Just a heads up Derek. There are two new albums on iTunes featuring the material previously published under the Acoustic Moods titles which you refer to on your website. [I won't go into detail here as people can go to your site to read the whole sorry tale - http://derekdallenger.com/]

Just thought I would let you know. I am sure 'Great Tunes Played On The Chapman Stick - by Derek Dallenger', would not be a title you would choose for an album!!

I am just sad that I contacted Apple about the ongoing situation with the Acoustic Moods material and now they put more [unsolicited material I presume] up for sale.

Hi Andrew and thanks very much for the alert.

I wonder how many times and for how many years it is possible for an unscrupulous entrepeneur to re-package and sell the same can of beans ? ("Can of Beans", "Beans in Can", "Tin of Beans", "Beans with free can ! " etc. etc.)

"Are these legit ?"

NO, they are not. The rights of any of these companies to distribute these recordings (which were made sometime around 1994/5) ceased to exist with the verbal annullment of my contract with Satellite Music Ltd in 1997 by Ray Dorset (Mungo Jerry) who was a director of that company.

This singularly insidious piece of marketing bears all the characteristic and extremely dubious hallmarks of Eliot Cohen and his various companies, of which AMI and the label Mbop Direct are just a couple among many. It is interesting that the release date of Dec '09 happens to coincide with the exact time at which he was strenuously denying to me and others that the recordings had been at all profitable and it is also therefore rather strange that he should go to such lengths to market and re-market them in this way.

It is also, I suspect, a very strong possibility that he has done this to all the other musicians and artists with whom he has dealt over the years, a number of these were until last year pursuing him in various ways to try to secure payments of one kind or another from him upon which he appears to have universally and wilfully defaulted. Some of these are or were quite major artists with a lot more at stake to lose than me.

The current situation for me and others like me has been allowed to develop owing to several factors : 1) the extremely poor directorship of Mungo who was quite obviously totally incompetent, 2) the control of Mungo's Royalty income by Cohen which meant that Mungo's income would cease or be delayed should he fail to turn a blind eye when required to do so by Cohen and 3) the utterly reprehensible conduct of Cohen himself.

As for this latest travesty, well, I've glanced about on the net and these albums are indeed the very same and somewhat superannuated 'Can of Beans' under a new title, sometimes even advertised on the same web page as the old 'Can of Beans'. The pages in question can be seen here and on other related pages :

http://www.tradebit.com/mp3-artist/3137 ... -dallenger

http://www.tradebit.com/filedetail.php/ ... -played-on

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/great- ... d372286629

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/great- ... d372252511

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they were on other sites as well, if indeed there is anyone left who is prepared to do business with Eliot Cohen - I shan't be searching for them myself as I find the whole matter rather distasteful and there is, apparently, little or nothing that I can do about them anyway.

As you say, the whole story of how this came about can be viewed on my website, here :

http://derekdallenger.com/mungo-jerry-acoustic-moods/

and here : http://derekdallenger.com/mungo-jerry-a ... ods-part2/

...and also as you rightly say, these are not titles I would have chosen - nor was "Acoustic Moods", come to that.

Apart from remarking that I have never at any time received a single penny of income from these recordings in any of their various forms from any of Eliot Cohen's various companies, ( and that I certainly did not write the track "I Will" which is of course a well-known Chinese song,) there is very little else I can say on the whole subject - except, perhaps to emphasise the lamentably few positive aspects that I can think of : namely,

1) that owing to the shift in trends in the way in which music generally is distributed and marketed nowadays, hopefully pirhanas like Eliot Cohen will be facing extinction, and

2) that at least he mentioned the correct name of the instrument this time and didn't try to sell it as guitar music.

I wonder when "Can of Beans 3.0" et seq. will appear on iTunes...?

I was afraid of that.

I just hope that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs arrive on their doorstep one day, turn them upside down and give them a good shake.

Haven't got an address for Mr Cohen have you .......?

Hmm, well I'm quite sure that somebody there will know about them, and very probably find them every bit as irritating and frustrating to deal with as everybody else does... perhaps even more so.

Actually, yes... I have several, including his private address... (thoughtfully provided to me by Mungo...) pm me if you want it and I'll gladly send it over...