The Delivery of Destiny, Purple Haze and The Case of the Missing Q...

Riversea Blog 3

12^th June 2012

Well, this is it… The moment we’ve been heading towards since Brendan and I wrote our first song together (‘Out of an Ancient World’) back in late 2006: The release of our debut album.

Over the next few days/weeks our finished CD will be landing on doormats all around the world, then all our hard efforts will be heard for the first time and the ‘Judgement of the Listeners’ will be upon us…. Gulp…

As my good friend Bryan Josh from Mostly Autumn has often said to me, the clock doesn’t start ticking until a finished CD is out there and people can hear the complete thing. Until then all the words spoken about the project are just hot air… And, let’s be honest, we have ‘talked’ about the project quite a lot over the last few years! Now, at last, we have something to back it all up… :o)

So now those first 1000 CDs exist in the real world and Tam and I sent out all the pre-orders yesterday. I filmed the whole thing as well as them arriving, both mine and Brendan’s first reaction to seeing the finished article and a little of the Progmeister2 festival in Hartlepool on Saturday (all the video footage will be online soon). I just want to take this opportunity to thank my partner Tamsin for been there every step of the way: Not only with all her help sending all the CDs out etc… but also been so encouraging and supportive during the whole making of the project. Without her I would have been totally lost…

I’d also like to thank, of course, all the people who had enough faith in us to pre-order the album in the first place. Without you guys all the CDs would literally not exist… Thank you :o)

So, since the delivery last Thursday, we have to come to realise that with these first 1000 CDs we have unknowingly created something of a ‘special edition’: ‘The Purple Haze Q-Less Limited Edition’. How so? Read on, gentle reader…

Imagine my excitement on receiving this long awaited finished CD last Thursday and then reading through the whole CD booklet with immense pride…. And then imagine my utter horror when reading the page 2 musician credits page and realising that my good friend Paul (‘Q’) Cusick’s name wasn’t on there!! :o( Paul not only plays wonderful guitar on track 6 ‘EDEN’ but he was also there at the creation of RIVERSEA and helped shape a lot of the original demos for some of the tunes. He also played with us at all 3 of RIVERSEA’s only gigs (so far) back in 2008 and has been a close personal friend of mine since 2001. How his name was missed off the musician credit page is a mystery that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I supplied the original text to Ed Unitsky months ago and, along with Brendan, have proof read the whole thing over and over again over the last few months. Neither of us picked up on the fact his name wasn’t there. This was NOT Ed's fault (he had just used the text I had sent him) but my own. And, of course, it took until we had the physical thing finished and 1000 copies made that I immediately noticed the error! My heart sank, I can tell you. In fact, it quite depressed me for a time. I phoned Paul up last night and told him the bad news (something I was not at all looking forward to). Been the great guy that he is, he laughed about it and told me not to worry too much. Back in the GABRIEL days (Paul played for my old band back in 2001-2005) he was affectionately known to us as Mr Memory (due to his amazing ability to forget songs from one minute to the next). It is therefore very ironic now that he was somehow ‘forgotten’ from the musician list. I’ve still now idea how it happened. I suggested to him yesterday that maybe he was an agent of The Silence (aliens in ‘Doctor Who’ that are immediately forgotten the moment they are out of sight). The actual silence that greeted me at the end of the phone was an indication of what he thought about that idea! So can I now take this opportunity to publicly apologize to Paul for the genuine mistake and state that he may have been ‘forgotten’ from the musician list but his superb playing and friendship will never be forgotten. If you’ve not heard Paul’s music please do check out his stuff at http://www.paulcusick.co.uk and, if you like what you hear (and I’m sure you will), please let him know and maybe even buy some of his music… Please don’t forget to tell him where you heard about him…. And if you want to write his name yourselves into the credit page in the booklet please do. It should read:

Paul Cusick: guitars on 6

Thank you :o)

So what about the ‘Purple Haze’ part of the ‘limited edition’? Well, although the cover etc… of the booklet still looks totally beautiful (thanks, of course, to the amazing artwork of Ed Unitsky), it is a little more ‘purple’ than we originally intended. The RIVERSEA colours have always been Blue, Black and White but, somewhere along the way, the beautiful blue has transformed into more of a purple. We hope to correct this for the next pressing of the album…

So there you go, the very special ‘Purple Haze Q-Less Limited Edition’. When your copy arrives hold on to it tight as one day it may be worth a fortune on Ebay! Who knows what will happen next… maybe the album will be ‘picked up’ and sell millions around the world (I can dream, cant I?) and these first 1000 CDs will be sort after by hard core collectors and spoken about in hushed reverence. Or maybe not. Let’s see what happens, shall we… :o)

Ok, that’s it for now. Please listen to the CD with an open mind and heart and then let us know your thoughts on the album. We really hope you enjoy it and thank you for taking the time to read this.

Let ‘The Judgement of the Listeners’ begin….

‘Gulp’

Peace, love and rock n roll

Marc :o)