LINER NOTES TO SKETCHES AND FETCHES NEW CD:

 SKETCHES AND FETCHES  is an album being created in real time (on YouTube, Mixcloud and Soundcloud,) night after night new compositions documenting my study of friendships in the flow of a same sex lifestyle.  Sort of like John Lennon's "Instant Karma" (where he wanted to issue a recording pretty immediately in the 1970s,) as well as Lennon's Plastic Ono Band primal scream using mostly his voice, a piano, with Yoko and Phil Spector in the background. 

Look, I love Yoko *(with Spector's horrific murder aside,) and the genius of Phil Spector...but those two artists in the same room will exact a primal scream out of anyone.   That someone I care about has serious issues - I would find out seven months after we met, is not what pushed me out the door.  Indeed, I would rather be there for his benefit than to be at odds, but there's also something called self-preservation for a sixty-eight year old artist who decided to start a record label (Varulven) rather than take over the family business.  The security of the family business would also have destroyed me - I know my own limits.  Rather than evolve as Hunt Drug Malden did into Hunt Photo (one of our customers,) I "burned my boats" as they say and dove headlong into the music business without a net.  Historically my half a century of work will probably end up a footnote, though the undercurrent certainly had a major impact on Boston/New England Music as well as - inadvertently - Medford, Massachusetts politics.  

2.a current of water below the surface and moving in a different direction from any surface current.  1)  an underlying feeling or influence, especially one that is contrary to the prevailing atmosphere and is not expressed openly.

Being one of the "crazy geniuses" of rock and roll in France with Phil Spector (in the press,) certainly something I am proud of. 

LINER NOTES TO SKETCHES AND FETCHES NEW CD: David Bowie's "Changes" has always been a staple of my piano concert sets, though they've been rather private. Some bar in Boston I don't think even exists anymore, over near the old Napolean and Jacques, it had an upstairs room with a piano that I would sit and play at. The encouragement of the seniors I've been playing to recently, and the bar goers a couple of decades or more ago, is wonderful. Keep in mind, I'm a songwriter more than a pianist, but happy to make people happy and play standards. Good therapy for my arm as well. Black Sabbath's "Changes" has always been a beautiful melody. Might do a medley of Bowie/Sabbath as they are two of my faves. The lyrics to Sabbath, well, Sab lyrics, https://youtu.be/ESE0ohvyOmA Ozzy and the boys perhaps the poets laureate of hell.... (A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions.) And, yes, I've put out too many "placeholder lyrics" in my rush to get music out in the past (Paul McCartney "Scrambled Eggs" lyrics as the song "Yesterday" was said to have evolved) ...though I THOUGHT that "The Salt Water Summers" was complete in 1976, it certainly needed the upgrade that The Salt Water Summers 2022 has, the special ingredient being on a trip in 2021 with someone that I admire...that helped structure a more sensible story, one that others can relate too. Yes, most of my songs are based on personal experience...where the Beatles wrote songs for the world (despite the reference to self in McCartney/Lennon/Harrison work - "I Me Mine," can't get more self-focused than that - though George was still enlightening the listeners projecting that "I Me Mine" philosophy on them), people can relate to Beatles' material very efficiently.) My songs are usually based on personal experience or fantasies of personal experience ...the new Salt Water Summers 2022 the state I would rather be in, happy and with a handsome fellow - than the "fantasy" of the original, some heterosexual couple yearning for the "fine find yesterday" of the beach during more youthful times. Again, the first composition actually started as a sequel to Bowie/Mott The Hoople "All The Young Dudes," which, ahem, originally had nothing to do with heterosexuality, and that was absolutely fifty years ago.