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Eagle Bytes: January, 2006

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Eagle Bytes

The Electronic Newsletter of Prometheus Music
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Volume 9 January 2006 Issue 1
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Hi, again!

Welcome to the "Pre-order Traveller" issue of Eagle Bytes, the newsletter of Prometheus Music.

In this issue:

1. Traveller Pre-order Announcement
2. Other Fun Stuff
- Divine Intervention mentioned in "Off the Planet" (Philip Hayward)
- Anyone speak Estonian?

1. TRAVELLER PRE-ORDER ANNOUNCEMENT
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It's not a Prometheus release, but I expect many of you will be interested in this. ;-)

THE QUICK SCOOP:
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"I remember reading once about some famous writer (my memory says
Kipling) burning his unpublished early works to prevent anyone from
ever taking them public after his death. While the story is probably
apocryphal, the sentiment certainly rings true."

-- excerpt from Julia Ecklar's CD introduction

Song List:

The Traveller * Song for Petiron * Tribbles * The Spaceman's Prayer
A Last Evening's Dream * Gambler's Lament * Eulogy * The Light That Died
Homecoming * The Purple and Orange Conspiracy * Brekke's Lament

When Love is Lost * He's Dead, Jim * Song to a Stranded Warrior: A
Memorial * Christmastime in Sector 5 * Ballad to a Spaceman
Traveller, Part II: Thoughts of a Homeless Alien

Julia Ecklar's first tape, "The Traveller", is now available for CD pre-order!

Recorded 25 years ago, this CD comprises 17 of Julia's rarest and earliest works, recorded in her teenage years. We're reprinting this one by popular request from Julia's most fervent fans.

Each CD also includes a copy of the Traveller Songbook viewable on your computer in PDF format, as well as a new introduction by Julia.

Upon pre-ordering Traveller, you will receive a download URL for the complete album and songbook (PDF) within 24 hours. Physical CDs will ship by early March - probably sooner -

The pre-order price is $13.97, plus $2.75 shipping. To pre-order, click:

http://www.prometheus-music.com/pre-order/traveller.html

Or by sending a check for $16.72 to:

Eli Goldberg
333 Franklin St. #5
Mountain View CA 94041

** With your pre-order, you're welcome to additional copies of any Prometheus CDs you've been craving, at the also-discounted price of $14 apiece with free shipping. There's no special shopping cart for these discounts - just include the extra money, and let us know what you want. **

You can view our full catalog at: http://www.prometheus-music.com/catalog.html

THE GORY DETAILS:
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For those who don't know about Traveler, it was Julia's first tape in 1981. Clyde Jones recorded it back when she was not only not the rich and famous filker we know of today (LOL ;-), but wasn't even old enough to own an automobile, let alone buy alcohol.

Julia allowed Off Centaur to duplicate it, but they quickly put it out of print. Only about 100-150 copies were ever made. It's so rare that I've never even seen one.

Fast forward to a year ago. On Ebay, Harold Stein noticed that a Traveller cassette sold for over $225, followed by an enterprising seller hand-making pirate copies for sale (we told them to stop). Other copies have sold for $100+. So we took that as a hint that some folks *really* wanted a copy of this album, and tracked down the masters through Clyde Jones.

Scott Dorsey (Kludge Audio) took care of the media transfer, enabling us to work with them.

Dr. Adam C. Puche oversaw the audio cleanup and master preparation for this project - the masters were 25 years old, after all! He's meticulous, smart, and what he's accomplished is pretty amazing. You can download sample MP3s from The Traveller at:

http://www.prometheus-music.com/eb/

It gets better. Twenty-five years ago, Julia also self-published a songbook for the Traveller, which is an even rarer filk collectible. Julia personally scanned this songbook, and I've spent several days adapting those scans into a printable PDF. After months tracking down every single songbook illustrator to obtain their permission - as well as Joe Ellis, who transcribed the songs - we are proud to be including a printable copy of this PDF on every CD.

I'm very appreciative that Julia is good-humored and self-effacing enough to allow Traveller to be duplicated in this largely uncut form. The songbook includes dozens of pages of teenage commentary by Julia, some of which would be brutally embarrassing today. The only track we left off was "Southern Land" - we couldn't track down the author, Kris Seng.

If you're a serious Julia Ecklar fan or collector, you'll want this. We're only doing one printing. When these are gone, they're gone. And they won't be for sale on our website, either.

As you know, I value your trust, so I want to be clear: this is less a reprint of lost Beatles recordings than it is a cleaned-up copy of John Lennon's home-taped recordings as a 15 year old. Nobody was a professional when they worked on this tape 25 years ago.

We didn't break the bank on the project like Divine Intervention -- like the tape itself, this CD has overwhelmingly been a volunteer project. As a result, every penny of profit will go towards the Julia Ecklar Production Fund. I think it can raise enough to cover about 25% of the cost of a new studio CD.

Thus, we are very happy to present this album as a carefully restored rarity of musical fan-fiction, and we hope you'll enjoy it in the same spirit it was created.

2. OTHER FUN STUFF
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* Divine Intervention mentioned in "Off the Planet" (Philip Hayward)

Philip Hayward's book "Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema" dedicates a paragraph to filking and to Julia Ecklar's Divine Intervention CD on page 20.

If you have a Google account, you can view the page by searching for "ecklar divine" at http://print.google.com.

* Anyone speak Estonian? ;-)

If so, wanna check out the December 31, 2005 filk entry on http://www.tehnokratt.net/ and let us know what it says. ;-)

Yours,

Eli Goldberg
Proprietor, Prometheus Music