Mike Warden's (Conquer The World Records) Rebuttal to Rich Thurston Comments Regarding CTW Records

After posting the recent interviews with Rich Thurston (more to come), Mike Warden messaged me asking if he could respond to Rich's comments regarding Conquer The World Records and Culture. Since, quite often, many people have explained their side of the story when it comes to CTW, I thought "let's hear what Mike has to say for once". This is what Mike had to say about Rich's comment and again does not reflect how we at Stuck In The Past feel about Culture, CTW, or any of the parties associated with either.

Rich how come this lie has to permeate through the bands history 10 years later? Damien has already admitted that I did nothing wrong to you guys. I don't know how many times I have to say it but bands had a VERBAL contract I agreed to give all bands 10% of all pressings for FREE and that was it. I always gave bands 10% of the records and pressings the only times where there were delays in getting royalty copies is when I had demands for records and sometimes the mailings were delayed. You can ask John he always got his band copies even when it was only 50 records I was sending out. How many times do I have to explain this. We pressed 2,000 CDS and I made 2,000 COVERS for vinyls and I pressed records in bulk sections 500 here 500 there 300 on black if i remember. There were not even 2,000 culture 12"S pressed I had many covers left over. Labels did not right off the bat press 2,000 records but you got a price break on printing covers when you make x amount of covers. I did this all the time it was routine business with many labels. The answer why there were records popping up is because I had distributors everywhere not too mention over 500 copies went straight to CTWeurope in germany the guy who ran Green Hell Burkhard Junger. He paid me upfront for x amount of records which abled me to press the record up in the first place.

This label was never about money or any schemes or screwing bands over. I don't even care that maybe 3 bands claimed it once, 1 claimed it and they saw that the supposed "controversey" helped them sell records and gain a bigger following. It was my fault for being a nice guy so to speak, for not having any written contracts but this label was never business to me not in the strict sense. Thats why I never put out repetitive garbage or put out something just for the sake of selling mass amounts of records. Whatever I did with CTW I did from the heart. Being shit on and mistreated and shit talked when I put so much effort into helping you guys and other bands was really painful. Imagine that you put so much money and effort and personal interest into something and then just have it turn around and be a huge regret. This label to me was so personal it was like every record I did I was a part of the band.

I already said in another post that you know I apologize for the cover of the album born of you but I never even saw the covers until they arrived. That huge font was not my doing at that time Dave from oversight was doing my graphic designs for me for free and for experience with his design courses at college. Sometimes Ron Jasin would do my layouts IE Morning Again the cleanest war modeled after what Damient sent me. Ok I never claimed to be about the graphics I didn't fully grasp the entire artistic concept of covers and design etc. It wasn't my priority, as I wasn't a designer. I simply did the best I could.

I was always cool with the bands when it was in person you know that. The CD went out of press so fast and you guys screwed me over so fast I didn't have an interest to repress it even if it was going to sell more copies. I don't even have a copy of born of you on cd with the cover and packaging for myself at this time. Once the born of you goodlife bootleg came out I was devastated by what you guys put in there. I couldnt fucking believe what I was seeing with my own eyes. The only reason the goodlife version came out was edward wanted to make money and he didn't give a shit if he was bootlegging my records even though we were already close friends as I put out one of the Nations on fire records. He called me on the phone to tell me personally that he wanted to let me know that he was doing the record no matter what and that "since we were friends he thought he should at least let me know" OK. I had a european office handling all my distribution and promotions based in Germany why the hell did you think you needed another label to make a bootleg of my record? It was completely unnessecary and uncalled for. He didn't have permission to do that record in any way shape or form and since I had massive distribution in europe there was no need. Once edward pressed up the record my european office had a much harder time of selling the us copies because they were cheaper on good life. Once I pissed off the European office the labels financial stream went downhill as I had to deal with other us distributors not paying and all the shit talk going down from you guys and that whole boy sets fire bullshit fiasco. I still put out the records I wanted to put out years later but things were not the same in many regards. You know you tell me that I should just of gotten over it but it affected me so deeply when all you had to do was tell the truth. It was one huge lie.

-Mike Warden