All The Madmen at Play: Though his multi-year catalog of acoustic, rock, classical, and Celtic-influenced songs has thus far been flying under the radar from public consciousness, Delaware based multi-talented songwriter Greg Sinners is emerging from the shadows in a dramatic, socially conscious way—with “All The Madmen at Play,” a mid-tempo political commentary rock flavored song and dramatic video that incisively calls out the U.S. government for its decades-long endless war mentality and the apparent profit motives behind it.
Written in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the song—featuring lead vocalists Robin Osik and James Fitzpatrick, with Jim Osik and drummer, Eddie Haywood—was tracked at Secret Sound Recording Studio in Baltimore and produced by Sinners with engineer John Grant. The opening lines set the tone: “All the Madmen at Play/Who will they bomb today? As we watch the puppets dance/We see who’s getting rich from war.” The chorus includes the line “Which false flag will they fly?” while the second verse includes the biting lines: “Blinded by their power/And waiting for their hour…”
Video and Inspiration: Though the song is a nonpartisan piece of frustrated criticism, the imagery that Sinners chose and his creative partner Rob O’Connor assembled, unmistakably harken back to the Bush era, contrasting images of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld with photos of destruction, an aerial shot of rows of graves at a military cemetery, and a widow and her son at a father’s grave.
The clip opens with a typeset quote from President Dwight D. Eisenhower as he left office in 1961: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Having not learned any lessons from the Vietnam War (once so powerfully expressed in Barry McGuire’s 1965 anti-war anthem “Eve of Destruction”), the U.S. government extended the endless war aesthetic into the 21st Century with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with disastrous consequences. “These wars spanned the Bush, Obama, Trump and part of the Biden eras,” says Sinners. “They reflect the grip that the military-industrial-complex has on Washington.”
Sinners’s Other Material: A visit to Sinners’s website (gssongs.com) and YouTube page offers an immersion into this songwriter’s diverse talents for many different styles and themes, with an array of songs available for other artists to record and publishers to sign and license to film and TV. Sinners, plays numerous guitars on these tracks, including 6-string, 12-string, nylon string, and bass guitar.
Some of the songwriter’s favorites, all brought to compelling visual life via their videos, include “Irish Rain,” a heartfelt reflection on the experiences of his maternal grandparents, who emigrated from Ireland; “Living Love Silently,” a co-write with its singer, Fran Bryant, which offers a beautiful reflection on the fragility of relationships as couples grow older; “I’d Go Back For You,” a classic styled rocker of nostalgic romantic longing; and “I Knew All Your Dreams,” a soulful tune whose video starts with a Shakespeare quote and includes the poetic refrain: “Time will wash your bones/But it will never wash your soul.”
Contact Greg Sinners: [email protected]
