Cabaret Cast Recording – as it happened
Today we consider the plight of the Olivier Award winning West End production of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club.
By way of a reminder, the 2021 London Cabaret Cast Recording was put on public sale online last weekend with a 16 December 2022 release date. Great, I thought. Except it suddenly vanished from online retailers. I shared the news, so did many others; I love the show.
As for how well the production team’s taking it, one member of the Kit Kat Club (ATG) staff took issue by trying to discredit me in a series of *now deleted* disingenuous Tweets stating it was time “to stop paying attention to theatre news leaked by bloggers in self serving pursuit of RTs/follows.”
A minor act of condescension which wouldn’t have bothered even a prickly little customer like me maybe five years ago. I mean … I’ve been staring at that quote for some time, trying to work out what precisely it is about it that has sent me to the brink of a hernia. It was later being compared to journalist Laura Kuenssberg, I think. Ha!
Still, each one of these botched attempts at dumbed down gravitas now turns me full Braveheart – see embargo-gate – and I very much hope you are with me.
Cut to this week where it landed on hundreds of HMV shelves. Maybe there was a legal issue but it was hastily pulled from sale.
What have these people been doing all week other than getting it amusingly wrong and reminding us that, for all their tactical social positioning in the course of flogging more tickets, the horse had bolted from the stable.
Next, Universal Music issued a DMCA notice on my Tweet for ‘Infringing Artwork Copyright.’
The notice stated: “In sending this notice we are seeking to ensure that infringing content is removed from the internet as quickly as possible through your cooperation.”
Sorry, but no. Nothing says Merry Christmas like a cease and desist, and the farcical merry-go-round keeps spinning. Either way, I couldn’t help snorting at the irony that the show is about the rise of the Third Reich.
Alas, I am not an obedient blogger.
Despite the work that has gone into crafting the fantastic social media profile of the show, this gatekeeping has left a nasty taste in my mouth. In any rational world you’d be able to state the obvious reality that a CD is in the shops.
Yet on it all rolls, in the hope that people won’t notice. Indeed, the task of noticing such menacing things has become almost a full-time job. In fact, as the country’s economic prospects get darker and grimmer, this particular costly mistake has been head-scratching.
As one prolific Tweeter based in the USA stated: ‘This is the Fyre Festival of cast album releases.’
The whole batshit saga was easily funnier than anything ATG has done since operating a “dynamic pricing” ticketing model that saw the cost of a seat to play Cock rise briefly to £400.
Anyway, it’s all just a matter of course now, until the 2021 London Cast of Cabaret, recorded live – is properly released on January 20 2023.
Auf wiedersehen!
A bientot!
Good night?
Cabaret runs until December 2023
*UPDATE* On the eighth day of Christmas ATG gave to you… a pre order link for the album.
