Revision as of 19:10, 31 July 2011

Hexagon_Sun_Official posted the following on WATMM on February 15, 2005, in response to the (subsequently cancelled) auction of original Old Tunes tapes on ebay by Prince Murat;

OK The reason it was jumped on was this: Warp and BOC have been in talks for a long while about
putting out a box set of old tracks from these tapes and others, with new packaging and art, to
be released sometime after the forthcoming record. The tapes were private comps given out to close
friends a few years ago, long before the band imagined there would be this kind of interest,
and long before the likes of Soulseek etc existed.
The tracks are out there now, nothing can be done about that, they've been circulating for a while
and fans have them, so the decision was taken to at least consider tidying them up and repackaging
them with decent exclusive artwork & more rarities. BOC never wanted these tracks presented this
way, mislabelled and as poor-quality MP3 files.
There's no 'hype', these comps were never listed on any old discogs as they were never intended
for mass release in the first place.
Now the intention is still to get round to scheduling a release of these tunes and other rare
comps, but unscrupulous people like 'prince murat' are obviously stealing the thunder of the
proposed releases, whilst trying to make a tidy profit in the process (a starting price of $799
speaks volumes about 'prince murat's true intentions. who is trying to profit from hype here?
if any money is going to be involved, surely the artist who wrote those tracks should be receiving
the royalties, and not this person? there's no difference between this kind of profiteering
and someone trying to sell a bootleg CDR of Beck's new album months prior to release.)
Anyway, now you know, we hope the intervention hasn't caused too much negative feeling,
after all the concern that Warp and BOC have is that basically it's going to spoil the
impact of a nice release that hopefully will be enjoyed by the fans.

-mark, hs

In 2011, posts appeared on the review page for the A Few Old Tunes release on discogs.com, claiming to be by recipients of the original cassette tapes from Mike and Marcus Sandison. [[1]]

"This might not be the strongest evidence of its 'authenticity', but a producer-friend of mine from the UK once received a copy directly from Mike & Marcus. At some point a girlfriend of his stole it and it made its way onto eBay via her new partner. I don't remember whether he ever got it back or not... since he was an old friend of the duo (and not one of us fanboys!) it didn't really matter to him that much if I recall correctly." - originalnlogax, Jan 18, 2011

To wind up the authenticity issues, yes, myself and another producer received old tunes one and 2 as christmas presents from Mike and Marcus, and we made copies of each one, so we had a cassette of both each.

The images that were seen on the now slightly legendary $900 Ebay auction were of my 1 original and a copy, with my handwriting in blue paint pen.

The stories vary from the wildy inaccurate to the half true, how the tapes wound up on EBAY.

Here`s what happened.

While living in the USA, I used to visit my then girlfriend,a known ex moderator of the WATMM forum, Joanna Balsamo, AKA octavekitten in south florida, and after breaking up with her, she agreed to send back my belongings I had left at her house including the 2 OLD TUNES cassettes. I never recieved the package.

I was told it was lost in the mail with no tracking or return address.

Having no way of the tapes ever being returned to sender with no tracking info etc, they strangely then found their way into the hands of her next live -in boyfriend, who, after being told she was leaving town without him, tried to auction them off on Ebay to get rid of `parts of a past life` or some other post break up catharsis.

Ms. Balsamo never re-appeared on WATMM forum to attempt to clear her name, and proceeded to reinvent herself a scenester in an unrelated music genre in another city. this procedure of bailing and reinvention is a repeating pattern with Ms. B as drama is a forte of hers according to numerous victims.

I was told the tapes that had been seen on ebay were copies of the originals and were not my property, but the large photographs that the auctioneer had posted in loving detail showing handwriting on the copied cassette, in blue paint pen proved this to be untrue.

The intervening party that got them off ebay was myself, and possibly BOC, I intervened simply out of respect for BOC having an item given in trust to someone ending up being ausctioned for an extortionate amount of money.

The guy in question to my knowledge, still has them.. I called him at work once, he said hed send them back, but never did.

Hopefully that will finally clear up the story. - datathief, Jul 12, 2011

Related threads

• regarding that ebay BOC old tunes tape (Internet Archive copy)

See Also

• A Few Old Tunes
• WATMM