Life As We Know It / Songs by Dave Hickey / Digital Download

I write love songs for people who live in a democracy.

—Dave Hickey

Dave Hickey‘s long-lost album of pop-country-jazz-inflected songs has been remastered to celebrate the 30th Anniversary Edition of his groundbreaking book on beauty, The Invisible Dragon. This is Hickey as you never heard him before. Witness the frivolity of “What Did You Do On Your Summer Vacation,” the languid stylings of “Spur of the Moment,” and Hickey’s rockin’ paean to a new generation, “Flaming Youth.” Listen for Natalie Maines, lead of the Dixie Chicks, singing background vocals on “Baby Vampires” when she was 12 years old. The album’s first eight songs were written as the soundtrack for an exhibition of photographs by the artist Nic Nicosia. A ninth song, Hickey’s self-revelatory ode “The Ballad of Billy and Oscar,” has been added for this release. It’s a rip-roaring tale of the outlaw Billy the Kid and the effete Oscar Wilde traveling in concert through the Wild West. Billy and Oscar visit a whorehouse, smoke French cigarettes, go out looking for love, and give advice to assholes, bureaucrats, critics and cops. Hickey plays guitar and sings on the album. At last, fortissimo!

Originally recorded by Factory Girl Music at Caldwell Studios in Lubbock, Texas, 1987, and produced by Nic Nicosia, Dave Hickey, and Lloyd Maines

Songs written and arranged by Dave Hickey with Mike Wafer

Remastered, 2023