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Album Details
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· Produced By: Erik Norlander
· Running Time: 75.05 & 58.42
· Release Date: July 12
· Released: EU
· Genre: Symphonic Hard Rock
· WebLink:
· LabelLink: Frontiers
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Artist Bio
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RETURN TO JAPAN – RECORDING DATES:
18 April 1998 Club Citta, Kawasaki
29 October 1998 Zippal Hall, Tokyo (Acoustic Live 1998)
20 April 1999 Club Quattro, Shibuya
1 February 2002 Another Dream, Tokyo (Acoustic Live - Special Event 2002)
26 April 2002 Club Citta, Kawasaki
27 June 2003 Colos-Saal, Aschaffenburg, Germany
28 June 2003 Spirit of 66, Verviers, Belgium
MUSICIANS:
1999 Club Quattro songs
Lana Lane: vocals
Erik Norlander: keyboards
Neil Citron: guitar, vocals
Mark McCrite: guitar, vocals
Don Schiff: NS/Stick
Tommy Amato: drums
2002 Club Citta songs
Lana Lane: vocals
Erik Norlander: keyboards
Peer Verschuren: guitar (recorded in the studio, November 2003)
Don Schiff: NS/Stick
Vinny Appice: drums
additional 2002 musicians:
Kelly Keeling: harmony vocals on "Secrets of Astrology" and "Project Shangri-La" recorded in the studio, November 2003
Mark McCrite: guitar on "Redemption Part II recorded in the studio, November 2003
2002 Acoustic Live songs (Alexandria, Autumn Leaves, Let Heaven In)
Lana Lane: vocals
Erik Norlander: keyboards, backing track programming
1998 Acoustic Live songs
Lana Lane: vocals
Erik Norlander: keyboards
NOTES FROM THE PRODUCER'S DESK
Lana Lane certainly has a special connection with Japan. While her 1995 debut album, Love is an Illusion, was released first in the USA, it was a tenacious and independent Japanese record label that ultimately had the vision to bring the music of Lana Lane first to Japan and then to the world. Love is an Illusion sold amazingly well for a grass roots home grown recording project, and its 1996 follow up, Curious Goods, followed well in its footsteps, gaining new creative ground and raising the artistic bar in a bold experiment where 80s melodic hard rock and 70s influenced progressive rock collided in a flash of power and wonder wholly unique to the sound of Lana Lane. And above it all, the heartfelt yet authoritative vocals of Lana herself provided the ultimate signature to the project. A voice like this had to be heard.
And heard it was, particular in the land of the rising sun. In 1998, Lana's Garden of the Moon album skyrocketed our careers into overdrive with both catalog sales and demand for new recordings increasing with each passing day. 1998 would bring five Lana Lane releases in all, not the least of which was Live in Japan, the audio document of Lana's first tour of Japan and indeed specifically Lana's first ever concert there. Lana fronted a five piece band based upon the Los Angeles prog outfit Rocket Scientists with the addition of rock guitar virtuouso Neil Citron whose contribution to the first three Lana Lane albums was a particular standout.
The Lana Lane band was finding its way in early 1998, and the evolution of taking the music from the studio to the stage was no easy task. The sonic richness and arrangement subtleties that worked so well on the studio albums had to be retooled in order to be delivered in a live rock environment where volume and energy remain the inexorable king. That 1998 Japan tour provided invaluable experience and gave us all vision -- vision to expand, to enhance, to electrify.
By the end of 1998 we had recorded the highly anticipated follow up to Garden of the Moon, the symphonic epic Queen of the Ocean CD. Queen of the Ocean took the magic melange of rock and prog from Garden of the Moon and added a larger-than-life stage feel to the music. High intensity rockers like "Rainbow's End" contrasted blissfully with the gargantuan title track, "Queen of the Ocean", truly an ideal collaboration between Mark McCrite, Neil Citron, Lana and myself. The cinematic "Night Falls" and foot stomping "Frankenstein Unbound" added both power and color to a band whose sound was already known for its grand melodic quality and high-end production intensity.
The Queen of the Ocean album is to Garden of the Moon what the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was to Rubber Soul. It was what Yes' Fragile was to The Yes Album, or what Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was to Ummagumma. In a word, it was evolution. And evolution at its finest. What had been promised with Garden of the Moon was delivered with Queen of the Ocean, and the Lana Lane sound had blossomed with the spring of new life and new vigor.
The 1999 Japan tour brought a very experienced, very focused band back to the beautiful island where time had strengthened the roots of a burgeoning forest of art and creativity within the project. In preparation for the 1999 tour, we had moved to a rehearsal room three times the size of the 1998 space in order to craft a suitably large live voice that would carry well all the way to the backs of the Japanese halls we would again visit. The personality of each band member had thus become more defined, the interaction between the players more graceful, and without even realizing it, we had become a band. Not just a bunch of great musicians recreating a studio recording on stage, but an actual bonafide live rock band. The living animation in those 1999 recordings is a great document of this metamorphosis. The tracks "Rainbow's End", "Evolution Revolution", "Night Falls" and "Athena's Shadow" are particular standouts. The covers of "In the Court of the Crimson King" and "Long Live Rock 'n' Roll" also show the dexterity and range of this band at its best.
Then came the turn of the century and a time for both new beginnings and melancholy endings. After the whirlwind of 1998 and 1999, we six Lana Lane musicians were ready to take a turn and explore some different roads. The road for Lana and me took us to Holland where we recorded a decidedly Euro metal sounding album called Secrets of Astrology with an almost entirely new crew of musicians and collaborators. A lengthy European tour followed in 2001 where we balanced the Euro metal of Secrets of Astrology with the warmer and more sonorous qualities of the previous albums. A new figure emerged through this tour, Dutch guitarist and wunderkind Peer Verschuren. The fit was near-perfect as Peer's balance of metal and classic rock brought the exact modern rock edge we were after without losing the beautiful vintage feelings we had created on the older albums.
We returned from Europe in 2001 with big plans for a new studio album that would capture the magic of our European tour sound, that elusive blend of old and new, edgy and warm, progressive and melodic. But the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 brought horrors to the world and suddenly halted our growing trend of moving freely between Europe and California. Peer, already deathly afraid of flying, could not come to California to record, and it was too uncertain for us to fly to Europe in the weeks following September 11. Due to these dire circumstances, we regretfully ended up recording the Project Shangri-La album without Peer even though many of the songs had been arranged for him to play a key role. The familiar guitarists Neil Citron and Mark McCrite then graciously stepped up their planned roles for the album and handled the complete guitar duties between the two of them (with the one exception, of course, of the Helge Engelke guest appearance ... done entirely by postal correspondence!).
By January of 2002, it seemed that world travel was safe and practical again, and so Lana and I ventured back to Japan for a long-overdue promotional visit and some "acoustic" concerts to support the Project Shangri-La album and the forthcoming band concerts planned for April of that year. I put "acoustic" in quotes because although the concerts were just Lana and me, I used a fairly comprehensive approach to these duo arrangements involving synthesizers and backing tracks played from my Macintosh Powerbook computer. Three tracks from those "acoustic" concerts appear here on this collection: "Alexandria", "Autumn Leaves" and "Let Heaven In".
Following our promotional visit, it was time to prepare for the full band tour for 2002 with the highlight scheduled for a return to the newly remodeled Club Citta in Kawasaki, the venue where we had played our first Japanese concert in 1998 and recorded the Live in Japan album. The drum chair was easy to fill -- the legendary Vinny Appice, who had recorded the Project Shangri-La album with us, was delighted to join us on the tour following some time off after his years with Dio and Black Sabbath. But the guitar role had rapidly become a conundrum. Neil Citron was enveloped in his producing and engineering work at The Mothership studio in Hollywood and was unable to break away for the tour. Mark and Tracy McCrite had just had their second child, and family life was in high gear which put a tour out of the question for Mark for 2002.
Peer Verschuren was the logical candidate and the natural choice for the touring guitarist, particularly after the great work we had all done together in Europe on the 2001 tour. But Peer's fear of flying combined with the still lingering images of the September 11th attacks put and end to this idea. So instead I invited fellow Dutch guitarist Arjen Lucassen to join us on the tour. Lucassen had played on tracks on both Lana's Secrets of Astrology and my Into the Sunset CD and Lana and I had both made numerous guest appearances on his various albums. It seemed like a reasonable substitution, but it turned out to be a mistake in judgement on my part.
When Lucassen arrived in Los Angeles for the tour rehearsals and warm up gig, we were quite surprised to find that he was not enough trained for the rigors of this intense material. Many songs had to be cut from the set. But by this time it was too late to make a change -- the concerts were looming and bringing in a last minute substitute was not a viable option. So while the guitar playing on this tour was less than ideal, Lana had in contrast sang perhaps her best yet this time around. And I was quite happy with my playing and also with the new interpretations of the very unique Schiff / Appice rhythm section. Plus, the Club Citta concert was beautifully filmed with multiple cameras and recorded with a state-of-the-art facility built into the newly remodeled venue. So it seemed like a travesty to sacrifice such a great event, so we simply set about the task of replacing all of the guitar from this concert.
Then came a wonderfully ironic turn for the better. When Peer Verschuren heard about the problems with the 2002 guitars, he volunteered to FLY to Los Angeles and replay all the parts and shoot some video in the studio. Fly? Peer? Impossible! But with a strong will powered by great friendship and devotion to great music, Peer overcame his fear of flying and landed in Los Angeles with his wife Corinne in November of 2003. We proceeded to record his guitar along with the 2002 Club Citta concert tracks, and I find the end result to be wonderful. It is now as it should have been from the start with Peer "retroactively" joining Lana, Don, Vinny and me at this great concert. And now I truly believe that the next time the invitation to play in Japan is given, Peer will be there to deliver his performances live and in person!
So at the end of this long story, Lana and I are extremely pleased to present to you this fantastic audio document of the four very dramatic and highly eventful years following our initial "big break" of 1998. From acoustic to electric and somewhere in between, please join us as we RETURN TO JAPAN!
Erik Norlander
Los Angeles, April, 2004
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