Type Jeza into any search engine and you get so many hits that it's more than obvious that you are an internet presence to be reckoned with.  What's the story behind that?  

I think search engine placement is one of life's "black arts", like "compression", "quabala" or "alchemy".  Takes years of study and understanding to turn gold into coal dust...There's a lot to be said for good "metatags" in your web pages before submitting them to search engines.  Though you'll get a lot of web hits on my name, they are not always the results I would like to see come up.  Many out-of-date links like Javamusic and Ampcast still coming up, I even find sites I didn't know or long since forgot about, where preferred sites like Besonic or Fap are not on top of the listing, so I still need a lot of work on refining the process.  Some of my best results come from the festival photos at the website and my 70's heritage in general.  I learned my craft back then and listened mostly to acts from that era.  The Beatles, Stones, TRex, Terry Reid, Traffic, CSNY all rubbed off on my "style" of music.  With that in mind I found a neat tool online to test popular search phrases.  I discovered there that the phrase "1970s Music" was a safer bet than "Free MP3s" so I submitted my '70s Music Festival Photos as a website...now I get listed at AskJeeves higher than ABBA or the Eagles with a high percentage of anonymous web hits from that very search phrase.  So effectively somebody searching for music from that era is likely to come up with Jezaland, and hopefully, dig my kind of music as well...Those photos also link to and from a "Festival Archives" website based in Australia where my pix are a featured link so that actually pushes a high percentage of traffic to Jezaland form non-music venues.  I'm starting to sell photos for publication directly through the site too.

How did you start with OMDs and who was the first?

The first OMD I joined in 1999 was called PeopleSound, based in UK.  I don't think my page is active there any more.  They started out with a few million squid as venture capitol, huge media splash with full page magazine ads and billboards etc.  So full of themselves...as an inventive to the earliest artists to join up they actually gave everybody a cheque for 100pounds as "advance payment" on CD sales...but provided one of the worst possible excuses for an OMD.  2/3 of the page was banners and ads for the website itself, leaving a tiny corner for the artists page.  No forum, no cross promotion, no central listing, almost impossible to chart or even track down an artist using the search engine.  Promo was purely about handing out cards at gigs...They also dolled out 25pounds for recruiting other artists.  So I recruited a couple of mates for another 50pound cheque, made them 100pounds each too and we laughed all the way over to MP3.com.  They are part of the "vitaminic" group now, but they're all pretty ineffective sites for promotion. 

OMDs sure came a long way before they went away.  Too bad they didn't stick around a more.  Who was/is the best one for you?

What is your opinion of OMDs these days?  Are they still valid or are they like LPs, nice if you've still got the need and can take the drawbacks, but not a necessity?

Online Music Distributors.  I think we've all been let down by quite a few of these websites over the past year or so without naming any names, and the only ones that will survive are now charging for the service so we as artists have to be more picky.  I went through a period loading one or two mp3s here there and everywhere, but it's impossible to maintain and promote them all, so these days I tend to be a bit more selective and concentrate in specific arenas where I see an interest being shown.  The collective sites are still necessary, because that's where the "fans" are supposed to go to find us, like record stores which sell your products, but I place more importance on my home website as a central point for up to date info and links.  There's always a link to Jezaland.

You obviously have spent a lot of time setting up sites on OMDs and on your own website.  What do you think the general opinion of other indie bands is about internet presence and OMDs?

I can't possibly speak for others opinions, but if I'm setting up a new page seriously for promotion, I will spend a day or two revisiting, making sure I've used as many features as I can and presented a page with some visual impact.  I see a lot of artist pages with very little info or care taken over presentation.  You don't have to be an expert to add interest and make a page appealing.  Personally I place a high importance on maintaining and monitoring my home web site.  The OMD page is all important too but I would emphasize finding ways to promote off-site, that are non OMD affiliated.

You are a reviewer for Besonic I know. Do you see any new trends in bands or indies from that?

Collaborations and cross promotion.  It's a uniquely internet, indie based phenomena and I'm possibly a leading exponent of the trend.  But you don't really see it happening in the commercial music scene, other than at superstar level.  The whole idea of you and me working together on a song, thousands of miles distant, simply by swapping mp3s and posting home made cds was not even a possibility even 10 years ago.  Your own work with Anthony Ruocco, and both of you also contributing to "Man in the Mirror".  Being able to work with people in different locations, regardless of musical style or software used is a phenomenal advance and people are taking advantage.  Now we see Matt Claus, a leading international collaborator of some standing, recently touring live in Germany, and next year the states, together with Peggy & Bob Morris from USA, as a direct result of working distantly via the internet at a high level.  I have much respect for Matt and he taught me a lot.

Being a scout at Besonic is a nice way to be able to give something back to the community.  I hope that my many years of experience both on and offline have given me the privilege to voice an opinion with some kind of authority and credibility on a major platform and also to cross-promote other people's work on my artist page.  Hopefully it raises the kudos level.  I made the statement once and I stick by it.  "Being truly indie-pendent means working together as a team."  Think about it...as I worked with you on "Tower of Babel", so we start promoting each other with one song, two musicians, several other artists and several other albums and on various websites, all benefiting through the exposure. 

What are your feelings in the download vs. stream debate of online music?  Do you think it a bad idea to "give it away" in downloads, or are you confident that the quality differences between a download and a real CD are enough to entice people to buy?

I have more or less phased out free downloads at Besonic on the new album.  I see from the stats that the majority of visitors stream the music and very few downloads.  I'd rather give out a taste of what's on offer and try to sell cds.  Mp3s are only adverts, the concept of selling mp3s is a real non-starter.  I may even load one minute samples of some songs.  It's sometimes hard to get the point across, hey guys there are 5 songs you can hear on this page in hifi, but there are 12 or 15 of equal quality on the CD itself.  If anything I've lost confidence in the power of the internet to sell cds.  If you figure the average hit rate from giving out 100 flyers to a gig might be 2%.  So let's say 2% of visitors to IndieLegends.com visit your webpage, and possibly play one or two songs in lofi.  How many of that 2% drop you an email and how many of those actually buy a cd.  The possibility gets so diluted without the luxury of saturation airplay on daytime radio.  You have to almost begin again every day on the web reaching out for individuals and it's so easy to loose momentum, it can be very daunting building a loyal online fan base, especially to newcomers on the scene.

What's more important to you, selling CDs or getting people to listen to your music?

They are both important and impossible to separate.  People are unlikely to buy a CD unless they heard the music in the first place.  But then somebody either buys a CD on first listen, or they come back time and again, praise you to the sky over an extended period and still don't buy a CD.  That's part of the problem with giving away free mp3s.  The internet is very fragmented.  You don't get the packaging, the running order of songs etc...Obviously having poured so much time, effort, energy and personal cash into a project like making a CD, I'd be a fool not to want to sell a few extra copies.  I certainly get the bigger buzz knowing my CD reached a happy home.  Owning a physical CD is the ultimate appreciation of an artists work.

Do you buy a lot of CDs?  What's in the Jeza CD player at this moment?

I seem to acquire/swap CDs with other artists more than I buy them.  Having your own CD in our weird wide indie world is a form of currency.  I got CDBaby to pay me last season in CDs rather than cash.  The latest I got was a World Music sampler on a magazine cover with about 15 tracks by various artists, having just visited WOMAD (World of Music Arts & Dance) festival last weekend.  My brother Lazer the Deejay is more the collector, we recently raided various artists, having just visited various friends' CD stashes and upgraded the 70's collection with stuff like Traffic, Spirit, Temptations, Hendrix and the like.  The latest indie platter I got was from Luciano Albo, my original kick-butt bass player on "Wined Up" all the way from Brazil.  He's been working on it since he returned home in 2000.  It's great too, playing all the instruments and singing.  Very Beatley pop rock tunes all sung in Portuguese haha available through an obscure Brazilian music website.  And Neal Allen sent me a great CD as well.

For those reading this in the UK you'll find 3 Jeza tracks from the new CD featured on Computer Shopper cover mounted CD, Osmosis Music Feature 49, October issue 190 available from your local newsagent, September 2003!

When I think of Jeza, I think of music first, but I also think of art.  From what I've seen of your work, you're an accomplished artist and photographer.  How long have you been painting?

Thanks for saying that.  I've been a bit of an all rounder/renaissance kinda guy as long as I can remember.  I moved up a year in pre-skool 'cause I could draw well aged 5 or 6.  I think there's at least one of those to watch in your household...I actually haven't painted anything for about 10 years.  It requires a lot of space and time to get out all the oil paints, dry rags, brushes and terps, I did art college as a mature student aged 30 which was a good experience, though trying to "be creative" at 9 in the morning wasn't always conducive to great art, but trying out many different disciplines from screen printing to typography to building terrariums in glass, helped me realize I'm more of a designer than a fine artist so that fueled my interest in computer graphics.  Photoshop manipulation is a lot less messy and time consuming than oil painting.  I did one or two large canvases but I was never prolific as a painter.  At the end of the day my music was the thing that drove me most creatively.  I still do "artwork" but I use different tools.

What inspires a painting to come from you?  Is the inspiration to paint different from the inspiration to do music?  Do the two ever cross paths (like are there any examples of a painting that is also a song etc)? 

Yes they are quite different.  I'm more of photo-realistic/copy artist rather than inspirational so there was usually a photographic image as starting point but there's often some surrealistic twist like a man's face in a waterfall or a dolphin in the mountain valley...with music the process is quite different.  The two have crossed though.  With the song "Chasing After Wind" I did with CM, based on a Biblical text by King Solomon.  I have a painting of a river running through a mountain pass with Hebrew lettering formed in the cavern wall.  That text is actually part of the same song lyric in it's original form.  "All the rivers run into the sea, but the sea is not full", and A generation passes away, another generation comes, but the earth (universe) abides forever"...such a loaded observation.  The painting itself I actually began "on location" at Ein Gedi nature reserve near the Dead Sea in Israel, a wholly inspiring landscape itself, and finished off later from a photo.  The song was written around the same time.  Mid 1980's.

"You're the one" - acrylics by Jeza

       "Feeding the dolphin" - oil painting by Jeza

When you paint do you listen to music?

No, I stuff my ears with the dry rags...For sure, paintings can take a while to dry.