CREDIT FLAP: If you have the cassette...

CREDIT FLAP: If you have the cassette or CD of Love and Rockets’ best-selling “Love and Rockets” album, you’d never know that the group is associated with Big Time Records, an Australia-spawned label that has introduced acts ranging from Air Supply to the Hoodoo Gurus.

The cassette and CD configurations of the album, which has sold about 700,000 copies in the United States since its release in April, carry the RCA Records logo but make no mention of Big Time.

Big Time president Fred Bestall characterizes the omission as a case of the big corporation exploiting the little guy.

“Under our agreement, they had the right to license any act they wanted, but it still had to appear on the Big Time label,” said Bestall. “But when the new album was delivered, they put it on the RCA label and we got absolutely no acknowledgement.”

Bestall said that when he filed a complaint, RCA added the Big Time logo to the vinyl LP, but not to the cassette or CD, which account for the vast majority of sales--especially with a college-oriented, alternative music act like Love and Rockets.

In a statement, RCA acknowledged its contractual obligation to carry the Big Time logo “on a limited number of Love and Rockets albums, of which the current album is the last.”

An RCA spokesman said that the initial omission of the Big Time logo may have been the result of an oversight. He said that the identification was added to all three configurations when the original stock was exhausted, and added that the original stock of LPs was depleted first because comparatively few were initially pressed. He said that subsequent copies of the album in all three formats will include the Big Time logo.