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-- Liner notes to The Arpaia Sound II --


"When You Came Back I Knew" was written for the GI who came back and found: "My love it strayed away; what else is there to say." On the previous album, "Sunset On The Sea," was written for the hatcheck girl whose husband went down with the Dorchester on February 3, 1943. There are many more songs about the Sea, the War and the Dorchester which he has written and which will be released in subsequent albums. He loves his America with intensity. He lives one of his favorite quips: "High, valiant, true and strong; America to you I belong."

As an organic gardener, the composer will tell you that 90% of the food he eats he raises and that 90% of the food he raises he gives away. His garden as will be noted is most unique and of his own creation and design. He has been quoted as saying, "I can get as big a thrill in my vegetable garden as I can in my music room."

As a lawyer, he will say: "The devoted trial lawyer fights, bleeds and dies on the courtroom floor." "Open Up The Doorway" is one of the ballads he wrote based upon a case he handled involving an accident in which a mother and her two children were killed during the Christmas holidays. The husband was the sole, emotionally distraught and pitiably depressed survivor. His advice to him was "tolerate the suffering ...", "sadness throw it out; hate turn it about ..." and with it all "masquerade the sad side."

As a quip writer, the following are a few of his favorites:

  • There are more ways to spend money than to make money.

  • What is ginger-peachy to you could be sour grapes to Sam.

  • Don't look for happiness only on the weekend.

  • The movies of yesteryear revolved around love ... the movies of today revolve around blood.

  • The weak cry for help while the rich cry for power.

  • If alcoholism is a disease, then so is stupidity.

  • Every lifestyle has a speed limit -- don't exceed yours!

  • No person will ever amount to much of anything unless he was disciplined as a child and continues to discipline himself as an adult.

  • Many people charge according to what you are worth -- not to what they are worth.

  • When your neighbor is wringing his hands don't you ring his bell.

  • There are those who arrive in Washington full of hope and depart full of shame.

  • Stored knowledge is like a fire that has been banked.

  • Every grave stone represents a closed book.

  • Talent is worthless without ambition.

  • The bored person is emotionally dead.

  • You can keep your eyes wide open and still step into a mud puddle.

  • It is more thrilling and more dramatic to cross the wire as a long shot than as a favorite.

  • When the facts are beaten black and blue they can make you see red.

  • The present is the most permanent thing in my life.

  • My future is in today.

  • The ballad of the Twenties was designed to sooth the nerves, but the contemporary ballad seems to be designed to jangle them.

  • There is no retirement age for a housewife and there should be retirement age for her counterpart.

  • You eat the apples but who planted the tree?

  • You cannot navigate and procrastinate at the same time.

  • Regardless of how well you plan your future, when it arrives it will be the present, and inevitably will not be as you planned it.

  • Cigarette manufacturers still insist that smoking does not cause lung cancer and millions of victims believe them to their lung-cancer-dying day.

  • The "wrong way" traffic sign can be put to good use also in the roadways of the mind.

  • We are all standing on the verge of eternity in the sense of certainty as against uncertainty.

  • Rapture double enraptured comes about so frequently as the result of a divorce rather than a marriage.

  • Ships leave a wake and so do men.


    He will say: "My garden is my health food store."


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    Discography ©2004 Phil Milstein