Scott Free - Happy Pride Day Moscow

You Queer Punk Rocker You!
Nice trumpet, too!
Spread the word!
Protest Music Lives!
Description: Scott Free's musical sarcastic response to Russia declaring their anti-gay laws are applied equally to all people, and therefore not discriminatory.

Jay Spears ~ We Are All Born Lucky ◂ Q

 And now a message from my subconscious.

So there's this title track, "We Are All Born Lucky", see?

And I read that title and think I'm not feeling so lucky, see? Not when I first heard from Jay that the album's coming, not when I heard the song the first time, not when I got the album in the mail. Yeah, I guess, sometimes I've felt lucky, of course, y'know? But the way Jay puts it:
  We.  Are.  All.  Born.  Lucky.
  ??

  That right there is ASKING for bad luck, see?

  That's flaunting your luck — I mean, you're not supposed to, like, brag about your luck like that, like you can count on it always being there. That's just ASKING for trouble, is what THAT is, see?

  THEN I SEE.

  The video, that is. I just a little while ago watched it for the first time. (See it for yourself: http://youtu.be/6kznlezPOV0 )

  And now I see. Yeah, I get it.

  I see I've had this bad-luck belief about good luck. Man, the ways I've been ucked fup about luck could fill a page. Sometimes it takes an artist who has been through Hell and back (pay attention to the lyrics in the first verse) to have enough gravitas — and returned from Hell lighter for the trip — to get through to someone as outsider and thick and bass ackwards as I can be. Suffice it to say, I'm better now, thanks to Mr Spears.

End subconscious message.

  What's the big-freakin'-deal about all that?

  That's what Art is supposed to do!

  Isn't that WHAT GREAT ART DOES?!

  IT GETS YOUR WHEELS TURNING WHEN THEY'RE STUCK.

  IT PUTS YOU IN A NEW FRAME OF MIND.

  IT MOVES YOU.
  Sometimes not so much emotionally as it moves you from one way of thinking to another way, perhaps a better way.

  Or just look at it this way. Because Jay is much smarter than me — Savvy Spears, he is — he describes "We Are All Born Lucky" as a: "Happy, cheery, beer-hall sing-along about how great it is to be alive."

  You have got to, GOT TO, give yourself over to this song. GOTTA see the video. It's not [voice of god] L I F E   C H A N G I N G !!  But remove the glitz and the shiny useless polish and, like a song you remember dearly, a truly unforgettable refrain with a gentle melody, perhaps a song you learned as a child, perhaps you sing it to yourself when you're feeling happy, or sad, or just enjoy its company, "Lucky" is a lifelong-keeper of a song.

  (Still don't get it? Lyrically, the words alone are mundane, but think of how they meld with the melodies, and the memories, on classic songs.  Think: "You are my sunshine / My only sunshine / You make me happy / when skies are grey."  Think: "Nothing you can say can tear me away / from my guy."  Now, to the singalong list in your imagination, add: "We are all born lucky / all born lucky / I was born lucky / Same as you / At times I used to doubt it / but there's no doubt about it / We are all born lucky / and you know it's true.")

  We Are All Born Lucky has 12 other songs. Lets listen to a few of them.

  Years ago, I described Jay's first album, Boy Howdy as "masculist", an equivalent of feminist. Some of you will no doubt fondly remember his catchy-as-herpes breakthrough music video on LOGO-TV, "I Like Mike" from Boy Howdy. Jay told me he liked the word masculist and took it to heart. Here, "I Abide" is another song of his cut from a masculist stalk, with well-grained woodiness. The mascular male harmonies, the simple openness of the single acoustic guitar allows the song to stand firmly on its own.

  "Drive Time" is another superb example of Jay's unique ability to build a song in concrete — as in concrete or found-poetry. Studio wizardry and lyrical repetition collude to form something unique. Spears' tongue-deep-in-cheek sense of gallows humor brings us "When The Big One Hits", a swing-time preventive prayer of respect for California earthquakes. Speaking of prayer, my mental to-do list includes a note to ask Jay (on the podcast I've some day gotta produce) how he resolves having both "(There's no such thing as a) Guy In The Sky" and "City of Angels" ("Play with me / Pray with me / Stay with me") on the same album.

  "Victory Day" is a celebration which just doesn't deserve to be buried at track 11. (see * below) A non-stop burst of energy, drawn from a solid, crystalline sense of self: In an alternate time-line, I imagine record companies in a bidding war to win the opportunity to invest in re-recording some of "Victory Day"'s instruments and sweetening the vocals in anticipation of a hit record pay-off. A re-recording of Spears' "Bougainvillea Waltz" (originally found on the album Playing On My Team) now features vocalist Jeff McCarthy. I still can't say they've come up with an appealing concept for this song. It deserves less melodrama. But had "Lucky" ended on "Sleep With Me" instead?  The elegant guitar arpeggiation (a genetic brother to that on The Beatles' "Dear Prudence") would have brought the album to a cozy but engaging close.

Lucky is worth taking a gamble on, and worth what Spears asks for it. At his Bandcamp page you can listen to the entire album, read all the lyrics, and order your copy. Speaking of "order":

* CD Sequence Got You Down? Change It With Playlists!
An ongoing argument takes place in my head about the song sequences on dozens of independent musicians' albums. (Almost always it's Do It Yourself musicians who don't quite get the hang of it.) But I'd never mention it in print until I dealt with the ego aspect: What purpose does complaining about an already-made CD's song sequence serve? Rather than merely expressing my two cents about a problem I couldn't fix, I shut up. But a partial solution has been with us for over a decade: Just use music player programs to rearrange digital versions of the songs in the order that makes more sense. One less fight I no longer have. No more frustration, debating myself whether to mention to a struggling musician why I want to rearrange the sequence they probably sweated over.  Now I just make my own.

My suggested playlist for We Are All Born Lucky is:

  1. We Are All Born Lucky  (6) (song's original order)
  2. Meat  (3)
  3. I Abide  (7)
  4. Drive Time  (5)
  5. When The Big One Hits  (1)
  6. Victory Day  (11)
  7. City of Angels  (4)
  8. Guy In The Sky  (2)
  9. Revolution  (10)
10. Our Love  (8)
11. This Is One My Heart Won't Win  (9)
12. Bougainvillea Waltz  (13)
13. Sleep With Me  (12)

(Originally printed in Challenge (Summer 2013, p 13), on June 28, 2013 at issuu.com.)