John G. McDaid: Found in Translation

Let me introduce you to John G. McDaid. He was my student in the MA in Media Studies Program at the New School for Social Research in New York City in the early 1980s. I was delighted when his first professionally published science fiction story "Jigoku No Mokushiroku" (in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine) won the Sturgeon Award in 1995, right around the time one of my first published stories, "The Chronology Protection Case," in Asimov's older sister magazine, Analog, was nominated for the Nebula Award. I was pleased when I began to see John start showing up in Media Ecology Association conferences about a decade later, singing a variety of catchy songs.

But I had no idea, until John's Internet concert at HELIOsphere Beyond the Corona this past April, about five hours before mine, what a superb songwriter and captivating singer John is. What do I mean by superb songwriter? Think Dylan, Phil Ochs, and a little Tom Lehrer humorous topicality thrown in. His first song, "Lost in Translation" was one of my favorites, filled with Dylanesque rhymes, acerbity, and lines like "Mango Mussolini" (guess who that is). Same for "Buy the Ticket".

But his next song, "Aaron Swartz," was really something. Much in the tradition of Phil Ochs' "Joe Hill," McDaid tells the story of the Internet visionary and activist who was persecuted by Federal prosecutors to the point that he took his own life. McDaid brings to this ballad a memorable mix of savvy, sensitivity, and anger. His Tom Lehrer comes out a song or two later, in "Check Out Time At The Owl Creek Hotel," in some of the lyric juxtapositions, and the song come to think of it also resonates with a combination of the Eagles' "Hotel California" and Netflix's Altered Carbon and its memorable character Poe.

I'm not going to say something about every song, because I want to leave you some surprises when you hear his new album, Trail of Mars, which contains many of the songs from that concert. It just went up on Bandcamp.