6th of August 2005
Dear (insert name),

So here we are now at the beginning of August, and things seem to be going quite well here at Batt Control. We've finished Katie's new album, shot the cover photo sessions and done the artwork, have commissioned the video and are talking to retail and the media. So far, all seem very happy with "Piece By Piece" - the album. We have had press playback days which were
well-attended, and had a great review in "What's On?" magazine (first and only review to date).

So as we stagger ever nearer to the release date, we are trying hard not to forget anything important, and to make our artistic and marketing decisions without too much operator error. I am excited to hear that our record company partners worldwide think this album surpasses album one.

Katie is off on holiday soon, but first we will be shooting the video (next week) with director Kevin Godley. It's the first time we've used an "external" director (that is, not me) ­ to direct the video, and both Katie and I are finding it a stimulating prospect. I've always admired Kevin's work, originally as a member of 10cc and since, in Godley and Creme, and subsequently as a director. He has devised an interesting concept for "9 Million Bicycles" ­ involving not very much, if anything, in the way of
bicycles. He sees it as a floaty, dreamy record and is planning a similarly floaty, stoned-looking video which involves Katie "floating away" at ground level, away from a grassy picnic, across sand, snow, wallpaper and other "backgrounds" with the camera constantly looking down from a fixed position above her. Hmmm, should be fun to shoot, as they literally "drag" Katie
through the sand and snow - wearing a harness, pulled by a winch!

I had lunch with Barrie Marshall, our tour promoter, today. He is very busy with the new Paul McCartney tour and recent and ongoing Elton concerts, so it was good to get a couple of hours with him, over some fish and chips. We are planning to base ourselves here in the UK and jump off to Europe for promotion work on the new album (which is to be released on the same day
throughout Europe, South Africa and Australasia) - until Christmas, then embark on a huge World Tour in January, starting in the UK.

I also talked to him about some ideas for touring with Robert Meadmore ­ who achieved the number two position in the UK Classical chart with "After A Dream" and has now sold close to fifty thousand albums on Dramatico - not bad for a debut classical album. Robert might record something special for the Christmas period, but will certainly tour early next year.

For those of you who would be disappointed if I didn't include my recipe for Pickled Quail's Bladder Bisque, here goes:

Ingredients

1 pickled Quail
Some bisque
Salt
Pepper
A cheese sandwich
A bottle of vodka

Method

Take the pickled quail ­ kill it, and remove the bladder very carefully. Chop the bladder into tiny bits and add the vodka slowly, heating over a low flame, and eating the cheese sandwich. Add the bisque, stirring and simmering until next Tuesday afternoon. Ring a stunningly beautiful woman and invite her round for dinner, but don't tell her what the dinner is. Put on a fabulously classy record such as Rupert Holmes "Widescreen" and hope for the best. If you are a girl, invite a bloke, unless you are gay in which case TELL EVERYONE and be proud of it. In fact, invite everyone. If you are a quail, do not attempt this recipe, in fact get out of town. Add the salt and pepper next August.

Meanwhile, back at my newsletter ­ I should say that I have enjoyed a round of radio interviews to promote my single "Railway Hotel" ­ and I guess the record will come out when we get a quiet moment. There is going to be a "proper" release - when the album is finally ready. At the moment we are so busy with Katie's new album that there isn't time to concentrate enough on the "Bright Eyes" album - I guess it will come out when it's good and ready.

This weekend we are doing a bit of final tweaking to "Piece By Piece" before mastering it next week. See Katie's own site for more details (www.katiemelua.com ).

Have a good few weeks,

All the best

Mike



16th July, 2005

Hello again,

It takes about 20 minutes to write and post a newsletter so God knows why it can't be done more often. Anyway, here we go again, using 20 minutes which I have created by staying up later than I had planned on the eve of Katie's new album cover photo shoot.

It's mid-July and we have JUST finished the new album. The "difficult" second album, they call it, don't they? But they forget how difficult the first one was when they say that.

As this is my own, rather than Katie's newsletter I won't steal her thunder by spilling the beans (hey, two clichés in one sentence!) about all her activities, save to say that since I last wrote to you we have been to South Africa, Beijing, the States several times, and made an album! Katie has won a German "Echo" award and sold 300K copies there. Great stuff, and very exciting times, with also the pressure (and pleasure) ­ of recording the new album. I have to admit that three or four weeks ago, my feeling that we had matched or exceeded the first album with this imminently-ready one, were dashed by several negative comments about one or two of the tracks. When I am getting an album ready for release I ask everybody what they think, and I
take the cleaning lady's opinion as seriously as I do the head of our distribution company. It was a very good album, but didn't run quite as effortlessly as the first, didn't have quite the same feelgood factor. So we went back into the studio, cut SIX more songs, of which three are now on the new album, and according to received opinion, we've cracked it, Of course, only the public will really tell us whether or not we have. I truly believe this album is at least as good as the last one - just more mature and not quite as jazzy. I guess it's blues-based and folk/singer songwriter based.. This week we did a "controlled explosion" of the album for 40 media people in Germany, and the reaction was incredible. This was followed by a triumphant gig in Stuttgart for 5,000 rocking fans with banners, and enthusiasm to spare.

Tomorrow's album cover session is with photographer Simon Fowler, and we are using a derelict-but-once-opulent old house in Portland Place. I'm taking a video crew down there to get a bit of fly-on-the-wall stuff as well. Should be interesting.

I flew back from Stuttgart to a BPI (British Phonographic Industry) meeting, at which I was elected to the BPI council, so that was quite a good day. Very well organised, the event was actually a 24-hour event involving a river boat trip with lots of Members of Parliament (the BPI are involved in lots of political lobbying and interaction) ­ which sadly I missed - and
then a full day marathon seminar and Annual General Meeting, which was packed, and at which we heard a very good speech from the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, who was excellent, and very skilful and reasonable during an ensuing question and answer session. My reason for standing as a BPI council member is that I gave up all my Industry committee
work some years ago, and just felt I needed to return to putting something back into the industry that has been my livelihood for so many years. Also, the BPI run the Brit Awards, which fund the Brit School where I discovered Katie Melua - so I think I owe them one.

So now, forty minutes after I predicted this would be a twenty minute letter, I am thinking I should break for the bedroom. I hope my next newsletter will be more fun to read, and might even include my recipe for Pickled Quail's Bladder Bisque.

Oh, and just before I go, may I say Bollocks to those who bombed the London Underground recently, and Bollocks to the American government and military, who instructed all US military personnel stationed in Britain to avoid London in the aftermath of last week's bombings. They should be offering to join us in the front line of "their" war against terror, by offering military personnel to help in the centre of London, not forbidding them to enter the city so that our tourism and theatre business will die the same death it did when in the eighties we allowed them to use UK air bases to bomb Libya in reprisal for the Lockerbie Bombings and then all Amercians gave the UK a wide birth for the following two years. Fighting terrorism takes courage. Come on, USA, show us a bit of that. Don't let us think you are all yellow.

I don't know whether I'm more angry with the bombers or the US government, who could possibly show such stupidity as to make such an order. We help you - you help us, with courage, please, not cowardice.

Anyway, rant over. Have fun, be good, boogie down, stay cool, etc,

Mike



13th February, 2005

Hello again,

February' s newsletter comes between our January and February visits to the States. I decided in December that this was the way to give Katie an apparently constant presence there and yet leave her some time to visit other countries and also to make the new album - so we are going there for at least a week each month.

As far as the new album is concerned – we are about half way there – but it will be out in September, so we have to put deadlines in, and exact sessions where we have to have certain songs ready. I' m writing, Katie' s writing, and we are exploring a few other songs, just as we did on the first album.

We got snowed in in New York a couple of weeks ago (we were there to play Joe' s Pub, then the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia - before leaving for San Francisco, LA and San Juan Capistrano. So we had an enforced couple of days sitting in the Irish pub across the road from the hotel in New York while we waited for the blizzard to die down. It really was a hell of a blizzard. I' ve never seen deep snow lying on the roads in a major city and remaining for days. The streets (and I' m talking about 6th Avenue and Broadway, not Acacia Gardens) only went back to their usual black colour after two days of being white, even with traffic using them constantly. Finally we made it to the West Coast. Where the gigs went equally well. We also had an interesting evening in LA, putting Katie' s vocal onto Sharon Osbourne' s tsunami record 'Tears In Heaven', with producer Mark Hudson - a man of cordial disposition and great musical and vocal understanding, who on that evening was sporting a camouflage pattern kilt and a bright red goatee beard. After our sold-out San Capistrano gig we drove back to LA ad got on a plane to Tokyo. Katie' s own newsletter will, no doubt fill you in on further details, but suffice to say a good time was had by all and we were well looked after by our Japanese hosts. Platia Entertainment. The album will be released in April over there.

Robert Meadmore' s album is being pre-advertised on Classic FM at the moment (see www.Robertmeadmore.com) and nice things are being said. At the moment we are at the important 'sell-in' period where Dramatico' s distributors - Pinnacle - take orders from retailers - and the reaction at retail has been very good. Thing is, with a classical album like this (however much it has a beautiful 'chill-out' feel) - you never know whether it will go huge, medium or sell just 25 records. We only made the record as two friends who had always wanted to work together on a proper album (after doing the odd thing here and there over the last 20 years, like the piece I wrote for the Queen' s opening ceremony for the Channel Tunnel) - so it was done for art, rather than commerce. However - having been the 'victim' of so much record company apathy over the years, I cannot, when releasing it on my own label, give it less than 100% marketing and promotional attention. So it is a bit of a risk, but why change the habits of a lifetime? I often find the acid test of an album is that people tell you they play it over and over again in their cars or wherever. It' s also a good album to peel carrots to, take a bath with your girlfriend or boyfriend (or both) – or why not take the carrots with you and peel them at the same time?

At the moment, in advance, we are preparing artwork for a series of nine to twelve double CD' s called 'Mike Batt Archive Series'. – the first three are expected to be out on Dramatico in April or May . Essentially they are my solo albums, in two-for one packs. First one is Schizophonia/Tarot Suite, second is Waves/6Days In Berlin and third one is Zero Zero with the Zero TV special as a DVD on disc two. I' m really not expecting them to storm into the charts, but having them available will at least make a change, and there are some people out there who will show a vague interest! (But how many?).

It' s a beautiful sunny, cold Sunday here at Batt Towers, and I' m sitting typing this in the control room of our studio, where my 17 year-old son is engineering his friend, David who is adding drums to a heavy rock record they' re making just for fun. It' s loud. The drums are in the hallway as you enter the house – which is where we always set up Henry Spinetti' s drums when we record here. It just means if we have visitors and they ring the doorbell in the middle of a take, you have to stop and start again (unless you want a doorbell sound just at that point on the track). Trouble is, the dog barks when the doorbell goes, so you' d have to want a doorbell and a dog on the record in order to keep a take like that.

The drummer today is David Stewart - son of our friends, Allan and Jane Stewart who are coming for a Sunday roast lamb dinner tonight. Allan is well-known as a performer and comedian. He is a brilliant mimic and singer, and has appeared on the Royal Variety show more than once. His heartland, however is Scotland, where he started very young with his own TV show and is always welcomed back warmly by audiences North of the border. He also played Al Jolson brilliantly in the West End show, Jolson. He likes a nice glass of single malt whisky so I' d better make sure we have some in.

This coming week gives me a couple of 'office-and writing' days (while Katie goes to Holland for some TV) - before leaving for gigs in Boston, Washington DC and New York towards the end of the week and next week. (See her site for details).

We have a new Head Of International Marketing at Dramatico - (never had one before) – it' s Andrew Bowles - who comes to us from Hot Records who have Eva Cassidy. He can take some of the weight off my shoulders. I' ve set up a wide range of distribution relationships for Dramatico, worldwide - but keeping all these different affiliates in the loop and planning marketing campaigns in each territory is a very big and time-consuming task, which I' ll be glad to share with him.

Now my son, Luke has moved onto performing the mad axeman guitar solo part of the record he and David are making, and so I' m getting out of here for a nice quiet cup of tea in the kitchen. Hey, just as I wrote that, my wife came in and said 'Anyone for a cup of tea and a cheese scone?' Spooky. Eh?

Stay cool,

Mike

PS: Funny thing just happened. After writing the above, I went into the kitchen for my cup of tea, (and a cheese scone) - and my wife, Julianne said 'They' re not coming!' I thought that was a bit short notice to cancel a dinner date, but said, 'Why?' and she said 'They' re busy'. I shrugged - it didn' t sound like the Stewarts to cancel like that - I was quite disappointed, but obviously took it on the chin. I finished my tea (and my cheese scone), came back to the computer and removed the above reference to Allan and Jane from the newsletter - just to keep it factual - not out of spite!- and posted it on the site.

Ten minutes ago, the Stewarts turned up, with smiles and flowers, etc.

I said 'I thought you cancelled!' They said 'What made you think that?' I said, 'Julianne told me earlier' Julianne said, 'No I didn' t!'

Turns out that when she said 'They' re not coming - they' re busy' she was referring to the boys - Luke and David not coming for a cup of tea (and a cheese scone)because they were busy being rock gods.

Trivia rules. Now you know. Bet you're glad I told you that.