Did you think the Uni­corns saga could pos­si­bly con­tinue? Nei­ther did I. But thanks to the always-amazing Inter­net Archive, I dis­cov­ered that Alden Ginger’s New Music Canada site (which is also defunct) was once the All Makes Parts & Col­li­sion site. I know, I thought they were on ZeBOX too. Any­way, in addi­tion to con­clu­sively set­tling the amper­sand as the proper con­junc­tion, the site reveals some brand new song titles, includ­ing “id didnt know” and “Let’s Get Strong.” Chances are I already have these, but I’m anx­ious to apply the titles to two of the five still unti­tled AMP&C songs I have. But when the songs have been pulled from NMC and there are no track dura­tions listed, what do you do? You’re forced to email the given address. This isn’t The Uni­corns’ address, so it’s either sit­ting idly, going unchecked, or it will actu­ally allow me to reach Alden Ginger.

Now, email­ing some­one whose blis­ter­ingly accel­er­ated fame in 2004 led to the rumored break-up of his band is kind of a del­i­cate issue, espe­cially when you’re email­ing him about some very, very rare bootlegs that he prob­a­bly doesn’t want you to have. You have to be polite, to demon­strate that you are a true fan, to be non-obsessive, but to get your foot in the door for either (a) track dura­tions or (b) actual mp3s. Nei­ther of these out­comes are remotely likely. Still, I had to try:

Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 13:16:09 –0500
Sub­ject: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

hey, am i writ­ing an email to alden gin­ger? if so, i love all your stuff, the uni­corns stuff, and i really love your solo stuff too. that song “soon” that was hosted on new music canada is really bril­liant and beau­ti­ful i think, i put that on mix cds all the time. any­way i got this email address from an old amp&c site on new music canada, so i thought i’d send a note. what’s up with those songs on there, “id didn’t know,” “oh leopold,” and “let’s get strong”? i’d be really inter­ested to hear those, are you gonna host them some­where else ever?

any­way thanks tons and tons for all the music you’ve made. keep sweet.

–jay

I should note that “Zzzz” is the name of one of The Uni­corns’ side-projects, and that “keep sweet” is the sig­na­ture fre­quently used by The Uni­corns them­selves in forums and on t-shirts.

The site also lists a mail­ing address for “Pony Expert,” AMP&C’s pur­ported label, so of course a for­mal let­ter is in order:

March 3, 2005

Pony Expert
3872 Bar­clay Rd
Camp­bell River, BC
CANADA

Dear Pony Expert,

I would like infor­ma­tion about the band All Makes Parts & Col­li­sion, includ­ing how I may pur­chase some of their records. Thank you,

Justin

Await­ing replies.

All these sparse and fleet­ing Uni­corns gems are really moti­vat­ing me to do some care­ful archiv­ing of my own.