Sorry, Robert, but I consider your deed on the borderline of unconscionability (long word, I know, but just maybe your library still has a dictionary in which you can look up the word). It's not just the fact that you STOLE a valuable work of art, but also that you're BRAGGING about it in this forum. Sad, sad, sad. Take the high road (aka White Train), my friend, and everyone's better off in the end.

I'm glad you found the CD, but you didn't steal it from the library, you stole it from every person who uses that library.

Burn a copy or two, and return it. Please.

Tim

The librarian went home and killed herself last night
Rob had taken everything...
Rob had taken everything...

oh, yeah - burn me one too!

Bad things may come to those who rip off libraries, though. Just a thought.

I second that thought! As a 20+ year veteran of used records stores, allow me to say that I and many of my colleagues in the business hold folks who steal cds & lps from public libraries with the highest degree of distain. Great music needs to be shared in as many different ways possible and not hoarded away. Libraries are wonderful places for people to get turned on to music they've never heard before.

Color me extremely unimpressed with your big score.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Replying to:

Bad things may come to those who rip off libraries, though. Just a thought.

So, by extension, that means it would have been perfectly acceptable for me to boost Canadian author Morley Callaghan's wonderful, but regrettably out-of-print memoir of expatriate Paris from my college library, claim it lost, and then pay the replacement cost so I don't have to pay the exorbitant prices it's fetching on the used book market?
That would have done a fundamental disservice to the people who might have loved and enjoyed the book in the future, and who might not be able to afford the $100-plus the book now sells for.
I'm sorry, but I can't subscribe to that.
But, ultimately, my opinion doesn't matter. This is a matter of personal conscience.

To all of those who replied, I never really thought about the fact that I was ripping people off (not the library itself) from the great music that is the dB's. Obviously, since I took the time to post here and that I actually visited this website in the first place, shows that I love the dB's and would like as many people as possible to hear them and love them too. I just finished burning a copy of Like This and will be returning the CD tomorrow. Even if they won't take it back (since its already been paid for), I will make sure that it gets donated to that library or another library.

I want to thank you all very much (especially Peter for his music).

Robert,
Thanks for returning the cd to the library. I think this was the right thing to do, and I'm hope everyone who posted about this will agree that it's a closed subject with the cd's return. Thanks for liking our music, and stay tuned to the message board for something interesting coming very soon.
Sincerely
Peter Holsapple

I think it's very admirable that you're returning the Like This CD to the library. I only wish that I lived in your town so I could check it out and burn myself a copy. I hate to admit it but I bought Like This way back in my poorer days and regretably sold it along with others to a used CD store because I was in need of cash at the time. I think I made a tape of it but can't find that tape now. Oh well, it's my loss because it was/is a truly great album.

P.S. I guess I'll keep checking the used bins and the public library in hopes that I'll track it down again someday. Or maybe it will be reissued like the beloved Guadalacanal Diary albums (2X4 and Walking in the Shadows...)

hey robert, good on you as they say. and good on all you other posters who said what you thought without being nasty or insulting. see? people listen, it works. and yeah, it's all about letting as many people hear the record as possible, not the valuation of the library's holdings.

now if i could only get hold of a cd copy...i have only vinyl and a funky bearsville cassette. where did you say your library was?

You did the right thing, man.
Good for you.

john micek

I'd like to say that those of us who aren't lucky enough to have a library containing a copy of this wonderful CD -

With a lot of patience, it can be bought for a reasonable price. I put notifys on every used record site I knew of, sat back and waited. It took me two years, but I was able to purchase the cd for $15.

I have a huge CD collection and a fair amount is out of print. I think the most I've ever paid was $20 and that was for an import.

The moral of the story is keep looking and wait for the right opportunity to purchase if you have no other source.

Thank you for making that return!

I must add that digitizing your LPs and tapes is possible with some cables from Radio Shack, shareware, and a USB interface. With a little practice, everyone here can preserve your record collection in the digital age.

As much as I don't want to elongate this thread any more, I also wanted to say, Good for you, Robert. When I was first becoming a huge music fan, age 12 or so, and of course had no money to buy records, the library's LP collection meant so much to me. I discovered Robert Johnson, a British Invasion comp, the Monty Python recordings, just to name a few. I'm so glad kids in your town will get a chance to stumble upon the dB's.

good boy, for returning the disc to the library.

As a little kid, I spent hours everyday at a university library listening room while my mom taught classes listening to the classic records from the 60's and 70's (the ones that weren't in my parent's collections already) and it was a wonderful way to gain a history lesson on music. Commercial radio in the early 80s (for all of it's bad points) was also somewhat cool, loose, staffed by music junkies and they did things like play a whole record every night at midnight. That stopped happening, and people complain about the "kids" not understanding good rock and roll anymore... That's one of the things I liked about Napster, I knew younger people who were digging through this treasure trove of musical history that gets mentioned in stuff they read, developing their tastes for the better. Should they have to pay $100 for a box set or original pressing just to get to hear Scott Walker or whoever? I wish someone would develop a streaming music archive library, where you can listen to anything ever done but not download it... Much like how opera and classical music should be made available to the people wihout you having to pay a king's ransom for status tickets, and people complain about their diminishing appreciation, too. More music, the business side will then be just as healthy.

I buy every copy of Like This I come across at a decent price, and I've given away quite a few to people who love it when I play it for them. I bought a bootleg burned disc of it in Athens to give to a bandmate who I knew would love it on the drive home, and the record store clerk warned me that it was a burned copy, and that he was put in an ethical delimma by it's presence, but everyone wanted it and it was a great disc and he would leave it up to the consumer's conscience. I told him I'd bought the record 3 times new and two of the cds when they were new at retail so I didn't think the band would mind. He then pointed out that "Lonely Is..." is a work of genius. By the way, that clerk is the leader of the wonderful band The Glands (Velocette/Capricorn/Bar None Records), and if you love the dB's you'll love them. The self-titled disc is a masterpeice!

I type too much!