You give the music section a three-legged pony for Christmas, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt, two CDs off the Straight 's Top 50, and two tickets to a Live­Nation club show taking place in Vancouver within the next four weeks. Here's this week's winning whine.

 Dear Payback Time: I read Steve Newton's review of The Heavy Metal Box and Josh Lucas's review of The Brit Box with considerable interest, and found that you both share a misunderstanding as to one of the basic principles of how a compilation is assembled. It's not like making a mix tape at home. You can't just throw on whatever you want; you can only put on stuff you get permission to use–permission that comes from whoever holds the rights to the music in question, which is usually the artists who made the music. I'm sure the folks at Rhino would have loved to include AC/DC, Led Zep, and Radiohead on these comps, but that doesn't mean that they were able to. Led Zep have always been recalcitrant about licensing out their music for anything like compilations or soundtracks, so is it really so odd that they're not on The Heavy Metal Box ? And given Radiohead's nature, I can easily see them passing on being in a box set as well. Why would the artists in question decline to participate? Maybe they feel that to be on a compilation would be an admission of has-been status. Or perhaps they have a massive reissue project planned. At any rate, it seems unfair to lay the blame at the feet of Rhino, which is the way it comes across in both your reviews.

> David Poulter

John Lucas replies: Dearest David–Thanks for assuming that we know squat about how publishing and licensing work. It's that condescending tone that makes your letter truly insulting. The icing on the cake was calling me Josh. I suppose you'd like me to apologize for Poseidon while I'm at it? Anyhow, I can't speak for Steve, but as both a recording artist and a partner in an independent record label, I do possess a pubesworth of basic knowledge about the industry. I'm fully aware that the compilers of The Brit Box would have doubtless loved to include "Creep" or "Karma Police", but that they weren't able to acquire the rights. In fact, Rhino's John Hagelston says as much right in his introductory notes: "There's plenty of British music of the era (like Spice Girls) and even British alternative rock (like Bush) that's been omitted by choice. Unfortunately, there are also a handful of absences beyond our control–trust us, we like Slowdive, House of Love, and Radiohead as much as the next guy." So I stand behind what I wrote. Radiohead's absence is, as I said in my review, a glaring omission in the context of a project that purports to summarize British rock of a particular era. But you're right about one thing: it's not Rhino's fault any more than it's my fault that Stealth sucked so mightily.

David Poulter continues the reindeer-blowingly ignorant tradition of refusing to tell us which CDs he wants. Voice your impotent rage by snail mail or by sending an e-mail to payback@straight.com