[jetengine]

Originally Posted by DaveMartin

Hey sorry about that, either Beggars Canada did not run the BEGN program like we had intended or maybe the store misunderstood how it was supposed to work. We don't always have as much control over those sort of things as we would like, but I will definitely bring this up and figure out if they had run the promotion like we did here in the US. So, once again, sorry that your store and ultimately you felt that this promotion was not worthwhile and hopefully in the future we can work things a bit smoother.

None of what you say subtracts from my view that there is something innately unethical about this type of pre-order deal—whether one is talking about Sonic Youth's output on Matador or that of any other recording artist on any other label.


If we were talking about a pre-order bonus of, say, a 7'' single featuring an outtake from Rather Ripped on the a-side and a 1985 recording of Thurston telling drunken jokes and farting backstage on the flip, then that would be one thing; but in this case we're talking about a full-length official release on 12'' wax—the band's only official full-length 'live album to boot.


I would be interested to know how many Sonic Youth fans out there who have no internet access had no idea the band was releasing an album in the first place—you would be amazed at the number of SY fans (and music fans in general) between the ages of 35 and 47 who have no interest in the internet to begin with. I just heard a statistic on the news last night that at least one third of Britons have no at-home internet access. That should tell the marketing folk something. Before I got a PC a few years ago, I relied on Letterman appearances, SLR mail-outs, and the occasional word of mouth for knowledge of new Sonic Youth releases. At least one of their major releases took me completely by surprise: I didn't know there was a NYC Ghosts and Flowers in the works until I saw the CD in a record store in early summer, 2000.


I'm not saying we can go back to the days when every little pharmacy or hardware store in Nowheresville, Canada or U.S.A. had an LP bin and an 8-track rack next to the ice cream refrigerator or plastic-wrap dispenser (although the '70s were a great time, weren't they?); however, it seems to me that record companies and (in some cases) the acts themselves are driving a greater and greater distance between their products and the record-buying public. Inaccessibility is increasingly the order of the day. The whole process of purchasing an album can now involve going through so many near-impossible ‘filters’ or ‘channels’. Think about it: Find a record store→doesn't carry the new album→Walmart only→Starbucks only→pre-order with surprise bonuses→Find it online→PayPal only→“don't own a credit card”→limited to 500 copies→etc., etc. Bearing all this in mind, any sensible person can only conclude that the whole illegal downloading/file sharing/CD-r burning phenomenon of recent years is no longer the problem (if it ever truly was), it's quite often the only solution.


One thing's for certain from my perspective: I won't be picking up the vinyl edition of The Eternal unless the Battery Park LP comes with it—and I won't be paying some bloated price for it courtesy of eBay, either; I'll settle for a cheap disc (there are already a few secondhand copies turning up on eBay, I notice).



If Matador has any sense of fair play—and any real business sense, for that matter—it will do the right thing, and give this 'live LP a proper and wider re-release. It's a full-length 'live SY album, for Chrissakes—Who doesn't want a copy of that?