Hello, folkies near and far.

I am happy to announce that I have just finished the master CDs for the fifth and last Mudcat CD in the Mudcat Sampler CD Series.

The Masters -- an original set and a back up set - will be in the mail to Dick Greenhaus at CAMSCO Music by close of business tomorrow (PST) -- in separate packages.

MichaelR has been given the playlists and is scrambling to get the inserts and artwork all lined up pronto so that DIck will be able to ship for Xmas. It is very tight. We need every ounce of cooperation to make it happen.

The playlists will be published here in separate threads, one for each disk.

You must advise michaelr by PM if you have any preferences for how your name is listed, website or email or whatever, in the CD inserts. (Assuming you controbuted a song).

I am going back through to recover those comments you sent me and forwardthem on to him about preferences for listings.

If you would like to offer lyrics, liner note comments or nostalgia or background history about your tracks, you can do so in the thread for the correct CD. The playlist will be at the top of each thread, so just add a post for each song.

I will be catching up all the housekeeping over the rest of this week.

I believe that everyone who contributed has been represented in this CD series and I have gone over my collection records several times trying to make sure of this.

If you sent something in and were not included in any CD, it was by reason of error -- mine -- and not because you did not make a cut. I don't believe this happened to anyone but if it did, write me about it and I will see what can be done. But know that you wee not left out intentionally if so.

The final playlists had to be changed in a few cases because of copyrights on songs. Every song in the CD series has been checked for encumbrance and in several cases songwriters sought out and permission solicited and gotten. Most are singer-songwriter by Mudcatters.

Finally, there is no scheme or empirical standard used in the evolution of the playlists except my own juggling of many factors, including time, how different songs fit together, the recording quality of the original, and a number of other considerations which I melded together in sorting them.

Not all the tracks are professional quality recording. Some were done on kitchen tables with cassette recorders, some were done in professional studios. People have fretted with mer about whether their performance was good enough. I have tried to stress that the raw impact of the song and the singer -- not the polish -- has been the most important criteria for me. There are some tracks where the power of the song comes through more vividluy, in fact, for having been recorded in the field, with more life than it ever would have had in a pro shop. That's just the way it is. These are not "CDs-R-Us" recordings and you wouldn't want that kind for this purpose.

That said, I have tried as hard as I could to take the hisses and pops and field noises out of the tracks in order to bring out as well as I could the best of the song. I have not always succeeded, given the limitations of the time and technology and expertise I brought to bear, but I have done what I could and if it is not satisfactory I am wholly responsible.

Please see the individual threads for the playlists for the Orchid, Rose, Strawberry, Violet and Plum Disks.

There is no ordinality to the disks, which is why they were named that way. (But just as a comment I hope you pay close attenton to the beginnings of Orchid and the endings of Violet.)

Guess that's all. Sorry for such a long post! Can you tell I am stoked?

Regards,


A
'