WAXPLOITATION! is dead! (Long live WAXPLOITATION!)
Local funk-and-soul crew gives in to pressure from L.A. label to change its name
Charisse Kelly
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On the list of things that are funky, “trademark infringement disputes” rank somewhere between “shopping for a Tempur-Pedic mattress” and “Mr. Belvedere reruns,” which is why it’s most unrighteous that that’s nearly all that local DJ crew WAXPLOITATION! has been dealing with in its downtime from the decks. For close to a decade now, WAXPLOITATION! has run one of Austin's most successful record parties, A Soul Happening. Behind the scenes, however, the DJ collective has struggled to keep that soul alive: Lawyers representing L.A.-based management company-cum-record label Waxploitation (home to artists like Gnarls Barkley and Black Moth Super Rainbow) have long hounded members of the crew with cease-and-desist letters, arguing that the use of the name “is likely to create confusion in the marketplace.” While the five men behind WAXPLOITATION!—Noel “Dr. Rhythm” Waggener, Brett “Pointman” Koshkin, Danny “Little Danny” Shiman, Greg “Greg Most” Hammond, and Gabe “Second Line Social” Vaughn—have fought back, arguing that no one in Austin is likely to start hitting them up for Danger Mouse records anytime soon, they’ve recently decided to throw in the towel and change their name. Before tomorrow’s final A Soul Happening as WAXPLOITATION!, Decider spoke with Vaughn about the history of the dispute and what this means for his crew's future.
Decider: WAXPLOITATION! started throwing events around 1999, and the Waxploitation label says it started in 1997. You claim you weren’t aware of it?
Gabe Vaughn: It’s been argued that the record label has been around that long, but they didn’t actually start releasing stuff, to my knowledge, until around 2000 or so. It’s all just hearsay, and nobody can prove one way or the other. Ultimately, what this all boils down to is money and time and energy, and their law firm just has a lot more of all three of those than we do.
D: When the lawyers contacted you with a cease-and-desist letter, did you regret that you hadn’t tried trademarking WAXPLOITATION! yourselves?
GV: Definitely. That name is our bread and butter here. It’s our reputation. But really, we just attempted to live amicably, because we’re not trying to get bigger than we are already. We’re not trying to do anything nationally. We don’t have a website, or even a MySpace page to cause any confusion. We thought we could just live and let live. But the law firm was like, “No, that’s not an option.”
D: The press release you issued says you suspect that the law firm is “trying to look busy and finding creative ways to validate their retainer fees.” What are you basing that on?
GV: I don’t think anyone has ever been contacted directly by the label. We have a pretty decent status amongst the funk and soul community and the record people in the world, and a lot of the people associated with their label we have connections with through a degree or two of separation. The label has never approached us and said, “We want you to stop.” It was always the lawyers. I would imagine that if it got down to brass tacks and we dealt with the label directly, the label would probably be fairly cool.
D: So you wouldn’t encourage a fan boycott of the label—say, starting with the Black Moth Super Rainbow show this Tuesday?
GV: Not at all. We just want to do what we do. We’ve built this night that a lot of people come to and enjoy themselves at, and we just want to spread that music and that energy and have people come out and dance. None of us really cares one way or the other what the label does, and in no way do I want anyone to have any ill will toward the label. I actually hope the label has a complete knowledge of what’s gone down and has equal—not to sound like a hippie—positivity and respect. Let us do what we do, they do what they do, and they don’t ever have to mess with us again.
The big bummer to the whole thing is just that we’ve earned something that we have to change against our will. That’s disappointing. I can say that as the rookie, because I started as a superfan. I came out to all the gigs, talked with the guys, traded records with them, and was such a fan that I was always there—to the point where they were like, “Come play with us.” I’ve been to many cities and many different “soul” nights, and there’s nothing like WAXPLOITATION! It’s the best party I’ve ever been to. I want to make sure that that energy keeps going on. Now, as much as we don’t want to, we have to worry about how the change is going to affect the night.
D: Have you thought about just changing it to WAXPLOITATION! U.K. or something?
GV: When we started to have this conflict, we changed it to all capital letters with an exclamation point, and we hoped that would be good enough. It wasn’t. Short of changing the spelling—which we’ve considered—there have been hundreds of options on the table, none of which have felt right. We are WAXPLOITATION!, and we’ve always been WAXPLOITATION! Nothing else is gonna feel right, because that was the right name for us.
D: Are you any closer to settling on a new name?
GV: [Laughs.] To be completely honest, no. There are five guys with five different opinions, and nothing feels right because none of us really wants to change. Right now, we’ll just keep it as A Soul Happening and not really present ourselves with another DJ name. The event has always been A Soul Happening, but by default everybody, ourselves included, called it WAXPLOITATION! Now, especially in the transition, we’re trying to make sure people recognize the A Soul Happening part. If people still want to call us WAXPLOITATION! they can, but we’ll never put it in writing one way or the other. But you know, the night has never been about who’s playing records. We’re just record nerds, man. We just like music. None of the people dancing knows who’s who, and nobody cares—and that’s a good thing.
