The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #146180   Message #3384479
Posted By: Phil Edwards
01-Aug-12 - 03:50 AM
Thread Name: Bill Leader/Dave Bulmer
Subject: RE: Bill Leader/Dave Bulmer
You can post questions on eBay sales pages; I posted one on the "Celtic Visions" pages where he was selling mint copies of Bright Phoebus, Ray Fisher's Bonny Birdy and a couple of others, asking why he wasn't re-releasing them, in consultation with & with royalties paid to the artists or their next-of-kin.

I got a reply by email almost immediately:

im sorry to be blunt, but you are clearly showing your ignorance in these matters you really should not believe every thing you read on the internet.
Two of the 4 albums you have messaged about are available on cd and have been for years! in fact bright phoebus had a radio 4 program all about how it was "lost" and is was proved on air that it was not. you might not be able to get them down at hmv but that's not our fault, try and get obscure jazz in hmv, you cant find it! some of these albums are not on cd, why is this? because they never sold enough, pouring money into a record that didn't sell is a bit stupid no? finally why are we selling the vinyl on ebay, because there are a few people out there who actually want these records, quite often overseas in country's like japan. in stead of trying to vilify us please do a bit of research and a bit of critical thinking...
perhaps if people had actually bought the albums when they were released the situation would not be so.

So there you go - a few of the Leader/Trailer albums are available, therefore they're not 'lost'. (They're available through channels like Amazon Marketplace, they're pressed on CD-R and cheaply packaged, and no artist royalties are paid (quite legally, as Richard says) - but they *are* available.) And the ones that aren't available, well, nobody wanted them anyway.