EMPTY RECORDS EUROPE OLD NEWS

The next stop of our traveling artshow including artworks from Dee Dee Ramone, Paul Kostabi and Joseph B. Raimond will be Munich, Germany. If you are in the area, be sure to check out the Jour Fix gallery in the basement of 84GHZ at Georgenstr. 84. The opening will be on Friday, the 14th of May at 7 p.m.. The gallery is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. and on appointment (call 089 30637918). Our friend Gerhard "General" Seckler will also be showing some of his works as well.

The long awaited Generation X single "Day By Day" will finally be out soon, with a previously unreleased B-side, the song so many fans have been writing us about, namely their version of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid". The single will feature a special, open up cover.

Springtoifel's new album, due for release early 2004, will be called "Ettalprednik". A special prize for the first one to figure out what the title means. Look for it on both vinyl and CD.

We are happy to welcome back The Putters to the MT fold. Out soon on MT will be a one sided 7", the newest edition to our MT Lite series, containing three songs from their last ever recording session, recorded just before they split up several years ago.

Our Ramones album "We're Outta Here" is now available as limited edition picture disc. Sides one and three have the Converse logo, sides two and four a collage of photos. Also, a misspressed version of 200 of the normal record was delivered that has yellow instead of red vinyl.

The Supersuckers were involved in a pretty bad accident with their van while on tour in Spain. Check out their homepage for more info.

Not only is White Flag playing Aasiaat, Greenland on Sept 6th, but they are recording it for the only punk album ever recorded in Greenland, and above the arctic circle.

For those of you going to this years PopKomm in Köln, check out our exhibition of paintings by Dee Dee Ramone, Paul Kostabi and Joseph B. Raimond. If you visit the exhibit on Thursday or Friday morning, you can even meet one or two of the artists. For a taste of what is in store for you, check out our gallery page.

White Flag will be doing a show in Greenland. No kidding. On September 5th. Since I know all of you will just happen to be in Greenland on that day, don't forget to check them out!

New single coming out in the next few days from one of Germany's coolest new bands, Speedway 69. Produced by none other than Philip Boa, this two song single is so rockin', so punk, so cool, you can see why someone of the reputation of Philip Boa would be into them.

D.O.A. will release a split CD with heavy metal hero THOR on D.O.A.'s own Sudden Death Records, called "Are U Ready". The songs are all about "sports, power, glory and mayhem". Check out Sudden Death Records for more info.

If you are into Motorhead and Springtoifel, then MT has just what you are looking for: Springtoifel have covered two Motorhead songs and will be releasing it soon as a 7" vinyl only record, of course only on Empty Records Europe.

Sonny Vincent is on a massive tour in Europe and the USA to support his new album. Check out our tourdates page for the newest dates near you.

Cool! None other than The Lurkers are coming on tour! Check out our tourdates page for more info.

Also on tour right now in the USA is Sonny Vincent. His backing band is none other than Rocket From The Crypt! For this upcoming European tour, his band will consist of Bobby Steele (Misfits-The Undead) : guitar Marc Hacquet (Frenchies) : bass Uzi (Ten Buck Fuck) : drums. And we are still waiting for an answer from Ivan Julian (Richard Hell and the Voidoids) as 3rd guitar !!!

Hey! From March 21st to April 5th is a huge Ramones Tribute concert and art show in Augsburg at Rampe3. Paintings from Dee Dee Ramone, Paul Kostabi and Joseph B. Raimond will be on display, as well as several days of live bands. Check out the Rampe3 homepage for more info.

It took a long time, but our live Generation X album "Live At Sheffield" is finally coming out! Look for the live single "Day By Day" soon after, with a cover of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" (not on the CD!) on the flip.

The Sonny Vincent album "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" is taking final shape. You won't believe the line-up on this one! Sonny will be supporting the album with a major tour, check our tourdates page regularly for updated tour info. To support the tour and the album, we will be releasing a saw-blade of Sonny Vincent together with none other than Jimmy Page himself! Look for all this to come early next year.

Also coming early next year will be a 20th anniversary album by White Flag, containing all their classic hits plus tons of hard to find tracks. Don't wait that long though to check them out, as they will be in Europe on tour in the last several weeks of this year. Check out our tourdates page for exact dates and venues near you.

The Vibrators "Buzzin" CD will finally be out in a few days. They are doing a monster tour of the USA and Europe to support it, check out our tourdates page for a show near you.

MT Undertainment is extremely saddened to report the death of Dee Dee Ramone. He died at his house in Los Angeles on June 4th of an accidental drug overdose. One of the original members of the Ramones, he was one of the founders of the punk scene. To put it simply, without Dee Dee and the Ramones, there would never have been a punk scene. After quiting the Ramones in the 1980s, he branched out with solo records, writing and painting (check our Gallery page for our current exhibition of some of Dee Dee's recent paintings). Besides his solo recordings, he also became an active member of Youth Gone Mad, the band of his friend Ena Kostabi. He will be missed by all of us.

Don't miss D.O.A. on tour here in Europe this summer. Check out our tourdates page for dates.

Springtoifel are working on new songs for a new record of children's songs. Planned for ages, seems like this is finally going to come to come out this year sometime. Also, a single is planned for the autumn to celebrate Mainz making it into the 1st German football league.

The title for the new D.O.A. studio album has been changed from "Those Damn Canadians" to the new title "Wind The Battle". Release date is set for May 15th. D.O.A. will of course been on tour to support the new album, so look for them to start their European tour on June 20th. Check our tourdates page for regular updates. Randy Rampage, who played on the last tour and who is also featured on the new album, unfortunately will not be on the upcoming tour.

The Vibrators come to MT! Yes, the mighty Vibrators will be releasing their last album "Buzzin" very soon on MT!

Schliessmuskel, one of Germany's longest running punk bands, have finally split up. They played their farewell show in December.

The Lurkers will be releasing a new studio album sometime in early 2002 on Captan Oi!

Dim is no longer in Springtoifel. He had to quit due to health problems. His place has been taken by Schwarzen Peter, an old friend of the band. Meanwhile, their new double album is out, and they are currently on tour.

Sonny Vincent is busy recording his new album, to be released jointly by MT and our buddies in Spain, Munster Records. As usual, expect an all-star cast to be appearing on this one. Check out our next update for an exact list of who will be playing on it. Will come out both on CD and LP.

Springtoifel, Germany's longest running Oi band, have finished recording their double album opus "Lieder Aus 2001er Nacht", and we should have copies in time for their 20 year anniversary gig in December. This double album, containing not only both live and studio tracks, also includes a funny sort of story between the tracks. Many of the tracks are new versions of classic Springtoifel tracks as voted by Springtoifel fans at their concerts and on the Springtoifel homepage. And to top it all off, the CD version contains some concert MPEGs for all you computer geeks out there. The vinyl, not to be outdone, will be pressed on both white and black vinyl, with a beautiful gatefold sleeve, Springtoifel's finest so far, that includes a pop-up when you open the cover!

Seems like Tarnfarbe have split up, having played their farewell show on September 15th.

The Nuns have played a few shows with Oghr of Skinny Puppy as guest.

The Nuns have signed with Triple Silence, the new label from Nigel Wingrove of Salvation Films in London. Triple Silence will release the Nuns' new CD along with a full-length goth/erotic/fetish video (release date TBA). Nigel Wingrove's Nuns flick, "Visions of Ecstasy," made international headlines when it was banned in England for blasphemy.

Congratulations! The Human Hamster Hybrids have signed to Wolverine Records. They also have won the slot as opening band for several shows by J.B.O. (see our tourdates page for exact dates).

The sad news has reached us today that Joey Ramone, singer of the Ramones, died yesterday on Easter Sunday of lymphoma. He was only 49. He had been hostpitalized in New York City since March of this year. A lot will likely be written in the next few days regarding the Ramones, not only of their importance in the history of punk, but also of their influence on the entire music scene of the last twenty five years. We would just like to say that our label as well as many of the bands on our label were very much influenced by the Ramones. Joey will be missed by all of us. For more information as well as a touching tribute to Joey, please refer both to The Official Ramones Web Site! as well as the homepage of our friend Jari-Pekka Laitiofan.

For all of you so patiently waiting for the White Flag and Flipside CDs: Pat Fear of White Flag had an accident a few months ago and broke his back. Due to his injuries he has had to have lower back surgery recently. We all at MT Undertainment wish him well and a speedy recovery. Once he is healthy again he has assured us he will get the last few bugs worked out of the long planned White Flag CD so we can release it.

Startling news in connection with the problem regarding Blake Wright: Jay Reatard, singer/guitarist for The Reatards, a band signed to Blake's label, has sent us a racist e-mail. For more details as well as a statement from us regarding this, check out our page "EMPTY USA".

Randy Rampage has rejoined D.O.A.! Yes, it's true, Randy Rampage, the original bassist of D.O.A., who left the band almost twenty years ago, has rejoined D.O.A., and not only will be present on their upcoming European tour, but also will be recording with Joey Keithley a new D.O.A. album to be released in the spring!

Springtoifel, to celebrate their twenty year anniversary, are working on yet another new record. This one will be a double LP, with one LP a collection of their greatest songs, as picked by their fans. The second album will contain live material, with possibly a few new studio cuts as well. Look for it on MT in the summer sometime!

Finally, after over a year of waiting, we offer you our answer to the "Music Fans" letter Blake Wright of our former US office sent around in August 1999. Since there is so incredibly much material offered, we have created a seperate page for it all. Just click on "EMPTY USA " to enlighten yourself to some truth for a change. Also included are details of the beginnings of EMPTY USA, the court case, the settlement, as well as the part played by both Ox and Mordam in this conflict. We refer to Blake's releases after August 1996 as our "Bootleg Series", and offer all his titles as quasi-official releases, complete with "real" MT catalog numbers, as a fund-raiser to help offset the lawyers costs.

Coming soon on Musical Tragedies will be three saw-blades of some of your old-school punk favorites, including on CD and 7" Blondie and The Bloodless Faraohs featuring Brain Setzer, CD and 7" by The Ramones and New York Dolls, and finally a 7" vinyl only saw-blade with Suicide and Richard Hell. Remember, saw-blades are a series of split releases by two bands, shaped as circular saws. Check out our Musical Tragedies page for more info on these releases.

d.b.s. have split up.The last few songs they ever recorded will be released on Ache Records. For more info on the release visit Ache Records.

Springtoifel drummer Wastl has a part in the short-film "Jesus zu Gast bei Gabi Schaf".

We have more Generation X live tracks, enough now for a full length. We are checking out the sound quality to see if we can fix it up enough for a decent sounding live album. We will keep you posted!

The new White Flag CD "Eternally Undone" keeps getting delayed due to problems with the planned CD-Rom part.

We have gotten a few live Generation X tracks that we are considering to release as a limited edition 7".

The planned CD from Schließmuskel, called "Aufstand Alter Männer" (MT-494) will be released soon. We are currently working on the cover.

The following was posted on the Ox Guestbook for only a day before Joachim Hiller performed a nice dose of self-censorship and deleted his whole Guestbook. We feel it is important enough to deserve further posting.

Well well, what do we have here? Joachim of Ox has sent his lawyer after David Link because David doesn’t want to give up his punkrawk.de domain. Very interesting. How many of you remember Joachim’s response to our lawyer letters to him a few years ago? He claimed that everything could have been worked out if we would have just talked to him, and he had never gotten a letter from a lawyer before. How un-punkrock we were for trying to protect our label name! He really blasted us in the pages of Ox for threatening legal action if he would not stop printing the illegal and unauthorized advertisements of our former Seattle office of eMpTy Records. Ever since then, Joachim seems possessed with revenge fantasies against us, and has not missed one chance to make us look bad in Ox. Even in his latest issue he titled his free CD "I Was A Punk Before You Were A Punk", almost the exact same title of our upcoming sampler that we have been announcing since last summer. And now he turns around and threatens someone with a lawyer because of a similar domain name! Whats the matter Joachim, can’t take your own medicine? Why does the word "hypocrite" sound louder in my ears than Scared Of Chaka have ever managed?

Ours was only one of many letters on the guestbook slamming Joachim and his hypocritical methods, and since Joachim only deleted his link to the guestbook, you can still view the original guestbook pages by clicking here. Since then, Joachim now is posting in the news section on his Ox homepage a statement that the various letters attempting to clarify his side of the story, and signed as from Joachim Hiller, are in reality fakes, and that this is the reason why he has censored his guestbook. What a bunch of nonsense! Joachim just does not want everyone to see all the bad press he has been getting lately. We suggest visiting the site of Enough fanzine to get their side of the story. And one other thing, Joachim keeps telling everyone now that this problem is only between him and David Link (in other words, "mind your own business"), an amazing thing for someone like Joachim Hiller to say, as he never stops mentioning our court case against Blake Wright of our former eMpTy office in Seattle. I think David Link is right, people should be talking about this and know about what Joachim is trying to do.

15 YEARS eMpTy Records! Yes, thats right! On December 20th, 1999, eMpTy Records has turned 15! To celebrate, we have lowered the price of all CDs. Offer good until August 1st, 2000! Check our order page for morre details!

If you are interested in the history of eMpTy Records, as well as our other labels, check out our NEW history page.

One of Europes hottest punk bands, the Safety Pins from Spain, will soon release their debut eMpTy CD. "Shake & Spew" (MT-493) will be a sort of greatest hits collection from their first two Munster LPs, plus a ton of new songs. This band is fucking amazing!

The promised tour by The Zeros is taking shape. Look for them in Europe this coming April, brought to you by the fine people at Proton Booking (Tel: 0561 7393260)

We told you so dept: German electro-death-rockers Generation Xed have now been forced by Billy Idol's managment to change their name, so now they call themselves "Generated Xed". What does this have to do with eMpTy? We tried to warn them about the possible problems with this name when we released our Generation X album "K.M.D. Sweet Revernge" last year, but they were too self absorbed and, lets face it, arrogant to consider our proposal. One can anyway only wonder about a band that gives themselves a name so similar to an already famous band.

Besides the the long awaited Youth Gone Mad CD "Touching Cloth" that eMpTy is releasing (MT-446, see below), we also now have a Youth Gone Mad vinyl single planned, both songs featuring Dee Dee Ramone. The A-side, "Cry Baby" is from the CD, the B-side "38th & 8th" is only on the single! (MT-490).

Speaking of Youth Gone Mad, turns out their mastermind Paul Kostabi is also a gifted painter! Check out his current exhibition in our Internet Gallery.

Mainz's favorite droogies and Germany's longest running Oi-punk band, Springtoifel, besides their new studio album "Weck, Worcht & Oi" (MT-492), will also release next year their long lost classic album "Satanische Takte" on eMpTy (MT-491). Long out of print, this record has since become a long sought after collectors item!

Our main project this year seems to be our "I Was A Punk Before You Was A Punk (Old School For New Students)" sampler. The idea is to offer new (or unreleased) tracks from bands (or band members) that have been active since the late seventies or early eighties. From our own eMpTy releases we have The Damned, Sham 69, The Ramones, The Nuns, White Flag, The Lurkers, The Misfits, Sonny Vincent, D.O.A., Only Alternative, Captain Sensible, and Generation X. Also confirmed are unreleased tracks from Die Toten Hosen, NoFX, Sator, The Zeros, Guitar Gangsters, Chelsea, as well as new tracks from the newest albums by GBH, Peter And The Test Tube Babies, Major Accident, Terveet Kadet, The Varukers and TV Smith (of the Adverts). Besides the normal CD, we're thinking about making it a double vinyl LP as well (MT-478).

Look for eMpTy Records to release the three Flipside Vinyl Fanzine LPs that came out so long ago on Gasatanka Records. They were supposed to be out already by now, but have been delayed due to problems with the cover art. Each will feature new packaging (which will include the original cover art), with bonus tracks and a CD-Rom part. They will be so fairly priced that you won’t have a reason not to pick up all three! (MT-462, 463, 464). Like the White Flag album, these will also come out on vinyl on Munster.

After many years, a new full length by the Nuns will finally see the light of day soon on eMpTy, titled "Naked Save For Boots " (MT-442), and will feature their brand of naughty S&M punk rock that all you lonely young pimple-faced punker boys have grown to love. A saw-blade shaped 7" featuring their track "Anita" is now out with another popular S&M band, the industrial band Die Form, on the flip. Check out the Musical Tragedies page for more info on this release. See below as well for more info on a new single release by the Nuns as well.

The Sham 69 Germany tour was unfortunately canceled at the last minute. We share your disappointment.

Munster Records has released our Generation X -"K.M.D. Sweet Revenge" album (MT-421) on vinyl, pressed on 220 gram vinyl and with a gatefold sleeve!

We are very happy to announce that eMpTy will re-release in Germany the classic first D.O.A. album "Something Better Change" soon, on both CD and LP (MT-474). Although many of the tracks were available on various compilations, this is the first time the songs will come out together again with the original cover!