NicCartel

hmm interesting. I'll have to check mine. I know it has the o-card though.

That's the old version. Epic didn't re-release with the O-card because it was expensive to press, like 90cents per record or something (But they had us re-record a song, & re-shoot a video... The logic there is not sound). Major labels...sheesh.

ACS: thanks man! We certainly will, freebird live venue is the jam!

The difference between the two is just a full band (Epic's) version (drums, guitars, strings). If your copy doesn't have the epic records logo on it then that is the old version (also has the O-card - sleeve for the cd case)

We still have a few old version chroma cd's militia group sent us. Of course you can only buy them at our shows.

Ide buy that! The cats might protest it's release on twitter though. Hah.

I'm going to print the text of this thread in an upcoming book, titled "Hear! Say! - The Chroma Saga" hardbound in cat leather, limited to 500 copies, so you can keep it on the shelf next to your 20th anniversary copies of this album. Coming from Simon & Schuster in 2024.

Nice! Well let's hang again & shoot the shit! I'm in Atlanta also. We can grab a beer & preach about how old we are haha.

Nope. They're still open and kicking. They have some good shows come through there. I love it there because of how small it is. It's just a more personal experience. Granted I haven't been in a long time. I'm living up in Georgia now. Just north of Atlanta.

Mike Hauben: ahhh it's all good man. No worries!

Dude, take me back! great tour! Jack rabbits, holy hell that place always got so hot! they closed that place right?

I remember hanging out with Cartel in Jacksonville over at Jack Rabbits before the Epic reissue came out. I believe Permanent Me and The Summer Obsession were also on the bill. It was the last night of tour and it was a great time.

That being said I'm excited for Cartel's press And also ETR's. It'll be nice to have two versions.

OH YEEEEEAH

Exactly. See what I mean?! Someone get this man a cat .gif & a 1,000 internets.

If I don't correct you can I get a guestlist spot for the next Philly show? Please?

sold! PM me.

can it juggle too?

*gesture. Dammit you guys are ruthless! Gimme a break I drop out of college over 10yrs ago haha

Your a little behind on this. It was clear comms between us & ETR were lost along the way sometime last year. We as a band never discussed anything about ETR's project, for the info was never relayed to us or even followed up on. This is why it was such a surprise when it released the other day.

& why wouldn't we deserve free copies? Any record of ours pressed by other labels has always given the band free copies for the collection. It's just a nice jester. I'm not going to pay for my own music. The amount of heart we put into making it I think we deserve at least a copy for each member. But that's just me, the 1 of 5 guys who pulled his hair out for 3weeks while recording it.

As for as my knowledge we didn't ask him to bail on production. & our "tweets" were never intended to stir shit. Merely to let people know we had no part in its production & ours will come with "extras" for the 10yr. I really don't see how that stirs things up, actually yes I do. Misinterpretations of what we said somehow turned into "bashing ETR", or "telling people not to buy it". We never did any of that.

Regardless it's still cool to see it in vinyl form. I think ETR did a good job. I'm not mad at ETR one bit, he beat us to the punch fair & square.

You know whats really stupid? A band giving PERMISSION and their blessing for a label to do something.

Then the label spends THOUSANDS of dollars setting it up and pressing it, etc.

Then the band stirs shit, acting as if they didnt give the OK, and then not understanding why Ross/ETR couldn't just bail out on the project without losing thousands of dollars.

THEN THEY ASK FOR SOME FREE COPIES. Really? ETR's release isn't cool but you want some free copies?

Look, anyone with any business background, or just plain common sense, can understand why ETR couldn't just bail out on this halfway through the pressing, when the band's manager even apologized for not getting back to him.

Additionally, its completely legal and legit. Ross didn't EVEN HAVE TO reach out to the band, but he did out of respect. If you know anything about ETR's history, they don't press things if the band is not cool with it, ever. They've gotton permission from labels who own all the rights in the past, but turned the pressing down because the band wasn't giving approval. So the band can't even act as if they didn't give Ross the OK to begin with because ETR has never, ever done that to a band.

Great questions. We should certainly still have the masters. As far as format I have no idea man sorry, it was long time ago but I can try to find out as much info as possible. I'm not sure what ETR's whole process, I'm curious myself what the costs were to get the rights.

Out of curiosity, DO you actually have access to the masters (as has been stated here) *if* they even still exist? I assume that ETR would have been given everything they needed to work with by the label, or at least whatever they still had. The early 2000s were the most horribly disorganized times for this kind of thing, so many bands and labels have no idea whatever happened to their mixed audio, session reels/files, artwork... It's a mess.

What was the original master format anyhow?

-Original version of Save Us.....

Ha, possibly.

The demo version was actually a key higher than the original! But it was too high to sing for Will, not that he couldn't hit it, it just put a lot of strain on his voice.

Some brainstormed ideas we talked about include:

-re-mastered

-Un-released b-sides that never made it on chroma

-digital download for chroma

-old pics/videos

-a fucking Tshirt

-subliminal messages for cats

-limited edition color vinyl

-etc...

Just some of the things off the top of my head. This record means a lot to us so in turn we want to make it special for you guys. If all you want is record then by all means go buy ETR's version (assuming you like Cartel). point is it's our 10yr, it's a long time.

I wish we could have put this out sooner but well we just couldn't. As someone said earlier were just one of those poor bands with a bunch of 30yr olds. hah

I don't get what cartel thinks they can do that will be so awesome for their pressing of it. Only thing I could think of would be to bundle it with some stupid t-shirt that 95% of people wouldn't want anyways.

Hey Nic,

put Collider on Spotify. Don't fight the inevitable.

Haha. I'll talk to the guys about doing that. Might as well since it's been out a year.

Although I did not want to resort to posting screen caps , this matter has already become far more public than it should have.

I am not sure which member answers or checks the facebook account but someone saw it and responded based on this response which was AFTER the private message sent to will on FB.

I 100% agree that facebook is not a great way to get in touch with anyone especially a "public figure" sich as the singer of a popular band but no other public info for the band was available at the time and it was my first attempt at contact but that message did say "read" back in Feb 2013 so it was seen although he may not have bothered to take it seriously. Regardless, after that private message to will's personal account, I WAS able to get a response from the band on their band account which was how the initial contact with their manager STARTED. Often bands do not have any public info available on their site other than twitter or facebook band accounts so getting in touch with members or management direct is often difficult and starts like this before I finally get the right contact info to have a real conversation.

I then had a few back and fourth's via email with their manager and then a phone conversation in which the whole "tour variant" conversation happened and the band being very interested & excited in finally getting this pressed. After the phone convo, I then sent a follow up email which recapped all the details of what we planned to do as their manager requested (pressing info, which plant was pressing, cost per record, color variants etc....) I sent the same follow up email 3 times after that which my only response was "Hey Ross, sorry for the delay, hope to get back to you soon" which in no way seemed negative since the response came a month after the phone convo and I assumed he spoke with the band about it at that point. In the phone conversation it was also mentioned that I was told by Epic that another label was in line for the license and if I did not move forward in the next month or two then they would grant them the license. Once i mentioned that to their manager, who openly stated "we would love to get this pressed but simply do not know how to go about getting the license" I was then told to get the wheels in motion if another company was in line and he would get back to me in regards to the tour variant proposal.

Unless their manager refers to himself in the third person then someone else in the band answered this and sent me his contact info which was how we initially STARTED talking, prior to the phone conversation mentioned above

As of tuesday, I have been approached by a website so do an interview about this whole situation and give my side of the story. I may provide more screen caps of the emails and what not , if need be in that interview. I am scheduled to be interviewed tomorrow and hope to have it up by the weekend at some point.

In regards to Nic posting on here, that is VERY cool of you and wish that I had reached out to you in the first place as you seem to be rational and a good guy. In no way was i trying to do this behind your back and offered you as many copies at label cost in exchange for your support of the release in order to have the band make some money on the re-issue which most of my competitors do not even attempt to do. I am really sorry that all this drama has gone down with the release & thank you for writing and releasing one of the best pop punk albums of the 2000's

All good man, thank you. I believe you 100%, this is certainly a case of lost translation & we failed to follow up with it. I personally do not remember any of this & there are 100's of messages on our band Facebook of which we try to check from time to time but obviously don't get to them all. I agree it is hard to get in contact with the right people, & I probably would have done the same as you.

I will apologize on behalf of my party if we have cause any wrong doing to your label, it was never our intention. We were merely trying to help illuminate the situation at hand via twitter since we were caught off guard(well... More like completely forgot about it according to the screen caps. That clears it up). Our replies were never meant to create a shit storm or bash you guys.

Feel free to message me personally, I posted my email a page or two back. I certainly do not want any more drama to this mess, good luck with the interview. I'm sure we will be contacted also for "our side of the story" as well. Again it was just lost communication & you guys were in the legal right to do this.

you guys did a good job on the vinyl. I hope it sells well.

This whole thing is starting to feel like jerry springer. Cat .gif anyone? Hah

Take it easy

Nic

Hah. So funny.

Alright I'm off to go tend to some family time but I'll keep up with this completely side tracked cat .gif thread as best as I can. If anyone has any questions, opinions or cat .gif's they would like to share please feel free to email me:

[email protected]

Take care everyone.

Nic

are there any songs about cats, specifically?

Of course, if you play our records backwards you'll hear subliminal messages only cats will understand. They provide the necessary tools for your cats to raid your stash of catnip & canned tuna. We love cats.

Btw what's with the cats? That a forum thing? Or a 'this thread sucks ass so here's a cute cat .gif to get you by' thing?

Egg: I'm just dumbfounded as you about this. Someone was obviously briefed on this idea & didn't follow through with it &/or never considered it to be a serious possibility. I honestly think it was all just lost communication between both parties. I wish I had the answer.

Regardless, ETR didn't need our approval had we agreed to do it or not, we don't own the songs. I can tell you that we did not know this was 100% happening.

I agree that Facebook is also not the proper outlet to get things approved. 1/2 of us don't even actively use it.

thejesseb:

No I am not denying that there was any communication between our party & ETR at one point. According to what I heard, these comms were well over a year ago, I knew nothing about them. All I know is we wanted to release it ourselves to coincide with the 10yr as supposed to a 3rd party doing it.

I can't tell you how much I miss the early days of touring where money & politics weren't involved. The fun was pure & the adventure was all that mattered.

Dig deeper: hah. I deserved that. sorry man. thanks for the grammar editing.

BFB: I promise you I had no idea

It was being released. If we knew about this last year then we completely forgot about it or (obviously) never followed up. But this isn't something you just forget about. Again, it was flattering to see it out.

Next EP will be "hear! Say!"

Jbrana: I agree the approached method to notify fans that this is not our pressing was not ideal. Social media is a very dangerous thing, it can quickly be misinterpreted & turn on you.

We never bashed his label nor did we call for the bashing of ETR, we claimed that they were well within their right to do so & that it was released without our knowledge. The difference is It does not have the extras that we will be putting on it next year for the special 10yr anniversary.

I still would like a copy of ETR's chroma.

Hey guys this Nic from Cartel. Here to clear up any questions you guys may have. This isn't some official statement, just me needing to get it off my chest.

I've been monitoring all the "hear say" the past few days but haven't really gotten involved with this ordeal, frankly I hate that it has created all this drama. We always seem to gravitate towards drama. Hah.

I think this release just caught me, as well as the other guys, by suprise. We(the band) literally had no idea or heads up this was happening. Honestly I consider it a compliment that someone would want to release our pressings for us. We certainly dropped the ball on getting a chroma vinyl out. A lot of it was timing, legal & financial issues. We are an independent band now in the US so everything we make or sell literally puts food on our table.

We wanted (& still will of course) to make the 10yr anniversary vinyl for chroma very special, with a lot of extra goodies in the packaging. So when we saw this, it took a little bit out of us. It bummed me to see chroma vinyl out before we could add anything to it.

I don't hate ETR for pressing chroma, nor do I condone fans from buying it. could we potentially loose $ over it, yes probably, nothing were not used to in this industry. But I do wish communications between all parties (Cartel, ETR, epic) were better so we weren't caught so off guard. Not this "he said, she said". When company ink pressed 'the ransom' were very involved with them on the process. I wish the same would have been for ETR. Again ETR is well within their right to do this & I'm flattered for them actually doing it. I do feel we deserved to know when it was happening, not kept out of the loop (all good, I'm used to being out of the loop, at the end of the day we just show up to play & have a good time with all of you, as it's always been....except for that bubble thing(but who wouldn't pass up that opportunity. No regrets).

Chroma is our baby, so we defend it as such. It doesn't matter if we sold our souls to the industry, in the end we made Chroma for all of you. Thank you ETR for doing this, & thank you guys who have supported us.

Nic