Monday, January 04, 2010

What not to give a Steely Dan fan for Christmas (or any other time of the year)

The cover includes pics from the original 2000 DVD release.

It's a foldout with a short text on Steely Dan by one William Hogeland.

Here's a record that popped up in 2008 listed among other Steely Dan releases. There is also a DVD with an identical name and cover.
Curiosity got the better of me and I finally ordered the CD. Titled Steely Dan In Concert it proved to be a bad copy of the audio from the Two Against Nature - Steely Dan's Plush TV Jazz Party In Sensous Surround Sound DVD from 2000.

I was puzzled to find that the CD was in mono! Yes, you read that right; m-o-n-o. And edited to just feature the music and none of the talk between songs. Badly edited at that.
Now, if anyone can explain why a bootleg - cause that what it must be - is released in mono please enlighten me and all who read this. At any rate it is a record to steer clear of. And without having seen the DVD in Concert companion I would expect the same thing to be true for it as well. Avoid at all costs.

The label is Immortal with additional info IMC Music Ltd. Licensed from BCD B.V. Made in The Netherlands. BCD@cddirect.nl

And they're not hard to find:

Blaricum CD Company BV
Blaricum Music Company BV
Compact Direct BV

Akeleibaan 60
2908 KA Capelle aan den Ijssel
The Netherlands

Tel.: +31-10-2642830
Fax: +31-10-2642835

The sparse homepage http://www.cddirect.nl/frame.html states

"Blaricum CD Company BV, Blaricum Music Company BV, and Compact Direct BV are three indepent music and dvd publishing companies and part of the Blaricum Music Group. All companies are welknown all around the world for their high quality budget products."

The strange thing is that I've seen Steely Dan in Concert CD and DVD for sale not only from online retailers but in actual record stores as well.
And maybe that these releases have been made possible to some weird loophole in the law, but it is sad that they're allowed to do the rounds. Any fan is shortchanged and I am pretty sure that very little - if any - of the money made from selling these make it back to the musicians.

And why, oh, why - if you're going to rip and release the soundtrack from a DVD on a CD - convert it to mono?!?

2 comments:

MetDeZachteG said...

hey there! i found this album some time ago in a discount store for only a few euros and i sent some snapshots of it to certain SD related folks. i also learned the same stuff you have posted here.

Nebukadnessar Stephenson and Sigurd Huckle said...

Did you send those snaps to us and we plain forgot about it? It could've happened. We're getting too old for our own good over here on Radio Dupree... ;)