Why is Thrown Down a leak vs other GOS songs?

[jeffs]

I am confused why "Thrown Down" is being called an official leak vs all of the earlier Gift of Screws demo songs out on the internet. Who even stole the GOS songs from Lindsey? How do these things get from the cave where he does his work out to the internet. There must be a precious few who are close enough to work with him and hear his work when he is recording and writing it is hard to imagine that LB wouldn't have either intentionally leaked GOS or he has some really bad acquantences!

Jeff

[Johnny Stew]

Ok... I'm going to be VERY careful while answering this question, in an attempt to not upset anyone.

I have been told... by more than one person, and by one person in particular, whom I trust to be a very reliable source... that Warner Bros' confidence in Lindsey was leaving a bit to be desired, so they decided to get more involved with 'Gift Of Screws,' than they had been on 'Out Of The Cradle.'

They periodically requested the working versions of each song, so they could see what shape the album was taking. And while they let Lindsey pretty much continue how he wanted to, they would weigh-in with their opinions... basically telling him which songs seemed to have the most potential, so he would know which to focus the bulk of his time on (which is why I assume some of these exist only in really rough demo form, while other tracks sound pretty dang close to finished).

I'm told they were also pressuring him into turning one of the tracks into a duet with Sarah MacLachlan, though I'm not sure which one.

At any rate... due to the fact that these working versions were floating around amongst the various Warner/Reprise execs, they eventually began to leak out to the fans. Some tracks in more than one form.

In the case of "Thrown Down"... it *is* an early frontrunner for the first single, so the track was submitted to the W/R execs, for them to have a listen.

In this day and age... with the relative ease of quickly taking a CD and ripping, then burning, a copy... it's probably not much trouble at all for some enterprising intern, or secretary, or whomever, to get copies of this stuff... and, of course, to then circulate it on the internet.




Johnny Stew

[brass_monkey]

Interesting stuff JS - thanks for the insight.

My money is still on TD being an "official" leak. It's apparently quite a common guerilla marketing tactic (not just in music, but all sorts of other areas). The theory being that if you leak a sample track, you ratchet up the pre-release hysteria among the fans. It's all nonsense of course, because the fans would be getting hysterical anyway.

[David]

Originally posted by jeffs
Who even stole the GOS songs from Lindsey? How do these things get from the cave where he does his work out to the internet. There must be a precious few who are close enough to work with him and hear his work when he is recording and writing it is hard to imagine that LB wouldn't have either intentionally leaked GOS or he has some really bad acquantences!

I'm sorry but I have to jump in here. The "Screws" tracks -- in fact, the "Screws" album, as it stood at one point (it went through a bunch of permutations) -- were not stolen from Lindsey. The album was sent to David Kahne before it was mastered. Kahne was head of a big record label & had many pals in the business, some of whom are well-known to all of us & who got copies of the album. There was a certain amount of excitement about the album among several producers & other artists; I think Lindsey still interests people like Matthew Sweet & others we've all heard about.

Reprise had a couple of changings of the guards, & Lindsey's work in progress didn't have quite the support it had previously with guys like Howie Klein. Lindsey aborted the project as a solo project, & the album just sort of continued to float downstream, pleasing some people. It was posted to the Web when it became final that it would never see the light of day as an official release. I think that's a lot different from being literally stolen---yes, it's a breach of copyright, etc. etc., but maybe Lindsey will understand 20 years from now that his fans didn't mean any harm. They just wanted to hear his long-awaited album. I think that probably almost all recording artists occasionally see their work distributed prematurely, particularly now that the Internet makes it so efficient & fast.

As for "Thrown Down" being a deliberate leak from the label, that seems really weird to me. If you wanted to stir up some interest online for a new album on your label, wouldn't you leak parts of things, or leak something a week or two or even three before the release? I can't imagine the thinking behind leaking something four or five months before the album release---enthusiasm among the casual listeners doesn't have that sort of shelf life, does it?

[Rumours]

I'm still trying to find out....

Where oh where has this song been leaked?????!!!! Help! Somebody leak it to me!!!

Stephanie

[BlueGrass]

If Sara Maclachlan was intended to do a duet with Lindsey, you think she would write a song with him or sing along on one of the leaked songs?

Which songs could you hear her on??