Yesterday, I started Monday morning by posting about the meltdown currently taking place at Glasgow Underground HQ. On Saturday, the label posted a rant making the utterly bizarre claim that Danny Tenaglia had started a “hate campaign” against them – which I covered here at the time. And then on Sunday, producer T. Markakis posted allegations saying he hasn’t been paid by Glasgow Underground for a previous release on the label.
You might imagine that with claims like this doing the rounds – oh, and the likes of this blog writing all about it – Glasgow Underground might want to respond to the claims being made. Such a response would be reported here in its entirety, they could be assured of this. But the old adage of “never apologise, never explain” seems to be at play.
Instead, label owner Kevin McKay chose to post yesterday about a subject close to his heart. Pizza!
Apparently, McKay spent his time during lockdown trying to come up with the perfect homemade pizza. And having discovered that yesterday was National Sausage Pizza Day in the USA – presumably being desperate for literally anything to distract from the PR disaster developing at Glasgow Underground – he decided to make a sausage pizza and post the (admittedly delicious looking) results on social media.
Perhaps McKay might now be best advised, having filled his belly, to provide the calm we all knead. It’s the yeast you could do, Kevin…
Update – since the publication of this article, Kevin McKay of Glasgow Underground has sent Amateur’s House the following statement, reproduced here in full…
“I have read all of Tasos Markakis allegations, and none of them is true. We have released two of his tracks. One of them was successful, the other less so. In his demo for the second track, he used an Acappella from Candi Staton. Unlike his label, Little Jack, we do not use other label recordings in our releases. Instead, we recreate any vocals that we use. The recreation cost £500. Tasos share of that cost was £250. Recording costs are a recoupable expense. We deducted those from his royalty statement along with mastering costs (a very reasonable £59 per track).
Tasos did not understand his recording contract and is angry that we took these deductions. He has claimed he has lawyers who back him up. I have asked to speak to them to have a reasonable discussion about this, but he has, so far, not put me in touch. I have just completed his latest statement run, and we owe him over £500 from his releases.
However, we are now taking advice about his libellous comments and the hate and mistrust in Glasgow Underground that they have generated. I will happily share our communication with him so that everyone can see that we have operated correctly. We regularly send statements and pay our artists as hundreds of Glasgow Underground producers can testify.
I hope Tasos will get some help for his anger and some education in the music business. I hope he stops bootlegging other artists on his label. I urge the people who have supported him here to ask him for evidence of his claims or speak with me directly so they can retract their equally libellous statements.”