Debut Release - Thumbscrews!

The debut release of my first single, Thumbscrews, happened today. I'm really happy with it, being the first time I've ever done this kind of thing. No, I didn't sing on it - maybe I'll practice enough to try it on another one. But yes, it makes me very happy and proud, that at 43, father of four, I am able to release my first solo single!

Acknowledgements

Thanks to "The Missus", who allows me time away from our four kids to do stuff when I need too. No, I don't know how we manage it either, with four kids, but we chip in and hold the fort on our own whenever the other parent has something important to be done.

Theme

So, if you're curious as to what the theme is, it's about history repeating, the cycle of human nature and how we as humans, never seem to remember the past much to learn from it.

Yes, Thumbscrews (also known as "thumbkins" - the nursery rhyme just got creepy!) are a torture device. The whole process of watching society do the same mistakes over and over is torture to watch.

You'll hear excerpts from a 1934 speech by Winston Churchill, "The Threat of Nazi Germany". This is six years before World War 2 broke out. Ironically, if you listen to the entire speech, you'll see many of these same triggers in today's society, as Churchill foresaw in 1930's Nazi Germany, clearly evident in our own shift to the right over the past 30 years.

"... there dwells a nation of nearly seventy millions of the most educated, industrious, scientific, disciplined people in the world, who are being taught from childhood to think of war as a glorious exercise and death in battle as the noblest fate for man."

"There is a nation which has abandoned all its liberties in order to augment its collective strength. There is a nation which, with all its strength and virtue, is in the grip of a group of ruthless men, preaching a gospel of intolerance and racial pride, unrestrained by law, by parliament, or by public opinion."

"... the possibility of compelling the submission of nations by terrorizing their civil population; and, worst of all, the more civilized the country is, the larger and more splendid its cities, the more intricate the structure of its civil and economic life, the more is it vulnerable and at the mercy of those who may make it their prey. Now, these are facts, hard, grim, indisputable facts, and in the face of these facts, I ask again, what are we to do?"

Yes Mr Churchill - what are we to do?