Done Daze
Lyrics:
Where will I take this?
I don't know.
You gotta want it baby and that's all.
You saw me trying and closed your eyes.
Your days are done here baby.
Where will I end up?
Where will I go?
Where will I end up baby?
I don't know I saw my father and what he was.
He did not know.
Say your prayers because I'm coming home.
I saw your lover, now you're on your own.
You stole my body and took my life.
Your days are done here baby.
Concrete islands with floating souls.
Rubber drivers and streets of gold.
Tight asses in a pool of shit.
My days are done here baby.
Commentary:
If Paradigm ever had a hit song (at least in the beginning days), this was it. Most shows that we played back then were occupied by our friends and it became a bit of a thing for them to shout out to us during our set to play this song. At least that was my perception. It may have been only 2 friends that actually only knew the name of this song and so they would shout it.
Either way, this is one of those songs that really drags out. It is the same 4 notes played over and over in different way. Lyrically it is, once again, trying to set myself apart from the herd. There is a line that I mention "my father and what he was." This was a direct rebellion from the hard working 9-5 life that both my parents lived. I wanted more. "You gotta want it baby and that's all." I was looking for a life of musical stardom and everything that came along with it and if you weren't with that at the time, well, then you were on your own.
The last verse is influenced by bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Bush that had lyrics that were sometimes abstract and didn't really have a clear message to the listener. This verse was my attempt at that.
There is a cool tidbit regarding this song's recording. If you listen to the parts when the guitar goes from distorted to clean (happens twice), you might notice that the sound goes from distorted to clean, then distorted for another second, then back to clean. This was not intentional. The distortion pedal that I used at the time was a DOD Grunge pedal. It was a poor design as the stomp part of the pedal was cheap and would always malfunction. There were SO many times when I would want the distortion off and have to continually stomp on it to get it to work (and vice versa). It sounds like shit when it happened and it was definitely the cause for a lot of frustration at the time. Thank goodness I eventually got rid of it and upgraded to a Boss Overdrive/Distortion pedal. Still, that didn't happen for over a year as I was pretty broke and couldn't afford a new pedal. At this time I was still playing Ed Bozan's guitar and my amp was an old receiver that I think Jay Ruiz gave me that was hooked up to a random speaker. The wire was spliced RCA to 1/4" to fit in the receiver's input. Try rolling up to a show with that set up. Pretty embarrassing but pretty fucking rock and roll at the time.
Another thing about this song that I remember was that we got a kick (at least I did) at essentially "tricking" the audience during live shows into thinking the song was over. We would fade the clean guitars, then start it up again...twice. If I were in that audience today, I would yell obscenities at us. The song was already about 5 minutes without any changes. This is a recipe for a beating from the crowd in my opinion. I'm grateful that none of our friends saw it this way.