letter from James Cabooter to Stereokill.net
James Cabooter
on Sunday 5, 2009
Hi James Cabooter here, my ears have been burning. I can happily confirm this is nothing to do with me. First I heard about it was this morning thanks to a barrage of abusive emails.
I’ve been in contact with eBay, Sony and Imogen’s various contacts and rest assured the item is now off eBay.
Unfortunately our post is often intercepted by people and this is not the first time it has happened to a member of our staff.
I’ll be doing my best to find out who stole the disc and looking forward to actually hearing the album myself. I’d appreciate if you could spread the word to salvage my what remains of my reputation.
many thanks
James Cabooter
While no fan of the British tabloid/red top media myself, I’m saddened by how quickly people have rushed to judgement of Mr Cabooter & The Star on this issue – and suspect that much of this is based on rather naive ideas about how the music industry and media work. I expect James C gets a great many promotional cds sent to him, perhaps several hundred a week, and I really don’t think it’s his job to maintain high level security on all of these items – and it sounds like this item was stolen before it even got to him. It would be great if those people who slandered him were equally effusive and vociferous in their apologies.
This is precisely why I published Mr Cabooter’s reply. Actually Stereokill (to whom he addressed the letter) were suitably apologetic. For my part I was careful to stop short of passing judgement, and I will withhold it until the true facts are revealed, which surely Sony, eBay and the Daily Star will make sure of. His letter claims he’s not the first writer at the paper to whom this has happened; in which case it’s something the Royal Mail need to investigate as well. TD
Quote TMDR:- ..it’s something the Royal Mail need to investigate as well.
Absolutely.
This has been a lot of negative publicity but it is still publicity none the less and might alert a wider audience to the fact that Imogen is coming out with a new album. It might have created more interest. (I know that’s very controversial)
I hope that in the end this episode becomes a positive for Imogen. Stuff like this should be stamped on and all credit to her fans for getting on board and helping this item being taken down off ebay.
I’ve worked in places where a lot of saleable reviews stuff comes in, everything from toys worth a couple of quid to large pieces of equipment that cost as much as a small car. What happens after the review (if there is one) varies a lot, as does ‘acceptable practice’. It’s rarely OK to flog the stuff for personal gain – although one publication I know puts all the review books it gets into a large box, takes it to a local bookshop once a month and drinks the proceedings. One computer publication used to have an ‘OK to sell software, not hardware’ policy, which I never really understood. Some give review stuff away as prizes (the local radio station where I grew up did this. Got some weird records as a result).
But lots gets nicked. It gets lifted from pigeonholes, ‘borrowed’ from desks, pilfered from storerooms… and that always provides a cover of plausible deniability if the person doing the extraction really is the person in charge of the stuff.