Geoff Brown
California Christmas: (How it came about)
Geoff is from Birmingham, England, and lived there until he married and moved to Los Angeles in 2004. Having his first LA Xmas in 2003 he was immediately struck by the sunny weather, the shopping frenzy and the beach all playing a part to create the 'crazy' vibe of a California Christmas.
All of this came together for the inspiration behind the song, which popped into his mind while driving in the LA traffic at Xmas 2006. Seeing the Hollywood sign in the hills he suddenly realized that Holly had a Xmas link and then on the way back home on the freeway he saw the sign for Santa Monica and realized the same link with Santa. Finally leaving the freeway he saw a poster about Los Angeles being 'City of the Angels' and the song was born!
A friend put Geoff in touch with Chuck Wild, the ex-keyboard player of Missing Persons (hit song Walking in LA) and the guru behind the prolific 'Liquid Mind' new -age best-selling albums. Geoff and Chuck immediately hit it off and worked diligently on the 'vibe' for the song (West Coast harmonies meet satirical lyrics). Joined by Ken Stacey on backing vocals the song turned into homage to the West Coast sound of the '60's plus but with lyrics that summed up the atmosphere of an LA Xmas.
Musicology:
Geoff Brown was a professional musician in the mid-1960’s founding several professional bands and laying claim to have ‘discovered’ two world famous drummers: Carl Palmer of Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Mel Gaynor of Simple Minds, whose first professional bands were playing with Geoff in the King Bees and Muscles respectively.
Geoff made 3 Albums and numerous singles with his various line-ups as lead vocalist and keyboard player. Two albums with progressive rock band 'Galliard', Strange Pleasure and New Dawn, and a funk/jazzy album with Muscles called 'Muscles'. A single Geoff wrote and recorded in 1966 with producer Larry Page, ‘I Must be Mad’ under the name of Craig, was voted the UK’s number one psychedelic single by the Observer Newspaper in a critic’s poll in 2006.
Videogames:
In 1984 Geoff Brown created “US Gold” a videogame developer and publisher.
US Gold rapidly grew to command 25% of the entire games market in the UK in 1989.The distribution arm of this business CentreSoft Ltd became, and still is, the largest distributor of games in the UK.
In 1993 US Gold, with Geoff Brown as founder and CEO, was floated on the UK stock exchange as Centregold plc. Centregold purchased Core Design in 1994, where Geoff commissioned and developed Tomb Raider, which went on to become a worldwide franchise selling over 30 million games and spawned two successful movies.
Through his various companies he has sold over 100 million games worldwide.
Awards:
Geoff Brown won a BAFTA for his Official Olympic Games product Sydney 2000 and also an MTV Award for the pop video of Robbie William’s ‘Rock DJ’.