Song of the Moment: 1/2 Full

[stip]

1/2 Full


Climbing on a mountain
Floating out on the sea
Far from lights of a city
The elements they speak to me...

Whispering that life
Existed long before greed...
Balancing the world
On its knee...

Don't see some men as half empty
See them half full of shit
Thinking that we're all but slaves
There's ain't gonna be

No middle anymore
It's been said before
The haves be having more
Yet still bored

Won't someone save?
Won't someone save
The world?


Musically ½ Full has always reminded me of Red Mosquito (and to a lesser extent Dissident) with Mike just playing leads over the dirty riff that drives the rest of the song. I love it on Red Mosquito but for whatever reason I’m just not as into it on ½ Full, and I’ve never quite been able to place exactly what it is about the studio version of this. But it’s not the song itself, since I LOVE it live. It has a looseness and playfulness to it that it is missing in the studio version.

Lyrically ½ Full is a hybrid of Eddie’s Daniel Quin and Howard Zinn influences—fusing the insights and messages of both into a critique of society that address Zinn’s Marxist criqitiue of power and inequality and Quinn’s warnings about the consequences of our self-emancipation from the laws of nature. However, it is one of those times where the sentiment and what he alludes to is more intelligent and nuanced than what he actually wrote down.

He’s stronger with the first verse, evoking Quinn. The awareness of the totality of nature as a system that we are bound to, despite our best efforts to master it—and the recognition that if we do not acknowledge our connection to it we will be forcibly removed. The balancing the world on its knee image is evocative here—we’re children in the lap of something far greater than ourselves, and like a parent it can keep us bouncing happily on its lap, or drop us off if it is so inclined. But the choice is not ours to make.

As is usually the case, Eddie falls apart a little bit once class and inequality come into play. The ½ full of shit lyric is clever, but Eddie, as is often the case, gets overwhelmed by what is so self-evident to him. His instincts are often correct—yes the system is exploitative and unfair, but the problem is either so obvious or so enormous to him that he just can’t get his mind around it and say something insightful about it—instead he just repeats slogans. It’s too bad, since he can obviously do better. And the call back reference to porch is just lazy

The weary, plaintive question at the end—won’t someone save the world--is delivered really well and captures perfectly just how dark and desperate and powerless a time 2002-2003 was for progressives---before the rest of the public finally began to acknowledge even the smallest amount of how much a disaster Bush and co have been (note that Eddie is asking for someone to come and rescue all of us when in almost all other cases freedom and emancipation is something we do for ourselves, or as a group—never something passive we have to wait for like it is here), and all you could do was howl in the darkness for people to wake up, like he does during the outro jam. However, I would have liked to have that be even higher up in the mix. It gets buried in the music, which may have been an artistic choice (Riot Act is an album about exhaustion as a state of mind) but not one that I enjoy as much as I could

And as with the music, ½ full doesn’t really shine until it's live, where Eddie’s vocals have the energy that they’re missing here. This is probably a 2.5/3 star song in the studio but it is closer to 4 live, so I’ll split the difference and give it a 3.

old thread archived here

[knee tunes]

Is there any more thrashier song by PJ than 1/2 full?

(by thrashy, I mean the type where you want to get on the floor and roll around to it, as a means of representing that you're dancing to it)

?

[BurtReynolds]

I'm a fan of this song in all its forms.

[knee tunes]

I'm a fan of this song in all its forms.

see. you do like pearl jam, bmacsmith. are you bmacsmith?

[BurtReynolds]

I'm a fan of this song in all its forms.

see. you do like pearl jam, bmacsmith. are you bmacsmith?

yeah. I like a couple of their songs. nostalgia, probably.

[knee tunes]

I'm a fan of this song in all its forms.

see. you do like pearl jam, bmacsmith. are you bmacsmith?

yeah. I like a couple of their songs. nostalgia, probably.

yeah probably.

do you like the red mosquito song too?

[BurtReynolds]

I'm a fan of this song in all its forms.

see. you do like pearl jam, bmacsmith. are you bmacsmith?

yeah. I like a couple of their songs. nostalgia, probably.

yeah probably.

do you like the red mosquito song too?

is that the one about the kid who shoots up a school? that one is pretty cool, too.

[knee tunes]

I'm a fan of this song in all its forms.

see. you do like pearl jam, bmacsmith. are you bmacsmith?

yeah. I like a couple of their songs. nostalgia, probably.

yeah probably.

do you like the red mosquito song too?

is that the one about the kid who shoots up a school? that one is pretty cool, too.

Nooooo.
It's the one where you don't roll on the floor to but you kind of shuffle over it...
kinda like a square dance, but oblong.

[Got Some]

Love this song!!!!!!!!

One of the best songs of the naughties. And my favorite of riot act . Great song live.

5 stars!!!

[stip]

I was a bit too hard on this song in my original post. It is definitely a 3, maybe even a 3.5 in the studio

[EJ]

3 stars studio
4 stars live

I find the studio version a tad on the drab side. But, it roars to life in a live setting. I've posted many times before that the Chop Suey performance is the quintessential version of this song. Too bad this wasn't the one on the album.

[VinylGuy]

great studio version, awesome live song...Mike and Ed shine at the end...amazing, amazing song to listen and sing when you are drunk..but sad drunk.

[Coach]

3 stars studio
4 stars live

I find the studio version a tad on the drab side. But, it roars to life in a live setting. I've posted many times before that the Chop Suey performance is the quintessential version of this song. Too bad this wasn't the one on the album.

I agree with what you're saying here. Live version is just an unapologetic thrust of "what-the-fuck-I-just-need-to-get-this-off-my-chest-in-a-real-loud-and-noisy-way."

[zeb]

This is in my PJ top ten.

[yofismom]

4 stars. Love the studio version, love it even more live.

Stip is right I think that Ed has terrific instincts but there's a lot of it he can't quite seem to capture in linguistic subtlety. Jeez he's great at creating powerful moments though. And those are of course very much about lyrical tropes (if that's the right word) and putting them in the right context with the right music at the right time.

[McParadigm]

Great music, but I have a really hard time not being brought down by the flavor of uncooked ham in the lyrics.

[dimejinky99]

The loosest playing in the later part of their career. I had a dream with this song in it recently. It's a great song in all it's forms. 5/5

[Dr. Van Nostrand]

I think I've only gotten this like 3 times live, and it is such a good song live, they need to play it more

[knee tunes]

Great music, but I have a really hard time not being brought down by the flavor of uncooked ham in the lyrics.

what a mcparadigm ya got there

[mikejasond]

How bad does this song wish it was Red Mosquito?