The Shadows At The BBC - A Few Thoughts

[Arpeggio]

John Beecher's releases are always superb quality & he does like to take his time to get things to be absolutely the best quality possible. As well as the Shadows material...he also has a lot of Cliff / Shads tracks too. His email address at RollerCoaster is not a secret. Anyone can look it up on the Internet & get in touch with him. However....I won't post his personal email here. I do think that it would help if fans just sent a general message expressing their interest in the release of the Shadows BBC material. This is the way to contact RollerCoaster (direct from their own website):

http://www.rollercoasterrecords.com/inc ... ontact.php

Bests.....Rob

[rollercoaster]

Rob, what you say in your first post about the BBC wanting to release the Shadows material, but not pay Bernie Andrews is not quite correct ... as you know, they and EMI did originally want to release everything that existed by Cliff and The Shadows and they would have made a financial arrangement with me and Bernie ...but they couldn't reach agreement with the other parties (and you can guess who they were).

Prior to this, the BBC had agreed to pay Bernie for all his tapes, but when the day came when their commercial arm people were to bring the contracts and the cheque to him, they reneged on the agreement they had made. This made him very upset, as it was not a great deal of money, but he had agreed a deal and at the last minute they tried to cut it down further. That is when I acquired his tapes. They have taken years to catalogue and the job is still not complete because there are still many more unmarked tape reels to go through (which Bernie left to me when he died) but these are mostly off-air and later recordings.

I think we have catalogued most of the Shadows recordings (although some are missing because they were not preserved in the first place). They are nearly all super quality and ... yes ... of course we do plan to put a CD together. I have selected the available masters. But it is counter-productive to suggest to Shadows fans (in your later and last post) that they write to me, begging for such a release and explaining to me how important it is to get the tracks out, etc. I know that, but these projects do take time if we are to do them properly, and it is not the only thing taking up my time. And having to respond to dozens of these emails is not making any more time available. We have waited a long time for these and the Cliff recordings to be made available, that most people never knew existed until recently. So, please folks, try to be patient, we will get it done ... and you will enjoy the product.

[Arpeggio]

Thanks very much John for putting the record straight. Of course, it was never my intention that any potential 'inundation' of emails should in any way become a problem / burden for you. Rather...just to clear away any possible doubt that this would be a 'milestone' release with enormous potential - something which, sadly, EMI does seem to have lost sight of. How very, very sad for all to hear that someone reneging on an agreement caused the whole project to fold back in 2002. Of course I understand the need for patience & realise that these things take time. In my own case I have, in a way, been working on this project & trying to get material released for 15 years! Will I still be around in another 15 years?? I hope so....but nothing's that certain!! God speed you in your work John & thank you for all of the marvellous music that you put out on RollerCoaster - which is always (as I've said) 'Top Notch'. I'm sure that we all wish you every success with your efforts and I'm sure that a Shadows BBC sessions on RollerCoaster (whenever it appears) will be an enormous success.

Best wishes,

Rob

[Bill Bowley]

Rob,

Quietly watching and waiting here in Australia for the release (or should I say 'escape'!) of these tracks ....................wallet on standby..............

[hoffers]

I received my copy of the Belgian Shadows CDs at the weekend and finally played the offending article today and I have to say that the sound reproduction is a bit ropey with it would seem no effort to source the best 'private' versions around or to create a level mix. For example, track 2 is way louder than track 1 and so forth.
In fact the whole package looks cheap and nasty.
Hopefully John Beecher can provide us with a decent release someday.

Now where did I file my CD-R of the unreleased 1967 Japanese Shads concert that Columbia recorded?
Only kidding BG, don't send the heavies round.

Hoffs

[Iain Purdon]

they couldn't reach agreement with the other parties

Do we know if the sticking point was financial or artistic?
Iain

[Arpeggio]

Financial - affecting Bernie Andrews. The BBC didn't exactly cover themselves in glory here. They had a chance to recover some classic lost material and, basically, blew it.

[Martin Page]

I received my copy of the Belgian Shadows CDs at the weekend and finally played the offending article today and I have to say that the sound reproduction is a bit ropey with it would seem no effort to source the best 'private' versions around or to create a level mix. For example, track 2 is way louder than track 1 and so forth.
In fact the whole package looks cheap and nasty.
Hopefully John Beecher can provide us with a decent release someday.

Now where did I file my CD-R of the unreleased 1967 Japanese Shads concert that Columbia recorded?
Only kidding BG, don't send the heavies round.

Hoffs

Got mine this morning and I'm really enjoying it. It's great to hear the different versions of Jet Black, Driftin' & Nivram, etc...

Martin.

[Arpeggio]

Exactly Martin. Hoffers me old mate - such problems (sound quality etc) were only to be expected with a release of this nature. Nothing can compare (say) to the quality of your releases on Legacy Sounds - where everything is sourced from master tapes & the presentation / annotation etc exemplary. If the Shads at the BBC ever gains any kind of official release from top quality masters then it will be a very different story. Meanwhile (as 10 years have passed since the original project was aborted) such releases (insofar as the fans are concerned) are, I'm afraid, genuinely 'About As Good As It Gets'. I have enjoyed listening to this set. If anything official is ever released then I would (as we all would in all probability) buy it tomorrow.

Bests....Rob

[George Geddes]

Rob

I suspect that most of the people who would buy an official release of this sort of material already have most of the legally available recordings, and buy bootlegs out of frustration of the kind that you have expressed...

George