by Alison Cummings

You’ve all been hearing about Pat Badger’s new project: it’s a multimedia CD, but what exactly is it? Well, on 16 January 1997, I had my first contact with my favourite bass player (long-distance, but hey, still very cool) - and he answered a few questions about it.

So, what’s the name of this mysterious project? And when did you get the idea?

"First of all, there is no official title for it... but our working title is Extreme Enhanced CD," says Pat. "The initial spark that got this started, actually happened during the III Sides tour. An old friend of mine, who is a Multimedia Producer, approached me on doing a CD ROM or an Enhanced CD for the band. At that time, not a lot of people really knew what that kind of thing was about, myself included. He had put together a prototype of what something like this could look like, using video clips, album artwork, music clips, etc. This was all new to me, but it impressed me a lot and got me more interested in computers."

But with Extreme still being quite busy, it wasn’t the time for Pat to get started. "Needless to say, nothing really came of it then, but I always kept it in the back of my mind. While the band was on hiatus, last year, I was getting a bit anxious to get back to work, so I contacted him and talked about doing a project for our next release," he says, adding, "... Unfortunately a release that would never be, but that's a whole other story." Hmm, that we know all too well...

But, onto the beginnings of the Extreme Enchanced CD... what kind of things will we be seeing?

"We started working on this project which was really designed for demo purposes only," Pat explains, "using the artwork for Waiting For The Punchline, recent videos for ‘Hip Today’, ‘Cynical’, recent articles, newspaper clippings, music loops of some of our material, etc. There are several "environments" that you visit," he expands, "including a circus tent, a bar, a theatre, and a tour bus, where you can go check out all of that stuff and more."

Sounds exciting! And as they progressed, "we started incorporating more and more of the band's catalogue, magazine and newspaper articles, old videos, concert footage, behind the scenes footage, etc. Now the project has a bit of a retrospective look at our whole career."

But the bad news, adds Pat, is that "As I said before, it was really designed for demo purposes, so I don't really know if it will ever be released. There had been talk about a "Best Of" Extreme record someday, but I'm not sure if that will ever happen."

"This material could be included on the disk, on the unused portion of the CD," he says, "so that not only could you listen to the music on the CD, but you would also be able to put it in your [computer] CD ROM drive and be able to interact with all this stuff." And, he adds, "a lot of it I know you haven't seen before. I hope someday, it will be released."

My final question to Pat was whether he wanted to get anything across to the readers of Rise N Shine, about the project or anything else.

"I know there is a lot of you out there that help keep Extreme alive," he says, "and this would be my contribution to help keep it alive." And, proving to us yet again what a nice man he is, he adds, "You are all much appreciated!"