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Sandman did give in on one issue. He wanted to record the album at Hi-N-Dry; Kolderie felt the 24-track facility at Fort Apache would be better. "I sort of won that argument. But then, you know, things just kind of broke down. He didn’t want to be at Fort Apache, and it was a difficult session. We ended up transferring some of the Hi-N-Dry demos to 24-track tape and recording some stuff from scratch. We didn’t really know whether it was going to turn into a final album or not, but we were taking the next step. As with any Morphine project, you never know. I mean, Cure for Pain was recorded as a demo that turned into an album. What came out of those sessions were some roughs that I gave to Mark on a DAT. He took that DAT and wrote ‘Crappy Fort Roughs’ on it and that was the end of my involvement. He put that DAT away and said, ‘I hate everything about it. I don’t want to put any of it out.’ "

In his initial finding, the judge who heard the case agreed that Morphine had fulfilled the terms of their contract with Ryko and that Ryko has no claim to recordings that Sandman didn’t intend to release. The label may have a right to moneys generated by the sale of recordings made during the term of the contract, but it doesn’t control those recordings. "I think the best spin on this is that it opens the door for this thing to be done right," Kolderie offers. "These recordings represent a big chunk of what was happening in Boston musically during the ’90s. A lot of us who were involved in various capacities want to see them made available to people who want to hear them. We’re not trying to foist off any crapola. This is stuff that deserves to be out there."

With Hi-N-Dry now settling into negotiations with Ryko over how to proceed, neither party is in a position to comment on the court case. But Conway, who after a month on the road supporting Twinemen’s second Hi-N-Dry CD, Sideshow, will be back to play the Middle East this Saturday, is doing his best to focus on the future. "I couldn’t be more sad about the way this all went down. But at the end of the day, my comments are positive, because you can’t get caught up in the struggle. You have to keep the goal in mind. And the goal is to make Mark’s music available and to encourage Rykodisc to put out a proper box set. You know, this isn’t going to be the next big thing: it’s about tidying up and taking care of a guy’s prolific career and moving on. This isn’t something to get stuck on. And I think the saddest part is that it got stuck."

IN THE MEANTIME, the folks at Hi-N-Dry have been keeping themselves busy with other projects, like the new Downbeat 5 album Victory Hotel, a disc recorded at the loft by producer and sometime Twinemen bassist Andrew Mazzone. The Downbeat 5 were launched in 2001 by local guitar legend J.J. Rassler, who cut his teeth in the ’70s with the high-energy proto-punk group DMZ and continued to play throughout the ’80s in the oft-overlooked Worcester-based garage band the Odds before landing a job at Rounder Records. The Downbeat 5 amounted to a giant leap into the rock-and-roll deep end by his then untested singer/guitarist wife, Jennifer D’Angora. A lot has changed since then. For starters, Rassler and D’Angora are no longer married. More important, D’Angora has made up for lost time in a big way. She fronts not only the Downbeat 5 (actually a foursome with roots in ’60s British Invasion rock and classic girl-group pop) but also, with bassist Michelle Paulhus, the pop-punk foursome the Dents. So when I finally catch her on the phone, she’s on her way to NYC for a Dents gig after spending the day at a Downbeat 5 photo shoot.

"This was my first real band," she says of the Downbeat 5. "But it was something I had dreamt of my whole life. I’ve played guitar and been singing since I was a kid. But I never did anything with it because I was too petrified. I tried to manage bands. But it was very obvious that I was a frustrated musician because I really sucked as a manager. So J.J. gave me a nudge, and he wouldn’t have let me go out there if he thought I was awful."

D’Angora may have sounded like a beginner on the Downbeat 5’s rough-and-ready 2003 debut, Ism (Sympathy for the Record Industry). But in a live setting, J.J.’s guitar heroics and a tight rhythm section distracted audiences from her shortcomings long enough to let her develop into a singer who holds her own on Victory Hotel, whether she’s letting loose a bad-girl growl on a you-done-me-wrong rocker or dueting with her ex-husband on a touching acoustic cover of Rick Nelson’s "Lonesome Town" — a fitting tune given their situation.

"We went through all the crap we had to go through," D’Angora says of the divorce, "but we both loved the band enough to keep it together. It’s one of those things that’s in the past and we’ve all come out ahead. Now we’re the best of friends and musical collaborators and we almost feel like this is how it should have been all along. We’re just very lucky."

The Downbeat 5 play this Friday and Saturday night, April 1 and 2, at the Abbey Lounge, 3 Beacon Street in Inman Square; call (617) 441-9631.