Album Notes

This is the war you never saw on CNN. Over the years, I've had my share of working on films depicting people getting beaten, shot, stabbed and blown up. My job, presumably, is to help make it all believable...to put you, dear viewer, in the drivers' seat so to speak.

This film however, had no trouble speaking for itself when it came to conveying the intensity and brutality of 21st century warfare. If anything, I felt obliged to soften things up from time to time, to assure the audience that it was only a movie just like anything else on the menu at your friendly, neighborhood cineplex. And if it was a horror movie, I tried to sanitize it for your protection. Sure, it might roll around in your noggin for a couple days or so, but it wouldn't come back to haunt you for months, for years, for forever. Or would it?

I suspect that the Iraq war will be the subject of great controversy long after our time. The film makers wisely and deftly side-stepped making any kind of judgement call and asked me to follow suit. I hope that I succeeded. Severe Clear was my first documentary film and I'm impressed with myself for having been associated with it. I have a feeling it will be an important document of a significant chapter in American history and with every average Joe now walking around with a video camera in their pocket, the beginning of an era when media managed coverage of such events will become a relic of the past. This is reality television pushed to the absolute limit. I don't think most of us will ever know what it is truly like to be a marine, but here's the music to help you get in the mood...to get slow roasted in the desert, to eat shitty food, and have bullets, mortars and RPGs whizzing past your head, then fall prey to all manner of exotic ailments, disease, injury and possible death. Severe Clear takes you about as close to that reality as you'll ever care to get.