The Rock Legend - XOX

It was way back in 1993. I had just completed construction of a small recording studio in, of all things, an old boiler room. I called up a guitar player acquaintance of mine by the name of Curt Atwood about a possible recording project. Curt was interested, so I called up another musician acquaintance, a drummer named Steve Mills, who had helped out one day during the construction of the studio, and shortly thereafter, we began rehearsing in Steve’s basement. We eventually decided on the name XOX with a democratic vote, with myself being the dissenting vote (thought the name lacked pizzazz). And we came to a collaboration agreement: I would donate all studio time. Curt would purchase a run of CD’s, after which, he would be allowed to recoup his investment first, before royalties were divided three ways. The source from which Curt would recoup from, however, was never specifically discussed, although it was implied to be royalties from any record deal that might materialize. 

The first CD “What Happened To You” was mainly intended to be a demo to present to record companies. The rest were to be handed out for free, as promotional CDs. Curt hired a guy to take the CD around to some record companies in hopes of getting a record deal. From what I gather, the record companies deemed the CD “Not hip enough.”

Not to be defeated, we went back and produced two more CD’s. “Atomic” – circa 1996, and “Forever” – circa 2000. We decided not to hand out anymore CDs, and apply our collaboration agreement to include any direct sales (although most, I believe, eventually did get handed out). The band got more comfortable in the studio with each CD, and I also got better at recording and mixing, so by the third CD, mind you, the finished product had a more commercial sound quality. By the third CD, I no doubt had hundreds of hours of my time involved in XOX recordings.   

By 2000, some of the material was getting radio play. There were a few stations that especially liked our material, yet as soon as we got out of the studio, both Curt and Steve seemed to lose interest. Although Steve did put together a web page for the CD, Curt dropped the band like a hot potato, citing he was too busy with his rope business to do anything else, and refused to do anything that a band normally does to promote itself—like play out, for example. I put the pressure on Curt, but Steve was reluctant to back me up. And so, XOX – RIP.

Skip ahead to 2009. By this time, Curt had purchased some recording equipment and produced a couple CDs himself under the name Hinge. I played bass on about half the tracks on the first CD. Curt did the guitars and vocals. His son Dale did the percussion work. I suggested we form a legitimate record label and submit the three XOX CDs, plus his two Hinge CDs, directly to iTunes, possibly skipping an aggregator. The recordings were doing nothing but gathering dust, anyhow. Curt seemed uninterested.

Skip to the fall of 2011. Steve begins sending me reports regarding some prank videos that Curt’s son, Roman Atwood, was making using XOX material for background music. This occured while I was continuing to prod Curt and Steve into pooling our resources to further promote the band, including—once again—forming a label and submitting the recordings to iTunes.

August 2013: The reports from Steve continued; however, they only pertained to a couple of Roman’s videos. One in particular had gone viral, you might say, with something like 13 million hits. By this time I had learned a lot more about iTunes and how royalties are paid, so I called Curt on the third and declared that I was going to post the recordings on iTunes myself, and this time I was serious. The subject of Roman’s videos came up, and Curt announced that Roman was receiving some sort of royalty every time one of his videos was viewed. When I pointed out that part of that revenue was “XOX money,” Curt went into a tirade, accusing me of being greedy, and so forth, self rightously proclaiming to be the only one to have ever promoted XOX, but then changed his tone when I explained that I simply meant that part of that revenue should apply to Curt’s printing costs in accordance with our collaboration agreement. Then, for reasons only known to Curt, he absolved himself from the part of our collaboration agreement that allowed him to recover his print costs first. And for the first time in 13 years, he expressed interest in taking XOX seriously. I had always made it clear that if he and Steve were willing to begin taking the band the least bit seriously that I was on board, so I immediately contacted Steve and reported Curt’s good-faith gesture. However, Steve, after sending me reports for years about Roman’s videos, usually accompanied by grumping about how he will never see a penny from XOX etc., etc., now states that he does not even want his name associated with XOX (as if there is some magical Big-Brother genie who can sweep his involvement down the memory hole). Again, don’t ask me . . .

After all this, I began doing some more thorough searches for XOX material on the Internet. Using XOX in the search critieria, I discovered that Roman had posted at least six static-image videos featuring six different XOX recordings, and that he had also posted the same six recordings on iTunes.

Aside from the fact that Curt chose not do things right by setting up a lable and an adminstrator to keep track of monies spent and monies received, the problem with all this is, Curt himself has never reported the amount spent on the CDs or the amount of revenues collected. He never consulted me about using the recordings for prank videos (not that I would have been particularly upset about it had Curt chosen to do things right). He did not inform me of the iTunes postings. His and Roman's personal efforts to describe who the band is behind the recordings amounts to almost nil, in my opinion. And even after absolving himself from our collaboration agreement, Curt refused to report what revenues were being collected and also refused to report the proper owners of the recordings to the various vendors involved, something which should have been done to begin with, regardless of who collected the royalties. I refer to Curt, as opposed to Roman, because Curt has fully admitted to encouraging Roman to use the XOX material. rev 11/05/20

Curt is very protective of his copyrights, which is his prerogative to do so (regardless of how many times he accuses others of being greedy, I suppose), but as the producer of the recordings, I could no longer sit back and allow my ownership of the recordings (my sound recording copyrights) to be systematically undermined and ignored, so when it became clear—after nine months had passed—that Curt was not going to act, I decided to set the record straight.

The iTunes stuff and the static-image videos are gone, and I have no plans myself, at present, to submit any of the recordings. I apologize to anyone who might hear one of our recordings in one of Roman’s videos and would have liked to purchase a copy, but unless a miracle happens and everyone suddenly becomes willing to work together, the recordings will likely never be made available again by any Internet vendors.

XOX – the complete list

What Happened to You – 1995 All songs by Atwood except track 6 (Atwood/Conklin).
1 Feelin Fine – 3:50
2 4th July – 5:32
3 Do Ya Party – 2:57
4 I’m Takin You Home – 3:34
5 Lonely Love Affair – 4:45
6 Make You Mine – 4:35
7 Lookin For Love – 3:15
8 Out Of Control – 3:09
9 What Happened To You – 5:36
10 No Way Out – 4:35
11 Go Getter – 5:21

Atomic – 1996 All songs by Atwood except track 2 (Atwood/Allison).
1 Should’a Known Better – 4:16
2 My World – 5:16
3 Atomic Bomb – 4:02
4 Change Your Life – 4:41
5 Johnny Brown – 3:59
6 Rise & Shine – 4:02
7 Speed of Light – 4:02
8 Get Down – 2:53
9 Extemporaneous – 2:05
10 Party Down – 2:44
11 Third Time – 3:16
12 Pay Your Dues – 3:28
13 I’m Not Mad – 7:34

Forever – 2001 All songs by Atwood except track 10 (Conklin).
1 Too Much For Sale – 3:29
2 Euphoria – 4:18
3 Mary – 4:14, remix – 4:17
4 Forever – 4:19
5 Make It Right – 3:51
6 Make It On My Own – 2:49, remix – 2:58
7 Hero – 2:37
8 Never Let You Go – 3:52
9 Lookin’ For A Friend – 3:33
10 Driving Home – 5:20

Unreleased material:
Satellite #5 – 2:24 (Conklin/Mills)

Steve Mills, Curt Atwood.

7/15/16 Appendix: At the end of the paragraph beginning August 2013, I mentioned that Steve did not want his name associated with XOX. According to Steve, this is because, after a few of Roman’s videos featuring XOX music went viral, he worked hard to get the word out as to who the band was behind Roman’s videos, only to be reprimanded by Curt and me for publishing a couple of the band’s old practice tapes. Since then, and despite a lack of cooperation, I have seen to it that Steve irrefutably owns 1/3 of the sound recording copyrights to all of its published works.

9/13/17: Since writing this page back in 2014, I discovered—through various means—no less than twelve more of Roman’s prank videos featuring an XOX recording. And it looks as though it was probably Roman who reposted four of the six static-image recordings to Youtube under an alias. Total views of all seventeen videos as of March 2017 stood at 107 million.

So far, I have tried to keep this website purely information based, avoid using this website as any sort of personally vindictive platform, and avoid using any language regarding Curt and Roman such as, greedy and ethically bankrupt low-lifes—oops, so much for those higher ideals. But, all possible legal issues aside, I state my case:

1 Youtube has a standard percentage (35%) of add revenues that are paid to the owners of any recordings featured in the videos they publish. To the best of my knowledge, that is the percentage of revenues that would have been siphoned off had Roman and his dad used someone else’s recordings.

2 Even if Curt and Roman had seen fit to disperse 2/3 of that 35% of revenue to Steve and me, they, of course, would still have saved money due to the fact that Curt was 1/3 owner of the recordings.

3 Had Curt hired a commercial recording studio to make the recordings (i.e., produced the recordings himself), it would no-doubt have cost Curt thousands of dollars more than his print costs for the CDs. rev 12/22/20

4 By letting Roman use the recordings, Curt created an avenue to recover his print costs (with my and Steve's blessing, as technically, CDs have nothing to do with Internet downloads or streams), and, at over 107 million views, I think it is probably safe to assume that the 35% of revenues surpassed Curt’s print costs long ago; however, Curt chose to ignore all proper protocol, and has now probably aided and abetted the theft of royalties. rev 7/20/19, 11/05/20

5 As Google will not provide any revenue information for my own content, one can only estimate how much add revenue the videos might have generated, but based on the hypothetical rate of .00175 per view, the 35% of revenues works out to about $65,537.50 as of March 2017.

6 I can’t speak for Steve, but Curt has thrown this friendship down the toilet by ignoring the situation, and there will not be any getting this band back together.

End note: As Roman and Curt have continued to ignore the situation, I recently removed all of Roman’s videos using XOX material and will continue to do so for any XOX material that I discover.

10/01/2014: I have been meaning to update this page for a while now. So back in December of 2023, I received and letter from an attorney representing Curt and Roman. There was no offer to account for any royalties that may be due Steve and me. There was no proposal to put the recordings under a proper label so that the three of us might mutually benefit from our individual contributions, which our collaboration agreement mandated. Only a notification describing how Curt Atwood had licensed Roman to use all of those XOX recordings (not just the underlying works) that Curt had exclusively composed the underlying work for, and a bunch of legal lingo designed to try and intimidate me. In other words, their only goal is to continue to use the recordings to enrich themselves.

However, I made clear (yet again) that the XOX recordings were off-limits, and any use at all by Curt or Roman will result in an immediate DMCA notice if it involves an online vendor and/or an infringement suit if it involves physical copies.

So let me take this opportunity to stress, I do not give anyone permission, at present, to copy or publish any XOX recordings, and I will defend my intellectual property.

I have better things to do than follow Roman, of course. I have checked up on his activities a couple times, but I rely mostly on others to inform me as to what he is up to. If Roman has attempted to do anything with the recordings, I am unaware. So if anyone becomes aware of any funny business going on with those recordings, please drop me a line.

On other matters: Someone sent me a link some time ago to a video on Roman’s Youtube channel that contained a table discussion between Roman, Curt and a few other people. In it, Curt essentially throws many of his past friends under the proverbial bus (guy is a piece of work), describing how he had “left the music scene behind,” due to the drug activity of other band members. While I think he does mention, at some point, that the incident was “back in the eighties,” he then pretends that neither XOX, nor his later projects, ever existed.

I want to state categorically, that no mind-altering substances whatsoever were indulged in during the entire time that XOX produced recordings (1995-2000) at any practice or recording session, and I seriously doubt Curt nor Steve indulged otherwise. I sure didn’t.

And neither Steve nor myself were part of the band that supposedly gave Curt—who I once witnessed destroy a Gibson SG on stage in an intoxicated stupor—so much grief.

But there is more to this story than I have henceforth related: While I don’t think Curt, like myself, used any type of mind-altering substance other than alcohol only on rare occasion during the time period of 1985-90, he did consume much more alcohol than I ever did, and more often, from the time period of about 1985-90 (at gigs and parties). But he did, as he says, clean his act up as the 1980s were disappearing in the rear view, so to speak. However, it would seem after 911 went down, he began going “off the rails” in other respects: He appeared to be getting more and more involved with his church, and also began spouting conspiracy theories, such as the moon landing was all fake and sending me video tapes, claiming Geddy Lee--a Jewish agnostic progressive rocker--was playing Jesus in Christian promotional films, and Curt was serious! And when I wouldn’t buy into what he was selling (I have been an agnostic since my early teens), he would only get more argumentative. This was the precursor to allowing Roman to use our recordings with no legitimate label in place and the probable stealing of royalties. I guess Curt’s religion is, steal as much as you can from your friends and throw as many under the bus as you can. Well, watch out for those busses! . . .