These days, it doesn't take too much surfing to find all The Haywains albums by not-so-legal means on the internet, and if intangible mp3 files are all you're after, then don't mind us. Friends have asked "aren't you going to do something about that?" Well, in all honesty, No! After all this time, it’s no big deal. However, we do feel sorry for today's aspiring young bands who sometimes find their brand new material leaked on to the internet by unscrupulous promo recipients prior to release.

Our music comes from a time when bands spent a great deal of time on their artwork, so downloaded audio files are missing an important part of the complete package, something we believe that most fans really do prefer to have. Most of the band's artwork - whether it was t-shirts or record covers - could take many weeks at a time to design. 'Desktop publishing' wasn't around at the time, and many of the typefaces we wanted to use simply weren't available as letraset transfers or typeset fonts, which only added to a long and laborious process. For the front cover of 'Desperately Seeking Something', every individual letter was cut out from photocopied sheets and pasted together by hand, a lost art in today's computer-savvy world!

So, for those who still prefer the tangible artifact, the band’s new ‘A37 Revisited’ retrospective CD comes with extensive sleeve notes, photos poster artwork and badge. We also have limited quantities of the band’s original albums available on CD, while stocks last. Just go to the ‘buy stuff’ page. Once they're gone, it's file-sharing only I'm afraid!

Paul Towler.