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Open Letter - Mark, December 29th, 2001

First off I hope everyone reading this had a good Christmas celebration and that the New Year proves to be an ace one. For myself it's been rather a dramatic year, probably 'the' most dramatic year I can ever remember, but overall an extremely positive one, I hope you are able to say the same. I can honestly say that it's been a positive year for the group too. 2001 saw the release of our first album in fifteen years in 'Why Call It Anything'. We are all proud of the work we did, primarily because I think we proved to ourselves that we still have the ability to make great records, songs that are able to retain the timeless quality that's become the band's trademark. How do we know this? Because over the last year we've played the songs night after night and felt them to be as fresh as the day we laid them down. If anything the live performances have improved the songs and enabled them to continue to evolve. It's a shame, in a sense, that we didn't have the opportunity to tour the material before recording the songs for the album, but that has always been the way of it. I know that some people didn't get the album they wanted and I feel slightly sad about that, but only very slightly. What little feedback I've had from folk along these lines reflect a mind set that would prefer to see us as we were twenty years ago, rather than as we are today. Well, young children can behave in very charming and endearing ways but were they to behave the same way at the age of 40, as parents we'd be very worried, wouldn't we? To those people I also say this, we will not retard ourselves for you, nor will we be the sad, nostalgic champions of your long, lost summer. If that's what you want then you have those early records, either that or book tickets for The Mission.

The massive majority of you though have embraced the new record and supported the gigs and to you I say you have our most sincere thanks and appreciation. Who are The Chameleons today? Well as you can hear we are still trying to work that out. If WCIA represents anything then it represents a group of close friends learning how to play and write with each other all over again, utilising all the various influences and diversities we have accumulated during our years apart. With the addition of a fifth collaborator, Kwasi Asanti, we've touched on textures that we weren't even aware of and had a lot of fun doing it. We've been able to rekindle the belief and confidence that made the band something special and we now intend to forge this into a positive direction. For myself I've always been most attracted by the darker, more intense work, both lyrically and sonically and I know Dave shares this view. Reg continues to conjure up riffs and progressions that are as inspiring as they are original. John has always been the hardest working member of the group and provides as powerful a foundation as ever, all of this in combination with Kwasi's spirited percussive talent, bodes well for a new record, providing we can find the time, space and resources to do the new ideas justice.

Quite a few people, clued in by certain remarks I made at Wishville toward the end of the year, have questioned whether The Chameleons have a future beyond 2001. While the answer to this question remains open it is looking decidedly better than it was back then. While I can't divulge too much right now, I can tell you that we are chasing some exciting possibilities for the new year, which, should they actually come off, will provide us with fresh challenges, something which is essential to the continued evolution of the band.

'Why Call It Anything' will finally get a domestic release in the U.S. slated for February 26th on the Cleopatra label. Hopefully this should bring us one step closer to getting the band Stateside next year. Also planned for the New Year is the long promised Chameleons live album, as yet untitled, recorded at the Manchester Academy last summer. The album will feature almost the entire set, I say almost because 'Truth Isn't Truth Anymore' and 'Soul In Isolation have had to be omitted due to a DAT failure on the former and Dave's guitar breaking mid-song on the latter. Shit happens as they say. The rest of the record sounds great though, even if I say so myself. The band's sound engineer John Delph and I mastered the recording about a month ago and we're only awaiting the completion of the artwork. While on the subject I've been asked where the official bootleg, 'Live At The Witchwood', which was being sold at the gigs recently, can be purchased via mail order. You need to contact Pod (pod@arcmusic.freeserve.co.uk).

In addition to the mystery project mentioned earlier then, we are hoping in the New Year to be able to bring the band to Spain and plan to attempt to find venues in the southern region of France in support. I'm hoping that we'll finally be successful in our attempt to get the band a gig in Dublin and intend to try and get the group onto the bill of next summer's Roskilde festival in Denmark, in which case, if successful we shall also try and find gigs in Sweden and Oslo. Finally, as I mentioned, we're determined somehow to get the group to North America this year, even if it turns out to be an ad-hoc visit to the east coast and would hope that any visit would also include a visit over the Canadian border to Montreal and Toronto.

I appreciate that these are not easy goals for a band so far out of the mainstream, so any help anyone may be able to offer would be greatly appreciated by all of us. Finally, egged on by many in the know, I'm hoping to find the time to finish the autobiographical narrative I've been working on for some time. Should this be of interest to you please let me know as the more feedback I get on this the more motivated I will be to actually get it finished. I'll continue to update this page as and when things become definite or when I have any further news relating to the band. Thanks again to all of you for the continued support, be it the constant stream of positive mail encouraging us forward, the warm reception at all of the gigs, even the one or two dodgy shows, or for buying the new record, thus increasing the odds of there being another. I hope you have an ace New Year or at the very least, more 'ups' than 'downs'.

Namaste

Mark Burgess

Red Sun Records has been updated with information about the tour dates of The Chameleons and its supporter: White Rose Transmission, band where Carlo Van Putten, leader of The Convent appears. White Rose Transmission was one of the lattest project where Adrian Borland, leader of The Sound, used to be before his death in 1999.

It is announced in Red Sun Records as well, that the new life album from The Chameleons won´t be released before January and it will be edited by Paradiso Communications, label of the band´s own, where they released Strip. This new life album will be the recording of the Manchester Academy Show of the beginning of this year, with a running time of almost 2 hours. On this concert, the following songs were played (so it´s pretty sure that the new album will contain all of these songs in the same order):

01-A Person Isn't Safe Anywhere These Days. 02-Pleasure And Pain. 03-Up The Down Escalator. 04-Anyone Alive?. 05-Indiana. 06-Soul In Isolation. 07-Truth Isn't Truth Anymore. 08-Lufthansa. 09-Caution. 10-Perfume Garden. 11-Dangerous Land. 12-Second Skin. 13-Miracles and Wonders. 14-Shades. 15-Swamp Thing. 16-Monkeyland. 17-Splitting In Two.

New tickets from the acoustic shows added to our photo gallery section ( thanks to Cath E. ).

According to Mark Burgess, the band is negotiating some dates for next February for Spanish shows, although right now there is still no confirmed date. The Chameleons will begin the last day of November their European Tour, ending before the year ends. There is no planning of keep on touring next year excepts for the dates for Spain ans some sporadic shows near Manchester.

We add the dates and places which are confirmed for the European Tour. As soon new dates are available or some changes appear, we will update it.

 

 

Here is the list of dates for the European Gigs provided by the Manager of The Chameleons, Simon Lawlor.As soon as more dates will be confirmed we will update this list:

Fri Nov 30: London – Barfly Club in Camden.

The Chameleons will kick off their European tour with a secret gig at Barfly Club in Camden, London (upstairs at The Monarch) on Friday November 30th. Please note this is a very small venue. It holds just two hundred people. Tickets go on sale on October, the 26th . There is no guest list and no tickets will be available on the door. The only way to get in to the gig, is to buy either online at www.barflyclub.com or by calling their 24 hour ticket line on 0870 907 0999. There will also be a limited number of tickets on sale from Wayahead 020 7403 3331 and Stargreen 020 7734 8932. (Information provided by Simon Lawlor)

Sun Dec 2: Berlin - Kato

Mon Dec 3: Koln/Cologne – Live Music Hall

Tues Dec 4: Hamburg – Grosse Freiheit

Wed Dec 5: Bielefeld - Forum Thurs

Dec 6: Bochum – Bahnhof Langendreer

Sun Dec 9: Bremen – Modernes Mon

Mon Dec 10: Paris – La Locomotive

Fri 14 Dec - Oxford Zodiac

Sat 15 Dec - Liverpool Lomax (early stage time 8.45PM)

Sun 16 Dec - Blackburn North

Mon 17 Dec - Macclesfield Bar Cuba

Tues 18 Dec - Doncaster Leopard

Weds 19 Dec - Nottingham Old Vic

Thurs 20 Dec - York Fibbers

Fri 21 Dec - Middleton Civic

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Change in the layout of Strange Times. We hope it will ease your navigation through this web site and you will prefer it. Any suggestion is wellcomed.

According to Simon Lawlor, The Chameleons manager, Spain is taken out from list of countries for the forthcoming European gig. It seems there has been no interesting offer from any spanish promoter. Anyway, as the Chameleons have good memories from the last gigs in Spain they will try to their best for the next year to try to come to Spain.

In Short the next european concerts dates will be published.

New retrospective photo gallery dedicated to The Chameleons and compiled by Tony Skinkiss is available on the official site. To view these photographs just click on the link below:

Tony Skinkiss Photo Gallery

Also deepest sympathy to Dave, who lost his father at the beginning of this month. I'm sure I can speak for all of us when I say all our thoughts and best wishes are with him.

Updates such as this one have been few and far between I know and I apologise for that For myself I've been bouncing around like a pin-ball these last couple of months and had very little or no net access.. Simon has also been somewhat distracted forging a new direction for himself in the north of Scotland, although he continues to work with the group as and when he can. But to be honest, aside from the gigs we played last month there hasn't really been much to tell you anyway..

Regarding the shows, I will admit that, following the pre-natal death of my two sons in May and the resulting shock, my first reaction was to cancel all engagements.. Although to have done so would have resulted in letting a lot of people down.. When I walked out for the first show at Leeds it was absolutely the last place on earth I wanted to be. Happily now I can say that to have pulled out would have been absolutely the wrong thing for me to do. The support you gave us throughout was tremendous. The smile I got from that little four year old girl down the front at Guildford during 'Splitting In Two' is unforgettable. Manchester was very special for me and the Garage in London was perhaps one of the best performances and audiences I can ever remember with The Chameleons. All of you who were there helped me turn a corner and I want you to know that we all appreciated it very much.

On the live front we've decided to do something a little different for the next batch of gigs. We're playing a short series of semi-acoustic sets in a half a dozen venues in the north of England. It basically came by way of invitation from an agency called Arc, in north Manchester. As we've never actually done this together as a band before it was a good opportunity to try some thing fresh and also play a few songs that didn't really fit into the electric sets and to attempt to create a different kind of ambience. These dates will look something like this..

Derby The Flowerpot October 7th

Bury The Met 8th

Liverpool Birkenhead, Pacific Rds Arts 9th

Sheffield Boardwalk 10th

Crewe Limelight 11th

Middlesborough Cornerhouse (venue TBC) 12th

As far as electric sets go there are also some dates being mooted for December. While we do like playing to larger gatherings we're aware that for many it has involved quite a lot of travelling and expense and we've really enjoyed the warm-ups we've played at venues like Fibbers and the more intimate vibe of venues like the Garage. So, this coming December we'll be doing a few more in this vein. While details are still being ironed out I can tell you that we're currently looking at venues in:

Oxford, Blackburn, Macclesfield, Doncaster, Nottingham, York, from around December 15th culminating in a gig at Middleton Civic Hall on December 21st.

We'll post venue details as soon as we have them confirmed. A European tour is still being mooted for November. The difficulty has involved dates in Germany because of the foreign workers tax that they insist on imposing on bands touring Germany, which would prove to be financially problematic. Obviously German dates have to tie in with other dates in Holland, Spain and Hopefully Paris. We're still optimistic that a solution can be found and that a tour can go ahead. Also the new album has now been domestically released on the European mainland. Living here in Hamburg I'm very pleased to note that the German reviews have been particularly good which will hopefully encourage the label to help make the tour happen.

I really want to apologise to our friends in the U.S. for the fact that, aside from a quick foray to California last year, we still haven't been able to confirm a U.S. tour, nor do I yet have any information regarding a U.S. domestic release of the new album. The latest info I had relating to this, was that British bands were being discouraged from touring the U.S. in the wake of last weeks terrorist attacks, because of problems that may arise from taking equipment into the country now that airport security has been tightened (!) If I still can't confirm a U.S. tour for the band for early next year then it's my intention to try and organise a solo acoustic tour there around next March and try to set something up for the band from that side of the pond. We'll just have to see what happens..

We're in the process of helping to edit together a live album, recorded earlier this year at the Academy in Manchester. Such a live album has been mooted for some time but we've never been truly satisfied with the results and we felt that we wanted a few of the new songs on there too. Now we have a recording that we're happy with and we should have it delivered by mid-October with a release shortly after that.

That's all I can think of to say right now.. Be cool to each other and don't let these days of doubt, turn you inside out

Mark

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New photo gallery of tickets of The Chameleons. New photos from 2001 gigs. Why Call It Anything has been released in Europe.

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It is available now in our Downloads section the very first Desktop Theme dedicated to The Chameleons for PC´s with Windows 98 or 95. It includes excerpts of songs from all their albums. To install it on your PC you will have to download the mentioned file and decompress it with Winzip and read the Readme.txt file already contained there for further instructions. Here is a screenshot of the mentioned Desktop Theme.

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The official site has been updated with some interviews to The Chameleons belonging to Tony The Greek, John Peel y Kid Jensen shows from 1985. These interviews are in mp3 format and can be downloaded as one only file of 32 MBs or partial files of 4,5 MBs aprox. Here we put a link to these files to ease your access to these interviews:

Global File:

The Chameleons - Interviews (1985).mp3 - 32,822 KB

Partial Files:

The Chameleons - Interviews (1985) Part 1.mp3 - 4,689 KB

The Chameleons - Interviews (1985) Part 2.mp3 - 4,689 KB

The Chameleons - Interviews (1985) Part 3.mp3 - 4,689 KB

The Chameleons - Interviews (1985) Part 4.mp3 - 4,689 KB

The Chameleons - Interviews (1985) Part 5.mp3 - 4,689 KB

The Chameleons - Interviews (1985) Part 6.mp3 - 4,689 KB

The Chameleons - Interviews (1985) Part 7.mp3 - 3,928 KB

Confirmed the dates for the acoustic shows in October. Check the August info for more details.

Our Other Projects section has been, at last, translated into English.

 

Since the end of this month the policy of Dreamers, Spanish web site dedicated to comics and music where Strange Times is hosted, has changed due to the lack of incomes. The ads which were optional are now automatically added to every web site belonging to dreamers domain. This is why from August, the 25th of 2001 you will see advertisment banners on the top of our pages. This publicity is managed by Dreamers to reduce the costs of server use, and Strange Times, as an amateur web site, has nothing to do with it and obtains no economic benefit from this banners. The only profit is to carry on editing this web site without any additional cost.

From Strange Times, we hope you understand this change as a neccesary one in order to survive in this virtual world. We hope this change won´t affect too much to your navegation through this lonely island.

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We have updated the biography section adding the information related to the last album.

Other Musics Section has been translated into English.

It seems The Chameleons will be performing some Acoustic gigs in October. The source of information is the official web site. Here is the list of dates:

Day
Place
Sunday, 7th October
Derby Flowerpot
Monday, 8th October
Bury Met Theatre
Tuesday, 9th October
Liverpool Birkenhead Pacific Rd Arts Centre
Wednesday, 10th October
Sheffield Boardwalk
Thursday, 11th October
Crewe Limelight
Friday, 12th October
Middlesborough Cornerhouse

 

 

According to what Simon Lawlor,the manager of The Chameleons, has estated on the official forum board the release of WCIA will be made in two phases:

- On the first phase, WCIA will only be released in UK on the scheduled date of 6th of July

- On a second phase and through Zomba, the album will be released in September all over Europe ( and we imagine that in the rest of the world too ). The original idea of Zomba records was to release the new album the same day that the UK release, but the negotiations have ended few weeks ago, and they wanted the press reviews to be done before the release ( the support of press in Europe is very important ). The only way to obtain the new album in Europe before September will be via import. This release will follow the release of a single ( probably with unreleased material ) to promote the new album, and late October a possible new tour through some countries of Europe.

This change in the release politic has been done to promote the new album as best as posible. As you already know, The Chameleons, aren´t supported with huge promotion campaigns and almost everything must be done with autofinancing. The release in UK will allow The Chameleons to invest more money in the promotion of the new album in the second phase. The fear that a sinchronized release all over the world without any single promotion caused WCIA to be completely ignored by the music business has been the main reason for this change of policy.

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It is now available excerpts of 30 seconds of all the songs from the new album on the web site of the Q magazine. They are on rm format, so you will need the Real Player to hear them. If you don´t have it you can download the Real Player Basic 8 for free on the Real web site.

New mp3s available on the downloads section from different alternative bands.We have included some songs from The Curtain Society, The Last Dance and Gossamer.

 

Shades

Anyone Alive

Dangerous Land

According to what Mark has said on the message board on the official site, the release date has been delayed until July the 6th. It´s possible that it won´t appear until the next week. In Spain, surely, WCIA will only be available via import, so if the release date reaches the middle of July, we probably won´t see it here until September due to summer holidays.

Here is the list of confirmed gigs for this summer with their corresponding dates:

31st July
York Fibbers
To be confirmed
  
1st Aug
Leeds
Confirmed
3rd Aug
Manchester Academy
Confirmed
  
4th Aug
Guildford Festival
Confirmed
5th Aug
London The Garage
Confirmed
  

All the lyrics of the brand new album is already available on our albums section. We have included Mark´s sleeve notes.

New photo gallery of the Manchester Academy 03/06/00 show. This gallery has been made with captures of the video, so the only place where you can find these photos is in the video itself and here.Enjoy them!

This is the track list and the CD cover design of Why Call It Anything made by Reg Smithies:

1 Shades 2 Anyone Alive? 3 Indiana 4 Lufthansa 5 Truth Isn't Truth Anymore 6 All Around 7 Dangerous Land 8 Music In The Womb 9 Miracles and Wonders 10 Are You Still There?

This information has been obtained from Red Sun Records and in their web site you can preorder the new CD which will not be available until de 2nd of July. The song Indiana is the new version of Indian originally included in the acoustic CD Strip.

New English version available of Strange Times now. The translation is not complete yet; the sections Other Projects and Other Musics are not translated; but they will be completed soon.

Alfabetic restructuration of the section Other Musics due to its fast growth. We have created a new section called Other Projects where we will make some brief reviews of the different projects the members of The Chameleons have been involved in. A new photo gallery dedicated to Invincible has been created.

Acording to what Mark has confirmed to Strange Times, it will be Artful Records the label which will edit the new album. Artful Records has updated its web page to include The Chameleons between its artists. To access Artful Records page, please click here.

 

 

 

 

We have updated the albums section including the comments Mark did for the origins of each of the songs of the Chameleons. To access these comments just follow these links:

Script Of The Bridge

What Does Anything Mean?, Basically

Strange Times