Greetings From Lafayette Park-- X-Patriate: Alan J. Lipman

Washington, DC contains the hunger, power and passion of the world. "Greetings From Lafayette Park" is the new release from Alan J. Lipman, otherwise known as X-Patriate, straight from the complex and flowing, hard and warm, beating concrete heart of Washington.

 

Embracing styles as diverse as the epic "Pennsylvania Avenue", the tabla- and sitar-fused "Future Remembers", the cool and knowing "Dirty Life", the depth and resonance of "The Cost" and "I'd Rather Close My Eyes" (receiving raves from Whipart), the haunting "Dirty Little Secret", and the uncanny delicacy and eerily encompassing understanding of "The Joke", "Motorcycle Interstitial" and "Unintended Consequences", "Greetings", like Springsteen did via Asbury Park, capture a world in lyrical inner and outer motion, a running narrative of the complex and powerful forms of emotional life--the dark and most human longings, as seen in a city that exemplifies those experiences in all of us.

 

Lipman writes the lyrics and music to every song on the album. He plays every instrument and sings every vocal.

 

Lipman creates lyrical passages of depth, complexity and multiple meanings that, at the same time, connect to fundamental human experiences. 'Future Remembers' moves time itself forward and back, portraying the vision of future in the present from the past, in a vision of life beyond how it is lived, as it is lived:

 

He saw a moment of his future

Bright lights while smelling shop fronds

A shot behind his head (shot)

 

He saw a light but

It did not dispel his problem

He saw a moment that

Would capture him beyond the light

 

A bolt to the left (rain)

It seemed important

The mud

That had caught his boot before

 

A sound to the right

A smiling child

Didn't care about a race

He didn't care about time

He didn't care about future

But there was his future!

 

Six years later on a Bangkok street

The smell of incense

Brings him back to another day

 

Was that his future? (laugh)

No, half of the future

Just enough

To remind him what he felt

(Sirens)...

 

'Dirty Life' speaks to the movement of human self-perception along the inner continua that can define us, in a style reminiscent both of the Beatles and of Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone', yet in a voice and music that is new:

 

First she was a paragon

Then she was a woman

Then she was an animal

Dirty Life

 

First he was an icon

Then he was kind of hiding out

Then he was holding on

Dirty Life

 

For long forgotten for all for one

For this for that for soon for done

Forever for now forsake foreseen

For heart for graft for done for been

For in for out forsake foreseen for time

Dirty Life...

 

And "Pennsylvania Avenue" captures the life and passions of a city, driven and riven by the multiple longings and desires of its residents and constituencies:

 

Silly little girl makes a video

Tilts her head so cute and tired

As the steam rises from the grates

 

And outside the Big House

The reporters scatter round

Like packs of nervous birds

Behind the steely gates

 

And let the steam rise up

And let the people wise up

As I drive down Pennsylvania Avenue

 

Let the steam rise up

And let the people wise up

As I drive down Pennsylvania Avenue

 

The young debark at Union Station

New suits and bright eyes

And a gleam to aspire

And/or to acquire

 

And the elders on the street

Watch the town cars in their fleet

Pass to use the last of them

Fore they expire

 

And let the steam rise up...

 

Chipped paint on historic slum

A drum beat

So short so sweet

The hunger for a dance that will feel new

 

But the trend that brings them here

Is to be a part of 'History'

Which means all will be the same

When they are through

 

And let the steam rise up...

 

In "Greetings", you will find 'Vivid lyrics' and 'magic songs'.

 

-Whipart: 'Beautiful'

 

-Nighttime: 'Sensation and Passion'

 

Done