Ellery -- You know I love you dearly and respect the snot out of you personally and musically. To the rest of you, I love Ellery dearly and respect the snot out of him, and, although we don't see each other as often as we used to, I'm pretty sure we're still pals, even withstanding our finding ourselves on two different sides of this issue. And I am shocked, not for any moral reason, but because you were the first avant-ish artist I personally knew with his own website and was the first I knew who was really far-sighted in net matters. Sorry I used your name without checking first. Bad move on my part. But it was based on the fact that some of your best music is issued in -- according to the packaging -- limited edition pressings of 1000 and that someone's best music should have a life after 1000 copies have been sold. Advances aside, you and I both know that the royalties on 1000 copies isn't really much in the way of eating money. I know I'm arguing about a matter of degrees. And I know you have a kid now and all that. As for people making/trading CDRs of live broadcasts, the only way you can avoid that is not to do these live broadcasts. Your feeling on this is not always shared -- I've had guys who are mutual friends of yours and mine ask me for copies of stuff like that, without being upset that stuff of the type exists of their performances. The generally cause of upset seems more often to be that they had to do their own scouring for a recording of a broadcast. Bootlegging a live non-boradcast show is a whole other issue, I agree. As for your not wanting me or anyone else to rip one of your tunes into a compilation, I'll cease. But I have done it in the past, and to good results. I've personally been responsible for the creation of ten active Eskelin consumers in my neighborhood (one of them even recently paid about 30 bucks for a copy of SETTING THE STANDARD at one of those collectable jazz sites). As for myself, the only one of your records for which I have not paid retail is JAZZ TRASH, which you personally gave me. And I have nearly everything you've done. As somebody who makes a certain amount of his dough off record and broadcast royalties (last year, my royalties schedule was about equal to my playing income, if my federal tax return tells me anything), I'm certainly not blind to certain economic realities of which you speak. But I'm also very well aware that the channels by which certain kinds of music get heard are severely limited. I've never heard any of your music on KLON, which purports to be all about playing new jazz on the radio. I've fared slightly better than you at KLON, but only slightly, and I manage to draw an audience in LA whose numbers increase, mainly without a whole lot of KLON listener types. Why? Largely because industrious people who like the music make CDs for their friends and include a cut or two of mine on 'em. I have a similar position with the music I like: My position was that receptive people should hear Ellery Eskelin, and, damn it, I'd play it for 'em. And I doubt that any label exec at the Hat/Art or Innova level thinks that people making comp CDs (the way we used to do with cassettes and we heard little bellyaching about) is jeopardizing sales, unless there was only one cut the record that anybody liked. If you really want to stem the tide of this sort of activity, maybe you could post your own mp3s on your website, which would do much to control what of yours is in the digital air. It takes effort to make an mp3, and Americans are so adverse to effort that if you offered up your choices, that would do much to stem the tide of what's out there. Bottom line contemporary reality: When radio is so limited, either people read about certain stuff, or an industrious fan who makes comp CDs for his buddies has made it possible for someone to hear one or two tracks and created some curiosity there. The magazines can give out all the props, but the easiest way for someone to decide if they want to buy some music -- at a time when music is so damn expensive -- is to hear some of it in the first place. Artists/listeners like you and me have less representation in the media than at any other time in the last thirty years (boy do I miss OPTION). If a cadre of passionate advocate-consumers want to change that by becoming the media in their own circle of friends, I can only see that as positive and something in which I am happy to participate. (Did all the circulation of song poem tapes curtail any kind of interest in Rodd? Hell, no. It created a groundswell when the stuff finally found its way into releasable form. Ardolino had been sending me tapes with that stuff included for years. I wasn't exactly unenthusiastic when more became available.) Unavoidable bottom line for us all: Self-digitizing is part of the landscape now and it's not going away. US radio airplay, which was never all that wide for certain stuff anyway, is even harder for some of us to come by than ever before. You work to a specialized audience, you're gonna cultivate a passionate listenership who are not going to be content to stay mute about what they love. They finally have the means by which they can be the media in their own community. And, from what I've seen at the shows we've played throughout the country, a big part of the audience is coming because someone else took the time and trouble to get them interested. After their interested, they tend to search out and buy the CDs. If certain members of the audience want to take upon themselves to broaden the audience, that is to be commended, especially if they're getting the message to people who otherwise don't know it exists. I can only be thankful. Love to you, Michelle, and Romi -- skip h