Did our 3rd gig since reforming on Sunday at The Retreat Hotel, Brunswick. Really enjoyed playing there as the venue is intimate and the sound system pretty good. It was nice to play to an audience, especially after our previous outing at The Evelyn Hotel on the Mother's Day Sunday in May. It was a tough ask to get people to come to that, nevertheless, it was good to play but also to witness the debut gig of  Only Aliens, our friend Lou's (and former Love Handles drummer) original band. After 20 years in the live scene, nothing really has changed much with regards to some venues. At the Evelyn, the first thing I noticed when I arrived there was that they were advertising the support band as being Phoebes Dream even though we clearly stated that they were not the support act. And then, I also noticed on one of their posters that they had listed us as 'Raw Factory' ha ha lol, what the fuck!! I am convinced that those who work with any form of printing are of their heads because of sniffing too much ink.

At the Retreat however things went smoothly and we even got paid at the end of the gig! So I definitely endorse the Retreat as a great venue for bands where you are at least shown some respect. We also played a couple of songs from our 'At the End of the Day' album, namely 'Oblivion' and 'Blood Red House', something that Fam and Sera hand't performed before but managed to deliver them excellently.

Our Jango Airplay fan base is continuing to grow and we now have 59 fans from as far and wide as Brazil, Lebanon, Bulgaria and Mexico who have listened to 'Shelter'. Ah the wonders of the internet!

In the next few months we will be concentrating on completing our new songs in preparation for our 3rd album which we hopefully can release next year. 

Some song-facts about 'Shelter'

'Shelter' is track no.7  from the album CIRCUS released in 1993

[blogg written by Con Moraitis (aka Moris), guitarist]

In 1988 I was travelling through Europe with a friend of mine and we arrived in Nottingham (UK) on a cold October night and could not find accommodation because of some city event or something that was taking place.  It was getting close to midnight, temperatures were dropping and we were getting pretty anxious with the real possibility that we were going to spend the night out in the street and freeze to death, when a taxi driver kindly took us to a discarded old church that was being used as a shelter for the homeless. It was an eye opening experience spending the night there among the derelict and the desperate souls. In the morning I scribbled some lines and immediate thoughts on some scrap paper and a couple of years later when we were working on our first Rain Factory songs, some of those words became the title, chorus and verses of 'Shelter'.

Funnily enough, the song was almost never recorded. Whilst it became a popular number and a regular on our live gigs in the early days, for some reason, when we came to record our first album CIRCUS we actually left it out. It became in fact a last minute, chance addition to the album. After 2 months of recording, we decided to re record 5 of the songs again because we weren't that happy with the overall takes. It was a lengthy, tiring and frustrating all day session and after finishing them at about 1am, we were all sitting back waiting for the production engineer (Dennis) to do some technical adjustments. To blow out some steam, we broke out into an impromptu but blistering rendition of 'Shelter'. Once we had finished playing Dennis jumped out of his seat (yes, just like the judges in The Voice and the X Factor ha ha!) and exclaimed excitedly what a great song that was and that we should include it in the album. To our surprise he had recorded our impromptu jam without telling us and upon playing it back, we all agreed that it was a raw yet emotive and powerful performance and too special not to be included in the album.

Those amazing female backing vocals on the song were sung by Barbara Field, a friend of my sister's from Sydney, who was visiting and staying with us at the time of the recording. One night, at home, I was playing back some of the rough mixes of the songs that we had recorded, including 'Shelter' to Barbara. Out of the blue she started to sing along with them, and her voice absolutely floored me!! I couldn’t believe that she could sing like that but incredulously also insist in the process that she wasn’t a professional singer. I immediately recorded her on a  4 track recorder singing along to shelter and 2 other songs and played it to the guys the next day and they were absolutely stunned with her voice. A week later we had Barbara in the studio recording her vocals for us. I must admit, that I had always loved the Rolling Stones song 'Gimme Shelter' and especially the backing female vocalist they featured in that song and I too wanted to do the same thing one day with the right song and right singer; that song became 'Shelter' and the right singer was Barbara.

The greatest thing about creating music and I guess any art is that particular moment when, after all the technicalities and laborious processes, you hit a special, magical part. In 'Shelter' I think that magic was achieved by the spontaneous energetic performance of the band and in particular when Barbara's and Chris' vocals collide and then take off in an spine tinkling crescendo in one of the choruses. I know I still get a shiver down my spine when hear that part. Those are tough and rare moments to capture in a performance, but when you do, it's pure gold!