JOHN LAPPEN

John Lappen is owner/president of Lappen Enterprises, Inc., a music business consulting firm based in Los Angeles. Past and current associations include working as a project consultant for David Fishof Presents, Inc. on the British Rock Symphony album (released on Point Music/Universal) and Ringo Starr's All Starr Band three-CD box set (Eagle Rock Records); working with EMI Music Distribution and Razor and Tie Entertainment on a variety of strategically marketed compilation projects developed by Lappen; developing the track listing for a seven-CD box set for a Casey Kasem project entitled Casey Kasem Presents: America's Top 10; music supervising the David Crosby-executive produced soundtrack for a CBS documentary entitled Stand & Be Counted; serving as the artist relations liaison for iSong.com, inc., a Dallas-based Internet company, working with CSN Records in the soundtrack and catalog areas and representing the artist and label catalogs for internationally known artists The Fixx, Triumph, Foghat, Tommy James, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Robin Trower and Chris Spedding along with Spitfire Records, the legendary Sun Records, Burnside Records, Razor and Tie Entertainment and Hot Productions for placement in film & television productions.

Lappen is a 24-year music veteran having worked in a variety of capacities during his successful career.Ê Beginning as a music Page 2 journalist in 1974, Lappen has written feature articles and concert reviews for Rolling Stone, Billboard, the Hollywood Reporter, HITS, Goldmine and Music Connection magazines among many others. Music personalities he has interviewed include Roger Daltrey, Sting, Black Sabbath, U2, Bonnie Raitt, Todd Rundgren, Bad Company, Keith Richards, Jimmy Cliff, Cheap Trick, Heart and countless others. He has also done personality profiles and music business news articles on numerous music business executives.

John was also owner of a thriving Minneapolis, Minn.-based entertainment media relations/marketing company for four years before moving to Los Angeles in 1989. Since that time he has served as publicist for Geffen Records, done PR for the late jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie and a Vice President of Media & Artist Relations for MCA Records joint venture partner Impact Records. During his tenure at Impact he devised and implemented PR and marketing plans for well-known acts like The Fixx, Michael Schenker Group and Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes.

In 1991, he was named Manager of Special Markets at Hollywood-based Priority Records coordinating the licensing and compilation efforts of this hugely successful independent record label. During his four-year tenure at Priority, he conceived and developed over 300-plus compilation packages of all genres of popular music, eventually working his way up to Vice President of Special Markets. Over the last several years, compilations conceived and developed by Lappen, while he was still working at the label, continue to be released since his departure.

He was also responsible, as President of Priority subsidiary Anthos Records (a label started by Lappen), for bringing to the company two extremely successful projects -- Vox Lumania (a joint venture dance label from Amsterdam) and the soundtrack to Streetfighter, the Jean Claude Van Damme Universal Pictures film based on the successful Nintendo video game of the same name. He also assisted in compiling the music for the Streetfighter soundtrack.

After his tremendous success at Priority, Lappen initiated a special markets division at Quality/Runaway Records, a start-up compilation label set up as a joint venture between Lappen Enterprises, Inc. and Quality Records, an international independent record label with annual revenues in excess of $100 million. Runaway Records released a series of 25 various artist compilations in January 1996, all of which sold in the 80-100,000 unit range (the break-even point for units sold was 15,000 units).

Lappen has also executive produced albums for various labels including Interscope Records, Vanguard Records, I.R.S. Records, TRC Records, Oglio Records, Sonic Images Records , Miramar Records, Gold Circle Entertainment, Spitfire Records, Best Buy, Inc.1s Redline Entertainment label and Simitar Entertainment. He has also consulted in the film-TV music area for Hollywood-based, BMG-owned production music company Killer Tracks, licensing their extensive catalog of production music to a variety of film and television productions; over 50 in all including Antz, Idle Hands, Austin Powers, Deep Blue Sea, ESPN programming, Studio 54, Inspector Gadget, Universal Soldier: The Return among many others.

Lappen earned a B.A. in Marketing and a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin and completed his MBA in International Marketing from the University of Saint Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.