LANA LANE- STORYBOOK: TALES FROM EUROPE AND JAPAN - DVD

Music Style: Symphonic Hard Rock

Tracklisting: 1. Introductory Medley- (1. Dark Water Part III; 2. Fanfare for the Dragon Isle; 3. Garden of the Moon; 4. In the Hall of the Ocean Queen); 2. Escher's Staircase (Norlander / Citron); 3. Project Shangri-La; 4. Queen of the Ocean; 5. Destination Roswell; 6. Rainbow's End; 7. Frankenstein Unbound; 8. Before You Go; 9. Under the Olive Tree; 10. The Beast Within You; 11. Evolution Revolution; 12. Through the Rain; 13. Seasons; 14. Love is an Illusion; 15. Avalon; 16. Symphony of Angels; 17. Astrology Prelude / Redemption Part II; 18. Secrets of Astrology.

NOTES FROM THE PRODUCER'S DESK

Sound and vision is not a new concept for the world of rock ’n’ roll. Rock films and video clips go back to the 1960s, and of course many a rock band has staged a fabulous multimedia concert. Perhaps the great Pink Floyd is the most legendary for delivering this kind of concert on a massive scale, and of course many additional artists have followed in their footsteps.

Sound and vision is not a new concept to the Lana Lane project either. Since the very first album, Love is an Illusion from back in 1995, great care was taken to choose vivid and imaginative cover art, to shoot moody and high quality photographs, to make CD booklet layouts that matched the depth of the music. The advertising and marketing campaigns undertaken by Lana Lane’s labels in time were no less artistic. The notion of a strong visual concept has always been a faithful companion to the music of Lana Lane.

But what is a new concept for us is that of moving pictures. Digital video, to be precise. While Lana Lane has released a vast catalogue of compact discs, this DVD is a first for us. As we approach the 10th anniversary of Lana’s first CD release, we knew that it was high time for us to venture into new creative waters and explore the depths of multimedia that DVD has to offer.

Locating and choosing the source material was an exercise in teamwork. Over six years worth of touring is represented in this project and it is due to the heroic efforts of Mark McCrite along with Naohiro Yamazaki, Hiroshi Kaneko and the staff at the Avalon label in Tokyo that we are able to visually document much of those years. When all the material finally arrived at my studio in Chatsworth, California, the stack of video tapes was intimidatingly tall " certainly it reached the height of a pro basketball player.

And of course there were audio tapes and hard drives, too. All in all, I had made about 60 “very good rough mixes” of Lana Lane live multitracks in order to then narrow the material down to the final selection. Then came the process of matching the audio with the video " making sure that there was adequate video footage available for any particular song we wanted to use out of the 60 candidates. As you can imagine, this process took months.

But in the end, a final playlist was completed, and the task of mixing and editing began. We have done our best to represent the most important concerts in the career to date of Lana Lane, and while sometimes the video quality of the earlier concerts is not ideal, we felt that it was historically valuable to include these vital performances. We hope that you will bear with us in these instances.

Additional compromises had to be made in the 2002 footage as it was necessary to replace all of the audio and visual footage of the live guitarist, Arjen Lucassen.

Our first choice for the 2002 tour guitarist was Peer Verschuren who had successfully, enjoyably and above all, professionally toured with us in Europe in 2001. But the events of September 11 combined with Peer’s mortal fear of flying made it impossible for him to come to the US or Japan in early 2002. But then in the happiest of all ironies, when Peer heard about the problems we had with Lucassen, he overcame his fear and flew to Los Angeles in 2003 to re-play all of the guitar from the 2002 tour and also shoot some soundstage video footage for the DVD. So in the end, we got what we wanted originally. If you find the 2002 footage to lack a bit of continuity because of the interjected footage, Lana and I hope that you will share our joy in having Peer be a part of this material, even if only in surrogate form. And of course you can see Peer live on stage in all of the 2003 European tour material.

In addition to the more than 2 hours of concert footage on this DVD, you will find an extensive series of interviews with many of the performing musicians from the concerts. I am usually the one who writes the liner notes for the CDs, and in interviews, you generally only hear from Lana and me. So we thought it would be both insightful and enjoyable to see and hear what the other musicians had to say about all this music and the years that have passed creating it. Lana and I hope that you will enjoy their views and stories as much as we do.

Lastly, Mark McCrite and I have assembled a video scrapbook of casual scenes from the various tours which we call the “candid montage”. The footage was recorded with our own off-the-shelf camcorders by Mark, Lana, myself and whoever we could find at the particular moment to hold the camera. We hope that you will enjoy this behind-the-scenes glimpse into our world of touring and that you will smile at the good spirit, sense of humour and overall happy vibes that accompany us in our travels. Lana and I are lucky to have not only a brilliant family of talented musicians, but also a close-knit circle of enduring friends. That is a rare combination indeed.

I wish you many happy viewings, and we’ll see you at the next concert! (I’ll be the one with the analog synthesizer and Mac laptop).

Erik Norlander
Los Angeles, April, 2004

Label: Frontiers Records
Release Date: July 12th 2004
Cat. #: FR DVD 005
Barcode: 8024391000533
Format: DVD-9 - PAL region free
Length: 180 Mins. Approx

Special notes: This DVD contains an alternate soundtrack for the concert footage mixed in the 5.1 surround sound format!