Hello everyone.

I am Francesco Consolini - one of the two person behind the tape "label" Celebration - in fact, just two friends and music enthusiasts releasing other friends musical projects we find pleasant to hear.

First of all, I can assure you that Sam Callow is not a "nom de plume", but a real UK native living in our city of Reims and a very active musician in other projects.

Second point is, we insisted to release what was a "hobby project" for him, a tribute to all this traditional music from the United Kingdom (sorry for my lack of precision on the geographic origin, but you can easily guess that I'm far from being a specialist) without any idea of improving them in anyways; I can't speak for him but I genuinely think he just wanted to play with this wonderful cultural legacy, and we were more than happy to release this "sans prétentions" excerpt of this still badly known culture in our country.

We didn't won any money on these; it was a less than 50 tape release that costed us more than the price we sold it (mainly to our friends & family in fact).

Sam gave us this description that was online and in the tape and everywhere when the tape / recordings where still available (we deleted it as soon as we heard of the problem - thanks to Mr Stradling for informing us); I think it speaks for itself :
'Under the Hills and Nearby is a project whereby old folk song collector's recordings of peoples' songs are accompanied by 5-string banjo.

Started a few years back, Under The Hills and Nearby has developed from being a part of the 4tRECk set in to a new project in its own right.

This is a project of Sam Callow ... who also plays as 'one-man-band" under the name 4tRECk. I simply provide banjo and/or apallachian dulcimer accompaniment to field recordings of traditional singers from around the British Isles.
The source material is all traditional music, passed down through generations, with each new singer adding his/her own interpretation,and each song branching off into different evolutions.

Visit Topic records (the Voice of the People series), and Alan Lomax's series Folk Songs from Britain and Ireland (Smithsonian) to learn more... and I recommend you buy some too!

I am open to any propositions to play live. Contact me on : sam_callow[at]yahoo.co.uk"

As I said to Mr Stradling, we acted like enthusiasts but clumsies amateurs ; we are really sorry for the copyright we infringed, naively thinking this was a good way to promote the same music you all seem to promote here. Moreover, and that may seem unbelievable to your ears, we really enjoyed Sam's accompaniment - and some people outside France seemed to enjoy it too.

In the end, and to correct a point I read in this thread, everything has been deleted as soon as we heard of this story; one question that will remain is why the gentlemen who have been the most injured by Sam's accompaniment haven't made the effort to write us an e - mail before getting on their high horses.

Best regards,

Francesco Consolini