RYL: “Little Brother is Watching” will be released in 10 days….. What this album means for you, lyrically speaking?
BUMBLEFOOT: This album feels like I’ve found a more direct line to my insides, not just lyrically but also musically, and production-wise.
Everything is drawing from a deeper place. The lyrics to the title track “Little Brother Is Watching” talks about how the constant presence of surveillance effects us.
In George Orwell’s book “1984” he depicted a future world where the Government watched everything you do, saying “Big Brother Is Watching You.”
But what no one predicted was the evolution, our reality, where we as individuals watch and expose the Government, each other, everything.
But with this technology comes challenges in how we interact, “We’re all connected but separated,” and how we use it to expose others, “Little Brother wants to make headlines, be immortalized…”
Little Brother Is Watching
Little Brother has taken control
Shoveling dirt in every hole
Predators to condemn your soul
Watching you & watching me
We’re all connected but separated
Misunderstood and so frustrated
A million Armies Of One have invaded
Watching you & watching me
We live behind glass curtains
And act like nothing’s wrong
Soon you will belong
I know you’re out there somewhere…
We’ve watched you for so long
We wait for you to fall
We will expose you all
I know you’re out there somewhere watching me
Little Brother wants to make headlines, be immortalized
Everyone’s got an electric eye, we’re the Digital Spies
They’ve watched you for so long
I know you’re out there somewhere watching me
We the people have taken over
We the people are Little Brother
Standing by to dethrone each other
Watching you & watching me
Paranoid, the lens is our weapon
Desensitized, in our lust for attention
Democratized, by our voyeur obsessions
Watching you & watching me
Slaves to perfection, don’t let them
Project you as you are
Reveal your every flaw
I know you’re out there somewhere…
We’ve watched you for so long
We wait for you to fall
We will expose you all
I know you’re out there somewhere watching me
Little Brother wants to make headlines, be immortalized
Everyone’s got an electric eye, we’re the Digital Spies
They’ve watched you for so long
I know you’re out there somewhere watching me
I know you’re out there somewhere…
This is the new Totalitarian State
1000 eyes are waiting for you to break
Stay in line, don’t make a mistake
We’re watching…
We’ve watched you for so long
We wait for you to fall
We will expose you all
I know you’re out there somewhere watching me
RYL: Tell us about “Argentina”, what inspired its verses?
BUMBLEFOOT: This song started with just one lyric I had, “Now I know what it’s like to live two lives and have to choose,” speaking of a situation I was in, that we’re all in at some point.
The music of the first part felt like a Romeo & Juliet tragedy, with the feel of an Argentinian tango. From there, the story turned into one about jumping into a relationship, then realizing the two sides don’t have the same feelings about each other and expecting something different than each thought it was.
And in the end people are hurt, and hurting each other.
Argentina
PART I
This is our last goodbye, young hearts will stop, torn souls set free
All that we have is now, if this is what you want then come to me
My Argentina, my love
One final kiss ’til we meet again
Now I know what it’s like to live two lives and have to choose
Sorrow and song, they dance – let them, for all the perfect nights with you
My Argentina, my love
One final kiss ’til we meet again
PART II
I never asked for your love
You gave it all and now it’s gone, oh, it’s gone
I can’t be obligated
I never said I was the one, one, the one
This is the Winter of our lives
We come to play the final scene
The curtains close and in the darkness we expose
What lies beneath
You thought I needed someone
To be complete but you were wrong, oh, so wrong
I’m nothing more than who I am
Don’t put it all in my hands
I never said that I could save you from yourself
But you took the chance
PART III
And this is how it ends
Games of revenge that no one wins.
This is how it ends
We romanticize our pain
And justify our rage
We excuse ourselves and remove ourselves
From all the wars we wage
We call it love.
Competition, foolish pride, taking sides
We call it love.
Stabbing words manipulate.
It’s how we’re taught to use and take.
We call it love.
When you look back on what you had, not what you lost.
Then call it love.
But this is how it ends.
All things must come to an end.
And in our place once we’re forgotten
A new day will come.
And the sun will shine again.
But I don’t know when.
RYL: Do you remember the first song you wrote for this album?
BUMBLEFOOT: I had ideas for songs already floating around, but the first one I wrote for the album was “Clots.” The words started coming to me on the drive home from the doctor’s office when they told me I had a tumor. I had symptoms that would show up randomly for about 5 years, and doctors would blow it off saying things like “You’re just getting older, it’s normal…”
I’m not that old, haha, and it’s not normal to piss *blood red*. I can’t speak for other countries but in the US I’ve experienced too much of “take these pills and go away.” That needs to change.
Clots
And the clots, they never stop
They barricade my veins
And the clots keep building up
They suffocate my brain
I built them to destroy myself
They’re circling the prey
I push until I break
I feel them start to scrape
The core of all I am is chiseling away
And every spec of life is gonna rot away in time
We turn to mud or turn to stone, it’s the grand design
A maze of petrified hearts and I’m lost inside
We all self-destruct, to love is to deny
And that is life.
And the clots, they never stop
They tear beneath my skin
And the clots keep building up
They rip new holes again
You’re here to turn me inside out
And then turn me away
For all my life I’d choke
On clouds of Savior’s smoke
Until my blackened soul was burning away
CHORUS
We build our castles and we stomp them back to dust.
Like ants, we climb the hill again.
Tell me how many times
Am I supposed to die
Before you lift the cross and let a man rise.
CHORUS
We are the clots.
RYL: Which is your favorite verse of the all album?
BUMBLEFOOT: There are a lot of lines that are personal and meaningful, hard to choose… I think a lot of the lines in the song “Livin’ the Dream” but overall I like the lyrics best to “Cuterebra,” how they compare the life-cycle of gossip to that of a parasitic fly… I wrote the song while wandering the stairways of a hotel in Argentina…
Cuturebra
In the hallway down the staircase slowly opening the creaking door
Someone comes along and smiles and for a moment all is quite the norm
Avoiding all the crowd below the sound of conversations spin
And patiently I wait in every corner for someone to come in
Dry’d in dust on darkened floors, a gasp resists with every buried breath
Watching shadows through the cracks of light that shape and sway with every step
So carefully and quietly and with an undetected hand
In comes a breeze it sweeps the room and follows with a distant slam
Donned in bath kerchief the chambermaids unlock and let the daylight in
She spoke of trees, and creeping things and nestled foundlings in the Starlight crib
With an unsaving clench a bribe under the cloak is unconcealed
And all her secrets now belong forever to whom she revealed
We build on wretched ruins thinly veiled below our skin & bones
Cowards, sing each other’s rhyme and add a verse of all your wicked moans
It starts off as a whisper and grows into the deepest battle cry
Pressing ears and spying eyes await the beast we’re nurturing inside
Questions fly and so do I, the hole fills with our harshest stones unturned
‘Neath the cardhouse all my kings are buried and the queen won’t say a word
We plant the tales, they feed on us ’til accusations earn their wings
Sold out for sharpened tongues and spit into the air these creeping things
RYL: What is the meaning behind “Higher”?
BUMBLEFOOT: ”Higher” is about enjoying your life *right now*. And how a song takes us back to the great times we’ll be re-living in our memories.
I was sitting on the couch watching Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” while writing the final lyrics of this song – something about it, feeling creative juices flowing, channeling ideas from the moment… this song was the soundtrack to that memory of writing a song about songs being the soundtracks to our memories…
Higher
In twenty years what will we say
When we look back on yesterday
Silence falls and I drift into space
This is the time that we will always remember
Living for now making it last forever
These are the best of days
There’s nothing in our way
You turn it up and play it over again
This is the time when all our eyes shine brighter
Just you and I and the whole world to fight for
We can make it last
Smile when we look back
Just look inside and feel it over and over again
We take you higher and higher and higher
You feel it over and over again
We take you higher and higher and higher
You feel it over and over again
This is the life, we live again tomorrow
Letting go, the heart will always follow
Nothing is far away
It’s just like yesterday
Just look inside and feel it over and over again
CHORUS
Now twenty years have passed us by
And we look back and count the time
Burning like the Summer sun
When the world was young
As I lay staring from the ground
And seven trumpets wait to sound
Silence calls and I drift from this place
RYL: How do you think you will be able to combine the promotion on the new album and your commitment towards “Art of Anarchy”?
BUMBLEFOOT: “Art of Anarchy” is all about the music we created together, and sharing that music. If there’s any touring or time commitments, it’ll get sorted.
But really, we all spend most of our lives doing more than one thing at one time, it’s totally normal. The album shoud be out around May or June. I’m also laying guitars and producing a rap metal collaboration of the band Generation Kill and rapper Darryl “DMC” McDaniels from Run DMC.
http://youtu.be/xL8CJfkLBo0
RYL: In your career which is the greatest lyricist you ever met?
BUMBLEFOOT: Ever *met*? hmmmmmmm… Neil Young.
RYL: “Women rule the world” are you really sure? 🙂 🙂 🙂
BUMBLEFOOT: We all know it’s true, haha. Seriously, we men make fools of ourselves showing off, competing, conquering, and why? To be chosen by women.
We know it and we like it. It’s nature at its simplest we’re trying to fulfill. Men will try by any means – through pleasure, through control, but ultimately everything we do is all within a woman’s ‘Matrix’. I have no complaints being a man in a woman’s world.
Women Rule the World
They let us play with all our toys
They let us think that we’re big boys
They let us make the louder noise, but…
Women rule the world
They let us think we’re superman
That we’re the only ones who can be strong
But we break on command, ’cause
Women rule the world
I try to act so cool but you know I’m just a fool for you, for you
I won’t stop til I reach the top just to be there with you, with you
And I still trip over my feet
And my heart still skips a beat
I’m such a lucky guy ’cause after all this time
It’s like the deeper I go the deeper I fall
The deeper I go the deeper I fall
They touch so gentle, play so fair
Mend our wounds with love and care
But they can crush us with a stare, ’cause…
Women rule the world
We are the fighters, we control
We’re always right, they let it go
Behind that pretty smile they know that…
Women rule the world
CHORUS
We launch 1000 ships into the rocks
And from the cliffs they watch
Us sink down in our thorny crowns
Women rule the world
And beggars dressed as Emperors
Offering you 7 wonders
Promising the deepest thunder
Women rule the world
We’ll tell you you’re the perfect girl
We’ll crawl for miles through the sand
To win your hand and be your man
Women rule the world
CHORUS
RYL: Which is the craziest thing you have done as a fan and which is the craziest thing that a fan did for you?
BUMBLEFOOT: People have done the most thoughtful and creative things, making beautiful art, but for me simple kindness is more than enough. I’m content with a kind word and a handshake.
RYL: Tell us about the upcoming tour ….when you will visit dubai again? Last time it was great to see you playing live and give some guitar tricks to your fans…!
BUMBLEFOOT: Thank you 🙂 I’m waiting on booking any tours until the album is released and I have a sense of what would be best touring-wise. I have shows in the UK in late-Feb into early March, and will be a counselor at Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp in Las Vegas end of March… after that I’m sure things will start getting busy, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other in Dubai again 🙂 Always a pleasure!
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