alisonboston.com

…that’s the name of the compilation CD I am on. My first CD. Now I have to join one of those songwriter’s associations so I can get my 50% of 1/13th of proceeds (after all the admin type people have taken their bite) from the sale of the CD. I need a manager to look after these things for me. I told someone that recently and was told: “You have to earn a manager.”

Well, I suppose 50% of 1/13th is a start to earning my manager. (My tongue is firmly planted in my cheek, in fact I think I am going to bite it off.) I have no idea when and if I’ll ever get any money from it. All the session musicians were paid up front. I guess the composers are supposed to eat their words for supper. Or maybe we are supposed to bite our tongues and eat our own flesh for nourishment?

What can I say about this CD I am on? I wrote the lyrics to the song Techno Toys Blues in 1987 when I was living in Ottawa, Canada and Canada was nosediving into an economic depression. The world has changed a lot since then. And so have I. But that’s the song Prieger Zsolt chose to put on the CD, so that’s what’s there. Though the recording isn’t exactly the way I wrote it, and I didn’t have anything to do with the production. I went into the studio and performed my song into the microphone. We did three or four takes; I was in studio about 30 minutes, and they did everything else. They put that guy reading the bible on there; I didn’t have anything to do with that. And I haven’t the foggiest idea who he is or why they did it, and somehow all of that just doesn’t sit well with my artistic sensibilities.

People tell me I should be thankful just to be on the CD, and I am thankful to be on the CD, but I am an artist and I wrote that song because I had something to say, and what I have to say as an artist is said in a certain context and when my words are taken out of my context and placed in
someone else’s, well…their context is not necessarily in sync with mine which means my intended message gets distorted and twisted, and perhaps used to say something that I had no intention of saying. Hmmmmmm……

…..NONE THE LESS…..

I do like what Anima Sound System did with my song. Csonti’s saxophone and Tibi’s guitar sound awesome. Really! They are the best part. I’d like to kidnap those guys and sign them up for my own band.

There are 12 other songs on the CD. I am not going to comment on any of them, but I will say that one of my absolute all time favorite Hungarian musicians is on the CD and that is Miki Lukacs. Miki plays cimbalom on five songs! I love the cimbalom. I’ll never forget the time I sat two feet from Miki’s cimbalom when he was playing in Nyitott Muhely. It was right after my father had been institutionalised for his dementia and it was a Mihaly Dresch concert. Now Mihaly Dresch IS about as Hungarian as they come, and his music comes from deep within his soul. It is highly emotional. Well, I sat there and felt the sound of Miki’s cimbalom playing Mihaly’s music vibrating in my chest and I wept. Powerful stuff. Very healing.

What’s any of this got to do with Anima Sound System’s We Strike? Nothing, absolutely nothing. It’s just that I love Miki, and Miki plays on the CD. That’s all. It’s hard to write about something you contributed to and maintain any kind of objectivity.

Where can you buy it? You mean you wanna pay money for it? You don’t just want a pirated copy? Oh okay - I’ll see about linking you up to some place you can buy it.