[Intro: Jonny 5]
Born in the flood, bloody fingerpaint sets
Black-marketed, fresh water cannons forget me not
Epitaph airbrush with death
White tees, wife beaters
Button up, reattach flesh!
[Verse 1: Jonny 5 & (Brer Rabbit)]
In between the lines (In between the lines)
Outside of the law (Outside of the law)
Underneath the veil (Underneath the veil)
We dig our foundations (We navigate the globe)
Trying to find a pattern to break the mold (Pattern to break the mold)
With a family to feed (Family to feed)
There's nowhere we won't go
There's spray paint on the teleprompter
Anchorman screams that he's seen a monster (Mayday)
There's bloodstains on his shirt (Mayday)
They say that he's gone berserk
[Verse 2: Jonny 5 & (Brer Rabbit)]
Sometimes when I wanna shut out this world
Want to rip up this page
Want to pour out this heart
Want to get up on this stage
And my lips become percussion
And my fists become the rage
And I pound on this table
'Til it gives me something to say
Then I think about things that I've seen
Right in front of me that I don't wanna believe
Let me let 'em know
The way that it is is not how it's gonna be
Not if we don't let 'em get ahead of us
The present tension's no threat
It's just a fence across the path
That we're already ready to walk
Rock solid footsteps
Let 'em put up obstacles
And prove that it isn't possible
Fuck that! We don't give 'em any weight
True liberty and freedom's at stake
Peace will never become passé
Live my life until my last day
It was half-past eight in the Bat Cave
When the cracks in the plaster
Collapsed and gave way to gaps in the pavement
(Mayday, mayday) Put it on blast
For the passengers and messengers
Where the fuck are the rescue workers?
Not far, off pissing on a cop car
Sipping liquor in the rock bar
Everyone climb to the frontline, lunchtime's cancelled
All hands on deck to pull survivors from the landfill
Onlookers, passers-by, brush off your shoulders
Shake off that rubble, break free from your standstill
[Hook 1: Jonny 5 & Brer Rabbit]
Signs of a better world, causes we understand
Failures we expected to occur and bring redemption for our sins
(In between the lines)
Safety from the crowds (Outside of the law)
In the shadows on the run (Underneath the veil)
Rules to keep alive (Rules to keep alive)
Rituals that prove their worth
Search for systems we can trust
Rhythms we can lock into
[Verse 3: Brer Rabbit]
This is madness, salvage teams can't bandage
Hope when it's damaged or broken compassion
There's not enough rope in the van
When the world is collapsin', our mode of action
Broadcast through the glass, all we can manage
Donate with the plastic scrapped from the salad
Hopin' to balance, emotions invalidated
Staged on four-to-three aspects
Just ballast for sadness
Lives shattered are standard fare for
Cameras and channels stare, no abracadabras
No faster answers or mantras for disaster
Remastered or plastered
Do you know the faction you're backin'?
It's another man down, another mother gone
Child drowned, another silent song
Solitude, another kind of strong
I miss you, another strung along
Missing in action
Another page is blackened
Burned, turned, ashes to ashes
Dust off the flags and the caskets
[Hook 2: Brer Rabbit]
Despite the life of love we knew
These lightning times are trouble, who
Can count the strikes that punish through?
The bonds we thought would never break
And never will, and never change
And never fade, but there's the rage
Of losing you to their mistakes!
[Verse 4: (Jonny 5) and Brer Rabbit]
(In between the lines) Signs of the next movement
(Refuge from the crowd) Outside of the law
(Causes we understand) Hands that trace
Instructions for descendants in the
Shadows on the run (Underneath the veil)
Failures we expected to occur
And bring redemption for our sins
(In between the lines) In between the lines
[Outro]
In between the lines, outside of the law
Underneath the veil
In between the lines, outside of the law
Underneath the veil
In between the lines, outside of the law
Underneath the veil, we carve our foundations
In between the lines, outside of the law
In between the lines
Bloodstains on the shirt of the anchorman. The media was often in the thick of the protests.
A screen’s aspect ratio compares its height to its width. A 3:1 aspect ratio, for example, means the screen is three times as wide as it is tall. The typical aspect ratio for a TV screen was 4:3 (also called 1.33:1) for several decades.
Movie theaters have a wider aspect ratio, so when films are broadcast on television, the side bits of the picture are often snipped off to fit the screen. This ties back to the album’s first track, which argues that the media presents the narrative they want you to see, and cut out the parts of the story that don’t “fit” on-screen.
An epitaph, as previously explained, is a paragraph written on a tombstone. You get a tombstone when you are deceased, so normally the story in the epitaph is a short description of the person and a brief explanation of how they died.
These lines are whispered, reflecting the notion that they are trying not to get caught.
They want to understand as to why there is the lack of peace in the world
“Anchorman screams that he’s seen a monster” and the preceding line “Spray paint on the telepromter”, notes the chaos that was presented to the mainstream media by the Seattle Mayday protestors. “The monster” the anchorman is referring to may be a rioter.
When there’s a hurricane, tornado, tsunami, shooting, terrorist attack or other mass disaster, you find that the news will talk about it for days, even when everything is all figured out. Media outlets use disaster to advertise and sell behind the considerate mask. Once they have you hooked on the one topic, they stretch it out so you keep watching. Remember when CNN used their ‘BREAKING NEWS’ banner to remind everyone the Titanic sank over a century ago? Now they use it for everything. This is where “Lives shattered are standard fare for cameras and channels” comes into light.
“No abracadabras” relates to the previous line in that the media shows you what’s going on, and then it all goes away. But in real life, where there’s tragedy, disaster, war, and everything else awful in the world, your problems don’t just poof away. Most viewers just want to know what’s happening and then forget about it to ‘stay with the times’. In one ear, out the other.
A common liability situation is pieces of plastic found in salads. In this lyric, they’re saying that in a widespread emergency case, like an evacuation, rather than complaining about the plastic in your salad, you’d have to donate it to recycling or whoever would handle environmental sustenance.
Unfortunately, many businesses will not be too careful about keeping dangerous substances out of their products. Here is an example of someone who found plastic in their salad.
The state of American society is such a disaster, posits Jonny 5, that rescue workers are needed to restore it. Who are these rescue workers? YOU ARE! The protestor showing contempt for police, the average student, the person on a night out. Anyone and everyone is responsible for saving this country. Everyone can come together, regardless of who they are.
This is a reference to the novel “Cider House Rules,” about a young man in the 1940s who performs abortions on women who want them, as they were illegal at the time. The title is relating to a list of rules posted at an apple orchard for the migrant workers employed there– however, since none of them can read English, no one ever follows the rules. Because of this, a recurring theme in the story is that everyone has their own personal set of ‘rules’ that they follow, which aren’t necessarily in line with those put in place by the law.
In the context of war and conflict, it can become easy to view deaths on such a huge scale as statistics rather than lives in their entirely, with all the richness and scope that each human life contains.
Trying to emphasize this, the line here states that while other people can always be found after deaths in a conflict (such as when political and military leaders seek reinforcements), from the point of view of the person about to lose their life in that conflict, a death is not merely a matter of statistics. Each life lost in war is an entire unique life, with experiences and memories and value, being taken away.
He needs help from people to help break people’s minds free of this “landfill” we call American culture. Everyone who hears his message that isn’t completely covered in “the trash” can drag their own selves out of complacency and start thinking.
He wants to express his displeasure with society, but only knows one way of expression. And that is hip-hop, so he asks for a microphone to let himself be heard.
This could be a refference to a rouge reporter who joined a 1999 WTO protest, often called “mayday” by officials despite being in november.
Mayday is an Anarchist holiday marking the 1919 demonstrations in Celeveland Ohio. Mayday is May 1st, and is celebrated by anarchists by rioting, particularly in seattle.
he is saying that there is some disgusting stuff going on in the world and he cant believe it