Can you be at Electric Ladyland at 2pm? James is doing a few songs for RXP

That one line from Jim had me canceling most of my Tuesday afternoon and running down 6th avenue towards 8th.

“Hi, I’m here for the James Taylor thing,” I said to the receptionist five minutes after two o’clock.

“That is on Thursday. Today is Tuesday,” she replied.

In my excitement to meet James Taylor I hadn’t paused enough to notice that I was two days too early. So, two days later I made my way back down to 8th street, I walked past the line of ticket winners, down the stairs to the reception area and waited for James to arrive. Five minutes later he walked down the stairs with Jim by his side.

“Hey James, this is Raman Kia, he is a big fan, and his band Buddahead is one of my clients”

“Hey Raman, it is very nice to meet you”. Sweet baby James looked older in person, and thinner, and taller.

Jim then led us to the studio where James began setting up and sound checking. I then walked into the control room where I found myself interrupting a conversation between two strangers to tell them that Paul McCartney recorded McCartney on a 4 track at home.

“That is right, and you know he didn’t even have limiters,” responded the first stranger who later turned out to be Paul one of the RXP DJs.

“So what you are telling me is that Maybe I’m amazed was done at home?” Asked the other stranger, another Paul, who is the program director at RXP.

“Hey guys, stop talking, listen,” said the first paul as he pointed to the speakers, “that is James Taylor, voice and guitar, without anything done to it – how perfect”.

He was right, James was perfect. I remained in a state of awe for the next hour while James played some new and old songs as I sat about 6 feet away from him and used words like “Swell” to describe how he was feeling. It was amazing just to realize that I will most probably never be as good as he is.

Later he signed my copy of Sweet Baby Jameswhile I interrupted with useless facts such buddahead opening up for James Taylor at the Tweeter Center or me knowing his long time producer and manager Peter Asher. James didn’t care. Why should he? I ama bozo and he is a legend. Still, I was on top of the world.

On my way out I got to thank Matt Pinefield for laying Ruin on his morning show. He sounded less gruffy than he does on his morning show but then again, he does wake up at 4AM. That sucks.

Tags: Buddahead, Electric Ladyland, James Delbalzo, James Taylor, Maybe I'm Amazed, McCartney, Paul Cavalconte, Paul McCartney, Peter Asher, RXP, Sweet Baby James, Tweeter Center
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Earlier today Simon and me were on a call with our team, Dana Gordon, Monica Geraldo, and James Del Balzo, and either Monica or Dana asked me, “Raman, being from England, how does the rest of the world see this election victory by Obama?” I instantly remembered an email I woke up to from my mum which I think answers the question perfectly.

“WOW! What an amazing time to be alive and witnessing the making-of-history. What a difference in the mood and atmosphere of this election from eight years ago. I have been following Obama’s campaign and I stayed awake most of last night to watch his amazing victory unfold. I am sad for my loved ones who are not here to see and feel this excitement. I pray for his success and for a better world. A war-free and a bomb-free world. A less hungry world and a more Just world.”

WOW – INDEED!

Tags: Buddahead, buddahead ashes, Dana Gordon, James Delbalzo, Monica Geraldo, Obama victory, Raman Kia, Sima Oskoui, Simon Gibson
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Trust me and read i rock i roll

Ever wonder what is cool and new in music? Ever wonder why you can’t find any good music you like on the Tuesday Itunes New Music newsletter? Well, fret no more. Nora is out there, savior about town (about the city I should say), devoting herself to the cool scene. Just trust me…

Tags: i rock i roll, irockiroll.blogspot.com, Nora Walker, Tuesday Itunes New Music
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Many years ago, through a chance connection, a crap demo of an even more rubbish song I had written, ended up in the hands of a manager named Ian Wright. Ian who had passed the song around to a bunch of his producers, who had somehow miraculously reported to him that I had talent, had decided to sign me on as developing artist.

One day Ian and me were sitting in his Notting Hill office listening to my usual run of the mill rubbish, when Ian gave me a press copy of Achtung baby and said, “Steve (Lillywhite) just finished this and when we heard it we were all like holy shit. I think you’ll like this one”.

“Ian, why don’t you hook me up with Steve Lillywhite?” I asked.

“Nah, you don’t want to do that. Steve can make your record sound great but he can’t make it into a hit. You need to write that first and then give it your sound, he’ll then just make it sound great”.

Back then, of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. I was knee high to a chicken and thought my musical droppings where ultimately brilliant. In many ways I saw that as Ian denying me the opportunity to work with Steve, something that hurt me and ultimately led to the end of our working relationship.

Ian was right of course. Steve Lillywhite is a captor and what captors do is capture the essence of a band that has their songs, and has their sound, but needs to make sure their essence is not lost in the mechanics of the recording studio.

Steve Lillywhite has during his incredible carrier produced tons of great albums for bands such as U2 and Dave Matthews Band (including the famous Lillywhite sessions after which the band and Steve split and DMB for the most part lost the art of capturing their magic in a studio). If Steve would have only produced my album the ky would have been the limit. I would have formed a super band with Bono and Dave, been as cool as Jason Mraz and Chris Cornell….a boy can dream, can’t he…

Not so long ago I was sitting in Pete Glenister’s studio in London, working on Ashes, when we started talking about Steve (Steve and Pete have a long history). The conversation began with Pete mentioning to me that he had played Ruin to Steve. Steve had really liked it and had made a comment about how much he liked my voice, and asked to be sent a CD of my music. Steve was at that moment in time working at Columbia Records as an A&R manager.

Again, I jumped on the opportunity and said to Pete, “why don’t you ask Steve if he wants to produce this album with us?”

“Nah, not sure if he is right really. Steve is great at getting a band that has their sound and capturing them in the studio. I am much better at understanding what a singer/songwriter is all about. He just doesn’t get it.”

This time the older and wiser Raman knew exactly what Pete meant. Steve had just won a grammy for his most recent work on U2’s “How to dismantle an atomic bomb” and had produced really rubbish albums for Jason Mraz and Chris Cornell. Pete was right, but then again he is rarely wrong.

A few weeks later Steve Lillywhite called. He had received his copy of the Buddahead material and he invited me to meet with him at his office at Columbia Records. Armed with my copies of the Steve Liilywite produced albums I wanted him to sign I arrived at this office.

“You are a tart,” Steve said to me as he signed the album covers, “Shall we listen to some music?”

Steve looked entirely different to what I had imagined the great British producer who had produced so many cool albums would look like – he looked, well, to put it mildly quite Hollywood. Bleach blonde hair and chiclet white teeth. I stared at him while he played his air guitar along to a song from “Crossing The Invisible Line” called Strong.

“I love it mate. This is fab. So, I have an idea, can you write a song for Aerosmith?”

WHAT? WHAT THE HELL IS HE TALKING ABOUT?

“What kind of Aerosmith song?” I asked politely.

By then Steve was half way out of his office. He turned around hurriedly and said, “Anything. I need a new single for their greatest hits album”.

Ian Wright and Pete Glenister had both been right. Steve was not right for me. He got my music but not my essence. He didn’t know what to do with me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the rule is that a singer/songwriter can never work with a Captor; but before you do you have to meet a very basic requirement: You must be really developed in your writing and performance, and confidence. So much so in fact that all you need is for your producer to figure out how to capture your essence.

A great case and point for this is the relationship between Andy Wallace and Jeff Buckley when they were working on Grace together. One night Andy and I were sitting in his studio listening to mixes he had done for Crossing the invisible line when somehow we started talking about his work with Jeff Buckley. That is when he told me the story of how Hallelujah was recorded. These are Andy’s words, pretty much word for word as he recounted the story. They have been ingrained in my mind:

“I knew that Jeff played a lot of shows around the city and he was really good live, and that everyone talked about his live performance. So, every night after we finished recording I would invite a bunch of people to the studio to sit around and watch Jeff perform. I would set him up like he was sitting on stage and then while he played I would just have the record button pressed. The album version of Hallelujah is just one of those performances. One night he just nailed it”.

So the lesson of this story is if you are an artist, and you really honestly have your songs and sound together but something is lost in translation when you record in a studio then you may benefit from a captor. Captors are not there to make you sound good from a technical point of view; they are the ones who capture the essence. Still, not every artist who is great is great because of his or her essence. Sometimes there is no essence to capture. From Chris Cornell to Jason Mraz, there is no essence. Essence is that identifying factor that no other artist or group of artists can recapture except for the one artist or the one band (and their captor). Think Dave Matthews Band, think U2: It is exactly that combination of musicians with that producer that make that sound happen.

Tags: A&R Manager, Achtung Baby, Aerosmith, air guitar, Andy Wallace, Bono, british Producer, Buddahead, buddahead ashes, Buddahead Ruin, Buddahead Strong, CHris Cornell, Columbia Records, Crossing the invisible line, Dave Matthews Band, DMB, How to dismantle an atomic bomb, Ian Wright, Jason Mraz, Jeff Buckley, Jeff Buckley Grace, Jeff Buckley Hallelujah, Lillywhite sessions, Music producers, Navigating shark filled waters, Pete Glenister, singer/songwriter, Steve Lillywhite, The Captors, U2
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Sometime around January of 2008 one of our friends who knows a ton about music online told us that she thinks we should be on Pandora. Kristen was absolutely right of course. About a week later Kristen told us that her friend at Pandora had told her that we were already on Pandora. Wow – what great news – we are bigger than we thought (every bands dream surely).

Soon though we realized that the band Buddaheads is on Pandora and not us. So, we read the instructions on the site and submitted our music. Weeks later Jasmyn contacted us to say they had in fact received it. Weeks later Jasmyn contacted us to say we were being considered but that there were no promises. Weeks later still Jasmyn said we will be on Pandora in about 6-8 weeks, and 6-8 weeks later we were told two more weeks would have to pass before their super computer, Big Pandy, would be able to analyze our music. Two weeks later Jasmyn apologized and mentioned that Big Pandy was having some technical issues and another week is needed.

So here we are at the top of that week and awaiting our final appearance on Pandora. Who would Big Pandy say we sound like. Radiohead? YES! Collective Soul? Not so yes. Fingers have been crossed for the last 6 hours until this news popped into my mail box.

Dear Tim Westergren (founder of Pandora) and Big Pandy, please stay afloat – I need to know how an unemotional machine will analyze Buddahead. Who do we sound like?

Tags: Big Pandy, Buddahead, Buddaheads, collective soul, Jasmyn Wong, Kristen Crusius, Pandora, Radiohead, Tim Westergren
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