A few words from Ezio.
One of our first A&R men once said to us in a heavy cockney accent, “If you can’t dance, drive or fuck to it, it aint no fucking good.” Well we’ve just finished our fifth studio album and I have to tell you that two out of three aint bad, in fact they’re pretty fantastic. (You know I was never too interested in dancing).
As the songwriter I am never sure if what I come up with is any good. But reassured by the audience reaction to the new songs at gigs, we started work on the album “Ten Thousand Bars”.
We started by trying to play all together as a band to get a really strong core performance that could be worked on. This proved really hard and the results were uninspiring. This was a huge compromise; in that by the time the band was playing a song well enough, I had sung it 15 to 20 times and the best performance had been missed.
One of the problems is that as Lee (The Reverend Lee Russell, Producer) puts it “It’s like acting. Gigs are like theatre and records are like films.” What he means is that on a recording you are more exposed, less is more in a film the actor doesn’t have to project to the back of a room. Instead the mere raising of an eyebrow can carry more power. This may seem obvious to many of you. To a band that has done thousands of gigs, this realisation is nothing short of earth shattering.
And so the new approach began. This consisted of performing each song on my own. Just voice and guitar, following nothing, no click track, just me. For the first time in my recording career the song was king. It could be as big or as small as felt right. By the second song we were all convinced this was the right way to go. I recorded enough songs for nearly two albums. Some have been arranged into full on pop songs, some have remained completely exposed and others will be on another record. All the core performances are amongst the best I have ever done. Booga said on hearing the basic versions. “You could put them out now as an album, and it would be our best one. I’ve never heard you sing like that except at gigs.”
Since that point thousands of micro decisions have been made, but there have been no compromises. There is nothing on the record that does not deserve to be there. I have felt the discomfort that I’m sure people feel when holding a winning lottery ticket, uneasy at being responsible for something so valuable and yet so easily ruined.
I have never felt prouder of a record. It is easily my favourite. I hope you take some time to listen to it.
Oh yes er sorry about the dancing.
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