I’ve decided to call my sixth CD:
Lights Over The Bar

I don’t know how long it’s been since I wrote that Flameland “is my most recently completed CD” and that “Lights Over The Bar is a work in progress”. As I look at it now, it’s been way too long.

Before I get to the various reasons why it’s taken me so much longer to finish Lights Over The Bar than it took me to complete my other discs, I repeat what I'd written before today about the CD.

There’s a metaphorical reason as well as a literal reason for the name.

I’ve literally sat at many bars in my life, too many to name. I’ve had some of my most intense discussions, political and otherwise, in those places. I think if sane people sat at a bar and discussed their problems over a couple of cold brews (not too many), problems may be able to be solved.

The metaphor is the bar, the standard to which we hold ourselves. We are still at war. Young men and women are still killing and dying because of phantom weapons of mass destruction and meetings not held between Al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi government officials, all in a country that never did a thing to The Former United States of America.

We need to set the bar higher, obviously, and when we’ve got it set just right, we’ll see that there is light over that bar.

Now, back to why it's taken so song to complete Lights Over The Bar.

First, I wanted to make certain that Lights Over The Bar was my best album so far. Unfortunately, no matter how long I worked on it, I’m still not nearly as satisfied with Lights Over The Bar as I was with Flameland. I’ll be doing more work on Lights Over The Bar even as I continue to distribute it.

Secondly, I’ve been busy, albeit inconsistently busy, as an assistant editor for OpEdNews.

I’d like to say that I’ve been at least as inconsistently busy as a contributor to OEN, but I’ve taken as long to write something containing some social redemptive quality as I have to complete my sixth CD.

Four months passed between the essay/article/rant that I wrote in September of 2007 and my most recent essay, “Is The Constitution Really That Unfair?”. Is it that society’s become that much better in recent time? As much as I’d like to think that it has, I don’t believe that’s the case. After all, a man who knows so little about The Constitution which is supposed to guide the citizens of The Former United States Of America is campaigning for president on the platform that he hopes to get “America back for Christ”! Even if there is any historical truth about the story of Jesus of Nazareth, I'm quite sure that the man didn't have the slightest idea that what we call The Americas existed.

As we know, the position of president of this nation is purchased, not obtained through the democratic process of voting. In this country, it’s never been obtained through the most democratic process, that is, one voter, one vote. The cryptic and far too complicated wall between qualified candidates and those who call themselves “Republicans” and “Democrats”, The Electoral College, is the same force that nullifies the concept of one voter, one vote.

Other than asking “Is The Constitution Really That Unfair?”, I haven’t been inspired, shocked or surprised enough about anything that’s happened in the world to write about it. It’s not that I haven’t continued to become angry and frustrated about the political theatrics, The Regime’s ongoing and unquestioned running afoul of the law, the incessant determination of the American public to find TV programs which are breaking unions by using “ordinary people” as casts while they dumb down the American public into a group of “peeping Toms” and sadists or watching Americans accept things as they are, no matter how obviously wrong they are. All of this is still staggeringly outlandish to me.

It’s just that I’ve been writing about the same things since 2000, as I wrote about this same kind of collective social mental lapse in the late 1960s and in the 1970s, and the same things are still happening, as if we couldn't possibly have learned enough to approach the exact conditions in a more humane fashion. I hear the same solutions or the same arguments supporting society’s robotic march toward insignificance. I’m a little known if not arguably unknown writer, but I’ve seen the writing of those to whom we should be listening, those who are well known. Yet, society, the people who are part of the “civilized industrial world”, with the help of the hypnotic American entertainment industry, still haven’t wanted to take note or think about it.

I don’t want to turn this into my next essay/rant/article, so I’ll just say that I’ve been trying to put these very thoughts into writing and, in explaining why Lights Over The Bar took so long to complete, I think I’ve gotten a running start.

Now that Lights Over The Bar is released and should be for sale at CD Baby, iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster and other digital music outlets soon, the curtain is closing on the window of time during which the album page will be linked to the full album songs.

Yes, I did say that I think that I can do more to make Lights Under The Bar better. But that idea may stem from the fact that I still find self criticism way too easy. I was once told that “the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement”, so it just may be that I see that room.

Lights Over The Bar does have far reaching potential and that may be another reason why I think I need to continue to move forward with it, even as I revisit and review it.

I’ve hoped, since I first wrote the song, that “Peace Is Possible” would potentially become the mantra for those of us who want to see legally ordered hits on “our enemies” come to an end. Maybe it's a reach, but I still hope that it can become to peace activists of today what Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance” was for those who pursued that very same goal when this nation and North Vietnam were hurling death at one another. Musically, the song has gone through many metamorpheses ranging from an attempt at RAP to its present presentation as a reggae piece.

The expression “Peace Is Possible” is the email signature of one of the members of The Mount Diablo Peace Center. So the title belongs to Mary Alice O’Connor who, along with the other members of the MtDPC, works 24/7 to make peace possible.

I wouldn’t presume to possess even a fraction of John Lennon’s talent. I do think that “Peace Is Possible”, if taken seriously, propagated and broadcast, can clearly elucidate just how easily peace can be effectuated. It’s a powerful and even hope filled message.

I collaborated on two of the songs on Lights Over The Bar. I wrote the music for the song “Crossroad Bridge #3” while Jim Bush, a very good poet and regular contributor to OpEdNews, wrote the lyrics.

I also wrote the music which accompanies the poignant lyrics in the song “Streets Of Eden”. Those lyrics were written by a very talented English poet named Alan Hodgson. I fervently hope that “Streets Of Eden” can be a classic. It reads like a classic and even sounds like a classic, if I may say so myself.

More importantly, “Streets Of Eden” is a song with which many of us who lived during the “good old days”, the days that people like Franklin Delano Roosevelt made possible by reminding us that America is supposed to be, as brilliant radio host Thom Hartmann likes to say, a “we” society, not a “me” society. I know that many of us share Alan’s desire for a time when disagreement will merely consist of how best for us to take care of society’s denizens and earth’s dwindling resources.

“Why Don’t We Go” is war as perceived by a soldier written by me, a person who never was a soldier. Yet, I hope that, for those military personnel who don’t already embrace them, the lyrics to this song will cause a pause and serious introspection for those personnel about the actions they take and if it really makes sense to be following through on those actions.

Lights Over The Bar is not a theme CD. Not all of the songs are about society and its relationship to greed, war and apathy. There are four songs on the CD which deal with more personal experiences. People should be able to relate to the situations which “Ellen”, “Open Up To Colors”, “Glad To Be Home” and “The Same Way” address.

Of course, I hope that you enjoy all of the music on Lights Over The Bar. I hope that you’ll tell friends and family alike about the CD so that they can get themselves a copy and enjoy the music as well. I hope, though, that while you’re enjoying the music, you listen clearly not only to the social messages contained in the album, but to the passion with which they’re expressed.

I've definitely decided to take these thoughts and place them in the Essays, Letters, Opinions section of this site. I’m sure that the narrative will wind up on my blog as well as at OpEdNews. How long it will take me to accomplish that feat is a question of great concern, especially for me.

There is a bit more to reveal as to why it’s been so difficult for me these past months to write and, along with the thoughts that I’ve expressed here, I'll include those revelations in what will be my next essay.

Since recording and distributing Lights Over The Bar, I seemed to have become a bit of a prolific song writer. The muse, as well as some friends, has been very good to me .

Jim Bush, who wrote the lyrics to “Crossroad Bridge #3” has written a sort of amateur psychoanalysis of the type of person who would be so hungry for lots and lots of money as to join a mercenary corporation and put his or her life on the line. I’ve not yet recorded “Blackwater Bullies”, but it will be done soon.

After discussing what I thought, and still think, is an excellent song from Lights Over The Bar entitled “Streets Of Eden”, with the song’s lyricist, Brit Alan Hodgson, we decided that an acoustic version of that song would sound good – maybe even better than the version found on Lights Over The Bar.

Doreen Peri, who sings the first version of “I Can’t Be Owned” on the album From The Heart has written a song which has some very poignant lyrics, although not a title. It’s also awaiting my musical accompaniment.

Jamie Redhead, another British lyricist, has written the words to three songs, “No Man’s Land”, “Shock And Awe” and “Storm Front”. I was more than honored to write the music for those songs.

Finally, I’ve written several songs. I’ll begin uploading them as I complete recording them. They may, at first, not be in any particular order. Ultimately, however, I will move them where I think they will fit best in my upcoming seventh CD:
L’il Ole Man.

You’re right. Those words represent more than just the title of the CD.

Thanks for visiting. Enjoy my modest gifts.

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