MARCH NEWS

[hpooch]

Richard, Each CD being 80 minutes long!!....>That sounds terrific, but maybe Michele will find some hidden gems
in Australia, plus her visit to Capital Records & their vaults will unearth some other treasures by Matt.......
When Michele returns in June, maybe there will enough material to make it a 3-CD Boxed Set, but knowing your
expertise in making any of this material sound so wonderful, it would take a few more months to remaster any
new music by Matt, but I would be willing to wait till September if you can add another CD...Just Kidding!!
Will there be any duets by Matt & female singers in the "Rarer Monro"??

[Rmoore]

We know exactly whats in the Capitol vaults (recording wise any way - Hopeing that Michele can unearth some new pictures & paperwork) so there is nothing more likely to come from that trip.

Australia - Well you never know!

This release though is now pretty much set so we won't be going to 3 CD's this time

No duets on this occasion. There aren't many of sufficient quality anyway - The ones with June Marlow, Pet Clark and Cleo Laine are out there already of course. I think the only other releasable quality duet is with Rosemary Squires (on an old acetate) which we have saved for another time.

Matt did duet with many people, but these mainly took place on now lost TV shows.

Richard

[Sandra]

Come on gang.How about putting Richards name forward for a knighthood

[Rmoore]

I don't know about that - I'd be happy with a Grammy!

Richard

[Eman]

A Grammy for Richard, heck ya!! I'm all for that even Knighthood! Richard deserves it with all the great work he's done on the cd's. What would really be cool is if Michele unearths some video footage of old shows Matt guested on. So an added dvd to the spanking new Rarer Monro will be extra special!!

Question for you Richard, When Matt was touring in the Philippines, do you know if he guested on any of their variety shows?

[Rmoore]

No DVD this time i'm afraid as rights are difficult. But we do now at least know where a lot of material is - Licencing it however is more difficult. The Ed Sullivan shows for instance (Currently owned by Sofa entertainment) wanted an amount in the tens of thousands for Matt's appearences, totalling arouns about 7 to 8 minutes!

We pretty musch know what exists in the UK, USA, Canada, Netherlands and Spain (even though we can't actually get anybody from the spanish TV station to acknowledge us - we know the show exists!). Australia we know most now, and hopefully will know everything by the time Michele returns.

There doesn't seem to be anything left elsewhere. His Italian perfomances are gone for instance, and I established links to all of the Honk Kong archives (including what's left of the old Rediffusion company) and despite searches by all concerned there is nothing left.

It's likely that he did appear on shows in the Philippines - we don't always have contracts for overseas shows as they were often part of an overall tour package. Marcos even arranged for a live show in San Francisco to be filmed and preserved in the 'National Media Production Center' archives. However from what we have been able to work out, much of the NMPC archives were destroyed in the revolution. and despite many requests we have never been able to find out if even that recording survives - All we have a low quality VHS copy, but this may be all there is now. All of the NMPC archives that survive are apparently at the 'PIA' (Philippine Information Agency) - although i've never been able to get them to answer my e-mails - so much for giving information!
If you have any contacts in the Media over there Eman, it's always worth asking them to help!

[Eman]

Richard, unfortunately no, I don't have any contacts there. I wish I did, but I can tell you getting some sort of Philippine office to answer anything, is like finding a needle in the haystack!! It's always been a frustrating process for me also and I get a little irrate dealing with them sometimes.

[Rmoore]

Prompted by this, I have just e-maile the one person who responded and said they would look - back in NOVEMEBER 2010! - and didn't get back to me and asked once more.

Richard

[Eman]

Good luck to you Richard!!

[Sandra]

IS MICHELES 2014 MARCH NEWS THE LONGEST YET

GIVE YOURSELVES AN HOUR GUYS.WE WILL BE DOING SO SHORTLY

[maxine]

great news Richard ...Summer music sorted

[Marian]

Definitely Sandra, the longest ever! After reading about all Michele's adventures I'm surprised she is looking forward to another season of cruising, though I should think the good times more than make up for the scary times!
Great news about the DVD, it sounds very exciting.

[mariana44]

Oh my, what an astounding time Michele has had. Just sounds like magic, and amazingly described and photograhed my Michele.
The storm sounds horrendous--it was bad enough inland.

The news of the new dvd sounds very tantalising---looking forward to more news on that.

[john]

Thank You for the news Michele, what an exciting time you have had.
Great news about the dvd too, looking forward to hearing more about it.

[Rmoore]

Yes the DVD is exciting and incredibly frustrating at the same time - There is some great footage that we just can't license. On the upside we may have discovered a couple of shows thought to have been wiped - although we won't get our hopes too high until we actually get to see the footage. For instance the other day one company said they had footage of Matt singing 'Ave Maria' - Odd we thought. Not the sort of thing we were expecting to find at all. It turned out to be 'For Mama' from Pop Gear, something that we've known still existed for nearly 50 years!

I've never quite understood why companies would rather that footage sits in the vaults never to be seen again that come up with a sensible price to make the project viable, especially when DVD's no longer sell in massive quantities. Why not make some money out of your archive rather than none. It makes no business sense to me!