INTRO... "Welcome as the CMJ..."
{"Goin' Out West"}
Well, Bone Machine started out as a, just a title. Let's make something
that sounds like it could be part of a group of songs that were entitled
Bone Machine. Let's come up with songs that...ya know. Now, I guess the
first thing that you'd think of is, maybe, this is like Halloween music or
this is...umm...like...What is this?...kind of skeleton music, this is
like horror, like music from a horror movie...Is that what it is? Well...
Maybe see a little bit. There's a little bit of that in there. Umm. That
gets ya thinking about bones, ya start thinking about, Oh God. We have to
die and all that. I hate to break it to you...um...that's a little joke
there. Umm. So I guess Bone Machine deals sometimes with, also with, not
only does it have a particular sound because of Bone Machine, it kind of
conjures up an image of, ya know, wood then...Well, I don't know.
Different for everybody, but for me kinda like wet leaves in your hair and
ya know autumn. I don't know. Anyway, Bone Machine. So it's...some of
the songs deal with dying and, ya know, with the fact that were all hurling
through space here and eventually the earth will probably open up and
swallow us all...some day real soon.
{"Earth Died Screaming"}
"Earth Died Screaming" is kind of a cyber, a cyber-drama, umm...
And the moon fell from the sky
It rained macarell, it rained trout
And the great day of wrath has come
And here's mud in your big red eye
And the poker's in the fire...locusts take to the sky
Umm...Revelations. It's all in Revelations. It's a heavy chapter.
The "Earth Died Screaming" is a warning I guess, It's one of those songs...
I haven't written a song like that really before. Like that, what I mean
is kind of a, it has a certain, it is a warning...ha...like the end is
near. The guys that I used to always love on downtown LA - Fifth and Main
- with the briefcase with the speaker in it and the crummy little
amplifier in it, going back and forth on a little wire screaming about the
end of the world. I used to just stop and listen to those guys. Oh! To
keep a crowd on a corner, now that, that is where you cut your teeth as a
public speaker, is on a busy corner at like 5:00 on a Friday afternoon,
downtown Los Angeles...and you're talking about Jesus. Now...Those were
thrilling moments for me. I guess, umm, if you can make somebody wanna
stop and listen, you can pretty much tell them anything, at least for the
period of time it takes you to tell them, and then they're going to move
on. And a record is really like that, songs...some songs you'll sing only
once...the day you recorded it and never again. Other songs, you'll sing
every night and still not understand it. Umm...Another song you'll have
forgotten one verse and can't remember the second verse, and so you had to
make up a new one. Songs are...I guess when I was a kid, I thought songs
lived in the air. I didn't know anything about songs publishing. I just
thought they, one day a song like landed in your backyard like a UFO or
something. God, did you hear that song? I still, I still do, I mean even
though I know more how...about songs. I still think it's important to look
at them that way, and wonder about them. Songs are small. You hold em in
your hand, and they're about as big as a bar of soap, really. And, umm,
sometimes you only listen to them for maybe that long. As long as it takes
to wear down a bar of soap and then move on to something else...another
song.
{"Dirt in the Ground"}
"Dirt in the Ground". umm, That Ralph Carney played all the saxes on that.
I think he has kind of an Allen Tonian sound he got on that, with the horn
section. I just play a very simple piano, um, ya know. I tried to sing in
my high, my Prince voice...ha. I can only do that once or twice and then
it's gone. If I try to sing like that on the road every night, forget
about it. So when you're in the studio, you're taking better care of your
voice, umm, you can do things like that. On the road, my throat becomes
ravaged by the weather and from just little sleep and bad food. So, and
the song is based on something that was a, Teddy Edwards used to say to me
all the time. Ya know, we're all going to be dirt in the ground. So hey,
he used to tell girls that in hotel lobbies. He'd try to get them to come
up to his room. He'd say "Listen darling, we're all gonna be dirt in the
ground." So I always thought that would be a good song title.
OUTCUE... "and music from BONE MACHINE"