Leslie Fish and her producers at Random Factors have given us something we really needed. Music for our times. The release of the long promised album "Lock & Load" could not have come at a better moment.

Every era of American history has music associated with it. "Yankee Doodle" started out as a taunt by the British Redcoats, but was taken up and thrown back in their teeth by the Minutemen. "John Brown's Body", "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", "Dixie", and "Follow the Drinking Gourd" were sung in the dark years before and during the Civil War. The old West gave us "Home on the Range" and dozens of other tunes and an entire genre of music. George M. Cohan gave us "Over There" for the Great War, and World War 2 is recent enough that many of the songs and artists from that era are still heard today.

Some of you who've worked with me in the Liberty Round Table may remember that I pushed years ago to include a musical category in our annual essay contest. Part of the reason I was so adamant that the freedom movement needed inspiring and fun music was because I had witnessed the effect the "filk" music of science fiction fans had in forming a shared sense of community. My favorite filk artist had always been Leslie Fish. I am going to make the not unfounded assumption that a lot of you have never heard of her, and tell you a bit about her before I tell you about this album.

Leslie has an almost mystical talent with lyrics, and an uncanny ability to write music which showcases those lyrics. She's written probably hundreds of songs, and you can find both lyrics and recordings scattered all over the web. She is a wizard with a guitar, in my non-musician's opinion, preferring a custom made guitar she is just about physically bonded with she calls "Monster"

I know a lot of people that dislike her "twangy" voice, but her range is incredible. She has written everything from quite silly satyrical songs to stirring ballads, and has set many (if not most) of Rudyard Kipling's poems to music. She fancies herself a bard, in the ancient tradition, and having seen her effortlessly evoke emotion in a crowd or a small "bardic circle" in a quiet corner, I would not gainsay her that honor. If you decide to visit her website, be sure to read the story she tells of her “initiation into the Bardic Order, American branch”.

The thing I have always liked most about Leslie Fish, though, is that she is an unabashed anarchist. She won't remember me at all, though we've crossed paths many times - and ended on the same side of late night rag-chewing arguments in the con suites at SF conventions. If you are really interested in more than this bare bones introduction to one of the most talented, hard-core freedom loving performers you're ever going to hear of, check out her website at www.lesliefish.com I first heard about "Lock & Load" years ago, more than I care to tell you. I'll give you a hint, I think I first read about it on a dialup BBS I used to run over something called Fidonet echoing alt.music.filk. Rumors about the progress continued off and on over the intervening years, and eventually word went out that production had actually begun - the liner notes tell the whole story. It was finally released this July 4, and has been well worth the wait.

The track titles should give you some idea what a treat you're in for, and Random Factors has made one track available for download.

Lock and Load They Were Having A Sale At the Gun Store Vigilante The Sheep Look Back Poor Man's Weapon PGP No High Ground The Weapon Shops Of Isher The Old Issue (Kipling/Fish & M.Creasey, arr. Fish) Free Fire Zone (Garry Siler) Devil-Devil We Did It To Ourselves (Joe Bethancourt) Gamer Eyewitness (Keller/Fish) Me and My 30-06 (Bethancourt) Flight 93 (MP3 FULL SONG) Once to Every Man and Nation (J. R. Lowell, 1845/T. Williams ["Ebenezer"], 1890)

The cover art is by Oleg Volk. If you have never heard of Oleg, click on that link IMMEDIATELY, and see some of the most amazing pro-freedom photography that is ever going to knock your eyes out. The crossed modern AR15 and Revolutionary Brown Bess musket is an excellent choice for the cover, symbolizing the weapon that won our freedom and today's choice of many patriots. Sam Colt's classic .44 Dragoon on the back reminds of of Colonel Colt's claim to have “made men equal”, a sentiment which recurs throughout the album.

The CD comes with a slip cover and extensive liner notes, including complete lyrics and notes from Leslie on the origin and meaning of each track. Leslie pulls no punches on this album. The titles only begin to give a hint just how fiercely she's thrown down the gauntlet in front of tyranny. I won't be surprised at all to hear that BATFE tries to regulate distribution and possession of this album. Lord help 'em if they try to hassle Leslie Fish, she is a tough customer.

"Lock & Load", the title track establishes the mood from the very first note, with a driving base line accusingly calling for action. The lyrics are a crushing indictment of the very idea of creeping government encroachment on liberty, and the chorus is a call to arms:

"Lock and load, aim and fire. Before hell rises any higher. Ready left, and ready right, Before the truth goes out of sight."

"They Were Having A Sale At the Gun Store" is a barbershop quartet (of all things), which Leslie wrote years ago to explain to co-workers why she bought her first handgun. I had heard her sing it before, but not with a quartet. Strange as it may sound, it works very well, and delivers an object lesson (or four) as to the merits of self defense while telling the story of the Jukes brothers.

"Vigilante" was inspired by the "Subway Vigilante" shooting in New York City, Bernard Goetz. It's a dark, driving indictment of the damning inability of big city police to protect the citizens who they callously disarm.

"The Sheep Look Back" is a lyrical, philosophical examination of the effects of "gun control". The lyrics draw fairly heavily on the ideas in the essay "On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs", though the concept has been so widely repeated among gunnies that Leslie did not necessarily know that. If you ask me, she probably did.

"Poor Man's Weapon" is as direct and blunt as a gunshot. She gives an intense musical treatise on the history of violence, how it led to "rule of the strongest"; then how the invention of firearms equalized the eternal struggle. "It makes a beggar equal to a king; that's why kings are gone" she musically explains. This is hardly just poetic license, as noted by M.L. McPherson's essay "Revolutionary Bullet Designs", found in chapter 16 of "Cartridges of the World":

"The advent of the effective gun and bullet reduced the best trained man, suited in the most effective armor, to the equal of any citizen who had an hour to learn proper gun handling and usage. Samuel Colt affected the slogan, but he was several generations late of the actual fact." (8th edition, p440)

"PGP" is a light, bouncy tune triumphantly proclaiming the virtues of PGP encryption for personal computers. Leslie can be forgiven the less than informative if enthusiastic endorsement of strong encryption. I was reading alt.music.filk when Leslie was given her first computer, and I have to agree with her producer Mary Creasey who notes wryly in the liner notes "Leslie is not, and never has been, a computer expert!"

"No High Ground" is one of my favorite tracks, showcasing both Leslie's wizardry playing Monster and her uncanny vocal range. The lyrics start with an acrid condemnation of the exploitation all too often visited on the poor and helpless by the rich and powerful, soar up to advise in an interlude:

"Ain't no freedom here, not unless you take it. Ain't no justice here, unless you make it all."

Each chorus warns tyrants that there's "No high ground anymore".

Science fiction fans will recognize the title "The Weapon Shops of Isher", from a classic novel by A.E. van Vogt. "The right to buy guns is the right to be free" was the sign in front of the fantastic shops of the title, a sentiment I expect many reading this review will share. I am as hazy on the details of the story any more as Leslie says she was by the time she wrote the song, but I rather like the result.

"The Old Issue" is a rather topical Kipling poem that Leslie and Mary Creasey set to music. It starts off slow and thoughtful, the tempo varying with the mood of the words written so long ago.

"Free Fire Zone" is the first track not written by Leslie Fish herself. She speculates that Garry Siler was inspired to write it by the radical Muslim takeover of Lebanon, and the chorus would tend to bear out that theory. "I don't want to live in a free fire zone; Let's give space a try!" ends each chorus. Not as stridently pro-freedom as Leslie's own lyrics, much more of an anti-war song.

"Devil-Devil" is a very jazzy criticism of politicians, and the way they manipulate situations. Sung from the point of view of the politician himself, looking for a "devil" to justify his oppressions.

"We Did It To Ourselves" is another track Leslie didn't author. It was written by another of my favorite filk artists, Joe Bethancourt. Joe's a fairly serious gunnie himself, though not the hard-core anarchist Leslie Fish is. His song is a lament, relating a chilling prophecy of the descent of America into fascism. He cleverly uses lyrics drawn from the rhetoric of both the political right and left to drive home his point. Leslie's voice sounds appropriately weary and defeated, matching the cheerless lyrics of a free society's descent into tyranny. "Ask the ones who let it happen... When they started with our guns" is the sad lament, trailing off with the cadence of drums bringing marching jackboots to mind as the song ends.

"Gamer" is a change of mood, telling a series of "true stories" based on real stories Leslie accumulated from gamers she met in her travels who encountered intolerance of their hobby. She is not kidding that they are real stories, either, I recognize at least one of them.

"Eyewitness" is Fish's tune, but the lyrics are from a poem by Martha Keller written in 1946. Both Fish and Keller wanted to set the record straight on what really happened in the old West. The harmony reminds me a lot of many old western ballads I used to hear sung around campfires, complete with harmonica.

"Me and My 30-06" is another Joe Bethancourt tune, written as a retort to the hoplophobic bias of the mainstream media. It is sweet melody, with almost earthy-cruncy sounding lyrics – punctuated by the chorus.

"Flight 93" is the only track of this album available for download, and it is a worthy choice. The ballad tells the story of what was effectively the only modern battle of the unorganized militia, a story we all know far too well. She gives each of the known heroes of the doomed fight a fitting verse, telling the tale through their eyes.

"Once to Every Man and Nation" is a hymn originally written to protest the Mexican-American war. It ends the album on an uplifting note.

Leslie Fish promised from the first rumors of "Lock & Load" to bring her bardic powers to the aid of the fight for freedom, and the collection on this album delivers on that promise. Many of her albums feature a track or two with freedom themes, but now she's produced an entire album of unabashed, in your face tunes promoting freedom and gun rights. "Lock & Load" is available for order online from Random Factors at http://www.lesliefish.com/cds.htm