Revillos! Live From The Orient

The Revillos! had lain dormant since 1985, but nine years on, we were asked to reform especially for a Japanese tour. All gigs were filmed and the Tokyo performances were captured on an 8-track machine. Finally coming out some two years later in 1996, the resultant album - on the Vinyl Japan label - missed off six songs. Most of the original, unreleased mixes became lost. In the ensuing period, Krupa became a very talented producer. In late-2004, he discovered the tapes of all our original mixes, which had been mislaid for 10 years. Krupa borrowed my archive of Japanese footage plus audience cassettes, out-takes, and assorted live monitor mixes. Using our rediscovered original mixes as the core, he planned to rebuild the Tokyo show - pulling the missing elements from these disparate video and audio sources - using digital technology that was simply not available to us back in 1994. I promised Krupa I'd oversee the release when he'd finished the audio. Sadly, Krupa passed away a few months later, early in 2005. Checking the work on his computer, I found no trace of the Japanese recordings on the hard disk, nor the original masters to which he had alluded. Years went by before I felt up to sifting through the many back-up CDs of Krupa's production and recording output. Eventually I loaded some unmarked data onto the computer and there they were our original mixes transferred to digital! Krupa was keen to see this project through, but his work on compiling the material was still very much unfinished. It was rough, but all there: all the songs, all the original audience response, and even the inter-song banter - some of which Eugene and Fay had spoken in Japanese. But it had not been segued back into order. Much reconstruction work and EQ-ing was still needed. Fulfilling my commitment, I have personally overseen this restoration. These tapes deserve to be aired, preserving as they do Krupa's final tour with The Revillos. Rocky Rhythm, London 2019