Philadelphia's Nothing Emerging From Former Label's AIDS Drug Scandal
By Michael Cerio
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- You might of heard the story over the past couple weeks of Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli. The maker of the AIDS drug Daraprim has faced intense criticism after raising the price of the drug from $13.50 to $750. He's become a political lightning rod with Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton asking feds to probe the company and fellow Candidate Bernie Sanders rejecting his political donations.
What you may not know though is that he has ties to a record label called Collect Records. The CEO is an investor in the label run by former Thursday singer Geoff Rickly. The label was also the home to Philadelphia band Nothing. Was.
"We took a gamble with Geoff and that label and he put his heart into it, and it just wound crumbling on top of us and him at the same time" explains singer Nicky Palermo before their show at Underground Arts in Philadelphia. "We want to try to help him do whatever he needs to do to get out of that mess now that he's separated ties with Martin. For us, we need to move on, we have a finished record. We're just talking to different labels now because we missed the deadline already. We're a working band. We make money off of trying to tour and stuff. That's how we live."
After hearing of the involvement of Martin Shkreli with Collect Records, Palermo did his research and learned this was not something he wanted his band to be associated with. "I read, and the more I read I was like 'oh ****' this is the real deal."
"I wanted to let everyone know how we felt collectively as a band that we wanted to separate ourselves from that because it's not really something that we want to be attached to. Who really would?"
Thankfully after some legal maneuvering, Palermo and Nothing are free to take their music to another place. The band is no longer associated with Martin Shkreli and Collect Records. "We finally got the pass to move on, so we're currently talking to a few labels, seeing what's possible and ****. Then hopefully we can get a street date for the record and get it all worked out." says Palermo.
The record itself is another step towards Nothing evolving into their own as Palermo describes. "It's progressive. It's the same sound but progressive I would say" he explains from behind the stage. "We try to emulate several different influences and try to add our own thing to it."
"There's always something new that'll knock you out of your chair so, that's never a problem" he says of following up last year's confessional album Guilty Of Everything. "It's dealing with it enough to let it reflect off of yourself to make a piece of art is the hard part I think. It eats a lot of people, and people don't get a chance to do that. Or they don't want to. There's never a shortage of bull**** to inspire yourself."
After their derailment of a deal due to the Shkreli connection, Nicky Palermo and Nothing are hoping to keep it together until they get another label secured. "I think we'll be able to sort something out. It's the get back on track thing that just always is intimidating."
You can listen to the full interview with Nicky Palermo below, or check out the video here.
