Fred Small

Everything Possible ~ 1993

This marvelous album was recorded at a live performance in Massachusetts, in 1993.  With true Fred Small style, the audience is coaxed into singing along, even becoming the frogs and screaming populace, in a rousing rendition of "Hot Frogs on the Loose".

If you are anything like me, once you have heard this album, as with any Fred Small album, you will want to own everything he's ever recorded.

Australian listeners may recognize the sentiments expressed in the chorus of "Guinevere and the Fire", a song about a real occurrence in New South Wales, where a woman burned to death while her daughter sat frozen in terror of her neighbors, inspired by the "dirty people's" "tales of the devil's drums and the evil eye":

"

When packed, her canvas satchel
Could not hold the salt tears back
Turned to leave her home forever
Faced a woman gnarled and black.

"Child our hearts are heavy,
Grieving, for your loss.
We live so close by you,
Why did you not come to us?
We have salves to heal the burning,
We have herbs to stop the pain,
We could have helped, had we but known,
To make your mother whole again."

Stay away from the camp of the Blackfellas
Little white girls have disappeared -
They drink and dance when the moon is red
Better never let 'em see your golden hair.

"

Those who remember the sight of Los Angeles burning, literally and figuratively, will be touched by Fred Small's touching musical rendition of the words of Rodney King's impassioned plea "Can't we all just get along?"

If you are a long-time fan of Fred Small's music, you may have experienced the frustration known to many people who work with small children - that of wanting to sing "The Hug Song" (a song originally written about a social worker fired for hugging people too much) with them, but finding that words like "sexual sublimation" and "electroshock therapy" make parents nervous when their young children are singing them.  You're in luck!  This album contains a completely child-safe set of words to this favorite of so many young children, complete with verses to take away the boredom of endlessly repeating the chorus:

" I want a hug when we say hello,
I want a hug when it's time to go
I want a hug 'cause I want you to know
I'm awfully fond of you.
I want a hug - what a wonderful feeling
I want a hug - want to feel you squeezing
I want a hug - it certainly seems
Like the natural thing to do. "

As always, this album contains too many wonderful pieces to list the merits of each one, individually, but it's easy to recognize that this album contains a rendition of what may be Fred Small's most famous song, the anthem of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians And Gays), "Everything Possible".

...

You can be anybody you want to be,
You can love whomever you will,
You can travel any country where your heart leads,
And know I will love you still.
You can live by yourself, you can gather friends around,
You can choose one special one;
And the only measure of your words, and your deeds,
Will be the love you leave behind you when you're gone.

There are girls who grow up strong and bold
There are boys quiet and kind,
Some race on ahead, some follow behind,
Some grow in their own way and time.
Some women love women, some men love men;
Some raise children, some never do.
You can dream all the day never reaching the end
Of everything that's possible for you.

...

Jaguar ~ 1993

At long last, the former environmental lawyer releases an album with a song about more traditional environmental issues, such as the destruction of the rain forests.  In "Jaguar", Fred Small captures the cries of the monkeys, as he asks "where will the jaguar go?"

I Will Stand Fast ~ 1993

Fred Small writes so touchingly of the traumas and trials of the sexual abuse or assault survivor that it is hard to believe that he is not, himself, a young woman dealing with the horrific memories that incest makes of childhood. And, while he lays the pain and horror open, he says "I Will Stand Fast".  And, for the survivor, on hearing this, a light breaks into the darkness, with the knowledge that someone has actually plumbed the depths of the darkness, and put it in words that prove that understanding, and still has the capacity to love us anyway...

The title song alone is worth the price of the album - and yet, it is joined by at least a half a dozen other tracks of equal strength and beauty:  "Denmark, 1944", "Scott and Jamie", "Diamonds of Anger", "At the Elbe", "Every Man", and "The Hills of Ayalon" - not to mention the hilarious "If I Were a Moose".

Jaguar ~ 1993

At long last, the former environmental lawyer releases an album with a song about more traditional environmental issues, such as the destruction of the rain forests.  In "Jaguar", Fred Small captures the cries of the monkeys, as he asks "where will the jaguar go?"

Jaguar ~ 1993

At long last, the former environmental lawyer releases an album with a song about more traditional environmental issues, such as the destruction of the rain forests.  In "Jaguar", Fred Small captures the cries of the monkeys, as he asks "where will the jaguar go?"