Pitchfork

Image via Trevor Brown's Baby Art Blog

Back in April, you may recall us running a story about a little dust-up involving Crystal Castles, artist Trevor Brown, and Madonna. The Castles, for a period of time, had been emblazoning their shirts and records with Brown's image of Madonna with a rather nasty looking shiner, something an uncredited (and unpaid) Brown was none too pleased about.

Words were exchanged-- not all of them nice-- and fingers were pointed every which way, but no settlement was reached. That is, until now. Trevor Brown recently hopped on his blog to announce that he's finally being paid, and that the Castles now own virtually all rights to the image of Ms. Ciccone.

As Brown tells it, things got a whole lot more genial between the two parties once Supervision Management took over the band's worldwide management duties. Supervision sent a letter to Brown on behalf of the band, apologizing to Trevor for the crappy treatment he received from a number of the Castles' handlers. Supervision also offered to buy the rights to the drawing from Brown. With what Brown calls "no muss no fuss," the Castles secured the rights to Madge.

Brown will apparently retain reproduction rights, but the image otherwise belongs to the band. As Brown notes, "the black eyed madonna is now officially and legally theirs, to do with as they please...at least until maddy herself files a lawsuit, ha ha!" So this isn't over, then.

A rep for Lies Records confirmed that Brown was paid, noting "an agreement was easily made" because "Trevor gets along with [Crystal Castles'] new management." The band's own Ethan Kath echoed the confirmation, writing, "It took us a while to build up our collection of pennies but we finally saved enough money to pay the man who drew the image which we have adopted as our logo."

And then there's this, quoted verbatim from Brown: "for me it was a matter of principles more than the money itself - maybe i'm old-fashioned in regard to matters of integrity and common decency in this download generation age - but a little courtesy would not go amiss for crystal castles too - they were doing themselves no favours with the "so what, who cares" attitude - it might impress every snotty 17 year old on the block but, as seen, it loses them the respect of more mature music fans and critics - but at last they've woken up to the fact this was their mess to clean up - it was pissing on their career more than mine - the negative press was never going to stop."

Speaking of messes, Crystal Castles have a mess of dates around the world to attend to throughout the next month and a half or so.

Crystal Castles:

09-25 Hamburg, Germany - Neidclub (Reeperbahn Festival)
09-26 Luxembourg, Luxembourg - Rockhal
09-27 Strasbourg, France - Osophere
09-28 Paris, France - Point Emphemere
10-01 Dublin, Ireland - Academy
10-02 Galway, Ireland - Cuba
10-05 Tokyo, Japan - Astro Hall
10-06 Tokyo, Japan - Club Quattro
10-07 Osaka, Japan - Club Quattro
10-13 Frankfurt, Germany - Batschkapp
10-14 Leipzig, Germany - Werk II
10-15 Munich, Germany - Backstage Werk
10-16 Stuttgart, Germany - Rohre
10-17 Erfurt, Germany - Centrum
10-18-19 Reykjavik, Iceland - Iceland Airwaves Festival
10-23 New York, NY - Webster Hall !
10-24 Toronto, Ontario - Circa Nightclub
10-25 Chicago, IL - Metro
10-27 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom
10-28 Seattle, WA - Neumos
10-29 San Francisco, CA - The Independent
10-31 Los Angeles, CA - HARD Haunted Mansion
11-01 Las Vegas, NV - Orleans Arena
11-06 Mexico City, Mexico - Pabellon de Alta Tecnologia
11-08 Buenos Aires, Argentina - Creamfields

! with Fujiya & Miyagi, WhoMadeWho