These songs were written in the early to mid-1990s, during the period when Songs for Social Change, a songwriters' workshop that I founded, was actively holding workshops in Los Angeles.
A site listing the lyrics to these and other songs can be found by clicking
.
Although I started Songs for Social Change to support the community of Los Angeles songwriters who want to change the world with their music, my own songwriting has always been primarily a way of working through difficult and disturbing political, social and philosophical questions, and thereby evolving my own world view.
Therefore, most of these works were produced through a process of intensive meditation on issues of great concern, such as wealth disparity, hierarchies of control, mortality, denial, and the possible destruction of the Earth, whose focal center was the evolving song.
In support of that process, it was important for me to get the ideas, the lyrical expression, and the emotional presentation of the songs right, so that the gestalt expressing the truth of the ideas could be heard and felt when each song was played. Hence, I was very interested and concerned with songwriting technique and craft, but was never strongly motivated to find an audience or to develop performance skills beyond those required to create song demos in my home studio. But now, with the widespread availability of music on the Internet, it seems appropriate to get these works out of my archives to a place where they can be heard, and hopefully performed, by others.
I don't sound like any of these people, but the following artists have influenced me:
Ani DiFranco
Michael Franti
Linda Waterfall
Chuck D
Dar Williams
David Rovics
Ross Altman
Jello Biafra
The Impossebulls
Atilla the Stockbroker
Fine Arts Militia
Bruce Cockburn
Jackson Browne
Chumbawamba
Many more...
Just a PC, some synthesizers, a microphone, some outboard stuff, and Cakewalk Professional software. I had some help from demo production companies on a few of these tracks, and they added their own live instruments.
I would welcome bands and individuals at any level of skill who wanted to perform these songs, especially at political events. I'm open to collaboration on song projects that reflect my own core ideals of diversity and cooperation.