Menders, benders
Spenders and amenders
All rise to seek the hope within a brand new day"
-"Pennsylvania Avenue" from "Greetings From Lafayette Park"
More than a quarter of a million people have now experienced X-Patriate.
Music and politics. "Pennsylvania Avenue". "Dirty Little Secret." "Dirty Life." "Unintended Consequences." "More and More Like A Civil War." "Future Remembers." "The Joke."
"Brilliant...Like Springsteen does for Asbury Park, Lipman does for Washington, DC"-Amazon.com
"Beautiful"-Whipart
"Revolutionary" - MySpace
Tracks down the darkness and brings it hard and real into the light.
The music. The politics. The season. "Greetings From Lafayette Park":
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Go See It At Amazon: 
From "Beatwire":
March 28, 2008
Do You Know The "Dirty Little Secret"? Song From New Release CD by Doctor/Lawyer, CNN/BBC Commentator Tops iTunes Popularity
"Dirty Little Secret", the haunting release that is now becoming known as "Hillary's Song" (referring to her misstatements on Bosnia, Iraq and other issues) comes from the remarkable new album “Greetings From Lafayette Park”, newly released on OneSuch Records. This record, with its echoes of Springsteen, Dylan and The Beatles, has been making waves all over the world – first in Italy and France, and now in Japan and the US too, word-of-mouth has drawn over a quarter of a million viewers to X-Patriate’s MySpace page. And with other album tracks “Pennsylvania Avenue” and “Dirty Life” also achieving top popularity on iTunes, it seems that Lipman truly has something to say that people want to hear.
Lipman writes all of the music and lyrics, plays all of the instruments, and sings every word on the record. He also has a unique background. He has been writing music since the age of 8, but he is also a doctor with a private practice in the heart of Georgetown, in Washington DC, has served as a professor at Georgetown University, is a graduate of Georgetown law, a published author (represented by the country’s leading non-fiction agency, as cited in the “New Yorker”, Dupree-Miller), and a commentator for CNN, the BBC, NBC News, the Washington Post, L.A. Times, and Agence France Presse, among other media.
He has seen it all--and brings this to his music. Having served as an expert on government panels and as advisor to nations and the State Department, and in elite institutions such as Yale University School of Medicine, The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown, yet also having worked with the most bereft souls on the streets of Washington, Lipman’s work has ranged from the most powerful hearts and minds in Washington DC, to those struggling to keep heart and mind, body and soul together–as well the many minds and souls in between.
Yet through everything else, each year, Lipman has been writing lyrics and music, singing, playing all the instruments, and recording. He now records his music in a studio that he has built located just a few steps away from the Capitol and the White House - in the very heart of the nation. “Greetings From Lafayette Park” has now delivered this music from the heart of the nation into the world.
“Greetings” has been lauded far and wide for its musical diversity and lyrical depth. International publications such as “Whip art”-Italy’s National Art Publication based in Rome, and Nighttime Magazine are amongst the new devotees of this extraordinary album, with feature stories and in-depth interviews of Lipman. Even the cover shows the levels of thoughtfulness and invention Lipman has brought to the project. Combining the famous “Abbey Road” cover with an ironic nod to Springsteen’s “Greetings from Asbury Park”, and the apples and oranges presented to us by DC brilliantly captures the musical diversity, emotional depth and lyric complexity of the songs within.
Greetings From Lafayette Park
The epic “Pennsylvania Avenue” uses DC as Springsteen used Asbury Park, with the inner emotions, darkness, passions, power, and hope of the many different groups in DC used as a prism to reflect the power, passion, dreams, and often undiscovered darkness of humanity. The powerful political message has since seen the track included in a very popular Obama IMix on iTunes.
The haunting “Dirty Little Secret”–also having reached top popularity on iTunes–evokes Dylan in its lyrical sharpness, while Lipman’s deep, warm, powerful vocal performance has been compared to Nick Cave. The cool, knowing “Dirty Life” with a driving backbeat, reminds the listener of Lennon’s irony and his direct biting insight. Lipman also shows full out orchestral power in the beautiful ballads “The Cost” and “I’d Rather Close My Eyes” , and the multiple string sections and extraordinary close of “A Physical Thing” is like a modern take on “All You Need is Love,” rising to a powerful crescendo that includes carillon, wedding bells, stereo sweeping subway chimes, telephone–and barking dogs!
These 16 songs represent extraordinary musical artistry, with lyrics of rare insight, intellect, and depth, and with layers of meaning that invite – even demand – multiple listens.
With almost no prior publicity, every song on the album has already reached top popularity on iTunes in France and Italy. It has received over a quarter of a million views on MySpace, where countless listeners have left unsolicited rave reviews about Lipman’s deep voice and powerful and moving songs. European press, including the international art periodical Whipart, and the Italian magazine Nighttime, have hailed Lipman as a new star, and his music has received airplay across the continent. The album has since been acquired for sale by Rhapsody, Amazon, Emusic, Target, as well as all other iTunes International Sites.
“Greetings” is a powerful work by an artist with a unique ability to look into the hearts and minds of those at the center of the nation. He has brought his experiences to the music as a reflection of the diverse desires, passions, hopes, darkness and dreams of this world. No doubt, the rest of the world will soon discover the "Dirty Little Secrets" that Lipman reveals so well.
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From Amazon.com: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. To date, nearly 200,000 people have experienced X-Patriate. Now, "Greetings" brings 16 new songs to the fore.
As has always been the case, Lipman writes the lyrics and music to every song on the album. He plays every instrument and sings every vocal. Embracing styles and ideas as diverse as the rising hopes, struggles, and ultimately uniting dreams of a nation, as signified by the drive both on and up "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", "Unintended Consequences" and "Motorcycle Interstitial"; Greetings, like Springsteen did via Asbury Park, captures 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.
On "Greetings", Lipman creates lyrical passages of depth, complexity and multiple meanings that, at the same time, connect to fundamental human experiences:
"Pennsylvania Avenue" captures the life and passions of a city, driven and riven by the multiple longings and desires of its residents and constituencies, worth excerpting in full from the album:
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
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
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
But let the steam rise up
Let the people wise up
As I drive down Pennsylvania Avenue
Let the steam rise up
Let the people wise up
As I drive down Pennsylvania Avenue
Lighting flash above the dome
It lights the homes upon the Hill
Just for a moment a stop
A shock a sign
And for that moment all are still
As they hesitate to find the will
To rise above the guise of love
While there is time
And let the steam rise up
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
Silly little girl makes a video
I watch it from my bed
As the light streams in
Between the monument and the grey
As the vendors, tenders
Menders, benders
Spenders and amenders
All rise to seek the hope within a brand new day
And let the steam rise up
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
As I ride down Pennsylvania Avenue
As I rise up Pennsylvania Avenue
(Fade)
"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)...
And "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...
In Greetings, you will find 'Vivid lyrics' and 'magic songs'.
