New Album Release – Preparing for the Fall

 

The new album Preparing for the Fall is now available at iTunes for $9.99 for the album and $.99 for singles.

 

We live in interesting times.

They’ve happened before and will again, but this time it’s ours to understand and experience.

Sit back and quietly take in the stories of what has come before, what is about to unfold in a coming winter, and the hope for a new spring once all the snow melts away.

Here is a very quiet and minimal live-off-the-livingroom-floor recording. There are a few “artifacts” —  in Fields of Gold a car whooshes past, and in Black Swan Dive there’s a pop or two. Perhaps in the future I’ll work with a studio and producer, but so far I’m happy with the mellow vibe with just me and a guitar. My part to play in the world of music, gold and geopolitics is fundamentally in what is being said behind what is being said, emotively and musically. Sometimes that just has to be unpolished. The beauty is in a phrase and the subtle arc of the guitar line.

The world is leaping ahead with technology and ideas, which always stirs up a balance of power between elites and masses.  The swirling words and actions of nations in flux usually brings an economic and geopolitical winter storm.

We go through cycles. We swing from fear to greed while we’re going around the seasons.

The repatriation of gold that you’re hearing about, is a symbol of that rising preparation for an economic winter.

The world has a change of global reserve currency about every fifty years, and a massive re-structuring about every five hundred years.

What the Romans called a seculum lasts about a lifetime, and each seculum in a closed system has a spring, summer, autumn and winter. The last Great Depression was about a seculum ago. Empires only last about two hundred years. Then they all fall.

We’re overdue for a really big fall and a blinding snowstorm, but there can be beautiful times no matter what the weather if we’re prepared.

This is what I think about, watching cycles and looking behind the reasons why things are as they are.

Wag the Dog is political. It’s a word matching song — think word before and word after — to point out what’s really going on. It was written last year before the Ukraine situation arose. The Gods of the Copybook Headings (words Rudyard Kipling) and Scarborough Fair (traditional) are from the past,  about love and staying with what is historically rational. Hands in the Pockets is the whistleblowers who have exposed the way our privacy has been hacked, and who is gaining. It was written originally about the News of the World telephone hacking scandal, and questioned who else is listening in, and who is being paid off. It was written before Edward Snowden revealed the privacy compromises. Fuel for Fire is how we’re feeling about the end of the empire. Bitcoin Barbarians is the rise of crypto-currencies — decentralized currency. I’m not pro-Bitcoin or anti-Bitcoin… just observing a social pattern. Water Woe is the radiation pouring into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima reactor, and the propaganda and resulting deaths. American Pie foretold the fall quite a few years back, when the empire was at its peak and looking over the precipice. Black Swan Dive is the growing string of banker “suicides”, including leaping off high balconies, and via nail gun to the head, and how high frequency trading, piracy, black swans, and walking the plank all combine with bankers, pirates, and gold rigging and lies… or gold, rigging, and lies. Somewhere Beyond the Sea is from the golden age of jazz, and along with Fields of Gold is hope for the future.

I have a unique history and I suppose I’m quite different in a lot of ways. That’s probably how most artists feel. We associate patterns some don’t see, and we don’t usually fight for a piece of the proverbial pie — we walk away when things are stressful and just make a bigger pie.

From the patterns I’m looking at, those who get the inside weather report are preparing for winter and making up some hot chocolate. Poets and thinkers are dreaming of the hope and new ideas and technology that will come in the spring (me among them).

And a few of us are looking down the road at a couple of swirling not-so-distant storm clouds.

Here is my little off the cuff album. Quiet and thoughtful. I’m preparing for the fall.

Thanks for listening.

Preparing for the Fall

Elaine Diane Taylor

Intelligentsia Media, Inc.

Available on iTunes

SOCAN/ASCAP

Tracks

1.    Wag the Dog 2:48
2.    The Gods of the Copybook Headings 5:12
3.     Scarborough Fair 3:01
4.    Hands in the Pockets 3:32
5.    Fuel for Fire    3:21
6.    Bitcoin Barbarians 3:02
7.    Water Woe 2:40
8.    American Pie 7:57
9.    Black Swan Dive 3:20
10.    Somewhere Beyond the Sea 2:46
11.    Fields of Gold 4:20

1.     Wag the Dog
words and music Elaine Diane Taylor

2.    The Gods of the Copybook Headings
words Rudyard Kipling and music Elaine Diane Taylor

3.     Scarborough Fair
Traditional English folk song arrangement Elaine Diane Taylor

4.    Hands in the Pockets
words and music Elaine Diane Taylor

5.    Fuel for Fire
words and music Matthew Ward. Used by permission.

6.    Bitcoin Barbarians
words and music Elaine Diane Taylor

7.    Water Woe 2:40
words and music Elaine Diane Taylor

8.    American Pie
words and music Don McLean. Used by permission.

9.    Black Swan Dive
words and music Elaine Diane Taylor

10.    Somewhere Beyond the Sea
words Jack Lawrence and music Charles Trenet. Used by permission.

11.    Fields of Gold
words and music Sting. Used by permission.

With thanks to — Jim Rickards, with affection, for the care and inspiration, Jim Rogers for long cycle wisdom from a far, Mike Maloney and Dan Rubock for the inspiration for Somewhere Beyond the Sea, Brian Landry, Warren Taylor, Terry Neiman for the contribution to Black Swan Dive, Elaine Supkis for the contribution to Water Woe, and Greg Monforton for the help on Scarborough Fair.

all production © 2014 Intelligentsia Media, Inc.
all copyright for Elaine Diane Taylor words and/or music and arrangement © 2014 Intelligentsia Media, Inc.
SOCAN/ASCAP