In An Unknown Hemisphere by Tony Reid

During this time, the would-be kitten learnt how to program, produce, perform and talk shite like everyone else in the music business. The recordings Tony would make at the Pink Museum led to interest from a management company based in Toronto, who organised a recording session in Nashville, Tennesse. This turned out to be a bag of underpants due not to the inexperience of the engineer, but probably his sheer lunacy clearly indicated by his worrying obsession with firearms. The lack of focus in the recordings could also be attributed to the programmer, who insisted on talking constantly about his numerous visitations by angels while stroking his very "christian rock" goatee. The whole affair was most upsetting for Tony as Bob Babbitt was playing bass on the demo. As some of you will know, Babbitt was second only to James Jamerson as house bassist at Motown, providing basslines for tracks such as Edwin Starr's "War" and The Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" and Smokey Robinson's "Tears of a Clown". Apart from being a tremendous musician (as one would expect), he was a great guy and became the only person Tony could go for a beer with after recording in the studio/asylum. Anyway, despite the crapness of the demo, it caught the attention of Jeff Wayne (of War of the Worlds fame) and he insisted on offering Tony a deal to produce the first album. After many meetings and phone conversations and a preliminary recording session at Jeff's home studio, Tony decided that this would work out; THEN it turns out that Jeff has been commissioned to remix and remaster War of the Worlds for surround sound. This led to a six month wait, which led to a 12 month wait, which led to Tony deciding that he couldn't be arsed with it, despite Jeff being a brilliant composer/producer/all-round good chap. The demo also caught the attention of a music lawyer/manager in LA by the name of Brian Rohan, who was once the lawyer for the Grateful Dead and Aerosmith. Brian Rohan shopped the demo to several major record labels including Sony, Epic, Columbia and J Records. It was a matter of days before the record companies contacted Brian and requested showcases to see the material performed live. This led to the formation of Pachanga. Tony had six weeks to put a band together and rehearse them before he was due to go out to LA and NY and showcase. To cut a long story short, James Diener from J records was to enter negotiations with the lawyer, only to withdraw a few weeks after Pachanga returned to England. Maroon 5 were signed soon after Pachanga's deal evaporated. It was at this Point that Tony started thinking about ways to die. Well, not strictly true. It was upon hearing Maroon 5's first single. The failure of the American excursion led to Tony's girlfriend of three years to offer her opinion on his career: "If you were going to make it, you would have by now." It was at this point that he was brought to the attention of Brian Reza, who considered Tony to have "classic" potential, whatever that means. Brian acted as Rob Davies' manager of top pop songwriter for Kylie, Atomic Kitten, Blue fame. Tony only hoped this wasn't Brian's definition of "classic". Reza suggested a more acoustic slant on the music and so Tony took his set back to the streets. Well... Bar Ca Va, more accurately - to the open mic night Mixomacoustic, run by Collen, Monkey and Tribal, to get his acoustic set running smoothly. Much merriment ensued, along with a sharp learning curve. It was in April 2004 that Tony met Mark Wainwright, a producer from the bustling metropolis of Bickerstaffe, Lancs and they began to work on new, finished tracks, rather than demos and this album is the end result, please enjoy!

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