Right. About the MP3s. Firstly, I don't think Jeepster even know the MP3s were up. It wasn't their decision to get them taken down. It was the band that wanted them removed. Put quite simply, the MP3s were a pish recording of a patchy gig. Chris himself admitted he'd plugged the mic into the the wrong hole on his minidisc. Pickle Prince, this has fuck all to do with money or commodities or Napster or anything like that. Most of us were well in favour of Napster, and some used it regularly. I agree that ideas are free, but if the person who had the idea decides it wasn't a good one, and decides not to disseminate it, surely that's their freedom? All your talk of artistic freedom is total bollocks if it doesn't include the artist's right to decide what is a finished piece of work, and what is an experiment that isn't fit to be made available under their name. The point is that the band have the right to have some control over how they are presented. If we'd like something to be made available, and think it is good enough for people to hear, then we'll make it available. For instance, there's the "Black Sessions" CD. I don't know who is manufacturing it, so I couldn't stop them even if I wanted to, but it's not too bad. You see it about quite a bit. I've got a copy of it. I almost wish there wasn't an MP3 of "Middle Distance Runner" going around. That's a song that's not finished, because it's not very good the way it is now. It will come out at some point, and it will be much better then. But we made the mistake of giving it to the BBC to play for a special. We put it in the public domain, and we live with the consequences of that. Fair enough. "Lord Anthony" isn't finished yet either, but we haven't gone chasing people over that, so to suggest we've gone all fascist is obviously nonsense. But the MP3s of last week's gig were totally shite. It was a bit of fun on a Wednesday afternoon, which the band spent about an hour rehearsing for. It was hopefully fun if you were there, but having heard the recording of it I can safely say it's probably not something anyone would put on to listen to of an evening. We don't think they're of any value whatsoever, so we don't want them available. It's an artistic decision, and if you can't respect our right to that, then hard luck. I mean, it's hardly fucking Metallica is it? We don't have teams of lawyers searching the 'net 24 hours a day. But Chris is a friend of the band so we've asked him nicely to take it down and he's done so. I'm sorry Chris feels like a cunt. I think that's totally unnecessary. As I said, Chris is a friend of the band, and I feel bad making him look like a scapegoat, because he has done both myself and the band several favours in the past, and we owe him far more than he owes us. No-one's angry with him or anything. No harm done. I'm sorry to the people who couldn't be at the gig. I can understand people wanting to hear what the gig sounded like, especially since it's been so long, and people very rarely get the chance to hear the band live. But there will be plenty of gigs later in the year. Doubtlessly some people won't be able to make these either, so if a decent recording of a decent gig gets posted up, we won't feel so inclined to have it removed. And that's how it is. Cheers for your time, Neil Robertson neil@banchory.net +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+