Art and commerce went toe-to-toe earlier this month at Warner Bros. Records, and art -- Grant Lee Buffalo to be exact -- was knocked to the canvas.| Though Grant Lee Buffalo is still signed to London/Slash, the label's current distributor, Warner Bros., has elected not to pick up the option for another new album, so the next GLB project, provided there is one, will be released by a yet-unknown outlet among the new configuration of the Polygram merger.

"Chalk it up to politics," says Randy Kaye, former A&R rep for GLB. "It wasn't something I wanted to do." Since 1993, Grant Lee Buffalo has released four albums for the Warner Bros.-distributed Slash/London, however only 1994's Mighty Joe Moon enjoyed any commercial success (to date, it's sold 100,000 units). The other three GLB releases, including last year's Jubilee, have sold a combined 107,000 copies.

"I worked with the band since day one and I'm just so disappointed that we never got farther than we did," says Kaye. "I mean it wasn't for lack of trying on everybody's part. And hopefully, maybe, somebody else will figure out a way to do it. I'm incredibly, incredibly unhappy about it, and sad about it, and everything else."

Now in a state of flux, like most bands signed to Polygram labels, "[Frontman] Grant [Lee Phillips] and [drummer] Joey [Peters] are discussing the future and whether the next record will be a Grant Lee Buffalo record," according to GLB manager Peter Leak. "I don't think any decisions have been made and I don't think it would necessarily be forever. If Grant makes a solo record, which he might, that doesn't mean there wouldn't be a Grant Lee Buffalo record after that."

BLAIR R. FISCHER with additional reporting by JAAN UHELSZKI(March 30, 1999)