the label. I have to see what the bands want first, and see if there is any meaning or any mission following all of this. More than anything, I want the bands to see that I hold art as the guiding force in my life. Ultimately I see this going in the same way it always does, where all the artists get blamed for everything and capitalism is never held accountable. I really think that if Collect is going to be scrutinized as being capitalism, but that is how music survives. I’m not making excuses for what has happened, but there is no corner of the music industry that doesn’t live and breathe from subsidies from business. It’s reductive and hypocritical to hold us and only us accountable though, we are all at fault in some greater way.
I don’t want to talk to him through the press. Frankly, I didn’t want to make a statement, but our bands have trusted me with their dreams and I’m not gonna let them down. Art, beauty, and dreams are the only things that can’t be bulldozed, and I’m here to make sure to look out for them any way I can.
Nickey Money of Nothing even gets in on the interview, saying that he cannot see Nothing on a label that's owned by Shkreli anymore and that he just wants to cut ties before things "get any uglier." Creepoid, another band on the label, also spoke out via Facebook.
Yesterday, along with thousands of others, we learned about the actions of a man named Martin Shkreli, who recently obtained the rights to a medication that is critical to the survival of many AIDS and cancer patients. His company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, shamelessly raised the price of this medication from $13.50/pill to $750/pill overnight.
As the events of the day unraveled, we were heartbroken to come to learn that this man was a major financial contributor to Collect Records. As you all know, we released an album with Collect this past summer. From the start we have only ever dealt with people we respected and trusted (Norman, Geoff, and Shaun) and have never met, seen or spoken to Martin Shkreli.
In the whirlwind that has followed, some details concerning the future of Collect remain very blurry (see attached link). We would like to make one thing clear – we would never knowingly work with Martin Shkreli, or anybody willing to walk across the backs of the sick and dying with a smile on their face for the sake of making a profit. As long as Shkreli is involved with Collect Records, directly or indirectly, we cannot be.
We are extremely excited about the new material we've been writing and will continue to tour exhaustively. We don't know what the future of Collect will look like but we respect everyone else there who we've worked so hard with, and want nothing but the best for each and every one of them.
Stay Punk,
Creepoid
It'll be interesting to see how this unfolds for basically everyone on Collect Records, who honestly I feel pretty bad for. These guys didn't jack up prices or anything like that, yet it seems like they're about to suffer…
