When I was a young filly just out of the oh-so-rocking gates of a private East Coast college and ready to jump into a music industry career, I interviewed for a publicity assistant position at Victory Records. This was to be (thankfully, you’d better believe) my only one-on-one interaction with Tony Brummel, and it’s one of those memories I reflect on with a “what was I thinking?” sort of enlightenment. I showed up to their Bucktown offices on my way to my bartending gig at a hotel downtown wearing that uniform: black dress pants and a blue button-down shirt. In my feet-still-bone-dry mind, this was a perfectly appropriate outfit for a job interview, but I spent about fifteen minutes with the lead publicist and got all of 5 with Tony. Upon entering the room, he gave me the once over, fired off a couple of “who do you know and what can they do for me?” questions, and muttered “we’ll let you know.” That was my interview.

A couple of years later, I was doing some part time work for a local pop-punk band that was enjoying minor national success. I would continually met a young woman named Mo who worked at Victory and made sure everyone within spitting distance was aware of this fact at all times. She was having constant thumb intercourse with her Blackberry and would malign the non-Victory bands on whatever show we were at almost without hearing them play. At the time, I chalked it up to, oh, I don’t know…extreme pride in her vocation? Deep dedication to emo-core? Complete lack of sex? But given the surfacing today of former Victory VP Ramsey Dean’s manifesto on Brummel’s reign of terror, I’m inclined to believe Miss Mo was validly brainwashed. The article, which hit the web via absolutepunk.net this morning, details Brummel’s dictatorship, from unrealistic expectations of both bands and employees to all-hours browbeating, email snooping, royalty pilfering, and surveillance cameras to watch his workers’ every move. Dean is perhaps the most reliable source yet to speak out on the Nazi-like regime, as by his own admission he “not only knew where the bodies were buried” but “was the gravedigger.”

Victory has seemed to weather the storms of the Ne-Yo stock-hiding debacle and the loss of (and total degradation by) its most successful bands, but there has to be a limit to the old “any press is good press” adage. Now that the world has yet another first-hand account of how poorly the label treats its bands and how little regard Brummel holds for his employees and the artists who make him money (which he allegedly steals from them), won’t up-and-coming bands steer clear of signing with Victory?

Share This