Who Said What

When it comes to Dave Elder's new CD 'Who Said What', what's old is new again. Dave originally packaged this collection of songs in 1988 as a cassette-only release, and even at that time, he thought that maybe the world had moved on from the places that had inspired some of the songs. He originally wrote 'Wind Whistle' following the events at Three Mile Island, composed 'If I Was You' out of concern over Reagan's push for war with Nicaragua, penned 'Nobody Knows' to weigh in on the conflicts in Palestine and crafted 'Under the Table' to comment on the growing Wall-Street-infused political corruption that would lead to the 1987 crash. But now, in 2012, as it turns out, the fight over nuclear power has hit center stage again with the recent Fukushima disaster set against a push for more nuclear by Democratic President Obama. 'If I Was You' could apply even more to Iraq and Afghanistan than Nicaragua, and Dave's new YouTube video for the song makes that point, as it includes several pictures he took in places like Camp Casey and a rally in D.C. against the Iraq war. Sadly, the conflicts he spoke of in 'Nobody Knows' remain as relevant today as the day he wrote the song, and seem no closer to peaceful resolution, although in the 1990s it might have seemed otherwise. And if anything, 'Under the Table' applies more to today than it did when he originally put those words down in the early 1980s -- Wall Street's corrupt grip on Washington has grown stronger. Of course, some of the songs on 'Who Said What' move through personal territory instead of current events, such as the roller coaster rides of romance ('Go With Me', 'Song of the Wood' and 'Reasons Rhyme'), the loss of one friend to drug addiction ('One More Broken Thing') and the enduring friendship of another ('So Long Friend'). The sounds on the CD are also a unique mixture of the old and new that would have been unthinkable in an earlier era of recording technology. When Dave decided to repackage and remix the tracks from the original 1988 recording, he found some songs in need of a fresh start, such as 'One More Broken Thing' where the original 16-track recording could not be located. 'Wind Whistle' was a much different story -- on this one he used all of the original instrumental tracks and the original backing vocal track, and he simply redid the vocal and then had the track remixed. On the stand-out 'If I Was You' which Dave feels is not only the best-sounding song on the record but also the best of all his recordings, he used the original bass, drums and backing vocal tracks but redid both guitar tracks (acoustic rhythm and electric lead) and the lead vocal. So 'Who Said What' arrives at a moment when the songs on the CD have not only stood the test of time but have now become, if anything, even more current, and they sound better than ever.