"The music industry might be a mess, the music industry might just be an endless labyrinth of clones cloning clones and herds of platinum-seeking A/R's. Make a move: there's a whole world up for grabs!" (Alex J. Frost - music manager)
Ray made a move...
Over the last eleven months award-winning singer songwriter Ray Tarantino has performed more than
150 shows to promote his critically acclaimed debut album
Recusant.
Whether it was the sound of a
duo vibing next to the Atlantic ocean; a
Brazilian-grooved-six-piece band in Southern Europe; a
trio formation jamming in a surprisingly-welcoming Germany; a
featured solo artist in London's premiere acoustic nights; a
fast-paced NYC-based band or the performance of a
light-weight songwriter's journey across America, Ray has been feeding the flames of his talent for thousands of listeners, only to find that there's a lot more to come and many many to meet.
With a plan to solidly tour the States over the next two years, Ray is keeping alive the promise he made to himself.
Let’s rewind to dig it all.
A thirteen year old boy blasting
Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street sax riff to an audience of at least two hundred cows is possibly the most
recusant of all rock and roll clichés. It happened in the very green and British Dorset - it happened in 1989 - and that’s where it all began:
“I knew I could connect to the audience, those cows were chasing me every time I walked their fields, but after just a couple of shows and some well-placed tunes I had a few friends I could rely on. I could walk safe. A lot of people are killed every year by raging cattle, it seems strange but its true.”
Ray Tarantino is an aquarius, he was born in Italy sometime in the winter of 1976 and moved to the UK at a very early age. His Sicilian-diamond-dealer-father (really) and old-school-Tuscan-countess mother were terrified by the hypothesis of seeing their son dodging snapped guitar strings and spiralling drugs on stage, and so Ray kept his secret well treasured and conformed to necessities for as long as he had to.
Year were passing, the fog was rising and fellow teenagers were busy smoking dried banana skins, exploring sex or gambling; some spent days playing bizarre ball games that needed big open spaces and some were heading for an accidentally prosperous future. Ray did all the same – maybe heading for a different kind of prosperity - but took a short path to experience by diving head first into what he felt was the beginning and end of it all: incessantly projecting visions of
Dylan recording Blood On The Tracks; constantly searching for
Daniel Lanois’ efforts to craft what became the
U2 sound and the beauty captured by The Joshua Tree; regularly intertwining melodic phrases into
Dire Straits’ strategically pure Brothers In Arms; hazily floating within the omniscient flavour of
Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here while jibing to the vibe of
Curtis Mayfield’s masterpiece There’s No Place Like America Today; and last but not least, intimately daydreaming of the day he could have performed to a predominantly human audience.
The world kept changing and so did Ray. He needed money and so he worked, he was asked to provide a social reason to be world-worthy and so he found it, at one point reaching the status of what he refers to as the socially-platinum package.
Quoting the computer-generated voice that’s hardly audible in the mix of the very last song of Ray’s debut album:
"After all, the point is that the limit of the achievable isn’t different from the limit of the conceivable, bearing in mind that a man must evolve when given a chance to.
There are times dedicated to thought, and there are times dedicated to action, and it only takes an instant for things to change...
Day one of the said chance -
five o’clock in the morning - a 100mph car crash on the highway seems to set all the priorities straight. The end of the end, or maybe, the beginning: there was no room left for business talk and late night meetings, no more oxygen for the guy wearing a suit.
“Crying out to your entire hemisphere that you are giving up what’s always being known to be your life for something that they regard as the absurd is pretty extreme” - says Ray –
“like walking up to your father telling him that from next Monday you’ll have dark hair, dark skin, you’ll stick to Kosher diet and you’ll move to London to live with your gay boyfriend. And that on top of that you’ll change your name from Frederick Hitler to Jeanette Churchill.” But the six-foot-two singer songwriter - with over 180 songs in his pockets - smiles, admitting that his imagination might have gone further than reality, although
“there was a major shock anyhow, it was a life-changing decision, and like all major shocks this one brought a lot of pain mixed with doses of joy and relief, and it all gave birth to that song.”
What song?
5 O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING (Getting Me Down)
Lost in a land of meager skies and slander
Betting on the best of my anarchy
Walk by the wall if you’re a dreamer then I’ll call
To share your sweet insanity
The King Of The Tamed has Jesus on a Dutch Date
Swears he’s lost the game
Counting every grain of dust under the rain he’s crying
But watch him do it again
Feel I could go now
CHORUS:
Five o’clock in the morning – getting me down
Down on my knees – getting me down
Five o’clock in the morning – getting me down
Shame on you shame on me too
They say the world’s evolving around a star that’s burning
But what I feel is winter breeze
Blown on the backbone I’m waiting for a new clone
But what I get is not what I’ve grown
How could I die before I hear and clear the lies
They said to me?
The President Of Games has gained control again and how
He wants to do it again
Feel I could go now
CHORUS:
Five o’clock in the morning – getting me down
Down on my knees – getting me down
Five o’clock in the morning – getting me down
Shame on you shame on me too
My head is filled with dreams and reason
I’m forced to blow the shaft of enemies
I need some friends or some pure remedies
Or hear a voice of vanity
That’s calling me to go…
CHORUS:
Five o’clock in the morning – getting me down
Down on my knees – getting me down
Five o’clock in the morning – getting me down
Shame on you shame on me too
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Ray Tarantino's debut album
Recusant is available on ITunes and is a recommended album on CDBaby!.
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