A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

(This post starts the lyrics post series of the songs on This End Up. I’ll get around to a history of the album itself later, as I’m working on a more detailed history of the band as a whole…)

This song was a series of happy accidents. The title and basic idea came from the “Slaughterhouse” sessions with Skiptoe in late 95-early 96, when we would each switch to each others’ instruments and fuck around. We always let Brian come up with the song titles because he could make ones that were silly and gruesome at the same time. One day we were jamming and it came time for a new song, and Brian said “let’s call this one Bloody Leg”. And that was it. Except that the ‘chorus riff’ we came up with was actually kinda catchy (it’s the same thing as the chorus in the final version of the song). I just screamed some crap over some crap riffs for the verse, then we hit that chorus and it rocked. So I remembered it… In an unrelated note, late in 1996 after quitting Skiptoe and starting to do the boombox Rampage stuff with Paul, I was working on writing stuff for Bellum Infinitum, the first version. I was working with ‘epic’ riffs for what would become The Final Day. I stumbled across this one slow, lumbering single-note line that was pretty morbid sounding, but it was in straight-8s and not triplets, and felt ‘different’ somehow, so I left it aside and finished the song.

When Paul and I met up in December 1996 for a recording session, he wanted to start with something new so he said ‘just start something’. Maybe it was the pressure of being unprepared, or just fate, but somehow that laid-aside lumbering riff and that old chorus to “Bloody Leg” just combined in my head - and that was it. I started that slow riff, Paul came in with one of those ‘barely restrained’ laid-back beats, and I started mutating the riff from notes to chords, trying to work it around to simplifying it enough to sing over… hence the long build-up before the verse. And then the words came out, pretty much totally off the cuff, just as you heard them on Misogyny and This End Up (yes, totally improvised - that’s why they suck. “choad”!??). The “Die” screaming thing was a nod to Death’s “Infernal Death”, of course.

Die - DIE!!!
When I see you wandering around
I see you in the road
Now I see you under my wheels
You are like a choad
Now I'm laughing as I hear you scream
I see you die
And I'll laugh when I see your momma
See her cry when she sees your

Bloody leg
Bloody leg
Bloody leg
Now you die

Bloody leg
Bloody leg
Bloody leg
Ha ha ha ha

Not much to it - I somehow got the image of a deliberate hit-n-run driver running down little kids. And now you know why I hate publishing lyrics. Basically the song has remained completely unchanged since Paul and I first recorded it that one fateful day.

(This song is still one of my favorites. I’m pretty proud how it kinda sprang out of nowhere and how it’s got a pretty unconventional song structure, compared to most of my other V-C-B-solo type songs. This one got banged out two or three times in the boombox era, recorded for This End Up with an early mix on the first EP, recorded again for the live album, then recorded again for a rehearsal that never got released. I’m sure I’ll do yet another version some time. It’s just plain fun to play, even without a solo.)