This collection was conceived by Javier Hernández -who, through Bizz Producciones, organizes our tours in Spain. The idea for this album is to offer songs like Vampiresa Mujer (Woman Vampire) to the Spanish audiences- as finding my records in the Spanish shops is no easy task—. Thus, this album features some previously recorded songs, like the aforementioned, as well as new tracks: Let’s see what you think of it. This collection is truly just a collection: there is no sound unity or arrangements between one song and the next one. There are recordings gathered throughout the last five years, space of time long enough to observe changes in the playing, arranging and recording. Delivering songs such as Vampiresa Mujer together with new pieces, we thought of combining original previously released versions together with new ones recorded last year in San Francisco, California; and in Tarifa (south of Spain). The A qué venimos sino a caer (What are we here for but to fall down) song was recorded in Tarifa last spring. I was writing words on napkins in coffee bars late at night in Sta. Ana square at the end of April for what would become a song later in May. Around that time, I also wrote some ideas for This romance will be different for me. Again on coffee bar table napkins Juanito (Spanish for Johnny)? Well… Maybe on a notebook. Silence alors silence (Silence Then Silence) was again written the days before recording it in Tarifa, and all of them three kept changing structure at recording… Same as after recording each song, all of them changing all the time: a chorus added here, a line removed or forgotten there and all that jazz. Es como el pan (It’s Like Bread) was an idea to help us improvise on stage; Muchachito, Kiko Veneno and myself. It was in October 2006 at a Cultural Centre in Barcelona where the people in charge had the idea of us – Muchachito and me – sharing the stage. Well, I didn’t quite got the idea right and thought that Muchachito, the bigger artist, was to be the star and Tommy, my drummer, and me would be opening the show. But not… they wanted all of us to play the songs together. When Javier explained to me the whole story two days before the show (we had talked before but with a lot of misunderstanding from my side), I said, Well, but I’m not doing it. Javier explained to me that we were going to have dinner with Muchachito and we could discuss the whole thing between us the musicians; and moreover, there was a surprise, my friend Kiko Veneno was a last-minute recruit to the bill. I thought to myself, What are we going to play? Which songs do we all know? We could do Volando voy (classic Spanish flamenco track) but the thing is that Kiko is fed up with playing it, then what… Etc, etc. Until we came up with Es como el pan as driving force to allow for all sorts of ways of improvising the song’s idea: words and arrangements do not matter, just pure spontaneity freshness. So, Juanito, how was the show? Oh, great! Muchachito was very, very nice, he played my songs better than myself, improvising with ‘soul’, and Kiko was a real prince too; improvising and singing with elegance and good mood. Two years ago or longer back, in a small village in California, a not too Spanish-speaking area, I found an old and mystical book written in Mexico in the early ’50’s. The book was called, in Spanish of course, Hasta el infinito, (To The Infinite, would be it’s English translation). I’ve drawn many ideas for my songs from the chapters of that book; El joven se estremece (The Young Man Shudders) and Ha muerto la Rosa (Rose Is Dead), to name a few. As well as songs in Spanish, French and English, in this compilation you can also find songs in Italian. So-so understandable, aren’t they? Jonathan Richman