MILESAGO - Mailing list
"Rock'n'Roll Scars" Mailing List:
Information for new members Revised version - March 2006 |
Rock’n’Roll Scars is an e-mail list for the discussion of Australasian music and popular culture between 1964 and 1975 -- groups, solo artists, recordings, TV, radio, the music scene and pop culture in general. The list is intended to augment the MILESAGO website. We hope you enjoy being a member of the group and look forward to your contributions. Have fun, and post often. You can choose to receive messages from the list either as single emails, or in a digest format. For more information, or to modify your membership settings, please visit the Rock’n’Roll Scars website on eGroups, or email the moderator. The list is owned by Duncan Kimball and is moderated and maintained by Narrell Brown, Michael Hunter, Mick Robbins and Duncan Kimball.
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CONTENTS |
GENERAL RULES AND CONDITIONS |
To make life a little easier for everyone reading and posting to Rock’n’Roll Scars, we’ve prepared a few suggestions about list etiquette, posting content, and the format and style of submissions. Please take a few minutes to read them. Please be aware that by joining, you accept the terms and conditions of the Rock'n'Roll Scars list, and that by registering with Yahoo! Groups you also accept their corporate terms and conditions of use. AS a gerneral rule, we ask that members observe the following reguations and postng suggestions:
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THE BAD STUFF |
Be warned! The following is strictly prohibited on this mailing list:
Please note that such actions will NOT be tolerated. Failure to observe these conditions will result in immediate and permanent removal from the list.
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A few thoughts about trading |
Trading in "pirate" copies of music recordings is a thorny issue, especially in relation to Australian recordings of the '60s and '70s. We cannot condone the illegal duplication of copyright material, and we must remind members that besides breaking the law, such actions only compound the sins committed against our musicians, many of whom have never seen any financial return whatsoever from their commercial recordings. But we recognize that many of our members are passionate fans and collectors of Australian music, and that one of the major problems facing us is that only a tiny portion of the material recorded during that time is currently available on CD, and that vinyl copies of many Australian recordings are now becoming increasingly rare and commensurately more expensive. Many important Australiasian albums and singles have never been transferred to CD, and in many cases the original vinyl recordings are now extremely rare and command commensurately high prices on the collectors market. Good examples of this are Company Caine’s Doctor Chop LP, and the Sons Of The Vegetal Mother Garden Party EP -- in both cases only about 250 copies were ever pressed. CD versions of recordings by major acts like The Twilights, Spectrum, Company Caine and Tully are still not available -- indeed with the exception of a few scattered "Best Of" compilation albums, most major recordings by these pivotal Aussie bands have ever been officially issued on CD to our knowledge. Of the major record labels, only the now-defunct Festival Mushroom group made any comprehensive attempt to restore and reissue its back-catalogue of Australian 60s and 70s music, and they are to be applauded for their efforts. The other major companies stand condemned by their own inertia and carelessness. Lamentably, it appears to be a consistent pattern that master tapes and multitracks of important recordings by major Aussie acts have already been lost or destroyed. For recordings made by these other companies, consumers are mainly reliant on specialist reissue labels like Raven, Vicious Sloth and Canetoad, whose resources are necessarily limited. The most important development to hit the music scene since the inception of MILESAGO and the Scars list is the advent of domestic digital recording technology, which has created a large and growing trade in non-commercial material, such as live and private recordings, which has been greatly facilitated by the advent of low-cost CD-R burning equipment. Our policies are always under review, but we ask subscribers to observe the following guidelines. We welcome and encourage any feedback on these issues and will review and change our policies where necessary. The general list policy is that use of the list for trading in illegal (pirate) copies of copyright material is strictly prohibited, as is use of the list for any form of sale of any item for commercial gain. Any such action will result in immediate banning. We consider private trading between members in non-commercial, non-copyright CD-Rs, tape recordings or videos as a matter between those individuals. However, all such trading should be conducted strictly off-list, and we ask that all subscribers respect the copyright of the creators and owners where they are known to subsist. |
Think About Tomorrow Today |
If you have any material that you wish to trade -- for example, a rare, privately-made live or 'off-air' tape of a group or artist -- we encourage you to seriously consider donating two copies of your recording to ScreenSound (formerly the National Film and Sound Archive) in Canberra. Other options include the National Library of Australia in Canberra, the State Library in your capital city and other institutions like the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. It is regrettable that, unlike the rules governing Australian film, there is no policy of compulsory donations governing Australian sound recordings. Screensound relies on the goodwill of record companies, radio stations and private donors, and consequently the national archive is a haphazard collection, where much important popular music of the last 50 years is not represented. Likewise, if you have other important material -- extra copies of rare or important commercial recordings, sheet music, rare photographs, posters, badges, items of clothing or other memorabilia -- why not contact ScreenSound and at least see if they already have a copy? We want to stress that ScreenSounds holdings are not locked away in a vault, never to be seen again -- the archive has an active policy of preservation, restoration and distribution. Copies of many of their audio-visual holdings can be purchased at a reasonable cost. Another excellent home for rare stuff is the Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne, which has a large and growing collection of priceless documents and materials like the 30,000-item Laurie Richards photography collection, Noel Crombie’s costumes for Split Enz, and all the documents relating to the epochal 1964 Australian tour by The Beatles, donated by the promoter, the late Kenn Brodziak. Such institutions are worthy recipients for any such donation and you would have the satisfaction of knowing that your gift will go towards creating a national collection for the benefit of future generations |
WHAT ABOUT THE WORKERS? |
If you have rare recordings or other material, we also strongly encourage members to use the network of contacts around the list and the MILESAGO website to provide copies of any such material to the original artist/s who created them. In most cases, artists can be contacted relatively easily, and in our experience they would be delighted to receive copies of this kind of thing. The regrettable fact is that many Australian musicians of the '60s and '70s (and beyond) do not have complete collections of even their own official recordings, let alone ‘bootleg’ live tapes, concert photos, etc. We consider it a matter of courtesy that members should try to contact the artist/s (where possible) and provide them with copies of such material. We are mindful of copyright provisions, but in the absence of official releases, we consider it the lesser of two evils if members want to privately copy commercial material, as long it to be provided to the musician/s who created it, when that artist does not possess a copy (or a good copy) of the work in question. |
Most of these suggestions were cribbed wholesale from John Relph's excellent Posting and Style Guidelines page on the XTC Chalkhills website. Thanks John! |
Please email MILESAGO
if you have any extra information to add to this page |