To wind up the authenticity issues, yes, myself and another producer received old tunes one and 2 as christmas presents from Mike and Marcus, and we made copies of each one, so we had a cassette of both each.

The images that were seen on the now slightly legendary $900 Ebay auction were of my 1 original and a copy, with my handwriting in blue paint pen.

The stories vary from the wildy inaccurate to the half true, how the tapes wound up on EBAY.

Here`s what happened.

While living in the USA, I used to visit my then girlfriend,a known ex moderator of the WATMM forum, Joanna Balsamo, AKA octavekitten in south florida, and after breaking up with her, she agreed to send back my belongings I had left at her house including the 2 OLD TUNES cassettes. I never recieved the package.

I was told it was lost in the mail with no tracking or return address.

Having no way of the tapes ever being returned to sender with no tracking info etc, they strangely then found their way into the hands of her next live -in boyfriend, who, after being told she was leaving town without him, tried to auction them off on Ebay to get rid of `parts of a past life` or some other post break up catharsis.

Ms. Balsamo never re-appeared on WATMM forum to attempt to clear her name, and proceeded to reinvent herself a scenester in an unrelated music genre in another city. this procedure of bailing and reinvention is a repeating pattern with Ms. B as drama is a forte of hers according to numerous victims.

I was told the tapes that had been seen on ebay were copies of the originals and were not my property, but the large photographs that the auctioneer had posted in loving detail showing handwriting on the copied cassette, in blue paint pen proved this to be untrue.

The intervening party that got them off ebay was myself, and possibly BOC, I intervened simply out of respect for BOC having an item given in trust to someone ending up being ausctioned for an extortionate amount of money.

The guy in question to my knowledge, still has them.. I called him at work once, he said hed send them back, but never did.

Hopefully that will finally clear up the story.

There is as much evidence as there is controversy as to whether 'A Few Old Tunes' (as well as the two other known volumes in the 'Old Tunes' series) is to be considered a legitimate BoC release or not - On the one hand we have samples contained within these tracks (as well as entire tracks) that would appear on subsequent releases in a different form. There is a pervading aesthetic to these tracks that is strikingly familiar and teleologically cogent with the known BoC discography that would follow.
On the other hand we have the fact that Mike, Marcus and the labels that harbour them have never mentioned this release or backed it's authenticity.

The general concensus among the BoC fanbase is that 'AFOT' is, indeed, authentic. There are just too many common samples and some of these unreleased tracks have popped up in some odd places; '5.9.78', for instance, appeared in a Nissan advert directed by Chris Cunningham. As well, 'P.C.' appeared in the online trailer for the BoC EP 'Trans Canada Highway'. The apparent outright usage of these tracks pretty much solidifies the authenticity of 'AFOT' for many people.

Presumably the 'Old Tunes' series of DIY cassette releases were compiled to be given out to friends, family and possibly small labels as a demo of sorts. As BoC gained in popularity it was inevitable that these old rarities would leak into the lawless realm of the Internet as low-quality mp3s.

There was one well-documented incident of these cassettes appearing for auction on eBay (with a starting bid placed at over $900 USD). The auction was quickly removed; presumably BoC or other Hexagon Sun members had some part in it's removal.

The bottom line is that if you want to hear this album, or any of the three 'Old Tunes' volumes for that matter, you're going to have to download it from P2P file sharers. Unless it were someday officially repressed, expecting to acquire a physical copy of these cassettes is a fool's errand.