The fragility of the singer

All change

The Soap opera continues to unfold; however in a whole new positive direction.

I can reveal that the voice of dissent in the whole Amaziah project was in fact the lead singer.

I don’t mention this in order to grumble or to cast affront, but to demonstrate that I can fully understand where he was coming from and did in fact have the deepest empathy for his concerns.

Unbeknown to me he had been very unhappy with the quality of his over vocal on the record. And I’m not surprised. The musicians had been given the lion’s share of the allotted recording time and poor old Derek got given what was left at the end. He had next to no time at all to belt out as best he could nine very lyrically intensive songs, with no chance really to go back and do it again if he wasn’t happy with what he had produced!

Now if any of the Brits reading this have been following the TV series ‘I’m in a rock & roll band’ you will be able to attest to the belief that all lead singers are Narcissistic egotistical dictators whose one aim in life is to be the centre of attention.

In reality most of us are insecure and terrified of finding ourselves stood stark bullock naked (musically speaking) in front of an audience baying for a sacrificial lamb.

You see, unlike all other band members we generally have nothing to hide behind and all we are able to offer is the natural un-processed sound of our vocal chords. As Roger Daltrey of The Who stated, you could have a multi million concert watched by hundreds of thousands people, tonnes and tonnes of high tech musical equipment all standing or falling on two small muscles that reside in the back of the singers throat.

For us there is no Marshall Amplification 23 foot high and coloured by a bank of Boss talent boosting affects pedals so wide that it covers two separate time zones.

There is no drum kit so vast that it has snow on the peak, or keyboard set up that required the largest furniture removal company in the western hemisphere to transport it.

The ‘band’ has one articulated truck after another to transport their mountains of ‘security blanket’ to and from the venue, allowing then the protection of ‘kit’ to hide behind.

For us singers, all we have to protect our dignity, apart from a cricket box, is an SM58 and those two small muscles that I mentioned.

One slight English head cold and the singer can be transported from virtuoso to train wreck in just a few short moments.

Have you any wonder I always play an instrument, I aint that brave.

So you see, when the singers performance isn’t ‘all that’, we can’t blame a bad batch of strings, or the incorrect temperature retuning the drums skins, or even just throw our hands up into the air and claim that we just had ‘an off night’..

When the singer is off key, the whole band falls off of the stage with him and it isn’t a pretty sight.

So having our insecure moments pressed into vinyl for all eternity to hear is not a happy place to be. And the horror of the prospect of having said moment re-mastered and distributed world wide is something I can fully understand and that feeling deep in the pit of your gut screams “Oh know, not again”.

However; following much discussion we all came to the conclusion that no matter how imperfect ‘Straight talker’ was, that it was a snapshot of a point in time. Not one of us wouldn’t like to go back and improve on something we had done or not done (I seriously had to have played the most boring box like bass lines ever written); however at the end of the day it was what it was.

Also, strange as it may seem, people have genuinely loved that album and it has brought pleasure to many.

So, if a new copy on CD can bring pleasure to a few more, then who are we to deny them this.

So once again, the whole project is back on and God willing steaming along like a locomotive.

One small snaggeto! The tapes and contracts appear to have disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic.

Now that could slow things down a bit.