The Best Kept Secret of the Music Business

There are those that fly in the face of fashion and other who follow it slavishly, while there are people that have no truck with that fickle world. They know that the flavour of the month soon leaves a sour taste and that magazine covers count for nothing when they’re in the recycling bin. Anyway, since when did the ability to play and sing become last week’s thing? Add to that well written songs, by the band and not a production team clustered in a soho studio tinkering with a digital editing facility and you have a timeless combination. So why hasn’t that time come? Maybe it’s the fact that people seem to think bands are to be voted on, providing an evening’s entertainment on the TV and then forgotten about until the next series. It wasn’t always like this and still isn’t, believe it or not, some bands get together without a ‘phone poll.

Imagine a band contest where the contestants play their own songs and i mean PLAY them. It was such an event that one Ezio Lunedei met Mark “Booga” Fowell, they eyed each other’s guitars, liked what they saw and decided that two was better than one. Ezio and Booga was born without a single digit dialled. They embarked on touring, everywhere and anywhere that would have them and quite a few that wouldn’t. Armed with acoustic guitars and more talent than is legal in this day and age, they gigged, entertaining shoppers taking lunchtime breaks and even regaling record company receptionists and security guards - normally followed by the shoppers on the street outside. You name it, they have been there, seen it and played it with passion, just so long as they could play, because that’s what they do best. You won’t find your fame rivals and pop academy mob doing this.

They stopped only to record a couple of albums (“Saxon Street” and “The Angel Song”) on their own Salami label that they sold at gigs to finance more touring. Soon someone noticed them, well, a lot did, but I’m talking about record company people here. A deal with Arista followed, “Black Boots On Latin Feet” was released and the ‘Booga’ name was dropped for our transatlantic friends. They celebrated by going on the road again. At some point they became big in Germany, which, considering the lyrical intensity of the songs, is some achievement. No one is quite sure how this happened, but it did provide some alternative places to play and made a change from the Half Moon in Putney and their local, the Boat Race in Cambridge. They marked this feat by recording “Diesel Vanilla” and touring some more.

Now you’ve probably seen their name cropping up in gig listings over the years and you wonder how they pull in a crowd when the popular press ignore them. They have been dismissed and consigned to the dark areas of your mind. You never gave them a chance back then, so why now? Maybe because they’re still going, playing to devoted fans, ones who would travel hundreds of miles to see them play. Yet you still feel they can’t be any good. Maybe you should take a chance, open your mind and leave the baggage at home. A friend tells you that their friend said they’re amazing, so you go and see them. The room is full of such people, die-hard fans and their sceptical buddies. The next time you see them you’ll take a friend too. To show them how live music should be in an age of processed pop stars, to let them see a band who play each song as if it were their last, who can silence a room with a couple of guitar lines and bring it to a roaring fever with equal ease. Who can send you into a cold night with warmth inside your soul and send a shiver down your spine in a steaming hot club.

In 1999 they decided to play the Shepherds Bush Empire in London, without a manager or record label and still packed it out, as their self released CD and Video of the night shows. They booked it and they came. To celebrate that gig they recorded an album, Higher, on their own and added a bass player and drummer to their duo on a full time basis, which means that Ezio and Booga can now talk to other people when they’re on the road.

2003 sees the release of The Making Of Mr Spoons and more touring. It’s their best album to date, matured and assured, showing what they do best, write and play great songs, songs from and to the heart, songs to make you laugh and cry, songs about the real world, your world, songs for you. Now, you can’t get that by dialling the number on the screen can you?