Get Out, Smiles For the Morning, and Live and Grow were written around April 1984, in Arizona. It was about the time I graduated high school. Caribbean Bound was written in April as well. I was working on two songs - one about a rich kid and the other about a plane crash. I was having trouble finishing these songs so I put the kid on the plane...

After the Storm (the song) had been recorded in 1983. I would play that song over and over in high school piano rooms. It was recorded after a session on extra tape. I just wanted to hear it. I had just finished Graffiti and I thought I'd just put another tape out - but it wasn't that easy. I was to move into my car and After The Storm (tape and song)never got out.

The Getaway, Dawning On Me, Back Up, and Dance Dance Dance were written in Albany Calif.. It was a strange time because I was being thrown into the real world thinking it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Also, I was trying to appease record company responses to Graffiti that claimed my music (because it was so acoustic) was out dated.

Notes
The synergy of the lyrics in each of these songs is in part due to the script that was being written for a video album. MTV was fairly new and there were very few conceptual videos out at the time. Most videos just showed the band or artist lip sync a song and tumble through smoke and video effects. I wanted to do a half hour story "bubble - gum" rock musical. I'd throw in a stick of gum and the directions.. "Put tape in deck. Put gum in mouth. Watch tape. Chew gum. Which ever looses it's flavor first... throw out." A joke about how disposable music was being sold as art - while real art repeated itself on the "then", recently invented, "Oldies Stations".

Disposable hits are marketed but in reality no artist ever works on them. Producers buy studio time and find ambitious business people to sing songs written by a team of staff writers. To many, nothing is wrong with this. It sells.

The lyric in the After The Storm story finds some irony in all this. The guy in the lyric is disposed of over and over (By Himself And Others) and is fighting everything to just remain above ground. (Bubble Gum Music Never Lasts Too Long) In the end he accepts everything and dreams of flying away. ( start over ). An artist has to care about something in order to create. In the end this character stops running and starts caring.

In 1984 I wrote part of the shooting script for After The Storm. I was in college and, later, as I continued to let random events dictate my life...stopped working on it. There was no outside interest for this project. It was too ambitious and arty. So I stopped trying to force it and shelved script and used some of the music for other projects.
D.S.G.