from Allerton Avenue in 3D, released March 1, 2022
About Serene: " Standing In the Line of Fire”

”Every time it's time to make an album on demand like this, I peruse these two old binders filled with songs I wrote from ages 17 to 23, looking for anything with some Bronx swagger to it. Of course, I had no swagger whatsoever but I wrote hundreds of mostly bad songs in my youth, most of the good ones have already picked clean already for 24 Originals Happening Now.

But I found two sorta Thin Lizzy, Costello-ish songs to resurrect with new lyrics. One song that didn't make it passed week two went no further than the opening line "You think you're hot shit with your age-inappropriate wife." That hiccup led to two other songs, "Big As Tiny" and this which used to be a song called "Deadringer" which you could probably trace back to the very week in 1978 I bought an import of This Year's Model. "Everybody looks like you, it's not my fault you got so many deadringers." That was the whole gist of the lyric, annoying people on the street because they look like you from behind! Jeez.

I always liked the chord pattern, so I fashioned this one into a song about cultivated hostility at an advanced age, something you see a lot of in Phoenix. What do old punks have to grouse about? Getting swindled by Tom Selleck on reverse mortgages and the end of Friendster, that's what!

Also, please note that The Bronx always brings me back to Catholic guilt and corporal punishment. This song has both. More on those later."