Matt Good To Dole Out The Goodies

When you can't beat 'em, figure out new ways to beat 'em.

Or at least that's how Matt Good intends to fight electronic piracy with the release of the Matthew Good Band's new album The Audio Of Being (out Oct. 30). With the forthcoming record, Good will be including a limited edition lyric book in the first 50,000 copies and will also be packaging the album in three different colours so you can choose from black, grey or white.

"I always find the funniest story to do with that is the story of [The Who's] Live At Leeds. Which of course is Pete Townsend finding out there were live bootlegs of The Who floating around so he said 'Fuck this, let's make one and we'll make money.' Which is the reason why this album is coming out in three different colours," says Good. "The first 50,000 copies have a lyric book. If you don't get one, I'll start selling it in five months and you can get one then. The thing about it is people love buying stuff, so you know what? If you want to go burn it people are going to go burn it and I'm not going to be able to stop them. But instead of just giving them one thing I'm going to give them this pinwheel of stuff that they can go out and buy so I can make more money."

Good has been very vocal in the past about his disapproval of MP3/electronic file trading and believes that providing something extra will help staunch the bleeding that has reduced record sales. Still, he anticipates that MGB will have lower sales with this album no matter how many bells and whistles he adds to his CD package.

"Look at the sales of Our Lady Peace. Now don't get me wrong, with Clumsy you go diamond on [one million sold]. Two records later you should not be selling 150,000 copies. There's no way. The only way, the only thing that can justify this drop in sales is that people are burning things. I mean we fully expect to sell less records with this record than with Beautiful Midnight. It's a given."

Tonight Matt Good's book tour for At Last There Is Nothing Left To Say continues at the Barcode in Toronto, Ontario. The event starts at 7 p.m. and for $20 you get a copy of the book and a chance to hear Matt talk.