Hello Friends, 

The last month has been a very trying time for all of us in many ways.  I will not use this as a forum for September 11th's actions - but I would like to thank ALL of our friends around the world that have sent their blessing and support to all Americans impacted by the events of that day.  Following are the important news items:  

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------   

NEW WEBSITE DESIGN   
We have been working on a new website design and would like your comments.  We have not published it for public view yet, so please follow this link to the new design:  http://members.empowering.com/gwfran/fossil2/default.htm   Let me know if you have problems accessing the new site. 

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------   

FOSSIL MAIN UNIT FAILURE  
The main computer that we use for *all* Fossil Activities had a catastrophic hard drive failure putting the system out of order since the end of August.  We submitted the drive to a data recovery company who, upon opening the drive, discovered deep gouges in the head.  As a result, no data could be recovered.  Having said that, I want to reassure everyone that no essential data was lost and we have been able to fulfill every order since the drive failed.   We did lose some emails that had updated addresses so we would like to ask everyone that has moved recently (last six months) to send their information once again.   We are using a new software package for records and purchasing so we will be updating those records over the next few weeks.  We would like to thank Jeff Smoots for his programming efforts to pull this all together.   

----------------------------------------------------------------------    

ADVERTISING   
It's that time of year again!  We have advertising in Progression, Guitar 2001, 20th Century Guitar, and will be renewing Colossus this month.  As most of you know, one of the founding purposes of Fossil Records was to provide for less expensive ways of doing business.   As such, every six months we ask all of our members to contribute a small amount of money to cover the costs of advertising.  At this time, we are asking bands/groups/artists to contribute $10.   

This has, and will always be, a voluntary program.  Remember - there's strength in numbers!  If you are able to contribute, just send an email and we will set the debit against your account.  Do not send any money at this time.  

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------   

SUGGESTIONS   
As always, we are open to your suggestions.  Please address them to me and give me as much information with your suggestion as possible.   Thanks for taking the time to read through this and we hope you are well.   

Sincerely,   

Gary

A&R Associates: Jim Reindel (jimreindel@aol.com)
                           Jon Yarger
Network Coordinator: John Green
Programming:  Jeff Smoots

Sincerely,
Gary W. Franklin
Managing Partner
Fossil Records (Madison County, IL)
http://www.fossilrecords.net
gwfran@empowering.com