Well the auctions have been and gone - with good news and bad news.
Auction 1 - promos, mix tapes and potential demo of His N Hers, Acrylic Afternoons and Someone Like The Moon.......sold for £170. I bid on this up to £150, but didnt see the value in going above that.
Auction 2 - the one we all wanted.....has been won, by.......... US! The bad news, it went for £340 (plus sellers premium). I was prepared to pay £300 before it got spotted by other members from Bar Italia - it was never going cheap, the bids were pretty much instant, and shot up to £260 in no time. I got outbid at £300, so I bid £340 (it was £320 at the time) - and won it.
Ill attatch the proof of auction victory in this post, and ill also post the invoice up later so you can all see the breakdown.
For those who are willing to contribute to this - please pm me, or add me on facebook - Ideally what I want is for us all to contribute equally, as it would be unfair for one person to say pay £50, and someone else only willing to pay £10. Ive never done something like this before, so im new to all this kind of approach, and would like people to make their suggestions known as to how to go about sorting this out. They will be digitally converted - also into Wav format and MP3, so we can have lossless audio for the audiogeeks out there, and also MP3 for them who just want to listen.
Please can we have communications as to who wants to contribute, and ill list on here who (unless you want to remain anonymous) you are and send you all something by way of a thank you (some Pulp things that arent out there yet - but will upload them to Ian's site in a few weeks)
I've been in contact with Scott throughout this, he deserves a lot of credit for spotting the auction and going through with such a huge bid. I think with the tax added (28%), that takes the total cost to £435. So 20 people chipping in 20 quid each and transferring to Scott should be doable?
I'm in. And yes, hats off to Scott for spotting this and making it happen.
Can I make a request of whoever ends up doing the digital transfer? (Kev?) It would be brilliant if this stuff could be shared in as 'untouched' a form as possible. I know that once you've got something like this on the computer, it's tempting to try and do a bit of 'restoration' - hiss reduction, EQ, whatever else. But I think there's always a danger of losing as much as you gain in that sort of process. No idea what condition these tapes are in or what quality they even were in the first place (hopefully quite decent as they're apparently not too far from the masters), but I'd much rather have them 'warts and all'.
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"Yes I saw her in the chip shop / so I said get yer top off"
If I'm doing them, I will certainly share the raw recordings, don't worry!
It sounds like you might have the better kit for capturing though, Study? You mentioned you had access to a professional tape machine... Mine is a Nakamichi cassette player, which I think is just a good-end home system. We should make sure we get the best out of them.
Furthermore, I have had the blessing from Nick for us to go ahead with all this too....so all is good! Kev / Sturdy, if you want to sort it between you both, and decide - thats cool, im not massively up on the state of equipment these days, so ill leave that for you two :)