Hey - Oh I thought I had posted about the compilation album (my memory is sliping too Barry!). With the encouragement of the ever-great Pete Baker from Rhythm Method we thought it was time for a compilation of Chris' work from over the years - Toy Love, Tall Dwarfs, solo, & The Nothing. A few months ago Chris & I went through the process of whittling down his c450 songs to around 40 for a double CD. Shayne's helped out too - but they're all of Chris' choosing. We've got the track listing pretty much sorted but now we need to get all the tracks together & look at mastering. It's not a big job but there are some questions around mastering that are hard to communicate with Chris about at this point.

Even being a Chris fan, I was floored by the breadth & quality of the 40 tracks. I've heard the criticism made that Chris did not self-edit enough - and it's certainly easy to miss some gems in his catalogue due to fatigue. It's odd to think that the person I consider NZ's best & most diverse song-writer is really only known locally for a bread ad/love song.

Going through the 40 songs is a real adventure & brings out many sides of Chris as a composer & artist. It's a bit like when I was going to be playing bass with the Tall Dwarfs for the MGMT show & Chris gave me a disc of songs to practise - listening through the songs & getting to know them was more like watching films & cartoons than listening to music; the tracks struck me as very visual & vibrant, each one it's own small universe.

I'll be very curious to see the response to the album from people that are less familiar with Chris' output.

Cheers

Roy