StopPress 8 – Apr

Check
out the new page on I’ll Be Gonz
4.4.04 – May is the 34th anniversary of I’ll
Be Gone achieving numero uno status Australia-wide,
and to mark the occasion I’ve whipped up a little something about
the I’ll Be Gonz project, replete with numerous pictures.
check
it out

Q
& A
Over
the past few months I’ve received a number of e-mails about the dreaded
Spectrum back-catalogue. Not only Spectrum of course, but the Indelible
Murtceps, Ariel, Mike Rudd and the Heaters and WHY. But if there’s
one album that gets more mentions than any other, it’s the Spectrum
1972 classic double album, Milesago. It seems this particular epic
arouses a great deal of nostalgia and sentiment too, probably helped
by the fact that it’s
pretty difficult to find, let alone acquire, and seems to
have acrued a great deal of value over the years as a result,
Brad Wilson, now of the ACT, is the most recent of my correspondents
on this particular issue, and has generously given permision to reprint
his query.

The
Question
Dear Mike & Bill,
I once had about 150 vinyl albums. However, 25 years of time, occasional
poverty, theft, continued moving & technological progress has
decimated that collection. I’m now down to merely 3. Two of them
are Beatles
bootlegs (1st live recordings in Hamburg), the other one a water
damaged, sapphire stylus abused, crackly copy of Milesago.
It’s not my original copy. A thief with good taste took that &
used it with a hundred others for some needed arm relief (pawned
for heroin). That was the one with the speckled cover. The matt
cover version I have now I found a few years later as I was looking
through some second hand records. I was consciously looking for
that album & that album alone at the time.
Finding it was a seminal event! Milesago, which I originally bought
for $9.00 in 1972, totally captured me. All
tracks are great, though my least favourite is Mama, did Jesus wear
makeup (don’t understand it). My favourite is Fly Without it’s Wings,
especially the guitar solo. At one point you seem to hear some airy
sound from the amp, which somehow remains as one of the finest moments
in music.
I no longer have a record player, so I can’t play it (but that’s
all right…trust me). What I do need is a quality copy on CD, and
that’s why I’m writing. Having just browsed your web site, I have
a sinking feeling it’s not available. Can you help? Will it be available
in the future?
I saw you guys do a gig at “Minnie’s Place” in Moonah
(Hobart, Tasmania) in 1972 or 3. Not a great gig, to my disappointment.
Lee Neale was missing. Only the three of you played. No announcement
or explanation was forthcoming as to why. Don’t think you did anything
from Milesago. Still, it was exciting to be there, only a few feet
from you guys (I was a bit of a groupie then, only about 15 or 16).
I’m in Canberra now. Will have to catch you guys if you ever play
here.
All the very best,
Brad Wilson.

The
Answer
Brad,
Liked the saga of the lost and/or deteriorating vinyl. I don’t know
if you noticed on the website that a couple of years ago we released
three Ariel CDs on our own Rare Vision label after extremely protracted
negotiations with EMI. We decided last year to lease back all the
back catalogue so we wouldn’t have to repeat the delays with each
album, and began talks with EMI again. At this stage, we’ve not
come to any satisfactory arrangement.
At the moment we’re preoccupied with getting a new CD out, but as
soon as that’s out of the way we intend to concentrate on the back
catalogue issue again.
If sanity prevails, you could reasonably expect we’d have something
out by the end of the year – we intend starting from the beginning,
so Spectrum Part 1 is first up, followed closely by Milesago.
Unfortunately, as regards EMI, I have no reason to assume the best.
Cheers,
Mike.

The Post
Script
While I can’t blame EMI entirely, (there have been the inevitable
changes in personnel over the years and every approach necessarily
starts from scratch), there are questions that demand rational answers.
If we don’t release these albums, will they? Up till now theye’ve
shown no inclination. What’s the problem? We pay for the remastering
(and if you’ve got any of the Rare Vision CDs you’ll know the remastering
has brought them up a treat) and any art work, not to mention the
production and distribution. All they’ve got to do is accept their
percentage for no effort. It makes good business sense even to me
– and I’m a musician.