Interview with Stan Bush on The Ultimate Album

Hello and welcome to the latest Geekcast Radio

Network interview. This time around, this is

going to be featured on all things Transformers

and Geekcast Radio. I am your host TF2 and Mike.

And joining me is the 35 -year musical prodigy

veterans, Mr. Stan Bush. Hello, sir. Can you

believe it's been 35 years since you started

your career? Yeah, I guess it's been a while.

How's it going? It's going, it's going. And 2014

is the year of the ultimates because Stan's new

album, The Ultimate, which... drops on St. Patrick's

Day, March 17th, 2014. Did you plan it that way?

No, no, it just kind of worked out. I coordinated

with the European partners, you know, the label

there, they were going to put it out. That was

the date they came up with, so we said, okay,

that's the date. Yeah, the sad thing is there's

absolutely no greed in this cover art at all.

That's funny. Alright, so the last time I talked

to you about one of your albums was 2010's Dream

the Dream. What has been going on with you since

then? I mean, I know normally you would tour

for each album. When did the Dream the Dream

tour start and end? Well, the Dream the Dream,

let's see, that album, around that time I performed

at the Transformers Convention. And I guess it

was 2009. That was actually the year before Dream

the Dream, or the summer before. Yeah, since

then, I've just mainly been performing around

LA and doing, you know, working on writing and

recording the new album. It's been to a couple

of years that we've been working on it. So my

producer, Holder Faff, he and I... I've been

working recording and writing and so forth. Also,

I teamed up once again with Lenny Macaluso, who

I wrote the touch with. Lenny's great. We wrote

a bunch of stuff together for the new album.

Awesome. Now, you've got... The Ultimate has

11 tracks. Two are... Two are previously released

and the other nine are all original to this album.

The two that were previously released was the

Heat of the Battle single and the Touch Power

mix. Are you always doing that? Are you always

taking previous singles and throwing them on

to the next albums? Well, sometimes there's like,

it seems like there's usually about three years

or so between albums and like Heat of the Battle

was written three years ago, pretty much. 2011

went ahead and yeah, I went ahead and put it

up on the website and we did a video and everything

with it so anyway, yeah, I was it was sort of

between albums we decided to release a single

or two just to kind of keep the momentum going

the The other one that you mentioned the touch

power mixes in the the last Transformers game

Transformers fall of Cybertron, so That was sort

of the reason we put that one out. In a partnership

deal with Hasbro, they agreed to allow us to

release a music video containing footage from

the game. So anyway, that came out over the holidays.

So yeah, it's on my website. So stayinbook .com.

Very cool, very cool. So what was the what was

the process or what was the feeling coming off

of dream the dream going into writing for this

one? What was the I mean that most of your themes

are upbeat music and you know good messages and

everything else and that's that's that's a great

thing that you do but What was it between because

dream the dream had a lot of? Slow songs on it

and this one has maybe one or two because I've

listened to this last. I don't know two days

since I got it. So what was the process in going

from the Dream the Dream to the choices you made

for this album for songs? Yeah, you're right.

This one rocks more for sure. It just kind of

came out that way. I wanted to make the best

record I could. It's just one of those things.

It's always hard to write good songs. That's

why if you take the time and you really put the

energy in, it works out well in that regard.

The Dream the Dream album, I was happy with that

one too. This one I think is even better. Let's

see, one of the songs, Thunder in Your Heart,

was a song that was released back in the late

80s and it was in a film called Rad. Anyway,

my partner Lenny Macaluso, my co -writer, he

wrote that with the sort of person that it was

in that movie and then what happened was we did

a music video, I'm sorry, a commercial. It was

for a beer commercial for Australia. Carlton's,

was it Carlton's Draft? Yeah, I think so. And

anyway, they needed to replace, the original

singer was John Farnham, and I guess they were

having problems with Farnham's manager or something

like that, so they wanted... They asked me to

sing a new version for the commercial. And I

was like, wow, this is a great song. So I decided

to go ahead and record it for the new album.

So we did a full version after we had done the

commercial. So that's how that song came about.

And the title song, The Ultimate, Lenny and I

wrote that one. as well as unstoppable unstoppable

we did a cool patriotic music video that's on

my on my website as well that's just released

too last week so uh it's called unstoppable and

it's it's it's you know it's very uplifting um

and you kind of hit it on the head with that

um that positive uplifting go for it sort of

believe in yourself kind of deal it's i don't

know how that i think the touch was the beginning

of that stuff for me and it it seemed like it

just kind of stuck it's like To me, it's like,

I don't know, I just have this really optimistic

view of humanity and I think we have amazing

amount of power that we don't even realize, you

know, that you can make, you basically make your

own reality in the world and I mean, I've had

a good run, I've had a great career and singing

a lot of big stuff and films and TV and commercials

and whatnot and making a bunch of records. It's

very cool. To me it's like, I don't know, I'd

rather sing about something positive and, you

know what I mean, just try to be a force for

good in the world, you know, as much as possible.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. And I mean, you know, some

of the other tracks on here, let's see, you know,

you mentioned Stand in the Fire, Thunder in Your

Heart, I also like The Journey. I actually did

an experiment with this album. as far as how

I listened to it. I listened to it all 11 tracks

straight through and then I took out Heat of

the Battle and The Touch because I had already

heard them. You already knew those songs. I already

knew those songs so I wanted to hear the album

without them because when I imported this into

my iTunes and I created the playlist for just

this album I didn't even look at the Didn't even

really look at the track listing that well So

I'm sitting here listening to this and I listen

the first two songs. I'm like, okay, this is

this is cool, you know Something to believe in

the ultimate that good slightly different and

that's good for what what you had did on dream

the dream for the first two tracks and And then

I get to heat of the battle. I'm like, hey, wait

a second. I heard this already So what I did

was I unselected Heat of the Battle and The Touch

just to see how the album would play without

them. And it plays really well. But at the same

time, now that I've heard it all the way through

with all 11, I'm like, OK, well, I'll leave them

in. Because it does make a whole package. Because

I don't know what I was expecting out of this.

I was expecting something that was, you know,

That stayed true to your style, which it does

and something that was slightly different I don't

know if I would I might actually try this next

time I might put heat of the battle at the end

with the touch to see how well I don't know I

just It's just a play -around thing for me. I

guess it changes your perspective if you already

know the song. It's funny because I hadn't listened

to Heat of the Battle in a long time, like a

year or two, and then I put it on, it's like,

wow, this thing rocks. It is a very good song.

Yeah, it is a very, very good song. We remastered

it too, so it's pretty slamming, and it really

adds to the album. But yeah, I'm really happy

with the whole, the stand on the fire totally

rocks. It's a cool thing. I really like it. The

other thing too that I do a lot of times in songs

is change keys so it doesn't stay sort of the

same key all the way through like the chorus

will lift and change into a different sort of

modulate. I like that. I think it's effective.

It makes it to me musically more interesting.

And I know I just said I've been listening to

this thing for two days and you'd think I'd know

off top of my head. I think, is it in the ultimate

that you have kind of the military march or is

it in Unstoppable? No, it has the, you're right,

the ultimate has the military march theme at

the end, yeah. Yeah, I love that. I thought that

was great. I was like, that was something I was

not expecting at all out of that song. I started

listening to it and I'm like, okay, hey, wait

a second. Thank you. That's a really cool thing.

Like back in the 70s, I remember there would

be like songs, first of all, every song wouldn't

be three minutes long, three or four minutes

long. Back then you'd have five minutes, six

minutes songs and sometimes they would go off

and do some tripping musical thing or like cool

segues. Music was more sort of open then. I really

missed that. You can do kind of cool little interlude

things. You know trippy things that that make

a song special, you know, and I like that Now

there is and I don't you'll you'll have to remind

me here because again I don't remember which

track it was on but there's a track on here where

Your voice sounds like you're talking through

an auto tuner now I know you don't use auto tune

and you don't like auto tune but what track was

that you did? I know it sounds like a loudspeaker

like a megaphone. It's that was on memory of

you and that's uh yeah that's like a futz effect

they call it in film and and whatever they call

that's the word this but it's like it sounds

like a megaphone you're basically uh um you you

talk oh yeah that's uh that was a kind of a cool

effect like the guys dreaming about um this girl

and uh anyway it made it made kind of a neat

thing and a break it was like a breakdown kind

of part in the song Yeah, I mean, it was cool.

It was, again, something I was not expecting

out of you, because to me, we've all seen what

autotuners do, you know? And autotune, in my

mind, is probably one of the worst things musicians

can do nowadays, but it's a gimmick, and sometimes

people need gimmicks. But I heard that, and I

was like, whoa, wait a second here. Let's talk

about the album art. How did you come up with

this design? That was created by this artist

in Italy. He's really good. Nello is his first

name. I don't know how to pronounce his last

name. Anyway, Nello's great. He came up with

the artwork and created it and everything. I'm

trying to remember the name of his company. Anyway,

you can look on the album cover. But yeah, he's

absolutely great. He came up with this album

cover design. It was like, whoa. It's like, yes.

So I immediately loved it. So he's a good friend,

too. the sky in here you've got the eagle which

is kind of funny because you mentioned the eagle

in a couple of the songs and what is this is

this cover supposed to be like a sequel to dream

the dream because i noticed that you use red

again and you also use i don't know if it's the

same character model But it almost looks like,

I'm looking at the Dream the Dream cover and

the Ultimate cover, it almost looks like it's

the same woman in that red cloth. Yeah, it's

the same guy did both covers, both might be a

style thing pertaining to him. But yeah, it does,

it has a really neat look to it. It's sort of

like surreal. It is very surreal. Yeah, it is

very surreal because It's not just like at first

when when I first looked at this at a distance.

I was like hmm Okay, she's in a house, and then

I looked at it close up. I'm like oh, no. That's

a road That's like going from outside going from

inside out. I was like oh wow that is so cool

Yeah, if you look closely, I think the girl is

Asian. Oh Is she I believe um yeah, she might

be Alright, what are the plans for promoting

The Ultimate right now? Well, I'm gonna do, in

Chicago, October 3rd, there's a festival called

Melodic Rock Fest, and I'm gonna be performing

at that in Chicago. October 3rd is the night

I perform. It's a weekend long festival with

several bands, but anyway, that'll be the Friday

night that I'm headlining. That night so that's

coming up and then there's a possibility of a

show in LA here in the summer and But I can't

tell you anything definitive about that I already

know I already know what show it is in LA. Yeah,

I think you know Would you be doing Heat of the

Battle there, or would you be doing Unstoppable?

Probably both, yeah. Okay, yeah like those people

normally call you up Do they specifically ask

for the certain theme songs of those bright?

I'm trying to dance around this so you don't

have to add because I know who it is Do you give

them a set list or do they request certain things

out of you? I can do whatever songs I want but

you know the one thing I Definitely could not

perform anywhere anytime without doing is to

touch Yeah, yeah probably so Alright, so outside

of those shows. What else is coming up for you?

Um, let's see basically just promoting the album.

I've been doing a lot of interviews and They're

the reviews are really good on it Yeah, in Europe,

the pre -sales have gone well, and everything's

going great. My European partner, it's through

Melodic Rock Records, and MelodicRock .com is

this famous website, pretty much the go -to site

for this kind of music, melodic rock music, you

know, in the world. And this guy, Andrew McNeese

is... He's the one who I've kind of partnered

with in this whole venture for the overseas stuff.

Of course, it's in the US. It's out on LA Records,

my own label. Anyway, yeah, but it's going good.

Like I said, the release is tomorrow with St.

Patrick's Day. Very cool, very cool. All right.

How was the... How is the release happening?

Are you putting it just on your website, or I

assume you'd put it on iTunes, or how is that

working for you? Yeah, it's through CD Baby and

iTunes, it's all on iTunes. A number of independent

sites are also going to be listing it for sale.

And of course, it's available on my website,

nbush .com. Right, right. Yeah, and of course

on iTunes. Very cool, very cool. All right. What's

next after promoting The Ultimate? Well, we'll

just see what happens. Like I say, I'm going

to continue to perform and record and write.

It's sort of one of those things where if it's

in your blood, you have to do it. Yeah, exactly.

But it's going great. Life is good. I got no

complaints. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I'm still

waiting for that recreation for Dare. Oh, yeah.

All right. So, yeah, you can check out The Ultimate

on Stan Bush's website, stanbush .com. You can

follow him on Twitter and Facebook. All the links

will be in the in the post for the interview.

Stan, thanks so much. I'll ask you to hold the

line and I'll be back after this. Yo folks, that

was Stan Bush here on the Geekcast Radio Network

once again here in 2014. His new album, The Ultimate,

hits on March 17th, 2014. Go get it, folks. It's

rockin'. It's awesome. I'm TFG1Mike. Unleash

the geek in you.