CD#7-Rules of the Road
“So, why an EP?” you ask…
For one thing, we wanted to cut down on the time between Studio Releases. We were averaging about 4 years between projects and we wanted to cut that down. The goal here was to get the new songs out on CD before they had been played for 3 years already. While a certain amount of playing helps to solidify arrangements and such, we were (and are) hoping to get songs recorded while they are still evolving as that has always translated to a freshness on the recordings.
Personally, I had another reason…
As a fan of local, underground and Punk/Garage Bands, I was familiar with the “Split Single” concept. For the uninitiated, Split Singles were cooperative ventures between Bands. They would take a 45 rpm single and slow it down to 33 RPM. That would effectively double the recording time (although it reduced the quality a little). Each Band would take one side and would include 2 songs. Generally, since nobody wanted to be on Side 2, Sides were creatively titled…like Side A/Side 1…or Breakfast Side/Dinner Side…etc.
As the Song “Rules of the Road’ has a decidedly Punk flavor, we felt this would be a good time to try this out. We figured we would be both Bands (so 4 songs) but would include one more track as an Encore for good measure. Since we were going to sell these things for $10 that came out to $2/Song which wasn’t far off of what iTunes was charging for purely digital versions.
“This is all well and good” you say, “but the EP actually has an unlisted 6th track. Why, on why is that?”
“That’s a very astute question” I would respond, “I see you’ve been paying close attention”. The answer is both funny and a little cringe-y.
“Rules of the Road” is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. It’s our fastest song. It’s the first song that I, a lowly Bassist, sang solo lead on. It’s also the first song that we recorded that contained the F-Bomb.
Also notable, it’s the first time that one of our songs was played on commercial radio with nobody informing the DJ of the aforementioned FCC-violating lyric. We were informed later by said DJ that while the switchboard did “…light up like crazy for an hour or so”, nothing official was ever filed and no one got in trouble. Crisis averted!
It did make us think though. How does one solve such a problem?
Enter Dr. Dre…
Some of us are huge Snoop Dogg/Dr. Dre fans. When we would hear their songs on our CDs, there would occasionally be profanity. But when the songs were on the radio or TV these would be different. This also is nothing particularly new. Artists have been “beeping out” or muting swears since swears have been recorded. The genius of Dr. Dre (one of them) is that he would come up with different lyrics, not just Mute or Beep them out. The kicker to me is that they were generally Better Lyrics than the swears.
An example- “It’s 187 on the Motherf@#$%ing Cop” got changed to “It’s 187 on the Undercover cop”. To me, the 2nd actually tells a bit more of a story than the former.
So, why did “shut the F’@# Up’ get left in? The simple answer is this, we tried a whole bunch of other options and nothing else was nearly as good. We changed another swear from something unmentionable to “Awesome Blinker” though and really prefer the update.
Thanks Doctor…
In the end, we decided to add a Clean Version of the song on the EP, but left it unlabeled so it wouldn’t look like we were trying to make the CD seem like it was longer than it was. We didn’t want to run a con, we just wanted a version that you could play for the very young and very old, or play on the Radio without losing your job.
To the DJ, we apologize for all that. You know who you are, and so do we. Sorry, and thanks for continuing to play us after all that…
-Chief
