Lookout! downsizes, scales back plans for the future

Due to concerns over unpaid royalties, Green Day has pulled their catalog from Lookout!. The long-running Berkeley-based label played host to both 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk! for the past decade, and also reissued a remastered version of the former last year.
As a result, six of the nine employees at the label have been laid off. Label president Chris Appelgren spoke to Punknews.org about the future for the label, explaining that despite the setback, Lookout! will continue, albeit in a scaled back form. Currently, no new releases are scheduled beyond the label DVD/CD samplers expected in September, with a focus on catalog titles after that. In 2006, Appelgren hopes to resume recording and producing new records.

The Berkeley-based staple boasts a catalog which includes seminal material from Operation Ivy, The Queers, Mr.T.Experience and many others. The label has also recently issued material from Ted Leo and the Pharmacists including 2004's Shake the Sheets, the final self-titled full length from Engine Down and Troubled Hubble's Making Beds in a Burning House.

Green Day's most recent release American Idiot earned the band a Grammy Award and has proved to be their biggest album since 1994's breakout Dookie.

Update: It bears mentioning that Green Day is not the first band to move its catalog. Other recent acts to do the same include Avail, Screeching Weasel, Riverdales, Lillingtons and Enemy You.