(Yes, the Masons are in distress again.) This is an old one and not pleasant reading, but it isn’t well represented on the web any more. Back in 1997 when corporations were pretty much clueless about the web, London Records (the American counterpart to Decca) launched their spiffy new classical music website, complete with a chat page:
We’ve included this area in the new site in response to the many requests for an on-line discussion forum. We hope that you will submit your comments and thoughts through the miracle of technology for others to absorb. Check back frequently as we’ll be refreshing this area with new topics.
Things started slowly in July and August, when most of the readers’ comments were about how lousy the London Records website was:
I have always held Decca/London in the highest regards for their recording quality, but the utter nonsense of this website greatly diminishes that reputation. This was truly a waste of my time.
By the end of August visitors were losing patience with the lack of updates and responses from anyone connected to the record label:
SO LONDON RECORDS THIS SITE IS SHIT AND MEANINGLESS. WAKE UP YOU BORING OLD FART OF A RECORD COMPANY… DO YOU HEAR ME!!!!!!!!@#@#$@#$$#@%
This message stayed up on the webpage for everyone to see. Finally, in September, Sir Georg Solti, one of the label’s greatest recording stars, died. Not a word from the London Records website, who contendly continued to list his forthcoming tour dates. And the floodgates opened. A message signed by Albert Imperato, head of London’s parent company Polygram, appeared on the chat page:
Hi there, this is Al, head of Polygram USA. Do you losers really think we care about your complaints? Shit, all of the money you chuckleheads spend on this classical crap would hardly buy me a noseful of decent blow. We’ll update this site if and when we fucking well feel like it, and I can tell you right now that it won’t be soon enough for you little crybabies. Why don’t you just stroke your little cocks if that’s all you want. As for Sholti, big fucking deal! I met him once and he blew me off, the arrogant bastard. Who cares about him now that he’s dead? Nobody at the New York office, that’s who!
For the next two months the page became a gratuitously offensive haven where, as Al himself put it, “potential customers have been asking their innocent questions for weeks, while persons sporting the names of top Polygram USA officers have been answering them with foul language, racial and sexual abuse, bad spelling and bad grammar! And that this has been happening on a server owned by Polygram itself.”
Eventually, the entire London Records website was taken down… except for the chat page.
Of COURSE it’s for real, you drop of piss from an old queen’s underpants. Look at the fucking URL if you don’t believe me. This is actually the server owned by Polygram Records, and this is all that’s left of the official London Records page. I am Albert Imperato, and while my title is Vice President of Deutsche Grammophon in the U.S. I am the guy in charge of marketing. I was given this job by my godfather (don’t laugh or I’ll have your eyes in a shotglass) after my cousin Cenzo screwed me out of some of the more lucrative family business out west… If I don’t start getting some RESPETTO I’m going to wipe some Clifford Curzon master tapes, and I mean wipe them on my ass after a prolonged shit. So enough of the stupid questions, and if you don’t like it you can fuck a donkey for all I care!
The almost-complete page has been archived, which, as I said, is not pretty reading but a good way to kill time if you like your trainwrecks long, slow, and laden with filth and invective.
London Records’ classical branch was closed down soon afterward. Polygram’s old web addresses now point to Universal Music Group; their classical site, iClassics, has a link to Sir Georg Solti on its front page.
