Scott Fagan's Mem.wa?

Book 4. Continued…Tales of The Second Coming .5

I am in the muddle of, ah…middle of, preparing for three very important occasions, and the April 15 tax deadline.

First, Sula’s One Hundred and Eighth Birthday, (the 22^nd of April).

Second, The release of my new CD “The Virgin Islands Songs, The Musical. In Concert” Containing my new single “Surrender To The Sun” and

Third, A benefit Concert for COAST (The Council On Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, St. Thomas, St John) on April 25^th at French Man’s Reef in St. Thomas, and…

 yes, I filed online, just in the nickel of dime.

 We have completed the production elements of “The Virgin islands Songs, The Musical, In Concert” and are now snaggled up in the manufacturing process.

Shari Brandt, Digitaldave (both from MAAC, the collective that I am involved with here in the states) and I spent much time on the cover last evening and that element looks great.  Shari had a photo of a “Golden Sky” that she took in the Virgin Islands.

The photograph is wonderfully representative of lines from “The Virgin Islands Song” 

The Virgin.Islands Song

 Have you ever been, to a Virgin Island?

If you answer no, come let’s go come let’s go

Have you ever seen what Virgin Islands mean?

If you answer no come let’s go, come let’s go

 In this world of gray on gray

I know where the rainbow day

Is born upon the golden sunrise

That scatters the stars turning diamonds to sky

Over Amalie… an emerald in the sea

Her perfumed mystery, bold as love longs to be.

 Have you ever seen what Virgin Islands mean?

If you answer no come let’s go, come let’s go

 In this world of grey on grey

I know where the rainbow day

Is born upon the golden sunrise

That scatters the stars turning diamonds to sky

Over sisters three… like emeralds in the sea

Their people’s history, bold as love, wild and free.

 Have you ever been, to a Virgin Island?

If you answer no, come let’s go come let’s go

Have you ever seen what Virgin Islands mean?

If you answer no come let’s go, come let’s go

If you answer no, come let’s go, come let’s go…

 And our upcoming single “Surrender To The Sun”.

 Surrender To The Sun

 Go down by the sea, surrender to the sun

Find the one you used to be, forget what time has done

 Go down by the sea and heal your heart,

Too many memories are tearing you apart

 Your eyes show you’re tired so

Of love of lose or win

Old friends know you’ve got to go

And let your heart begin again.

 Instrumental

 Your eyes show you’re tired so

Of love of lose or win

Old friends know you’ve got to go

And let your heart begin again.

 Go down by the sea and heal your heart,

Too many memories are tearing you apart

 Go down by the sea, surrender to the sun

Find the one you used to be, forget what time has done

 Go down by the sea and heal your heart,

Too many memories are tearing you apart,

They’re tearing you apart…

 We need to work quickly as I am scheduled to travel back to St. Thomas on Tuesday the 20^th of April, for Sula’s Birthday Party on the 24^th and the Benefit Concert at French Mans Reef on the 25^th. I would like to have at least fifty copies of the new CD to take along. The CD is a double album so we are actually burning and printing 100 discs to make 50 copies.

The package looks great (Thanks to Shari Brandt of MAAC) the production quality is great (thanks to Digital Dave of MAAC) and the content is interesting and unusual.

(The printing and burning is being done as I write, by John E. a once well-known New York City recording engineer who is also a part of the exciting MAAC collective)

In terms of content, the CD contains what I believe to be a selection of good and appropriate “Virgin Island Songs” (of which there could have been three times as many) poetry, and lots of what we call (down in the Islands) “schupidness” aka (in the USA), as “humor”. I think that folks will find it interesting, amusing, and worth their while.

 This is our first co-production with MAAC (The Middletown Area Arts Collective) and this afternoon the media committee is meeting to discuss and create an action plan for getting the product (most especially the single “Surrender To The Sun” to the public. We do believe that there is an audience for this song and this recording of it, and the trick is how to get the recording to its audience. Specifically,

1. How to get exposure for the recording.

2. How to make the recording available to those people who would like to have it

3. How to collect sufficient pennies, nickels, dimes and dollars from sales of the recording to be able to create more recordings…

We think that this recording is close to the perfect one to help us develop and establish a promotion and distribution (and collection?) process that we will be able to utilize for future products.

 Of course we have no freakin’ “mowker balowker” (moolah boolah) (At last report it took an investment of $250,000 to get a hit) to pursue the traditional or established promotion and distribution processes. Which includes printing thousands of promotional copies and shipping them to radio stations, hiring an “independent record promotions person” who would “get our release to the top of the pile” hiring a publicist to get us as much  “press” as needed, shipping copies to and getting the interest and attention of ”reviewers” inclined to “rave or even rant” about our humble offering, and mounting a “Promotional Tour” to get exposure and support for the release” so, we have to uncover and discover new ways to achieve our goal. Which is in a word,.. ah six words, “To make this record a hit”.

We are certainly interested to hear your ideas and to engage your help in this. Please write to me at scott@lilfishrecords.com with your thoughts, and suggestions. I (and we) thank you very much.

P.S someone is saying “Scott you’ve got to bribe folks! Urging me to offer “half a bag of Hershey’s Kisses as a grand prize” Continued…

 Book 1. Isla Grande .4

I walk right up to it and stop and stare almost every day. The house on South Catherine, it was my sister Gale’s home. We were here together loving each other as much as a brother and sister can. What fun we had rambling through the house shouting or mumbling silliness in English, Spanish and Calypso, in and out of yesterday, today and tomorrow. (incidentally, that’s the fun of being a “grown up” you get to  shout and laugh and yell as loud and as often as you want to, and turn the music way up high).

Who in the world could have imagined that Gale would have to split? Not to California, not to Florida, but completely. Clean gone outta here, off the Earth…Not here there or anywhere, and not back tomorrow either. Gone gone gone. It’s unbelievable.

So, I walk right up to the house and stop. Almost every day. I just can’t believe she’s gone.

 She would have loved “The Virgin Islands Songs, The Musical”,  The MAAC Collective (right here in her little town, Middletown,) and her brudder bonehead’s new recording of “Surrender To The Sun”.  After all, she was the one. She was the one that first heard the whispers in the wind, that realized a new kind of music was being birthed, one that she and her little brother Bonehead, belonged to, and were born to be part of.

It was the beginning of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Bill Haley and The Comets, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Elvis Presley,  The Platters, The Moon glows, The Flamingos, Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, their music, the idea that their music was OUR music, that spoke, that sang our freedom became our strength, the sweet salve, solace and succor for the soul, that we, that Gale and I, in that time and in our place, so desperately needed. Continued…