Conspiracy Of One

Conspiracy Of One

We Told You So.

Hey everybody, I know I haven‘t written a Dexter On The Songs for a while I'm gonna' have to try to make more of an effort on that front. Sometimes songs seem kind of selfexplanatory so it seems retarded to write a synopsis about it. So maybe I‘ll try to think of a different angle, like where I was when I wrote it, or what I was thinking about at the time. So I don‘t always just pump these things out, I try to be inspired to write one. Because, you see, it‘s about quality, not quantity. I‘m an artist dammit!

Okay, so this one‘s gonna be about the song Conspiracy of One. Conspiracy of One was the last song written for our last album. We wanted to have another really fast, punk type song on the record, because even though that‘s not what most people hear on the radio, it‘s an important part of who we are as a band. So I wrote the music and was trying to think of a subject to write about. We were in the studio making the record at the time and I remember one day the band and Brendan (O‘Brien, the producer) were talking about nuclear war or something. I know, nice topic, huh. (I mean, when you‘re in the studio, the conversation can get a little strange. Just ask Noodles about our last album‘s tentative title, Dirty Sanchez). Well, this was the point of our little talk: a generation or ago, our parents and our country feared attack or even nuclear armageddon, but that attack would have come from the Soviet Union because it was the time of the cold war and all that. Nowadays, however, an attack would be more likely to come from an individual or small group, and that idea was actually much more frightening, because you don‘t know where of whom it‘s coming from.

I thought about that conversation for a couple days. I thought about how it must have been during the cold war. I mean, during the 50‘s, 60‘s, and 70‘s, you had nuclear buildups, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a lot of tension, and I believe that that was pretty frightening. Today we don‘t have that threat from another nation. But we do have that threat from others if you haven't noticed, we're not the most popular people in a lot of the Middle East. We also hear horror stories such as how Russia 'lost' a half a dozen suitcasesized nuclear bombs and no one knows who got their hands on them.

So the idea that we as a country face much of that same danger today, but actually in a much scarier way, made an impression on me. I decided to write the lyrics to the song about it. That‘s what Conspiracy of One means, that the threat or danger that we face comes not from a whole nation but from one crazy individual.

I was also feeling particularly artistic about this one, so you‘ll notice if you look in the CD booklet that on the page for this song there are a couple of cryptic pictures with a little caption underneath. I wasn‘t going to explain these, because I think some things should be left to everyone‘s own interpretation. I also feel a little bit like a guy explaining how a card trick works! But, what the hell, since you guys are cool, I‘ll give it up.

The first picture starts off with “Ah, the good old days.“ That‘s supposed to show that this is how things were a long time ago. The picture shows two giants connected by a rope to their innards, and a caption that says, “Two men, from opposite sides, bound together by a siamese ripcord tethered to their souls. Who will pull first, knowing that it will destroy them both?“ And that‘s how it was, the giants are the two superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The picture and caption means that if one had attacked the other, then there would have been mutual destruction, because both nations had enough bombs to wipe out the earth ten times over or some crazy number like that.

The second picture represents the situation today. The caption says “One man, from opposite sides, struggles to keep the dangling ripcord from the reach of a little man who does not hesitate to pull, knowing that the falling carcass will destroy them both.” In this picture, the giant is the U.S. and the little man represents a terrorist. It also shows the suicidal nature of terrorists today, that he doesn‘t hesitate to destroy himself in order to destroy his enemy. It‘s insanity, I know, but we were trying to show things the way they are.

Our album came out November 14, 2000. We could have never predicted that the threat that we wrote about in that song and album title would be borne out the way that it was the following September.