Lads'n'lasses... C O M M U N I T Y ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Originally posted by Garymac > Originally posted by Spotnick> C'mon, everybody that followed the project since day 1 knows about those things

I joined these boards in Dec 03 , so I can assure you not everybody knows about these things , there is no mention of it on the link to purchase the disc well, Gary. then take your time to surf the Community forum then. all of this were discussed from the day 1. everything was put on the table for discussion. we had a majority agreement from the NOOLers and that´s why we went on. all the rules and issues were exposed for discussion and everybody knew about them. this wasn´t a suprise for the ones involved in the project.

Incidentaly , considering at one point the three principal characters involved , yourself , Mike and Alejo , were hoping to secure flight tickets as a result of the events myself and Tim were planning ( a situation on which I made my position very clear ) , then it would be reasonable for me to assume this was a project, whose intention at some point, would be makin money.

i don´t know how you came to this conclusion. if we were in for the money we wouldn´t ask you to pay for the flight tickets. we would have take the money out from the selling incomes (which is not the case). you´re pointing this as we forced you to pay for our flights. we never did that and we won´t. we thought about an event in which the more people involved in Community could participate, the better. you didn´t even know it was a Community event as you pointed out in the other forum. you made your position clear and so did we. so i don´t know why are you mentioning this here as the other people don´t know what the hell we were talking in private. from your words people could read we´re evil creatures that want you to organize an event for us and even pay for our flight tickets, putting your money balance in danger. if it weren´t for the political situation and the hard rules to get in the States, we´d do it there. in fact, Mike already did it, just without the guest apearances and without the people involved in Community. maybe he´d do it some day. and maybe we´d be there. who knows? crazier things happened!

If you recall , the only way I wanted our live events to work ,( hence the refusal of the flight tickets ), was the plan to put any profits back to those involved at a musician / artist level or to re-invest in a bigger / better event

if you´d pay more attention to the forums (which you obviously didn´t) you´d know that our intention IF there were any profits from the Community sales, was to re invest the money in a Community 2 without the need to put the money from our pockets (read "our" as Mike pocket only). because Mike did take the risk to invest money without knowing the results. and those are FACTS not WORDS. and it was a high quantity of money. he risked that with no more intention that to put the best product possible out, and to reinvest the profits into a new project. that´s why the artists are not getting paid (remember i´m an artist too and i´m in the albums and i´m not getting paid either, and not only i made 5 covers i also had to co-organize the whole project for more than 1 year). besides, we didn´t put a gun in the artists´ heads to sign the contracts so you´re questioning something that was agreed between both parts. that what´s this project was about: to edit a tribute from the fans to the fans, a massive and democratic project that we all were proud about, from the producer until the last of the NOOLers. everyone collaborating in any way should feel this was a great achievement, even voting once. the only one that´s different from the rest is Mike, just because he was the MAIN reason because this project came to life, which is ALWAYS the main issue: the money to do it. and he did it. and you´re questioning it? is not a good thing to do IMHO. are we amateurs, naive, did we make mistakes? of course! we knew that could happen as we don´t have experience in doind this. but we did it anyway and we put a lot of effort into it. so AT LEAST you could give us that, the benefit of the doubt. you still don´t feel you want to get involved with SUCH a project? ok, don´t get involved, sell the album to Shug, or whatever. nobody´s forcing you. i don´t want to mess with your ideals. because WE KNOW what ideals are about. this was an ideal project, an utopy, a crazy idea and we got by. and as we don´t want anyone to mess with our ideals we don´t want to mess with yours.

Originally posted by Garymac I joined these boards in Dec 03 , so I can assure you not everybody knows about these things , there is no mention of it on the link to purchase the disc Incidentaly , considering at one point the three principal characters involved , yourself , Mike and Alejo , were hoping to secure flight tickets as a result of the events myself and Tim were planning ( a situation on which I made my position very clear ) , then it would be reasonable for me to assume this was a project, whose intention at some point, would be makin money. If you recall , the only way I wanted our live events to work ,( hence the refusal of the flight tickets ), was the plan to put any profits back to those involved at a musician / artist level or to re-invest in a bigger / better event

Why are you bringing this thing in exactly? The flight thing is a misunderstanding, I never asked anybody to pay for my ticket, I was told that it could pay for my ticket... we couldn't believe it, but we all understood the wrong thing, end of debate, it was a known fact that none of us could make it from the start... no hard feelings, but I don't see your point in brining this into the discussion!

THAT has gotta be the single most stupid reason I have ever read for NOT payin a musician , the subtext of which seems to be , we'll keep all the money, we dont want to upset them with a small amount , and surely the e.p. is an even easier thing to split ?

Who said we keep any money? Everybody knows that IF (and there is a big if) we ever do any money out of this, it will be used for Community 2 so we can actually pay the artits participating in the 2nd album, which is something you can find somewhere if you read the Community forum, but there is a huge chance that we (we being only Mike, since Alejo and I only invested time in this project) might even lose money out of this... we will have 500 copies printed of both album and ep, there is no garantee we'll sell all those...

In fact, there has been *ONE* artist out of 20 that asked about money in this whole project, only one... it wasn't the point of this. I won't make a dime with this but my reward will be to have a copy of a profesionnally produced album in my hands with my name written on it, that's it.

Essentialy , the artists involved are gonna earn the same amount of cash as they would if this was a free download ? Or available as a ' boot ' ( that the right term ? in this case ) Like I say, that is not a scenario I would ever support

Actually, artists are paid by one free copy of the album, which is probably a better value that what they would get by sharing any "profits", although this is a non-profit project and will remain this way unless we manage to sell 500 copies of each item, which is the contract every band signed if I remember right... as I didn't participate in contracts and other stuff relating to the money, I have no idea...

Everybody is learning in this process, we're sorry about the delay but there is nothing we can do about it, if you can't stand a 3 days delay, send me a mail, I'll personally send you money to refund your money, because I'm a little tired of all this talk and critic about the project.

P/S: Tim, I'm not sure your union has rights about an album produced in the United States, you'd have to check with the RIAA about that...

Garymac.

you refund is on the way. why speak out now? you act if you been following this project from the beginning. complain all you want, you entitle to. besides, you did even buy an album until you started planning your manchester event.

The only issue I have with what you said is implying we were doing this for profit. that was never the case. We just wanted to do something interesting to pay tribute to our favorite band. Maybe I was a bit Naive to think it wouldn't be that hard to do.

All I wanted to do i put out a nice product, not a cdr with a inkject printed label. I worked very hard to make sure every step we took was legal and fair to the musician involved. I am not a record label, i never said i was. Licensing, production and any other cost came out of my pocket. I knew if we actually did this project, that i would have to be prepared to pay. Even with the pre sales, i still had to pay a large sum of money. There is no gaurantee that i will make my money back. But that was ok with me, I knew the risk.

As far the flight tickets, it was offered to us from someone on your side. I thought i was a generous offer. I was surprise it was offered. But I never asked for it. and I never really thought it was a real offer in the first place. So why do you have to throw that at our face?

Seriously, if you actually followed this thing from the beginning, we tried to be as transparent as possible to everyone, just go the community forum.

guess i'm a little late with my response.

But like nic says, the whole flight things was just a misunderstanding. So no one is really at fault for this.

the message i got today

Community should be delivered today (june 4) or monday.

CommunityiEP will be here on wednesday.

Ladies & Gentlemen......

It's here!

aren´t they lovely?

I hope Mike doesn't kill us for posting his pictures, but he's offline playing to Madden football :p

Ah, I guess the picture is IP limited.. wait I'll upload them on here..

I was about to give up hope that they were going to be delivered to me yesterday. So just when i was packing up to leave, they delivered!

my first reaction... "About F*ckin' Time!"

So you i get online, and NOOL is offline, so i could not share my excitement. Luckily, Jeff was online!

I took a cd out of the box, opened it, popped it into the stereo. Ahhhh! what relief :D

So the EP should be here on wednesday, and preorder well be out the door by thurday. :D