Will Mudcat let me post today? Yes, if you read this.

Maybe this is part of the problem with Ian A Anderson's contentious album - can middle-class English white-boys really sing the blues?

Almost certainly not, though I'm still slightly proud - with a certain degree of amusement - of my failed attempts to be a 65 year old Missssippi blueser at the age of 19. To that extent, when the master tapes of the 1969 album I made like that were unearthed in EMI's vaults 18 months ago, I was able to prove that ownership had reverted to me, spent a fair bit of time with an engineer doing a decent remaster, wrote some new notes and that nice Mr. Suff at Fledg'ling re-issued it. I may even see a few bob.

The one I mentioned above was a bad attempt at being a singer/songwriter. I was given one 4 or 5 hour session in which to record it. It obviously resonated so well with listeners at the time that it sold only a couple of hundred copies. Unfortunately (see many other examples in the strange world of record collectors) rarity boosts value. It sells for £200 on eBay on the rare occasions it comes up, has frequently appeared in books about rare LPs and recently had a half page in Record Collector dedicated to it, complete with a pic of the godawful cover. None of which improves the quality which I was dreadfully ashamed of at the time, and tried to prevent even its original release.

To find - this is my other point - badly dubbed - copies of an already poor recording (not, I think, my fault) of a not particularly good performance (again, not entirely my fault under the circumstances) posted up on the web by some blogger solely, I believe, to make his or herself look good because they've tracked down a rare album, distresses me a lot. Of course they didn't ask first, because I'm on record as saying I hated and regretted the thing from the outset.

I'm lucky enough to now own virtually all my other masters, having taken care to get them back or (later) protect them contractually over the years. I've just done a (I believe) well remastered and nicely packaged compilation of my other albums from around that time made for Village Thing which is out soon. I'd be very pissed off if that also started to appear on pirate download sites as it would rob any chance of recouping the investment in doing a decent re-issue, which we're also planning for other Village Thing artists to mark the 40th anniversary of the label - though whether they'll do much more than recoup costs is questionable.

A properly remastered, for example, Nic Jones or Tony Rose re-issue (other Harrogate problems permitting) in the kind of well designed, environmentally friendly CD packaging that's now available would be a wonderful thing to have, but preparing such a thing for release isn't cheap. If sales are marginalised by pirates then it'll certainly never happen. Which would you rather have: a beautiful re-issue artefact with best possible sound, notes, and maybe some income to the artist of their family, or crap dubs from badly pressed vinyl as a file on your computer or a handwritten CDR?

And do you condone theft?