2008.07.DD - antiMusic - Bumblefoot Week

Bumblefoot Week: Day 1 "Green"

06/30/2008

(antiMusic) With a sound described as "The Sex Pistols meets Queen, with innovative guitar and a Zappa-esque twist" how could your interest not be sparked? We are talking about Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal who was thrust into the international spotlight a couple years ago when he joined Guns N' Roses and quickly won the fans over on their world tour. But that new gig hasn't changed Bumblefoot's DIY ethic as he continues to be a champion of the underground with his new self-released CD "Abnormal". That effort from the critically acclaimed rocker is available this week and we asked Bumblefoot to pick his favorite tracks from the album and tell us a bit about each one. He more than delivered! Here is Bumblefoot with today's song:

"Green": I hate all my f**king songs. It's not that I hate them, it's just that either I change and don't feel the personal connection anymore, or I've gone through such sh*t to make the song happen, that it's like re-living that time you had to pull a rusty hook out of your foot, and couldn't. Such a song is "Green". I wrote the song 10 years ago. What I mean is I heard the music, the melodies, the arrangement, the instrumentation, and the feeling I got from the song and the message of the words that needed to be written, in my head - just needed to get it out of my head and fill in the missing pieces. Had the music ready for the "Uncool" album I was writing for, but could not get the right words. Nothing said it like it needed to be said. I had to search. I searched for 4 years, sleeping each night with a notebook behind my head, and would sometimes wake up at 4am out of a deep sleep and write down a phrase. I finally had the words, depicting what I saw inside.

It took another 4 years before I was *ready* to sing them. I wasn't ready to take on the song, after all of that, it was too big a deal. What the f**k, it's just a song, right? And I'm no Beethoven. So what the Hell's the big deal? I don't know - once in a while a song rules you like that, and you have to be ready to take the leap, it'll destroy you if you act too soon. This was one of those songs. The other was a song called "Heart Attack," written around the same time as Green. That one only took four years to find lyrics for, then record. And it took dying and seeing the white light to get that one out.

green lyrics

I fell in love with a cold-hearted woman
She shivers in silence
Her heart beating snow
And everything I know she taught me
'Bout Winter with trembling words

I wrote a song and gave it to her
She left frozen footprints
And made it her own
Her lies were full of rhyme and the music
In my heart turned suddenly black

Blame it on love and pain, and all in between
On colored emotions, each deeper than green
It's all in my mind in a world only I see
Where I am the king, and everything I touch turns green.

We live in a world deep inside an icebox
Miles from the floodgates
Where nothing can grow
I tried to step from darkness
And all that I stand on was starting to crack

Blame it on love and pain, and all in between
On colored emotions, each deeper than green
It's all in my mind in a world only I see
Where I am the king, and everything I touch turns green.

It's all in my mind in a world only I see
Have I gone so blind to have dark without dreams?
I try to be kind but hatred becomes me
And I become sorrow and jade becomes grief

We're frozen inside while the world keeps on melting
We only survive 'cause death comes in 3
We're stopped on the edge just a sharp word from falling
Now I am the king, and everything I touch turns green.

*

Bumblefoot Week: Day 2 "Glad To Be Here"

07/01/2008

After getting off a tour, the transition back to civilian life ain't easy - life feels *wrong*, like it isn't yours and ya don't belong there. Within 12 hours, I'm going crazy, have even less tolerance for the little things that piss me off, need to drive faster than a shitty old Hyundai was meant to, and am at a loss on how to budget my time, re-learning what a day is and what it's suddenly supposed to consist of. "Glad To Be Here" came out of one of those moments where you're in the last place you'd want to be.

Like in the 80's at the DMV, when the lines went out the door, ya get to the window and the lady says there's another form to fill out, and you have to wait on line again for another 3 hours. Or traffic court, waitin' to see the judge. I think I've seen half the ones in NJ, one in Westchester, got out of having to sit in one in Virginia. But yeah, if you're ever in that spot, in that kinda traffic, in that kinda trouble, or with those kinds of people, think of the verses to this song, it'll say it all for ya.

Glad To Be Here

I'm so glad to be here I could slit my fucking wrist
This chaos is just what I need to keep me nice and pissed
My chest fills up with acid till the veins pop in my head
I wake up every morning wishing God would strike me dead
But...

When the whole world looks at me they see some other guy
Doesn't matter what I say, they all made up their minds
I didn't like it then, and I still don't like it now
But I find the strength to smile somehow
And say...

I'm so glad to be here I could jump off every bridge
But everybody's got a rope around one of my limbs
Tryin' to get their piece they keep on tearing me apart
They wanna get inside me so they can kick around my heart
'Coz...

When the whole world looks at me they see some other guy
Doesn't matter what I say, they all made up their minds
I didn't like it then, and I still don't like it now
But I find the strength to smile somehow
And say...

I'm so glad to be here
I'm really glad to be here
I'm so glad to be here
I'm really glad to be here

I'm so glad I could just hang myself from the highest tree
I'm longing for the crush of rushing trains over me
I haven't had a good night sleep since 1995
I'm too tired to ask why I keep myself alive
But...

When the whole world looks at me they see some other guy
Doesn't matter what I say, they all made up their minds
I didn't like it then, and I still don't like it now
But I find the strength to smile somehow
And say...

I'm so glad to be here
I'm really glad to be here
I'm so glad to be here
I'm really glad to be here

*

Bumblefoot Week: Day 3 "Redeye"

07/02/2008

Redeye: So we're in this club in Tokyo, the band, crew, my wife, friends, having a great time. Only dim red lights in the club. This beautiful Japanese girl is all over us, couldn't understand a damn thing she was saying but spoke for hours. So there's me, my wife, this girl, we're just being silly, whatever, friends are laughing and taking pictures... get back to the hotel the next morning, go to bed, soon after I'm hearing this "voom voom voom" noise a half-second apart, I'm moving back and forth with it, thinking to myself "wow, the water's choppy." Then I realize I'm in a hotel, not on a boat. F**king earthquake. We get out of bed, the first thing I do is throw on a pair of pants - I WILL not die with my dick out, f**k that. We stand in the doorway of the bathroom, I hold my wife and tell her "this is gonna be a very long 30 seconds, just hang tight..." and we wait. The building didn't crumble, we went back to bed.

The next time I saw my friends, the photos they took came up - they said "what was up with that girl?" Did you see the pictures? They showed me the pictures, and the white light of the camera flash revealed that our exquisite lady friend from the night before had some kind of super outbreak of conjunctiva goin' on, I mean one of her eyes was so red it looked like a crime scene photo. The lights in the club were red, so it canceled out the redness of her eye, no one could tell...! And if we died in the earthquake, we never would have known. It makes ya wonder - when people die, what little bit of discovery do they miss out on, what would they have learned if they lived one more day? So deep... For me, it was that the little Japanese girl had a red eye. Great.

Red Eye

Well it started with a sound I never heard before
Then the pushin' and the pullin' me across the floor
I said the last thing we did the night before we die
Was a little drunk girl with a big red eye

It was another late night in Tokyo
In another dark club after another show
If the morning light could have got inside
We would have seen the girl had a big red eye

So we crashed out a little bit before the quake
Then I held you tight while the hotel shaked
If the walls came down we would have surely died
Never knowin' the girl had a big red eye

But we lived to see ourselves another day
And we laughed out loud with a foot in the grave
Ya see, the camera had a flash and the pictures don't lie
That little drunk girl had a big red eye

And the toxic waste spilled into the sea
And the air stuck like flypaper to me
It's all one big roller-coaster ride
And last night she got on with a big red eye

The greatest lessons we could learn in life
Are always served the day after we die
All I would have missed as I hit the sky
Was that the little drunk girl had a big red eye

*


Bumblefoot Week: Day 4 "The Day After" and "Dash"

07/03/2008

"The Day After" This is an instrumental song that comes after Redeye. A song that feels like the day after, the earthquake day. The clock doesn't seem to measure time the way you're feeling it. For the song, I recorded the drums at a faster running speed so that when the song is played back at the correct speed, they'd sound slowed down, to enhance the feeling like everything is happening in slow motion. A "Strawberry Fields" kinda thing, or the very end of the first KISS album, the "Black Diamond" fade-out. That shit scared me as a kid. Laid all the guitar solos in one pass, no second takes, just let it sing from within. Thought about those that didn't survive, those that need to re-build, not knowing to what extent it would be or for how many. Hopefully those periods in life where you're tallying the dead are few and far between.

"Dash" I missed a close family member's funeral while on tour. Not the first time. I was told of the meaningful words that were said. One thing that struck me was how the headstone will have the date of birth, and the date of death... but it's the little 'dash' in-between the two dates that really matters. That dash represents everything that happens in-between those two dates, a person's entire life. In the end, everything we are, everything we care about, is just a 'dash'. We should respect that little line between the numbers, and make it a good one. Like Lennon said about life happening while we're off making plans, I think life is what passes by pointlessly when we concern ourselves with the wrong things. The little battles we wage against each other, those are the markers that life passes by in-between. I don't want to die and have that dash consist of wasted moments, bad choices and regrets. I'm making the effort to keep the poison out. This is the only chance.

Dash

And everything will come to pass.
And it all happened in the dash
I saw the numbers on each side
But all that mattered was the line

When you left so many came
To see the stone they had engraved
It all happened way too fast
It all happened in the dash

And everything will come and go
And we will never really know
Just how much falls in-between
Or we'd say everything will be.

But we can't sum up every page
With just one cover and one name
It all happened way too fast
And all we had becomes a dash

And if I had one more chance for us to start things over
Ya know I wouldn't change a thing
And if I had one more chance for us to be together
If I could do it all again, I wouldn't change a thing

And everything will come to be
Another distant memory
Something alone to make you laugh
One for your own epitaph

And in the end what will they say
About your spirit and your name
It all happened way too fast
And all we are becomes a dash

And if I had one more chance for us to start things over
Ya know I wouldn't change a thing
And if I had one more chance for us to be together
If I could do it all again, I wouldn't change a thing

Life is what happens in-between the dreams you're trying to remember
Life is what happens in-between going for your longest breath underwater
Life is what happens in-between the red lights and stop signs
Life is what happens in-between losing your patience on the express line

Life is what happens in-between letting the phone ring and staring at the number
Life is what happens in-between finding out what no one wants to tell ya.
Life is what happens in-between staying for the end of your favorite song
Life is what happens in-between wanting to say it, but waiting too long

Life is what happens in-between each fight on the message board
Life is what happens in-between each time I leave for another tour
Life is what happens in-between the holding out for a better spot
Life is what happens when you take a chance and lose what ya got

Life is what happens in-between the traffic stopped to look at the crash
Life is what happens in-between forgetting to hit save and starting from scratch
Life is what happens between agreeing that the year went by so fast
Life is what happens and all we have becomes a dash

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