something to prove
Release Date: 3/99
Album: THE SCAPEGOAT FACTORY
Writer: ADAM MARSLAND
Lyrics:
Arrogant and scared
Defiant and unprepared
Talk about strength to hide your weakness
Strike yourself deaf before you hear me speak this
Array your options there before you
Admire them and let destiny ignore you
Got your brass rings but you wonít grasp them
Got questions for yourself but you wonít ask them
Forever doomed to retrace the steps youíve run
Staring blind at the setting sun
No mountain could make you move
'Cos youíve got something to prove
Cold anger for the dad who wasnít
Identify the why with the wrong becauses
Look down on the lesser souls over whom you towered
Because they wouldnít enter the corner where you cowered
You got a list of all the things that were denied you
Because your blessings couldnít fill the hole inside you
Talk about strength to hide your weakness
Strike me dumb before you hear me speak this
Forever doomed to retrace the steps youíve run
Staring blind at the setting sun
No mountain could make you move
'Cos youíve got something to prove
Damn every wise man whoíd deceive you
I damn any fool whoíd believe you
Nothing could make you move
Not while thereís something to prove
Welcome to the world
Bigger than youíd imagined
You see it as a great big wall to crash in
Behold a car, a job
Things to make you great
You can show this off
And still be pissed off at your fate
Because youíll never enter the land
Where the happy and free go
You canít get there
And hang onto your ego
Adam sez:
The last in the trilogy of SCAPEGOAT FACTORY songs to deal with the breakup of the Adam-Rob-James lineup of the band and my divorce-like feelings about Rob Cassell, it's at once more compassionate and probably less effective than the two that preceded it, with lyrics about the fear and insecurity that underly bad behavior, told from the perspective of someone that's known you for a long, long time.
At around six minutes of jazzy piano, reminiscent of mid '70s Elton John and Dennis Wilson's PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE album, this song is probably a little much (and the "hang on to your ego" punchline is truly wince-worthy), but it did give the band an opportunity to stretch out and try something new. Ironically, the Dennis Wilson "Baby Blue"-like guitar opening is Robbie Rist's invention, who had never heard the song, another case of sounding like the Beach Boys without really trying to.
Cutting the piano track drove me up the wall...I hadn't been playing much and Earle's baby grand had such stiff action that I wound up banging my head on the keys in frustration at the initial recording session because I could not get the end of the song right. If the piano at the end sounds overly forceful, well, that's the reason.
The background vocal session was similarly problematic -- I'd convened six people to record a massive vocal I'd arranged, but it turned out that there were too many people with overlapping ranges and whose voices didn't blend, plus I was the only one who could do the high part, and not having sung solo falsetto much up to that point, I made everyone else sound flat (I've since learned I sound a lot better in the lower range of a harmony stack). In the end, I wound up replacing most of the vocals and singing all the parts myself.