The First and Last
Back in February, Universal Canada quickly determined that the two albums in question were “not in the system”. They wrote and asked me if I had “finished CDs” of the albums that I could send to them. And the front and back cover artwork. And, uh … could you copy some information off your vinyl versions of the records and send us that too.
Fortunately, The last MCA album (the one that had no name - or any other information - on the cover) was re-released, in Japan only, on CD, and I had ordered one in the nineties. I sent it to Universal. The first “LP” - the orange one featuring the hideous seventies plexiglas construction - was never ‘officially’ released on CD. So I sent them a bootleg made by a fan.
Universal wasn’t hoarding these albums in a vault somewhere, refusing (or simply neglecting) to make them available. No one at the company knew they existed. It is brutally ironic, and fundamentally sad, that it is against the law to copy and share this collection of songs that cannot currently be purchased anywhere, from anyone.