BRUSSELS—A delivery driver confirmed today that the highly anticipated Anna Domino reissue of the 1984 classic East And West is currently stuck behind a stack of unclaimed packages in a sorting facility. The expanded release features the rare song 'Happy To Go.' However, the physical master tapes remain trapped in a bureaucratic labyrinth that dates back to the early eighties.
The Forty-Year Detour
The legendary Belgian label Les Disques du Crépuscule originally tried to mail the tapes in 1984. They used standard parcel post. They did not pay for tracking. This small mistake delayed the Anna Domino reissue by four decades. The package apparently got stuck behind a broken coffee machine in Brussels.
"We found the box under a pile of old tax forms," said Gordon Flense, Deputy Undersecretary for Things That Were Fine Before. "It had three cents of postage due. The postal service refused to release the tapes until we paid the fine. The fine accrued interest. We now owe the Belgian government four million dollars."
Lost in the Archives
Music historians are devastated by the shipping error. The avant-pop masterpiece defined the sound of downtown New York. Fans wanted to hear the unreleased track 'Happy To Go' on their modern turntables. Instead, the track is currently sitting next to a box of wet wool sweaters in a damp warehouse.
"We tried to bypass the postal system," said Marcus Bellweather, Domino Records' Senior VP of Archival Retrieval. "We sent a courier on a bicycle. He also got lost in Brussels. We have not seen him since Tuesday."
At press time, postal workers agreed to release the master tapes for the Anna Domino reissue only if the label traded them for three original copies of a Joy Division twelve-inch.
