PRESS
RELEASE Vic
Sadot Releases “BROADSIDES & RETROSPECTIVES”,
a 19 song CD Vic Sadot, a Newark, DE based singer-songwriter, has released a compilation of 19 songs from his 25 years as a working musician. The Crazy Planet Band’s first concerts were at Newark Community Day and The Deer Park Tavern in the fall of 1979. Vic’s band has always put its emphasis on original and topical song material with a reverence for folk, blues, and rock roots. After traveling in southwestern Louisiana in 1992, Vic returned to form Planète Folle (Crazy Planet in French), which specializes in Cajun/Zydeco and New Orleans R&B. Planète Folle released Comin’ Home, a 16 song CD in 1997, featuring the original bi-lingual Bourbon Street. Although Comin’ Home is no longer available, Bourbon Street is on the new B&R compilation CD. Crazy Planet released a number of songs with pop potential, such as Good Time Delaware, Beer Muscles, Respect for the Road, and Comeback Kids. This is the first time that these songs appear in the CD format. There are also 6 new songs in the offering of otherwise “retrospective” selections. Key contributions to these new songs come from the exquisite guitar of Rob Sadot, the well-selected effects of the piano synthesizer of Dean A. Banks, and the rich back-up vocals of Ellen Lebowitz. The lead song is Mad Cowboy Disease, a hard-hitting broadside against the Bush Administration’s war policies with a hilarious rationale for such hypocritical and bellicose behavior.
The second song is Are You A Citizen (Or Are You A Slave?). Vic Sadot wrote it with local activist Cindy Abramowicz Hubschmitt. It came out of a conversation that Vic had with a fellow at work who declines to discuss politics because “Nothing can be done! You can’t change a thing”. This song challenges the notion that we cannot make progress by the historical fact that we have done it before. It’s done in a gentle Cajun waltz style that employs the 10 button accordion. Ellen Lebowitz adds her wonderful vocals to the back up on this and several other songs in the collection.
The CD includes Vic’s unreleased tribute to Phil Ochs, the great folk singer of the Vietnam War era, who Vic interviewed in 1973 and put up in his DC apartment for a week. It was recorded in 1987 when the Crazy Planet Band was in Sound Lab Studios working on their only LP, Ride the Wind. It’s called Broadside Balladeer, which now figures into the title of this CD as well. Respect for the Road was recorded with Kenny Thompson on piano, George Dreisbach on guitar, and Brian Heckman in 19 Other retrospective songs that Vic has recorded in the past but never released remain unfortunately all too relevant today. Vive Haiti! has become timely again as the current democratically elected President Aristide goes into his second exile now that a second Bush Administration has violated the sovereignty and democracy of the poorest country in the western hemisphere by planning and funding and participating in a coup with the former “terrorists” of the banned Haitian military.
Ride the Wind takes on a whole
new meaning in the post-911 “war on terror”
era than it had in 1988 when it was referring to the balance
of nuclear terror with the Soviet Union. In the aftermath
of US wars and occupations and scandals of torture and the
rejection of the Geneva Convention treaty by the Bush Administration,
it becomes a different song altogether: Cold
winds blow across the land… Dark clouds gather gloom It’s
just like us to rise again when we have sunk so low Other titles that are gleaned from past recordings are White Clay Creek, Our Only Chesapeake, and Berceuse de Bonne Nuit (Good Night Lullaby) from Vic’s 2003 solo CD called Songs of the Seasons; Born To Win, the B-side of the 1985 45 of Good Time Delaware; and Need To Know, Vic’s reggae influenced torch love song from the Ride the Wind LP of 1988. Another fascinating part of the “retrospective” to this CD project comes from old poems of Vic’s father, Jean-Henri Sadot, that have been set to music by Vic or by his friends, who are also guest singers and musicians on B&R. Vic has rendered In Normandy When Breezes Blow into song, and he has added his own new section to the song about D-Day 1944 that he calls Our Pledge To You. Jean-Henri Sadot wrote:
Vic set his father’s Spanish song about the Pyrenees mountains in the spring of 1940 to music as well: Recuerdo de Los Pireneos (Remembering the Pyrenees). Long time friend and collaborator on this project, Dean A. Banks, sings Jean-Henri Sadot's A Little Girl’s Bedtime, and plays the piano. The song reveals a father’s warm sentiment for his daughter’s innocence and antics. For example, after the little girl is supposed to have gone to bed:
Vic’s French friends in Normandy, Lionel Bernard and Jérôme Panier, did a great job on Jean-Henri Sadot’s The Statue of Liberty. Lionel set it to music. Jérôme sings. They emailed their parts to Vic and he took that to recording engineer Dean A. Banks. They added keyboards, acoustic and electric guitars, and back-up vocals here in the United States by Dean A. Banks, Vic and Rob Sadot, and Ellen Lebowitz respectively. In The Statue of Liberty Jean-Henri Sadot calls “this gift from the people of France” a “symbol of hope”. He declares that “the principles she represents speak of true fraternity”, which “offers the dissident soul a spirit of good will”. In this time of stress in the historic friendship between France and the United States, this song reminds us of that unique bond. Jérôme Panier plays bass guitar and sings with sincere conviction as the guitar of Lionel Bernard soars like the flame from Liberty’s torch:
“Broadsides & Retrospectives” manages to amuse, inform, and inspire with an array of topics that are patriotic, that protest injustice, that deliver a good time dance beat, or that draw you into a more reflective mood. Since this is a self-published project, distribution will be limited. However, in this age of the internet, the potential is there for widespread results. Discmakers is our production company and they offer a free website at CD Baby and a professional review by TAXI as part of their package. With Co-Producer Dean A. Banks as Webmaster, we have developed a whole new section at our website that enhances the small print limitations of a CD size package. The CD sells for $15 per copy, plus $5 postage & handling for one, two or three copies. Add another $5 to that formula if your location is outside the USA. “Broadsides & Retrospectives” can be bought by mail at the address below or by credit card at Vic’s music projects website, which is listed below. Credit card purchase of the entire CD, or for just one song at a time, is now possible at this website. For further information, interviews, or bookings, please write, email, or call Vic using the following information: Vic
Sadot |
