mail von calexicos label city slang betreffs der probleme mit der neuen cd, gepostet auf der calexico-mailingliste:
Calexico – Fest of Problems
please read on:Dear all,
There is a lot of confusion, emotional discussion, and
heated debate going on regarding the various European
Feast of Wire CDs. Not only in this newsgroup.
I would like to clear a few things up from the label’s side:1. The 0 Track – Or the Minus Track, as we refer to it. This was
actually the band’s idea. Joey and John thought this would be fun. We
thought so too. Sorry if it isn’t. Sorry if you all are losing your
sense of humour about something that was meant to be an added little
present from the band. We were obviously not aware that some people
might not be able to listen to this track. It merely was meant to be
a groovy little gem. A truly hidden bonus, but of course in these
modern days of internet communication, to „hide“ anything is
virtually (sic) impossible. We do apologize to those who can’t hear
it. We will upload it as an MP3 to cityslang.com in the next couple
of hours. Please note that there are ca. 33 seconds of silence on
this file before the actual music starts. God nows why.2. The bonus tracks – this was our idea. We knew there were all these
beautiful cover versions flying around the casa and we asked the band
if we could put them on a bonus CD. Then we realized that with the
fancy Digipack with its six-colour print and inside-out cardboard and
what have you, the budget for a second CD was simply not there. So we
opted to put the bonus tracks on the same CD. But since Feast of Wire
is a very coherent record, with a beginning and an end we did not
want to ruin all that and wanted to make sure that these three cover
versions are as far as possible from the actual sequence of the
album. We tried to demonstrate the distance between them by ten or
five minutes of silence and many, many IDs. We did this actually for
artistic reasons and nothing else. It was not meant to corrup anything.
We at City Slang are sorry if we gave that impression.3. Copy Protection – City Slang has a licensing agreement with an EMI
offshoot called LABELS. There is a well meaning and very positve
philosophy behind this LABELS concept, but yes, it is effectively an
EMI company. Not City Slang, LABELS is. EMI has decided to copy
protect any and all of its CDs. LABELS had to go along, City Slang
had to budge. I am not going to tell you that copy protection is a
good thing. I personally don’t like it. But I do see why companies
such as EMI are using it. They think that it will save their business
model and thus their existance. To a degree I have to agree with
them. Unfortunately we should have waited until there is a copy
protection that a) deserves that name, and B) does not diminish the
playability of the disc. Such thing does not exist yet.4. Two seconds missing – Has absolutely nothing to do with the copy
protection, has to do with a software bug at the manufacturing plant.
We are currently in negotiation with the plant how we can make good
for the buyers of this obviously corrupt CD. This bug has hit the standard
UK version (which comes without copy protection because the EMI scheme has
not been rolled out in the UK) and it has affected the European Digipack
version (the one the three bonus tracks). I have no idea how and why it
happened but it has happened and obviously we can’t let the plant get
away with this, just as much as we will not try and simply get away with
it. Please do NOT come to our Berlin office, we don’t have any CDs here
at the moment to replace your broken ones. We will find a way!
For the time being, Sunken Waltz is up on our website in its fully glory,
please download it.5. The Music. Why is all this surrounding the record so much more
important than the music? Calexico have just delivered the most
beautiful album they have ever made. And album so grand it will be
hard to find a better one this year. We have packaged it in a very
fancy Digipack. You can feel it. You can touch it. It’s amazing…!
We have issued it as a vinyl LP in a stunning gatefold sleeve…!So from here: No more copy protection. No more bonus tracks.
No more digipacks. No more minus tracks.Very frustratedly yours,
City Slang
Christof Ellinghaus
--
but I did not.