Revenge Records presents
Revenge!

The Legendary Paris Concert

Historical notes

"The first time I was caught stealing records was in Paris in the autumn of l99l. I'd passed through the front door of the city's largest record store and was standing outside on the Champs Elysees when three store guards sprang out of nowhere and surrounded me. They were waving walkie talkies and shouting in French to someone inside the store. I had about 20 stolen Mingus CD's under my arms.

The guards shoved me back through the entrance, escorted me swiftly past the cash register which I had ignored on my way out, up a long stairway and across a series of executive suites until I stood before the desk of the store manager. The manager stood up when I entered the room. He was tall and he looked threatening. I explained that I had taken the CD's because the store had no right to sell them. I said they were issued by pirate record companies, none of which was in the habit of paying royalites, and that I had no intention of returning them to their bins.

The manager eyed me with disbelief and said he was calling the police. He reached for the phone. I suggested he call the daily newspapers as well as the television crews for the evening news and also the principal French jazz magazine whose offices happened to be across the street so that I could explain everything to everyone at once.

The manager glared from across his desk and put down the phone. In a gentler tone he declared that a third of the product he was selling fit the category I was condemning, that I had no right to carry off what belonged to a legitimate enterprise, that he was offering the public what the public wanted to buy.

I stood my ground. I reminded him that pirated CD's compete with legitimate records in the store. I said he was abetting a crime. I told him I was sorry I had not stolen my CD's the previous day when a Mingus' work called "Epitaph" was being performed in one of the major concert halls in Paris to a less-than-capacity audience. I said that publicity from an arrest would have sold out the hall.

The store manager rose suddenly from his desk and left the room. I waited alone with my CD's. After a while someone arrived to say I would be allowed to leave. When I passed through the front door again, I had the CD's under my arm. This time the alarm bells remained silent.

For years I have rifled through record bins around the world, while on tour, removing illegal Mingus product. I have done this while Charles Mingus was alive and since his death. The ratio in most bins is about three-to-one in favor of the pirates. I stack the illegal records in plain view and walk out in front of the cash register. Although in the old days I piled records under my arms, the packaging of today's CD's is less manageable. I have stood in the center of record stores and ripped open the difficult plastic CD covers and left them sitting on top of bins. With the exception of Paris, and one store in Chicago, I have never been stopped. By the same token, I have had a negligible effect on the sale of these records. Illegal records and CD's are big business.

So now I will continue my fight on a grander scale. Jazz Workshop Inc, the publisher of Charles Mingus' legacy of composition, will reissue, legitimately, the best stolen Mingus material on hand. We will press the very material released illegally by others, do it better and sell it back again-- with comprehensive notes, authentic photographs, historical data, cheaper rates. We will undersell the pirates and put them out of business. That is our plan. Joel Dorn heard my story and now we are armed: Revenge Records! Anyone in possession of pirated Mingus CD's, please contact us at the address below.

The presses are waiting.

Sue Mingus