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"old" versus "new" Chris Rea's style

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"old" versus "new" Chris Rea's style

Post by Chris »

Hello,
In my opinion, there isn't that much difference between the "old" versus "new" Chris Rea's style, except that now he plays more mature, sublime and better refined music, if you will. A sort of music delivered straight from his heart and soul. Being in the limelight for almost 30 years has helped him better understand the aura. The blues was always in his blood. It was flowing all right, but it hat to be re-directed towards one goal: the blues pure.
His songs on the eleven CD albums are scattered around and one has to choose carefully his/her best according to his/her likings. Some of them, namely: "The American Way", "Angellina", "Steam Train Blues" or "Head Out on the Highway" just beg to be longer. They all should have a different ending, the faded away ending, going down gradually and with Chris's guitar playing on and on....
The "old" pieces were only partially blues (long solos, etc.) and "camouflaged blues", since his record company's executives constantly knew better than him. Chris realized this a long time ago and he knew that one day he would have to part with them to play only the kind of music he always wanted.
As far as his plans to be a part of the three member band, the Fire Flies, well I have my doubts whether it will work fine for him. Chris is very much an individualist and perfectionist. He must dominate with his voice and (yes!) his kind of music. Only he knows what kind of message he wants to get across. Being merely a member of the band he will not have a privilege to lead. Unless, he is tired of it all and wants to take a back seat, if only for a while, so to speak.
Best regards to everyone,
Chris
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Re: "old" versus "new" Chris Rea's style

Post by marcolino »

Chris wrote: As far as his plans to be a part of the three member band, the Fire Flies, well I have my doubts whether it will work fine for him. Chris is very much an individualist and perfectionist. He must dominate with his voice and (yes!) his kind of music. Only he knows what kind of message he wants to get across. Being merely a member of the band he will not have a privilege to lead. Unless, he is tired of it all and wants to take a back seat, if only for a while, so to speak.
Best regards to everyone,
Chris
Well in these years Chris has been working with a band (he works with the same musicians since the 90's) so I think they understand each other very well (I say this assuming that Fireflies members will be the same people with whom Chris has played until now). Obviously (as always in a band) there is a "brain" and some "arms", and Chris will be the brain since he is a composer and songwriter, not merely a singer and a player. In a certain way, I cannot even understand what will really change in his way to make music, after all it's the same people playing the same music, so we'd better wait hoping the best!
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Chris Rea in Warsaw; asked about his plans for the future...

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Thank you Marcolino, very much, for your post. To answer it, let me quote the Man, who yesterday (Tuesday, December 13) was in Warsaw.

Chris was asked about his further plans as far as the band, concerts, his illness etc. He visited Warsaw to promote his "Blue Guitars." He met Polish press journalists and was interviewed in a TV4 studio. The interview was taped (I don't know whether it was a long, in-depth interview, or just some loose questions) along with a few sample songs (perhaps from the play-back.) The program is to be aired this Saturday, Dec. 17, at 12:30, on TV4 channel and repeated twice, the following week, on Tuesday, December 20, and Friday, December 23, at 1:00 PM.
According to the press release Chris said (and I'm translating it back into English from the Polish text) that for him "recording music, and I swear it, is not work, but a sort of disease, or an addiction. What's worst, I cannot switch it off inside of me. I just don't know how to do it." Chris recalled that he went through - as he put it - "the biggest tortures in my life", when he stayed at the hospital. "I was bed ridden for a year, yet I constantly thought about (returning to) the music", he said. "Regrettably at it sounds, I couldn't create any music at all. I was hooked up to all sorts of machines; there were tubes sticking out of me everywhere, but I kept on thinking about music all the time", he recalled.
Upon completing the current project, Chris decided he has to radically change his life, to give himself more time to better recuperate and to be more with his family. "That's why I came up with this idea of creating a few member band" ("a small band", he said), the Fire Flies, which "could play a specific music and could do this without me." That way, he explained "I would be free to stay at home, between concerts, if only for three or four days. I could get off my medications for a few days, because that's what my doctor recommends. I have to keep on taking my medicine to switch off certain functions, but there are these terrible side effects. That's why I need brakes (intervals) in-between taking pills", said Rea.
"I'll be frank with you", said Chris, "when you're living without pancreas you never know when you would have go to the bathroom."
But he repeated, just as in previous interviews in other European capitals, that he is looking forward to his late winter/spring tour.
He stressed that "definitely, this will be my last big concert tour under my name: Chris Rea."

In another interview, posted on the web by one of the Polish Internet sites, Chris Rea attacked his critics by saying "who is to say what's (still) blues and what (already) isn't? " He said that he is very much against, as he put it "those gurus and professors who define where does blues begin and where it's no longer blues." Rea pointed out that he left out flamenco as a blues example, but he insisted: it's also blues. "All one needs to understand it, is the knowledge of the language (Spanish in this case.) Once you know what they are singing about, you know it's got to be blues, too! For me, Tchaikovsky is blues, even though it's Russian!", said Rea.

Chris will be back in Warsaw on March 17, 2006, playing the only concert in Poland, at the "Congress Hall" (Sala Kongresowa), located at the Stalinist-times "Palace of Culture and Science", in the city center.
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Re: Chris Rea in Warsaw; asked about his plans for the futur

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Chris wrote:Upon completing the current project, Chris decided he has to radically change his life, to give himself more time to better recuperate and to be more with his family. "That's why I came up with this idea of creating a few member band" ("a small band", he said), the Fire Flies, which "could play a specific music and could do this without me."
A band without Chris? :shock: Or am I wrong in understanding what he says?
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Re: Chris Rea in Warsaw; asked about his plans for the futur

Post by Bart »

Chris wrote:To answer it, let me quote the Man, who yesterday (Tuesday, December 13) was in Warsaw.
Chris wrote: He met Polish press journalists and was interviewed in a TV4 studio. The interview was taped (I don't know whether it was a long, in-depth interview, or just some loose questions) along with a few sample songs (perhaps from the play-back.) The program is to be aired this Saturday, Dec. 17, at 12:30, on TV4 channel and repeated twice, the following week, on Tuesday, December 20, and Friday, December 23, at 1:00 PM.
Chris wrote: According to the press release Chris said...
Chris wrote: In another interview, posted on the web by one of the Polish Internet sites...
Hello Chris;

Many thanks for this info.

Did you meet "The man" in Warsaw?

Do you have a link to a website where this program is announced (So I can add it to the news section on the main page) ?

And these 2 or 3 interviews / press release you talk about; do you have them from internet, or somewhere else. Although they are in Polish, perhaps I can still add them to the interview section (the press release will be in English, isn't it ?). Please let me know ! Thanks in advance !

marcolino wrote:A band without Chris? :shock: Or am I wrong in understanding what he says?
As far as I understood from reading and some conversations, Chris and his musicians will continue to make (sort of) the same music and a bit in the same way, only under the name "the fireflies". In this way they can plan for example small gigs for "the fireflies" and when Chris is not feeling well at that time, the other fireflies can still play without the audience really counting on Chris' appearance... At least that is what I thought is going to happen... Also the name "Chris Rea" will always be connected to some sort of "superstar" status, with all the expectations that everybody (fans, record company, etc.) have from a super star. Making a new start under a new name, allows him to get rid of some of those expectations. Therefore it is very clearly stated the LAST we'll ever hear from CHRIS-REA-the-superstar.

I hope I have been able to make myself a bit clear (it is sometimes very hard to put it in proper English!)
REAgards, Bart (webmaster)
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what Chris Rea said exactly....

Post by Chris »

To answer your post Marcolino:

Well, this is what Chris Rea exactly said in the interview, and I quote him:

"I had to find a way to avoid playing three concerts a week (per week.) Of cause, I can still take my medications which are switching off (killing the pain) the pain, but that's not the only problem. My doctor doesn't want me to take them (medicaments) constantly, because they're causing (serious, terrible) side effects. I had to, therefore, find a way to be able to play concerts, create music. Hence, the idea for a small band which would perform certain music, which would be able to work without me. So that, I could return home and stop taking medications for three, four days and then be capable of going back and playing concerts again. It's a new challenge for me", said Rea.
Perhaps, he used some different words, for instance: "my doctor was pretty much against me taking my medicine constantly", etc., since I've translated what he said, but the general idea, what he wanted to pass on (what kind of message he wanted to convey) to his fans and the general music audience alike, is there.

Best regards,
Chris
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Re: Chris Rea in Warsaw; asked about his plans for the futur

Post by Chris »

Bart wrote:Hello Chris;

Many thanks for this info.

Did you meet "The man" in Warsaw?

Do you have a link to a website where this program is announced (So I can add it to the news section on the main page) ?

And these 2 or 3 interviews / press release you talk about; do you have them from internet, or somewhere else. Although they are in Polish, perhaps I can still add them to the interview section (the press release will be in English, isn't it ?). Please let me know ! Thanks in advance !
Hello to you Bart,

No, I didn't have a chance to meet Chris in person, talk to him nor get his autograph in Warsaw.
There were several news items in Polish on his visit, though. Polish press treated him, as always, very gently. He was not criticized nor blamed for his mammoth 11 CD project, except that a few journalist have mentioned that "it's too heavy a load" and that the album is, perhaps, "a little bit too expensive for some (young) people." The running price for "Blue Guitars" at Polish record stores, including the big media centers, such as the "Saturn", "Media Markt" or the "Traffic", is about 55,00 to 60,00 Euro.
To get the original English-language statements I would have to go the press office at the Warner Music-Poland, and yet I'm not accredited as a journalist, you know.
I've read most of the Polish press material related to the Man and I intend to watch the TV4 over the weekend. The TV4 (should someone be interested), is available free on one of the satellites hanging over Europe (I don't know which one, maybe someone knows better and is more knowledgeable on this subject?)

The interview with Chris is to be broadcast this Saturday, December 17 at 12:30 on TV4

http://viptv4.interia.pl/news_vip?inf=695379

Best regards,
Chris

Here is yet another interesting piece on Chris's visit

Title: "Chris Rea Feels the Blues"

http://muzyka.interia.pl/info/infid/694672

(excerpts)

The Interia.pl has asked the British musician, who on March 17, 2006, will be playing a concert in Warsaw, about his definition of blues.

"For me, the rules set forward by the British or the America 'scholars', who claim that only and exclusively certain types of music one can call the blues, are just an utter (pure) nonsense!", said Rea. "Is it possible that these people, who lived earlier that 200 years, didn't have the blues? After all the Africans, who as slaves ended up in America, had certain sensitivities and emotions, and they converted their feelings into certain music. That's how the Mississippi blues was born", pointed our Chris. "But this doesn't at all mean, that if you are not a black man and are not a descendant of slaves, that you don't feel the blues. Quite often I'm wrangling with such questions put to me by the British or the America journalists, who are asking me, just like a teacher in school: what is the blues and what isn't?
But one cannot classify that way neither the music, painting nor - for that matter - any other form of art", said the British vocalist and guitarist.
For Chris Rea, "the blues is simply a bundle of feelings, which doesn't have to be depressive." Chris pointed out that "the careful ability to reproduce the feelings of sadness in music makes a blues man out of a musician. Miles Davis created after all one of the best blues records, the 'Kind of Blue.' The blues is changeable and that's how I wrote about it in the Blue Guitars book", said Rea to the Interia journalist.
"For me, one of the biggest blues men was (Peter) Tchaikovsky, and even though his music wasn't the Mississippi blues, but Russian, it was still the blues! And there is also the flamenco, which didn't find its place on the "Blue Guitars", because there was no space for it. The flamenco is the Spanish rhythm and blues (R&B.) It's the rhythm and the blues, especially when one understands what they singing about", said Rea.


(more to be published "soon", according to the Interia website)
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