Most of this verbose cacophony of words was written on February 13th of
1999 and was actually a bit more verbose than the final lyric!
Sun was sitting at his sewing machine making a new pair of ‘happy
pants’ with the stereo on and was over come by an urge to spew anger. He got
up mid-stitch and penned all of “Bear Witness” except for the 3rd & 4th
lines of the 1st verse and the final refrain which he wrote a week later. That
day he also wrote about half of another angry opus called “And” that may
wind up being recorded if he doesn’t go broke from having made this record and
establishing this site!
He was afraid the song might sound too serious so when he wrote the
melody he gave it a sing-songy-ness. When production started it still seemed to
be coming out a bit too hard. The original sketch almost sounds like he’s
choking on a whisper. After all the song is not angry per say, it’s more about
wanting to be angry but being too scared to be. The idea to make a complete joke
of the song came up (something sort of like Blondie’s “Attack of the Giant
Ants”) but it seemed though there is some tongue in cheek in it, the song had
something to say that treated lightly wouldn’t have the same impact. Dan had
the garage approach in mind though it was Sun that insisted on the cheesy organ
part.
The na-na’s in the verses were something Sun and Dan just started
singing as early as when Dan played the bass part. The na-na’s continued to
gel as the guitars were added. Dan thought they should be girls but when he
tried it with Libby Johnson who sang the ba-ba’s on “Move On” it just
didn’t click for anybody. So Dan & Sun did the na-na’s. It was
definitely a boy thing.
Sun thought the break section was too naked so when they were mixing
and they had to record the distorted “out with soap” back ground line he added
the distorted singing and talking in the break. That was actually the last vocal
work that Sun did on the record. Here’s an idea for another trivia contest!
What is Sun saying in the break section? Since we're not rich, correct answers
will be rewarded with a set of The Official
SunPK.com Souvenir Stickers. If you’d like
more trivia contests like this and the “Nowhere” Trivia Contest let us know.
Though Sun likes the impact of the song where it sits on the album slamming in after “Feel” he’d still like to try a more acoustic approach to the song to evoke more of that quality of being afraid to be angry than he thinks he achieved in this version. What do you think?