Richard Patrick of the band Filter
filter, “only You (Stripped)
from: remixes for the damned, 2008
“I started to think about becoming extinct by the way that we’re going.
I started to think that we’re close to the brink if you don’t hurry.
I started to cry when I thought of the lie that they told you.
To limit the sky when I look in your eye, I know I can’t hold you.
Only you
Only you
Only you
I’m starting to think that we’ll disappear (only you).
I’m starting to think that we’ll disappear.
I started to think that we’re missing the link it’s begun to unravel.
I just takes a blink to get out of sync the lines become blurry.
I look at your smile then I know for awhile that I don’t have to worry.
Cause the world has got you and like oceans are blue we start a new journey.
Only you
Only you
Only you
I’m starting to think that we’ll disappear (only you).
I’m starting to think that we’ll disappear.”
I love the daily posts on The Bop Shop. I always get a delightful education. The music comes at us from all different genres. It is an antidote to the depressing situations in both Ukraine and Gaza.
But I have noticed a lack of louder rock and roll on Bop. So here is one. I hope my post shines a light on another under-appreciated, and lessor known singer songwriter, Richard Patrick
Emerging in the early '90s, Trent Reznor's seminal Nine Inch Nails project drastically changed what "industrial rock" could mean while still playing within its rules. A song like "Hurt" which was covered by Johnny Cash, was full of red-blooded passion and spookily primal. From there, the floodgates could open, and ex-NIN member Richard Patrick branched out with his own band Filter. I first became aware of the band with their only hit song "Take A Picture," a spacious and lilting tune that my Spin class teacher would play to get us singing along and cranked up.
In 2009 Filter released the brilliant anti-war album ANTHEMS OF THE DAMNED. The lead track was "Soldiers of Misfortune" a serious meditation about the Iraq war, a topic many of Filter's peers seemed scared to touch. The album was dedicated to a young Army Reservist, who was a Filter fan, who went to Iraq in 2004, to help pay for college, only to have been killed in a bombing a few days after he arrived. The song pulls no punches in describing "soldiers of misfortune, soldiers of distortion."
I have chosen the song off that album “Only You,” a remixed lean version, which is more of a soft ballad, compared to the band’s usual loud hard rocking style. Of the song Patrick says…”to know that my music actually meant something to someone at a super personal level, I decided to leave the record on a super high note. I wanted to let everybody know even when they're at their most vulnerable, you can always make it. There's hope at the end of any situation. I've been through it. I've been to Iraq. Someone shot a fu--ing a rocket at us after we got off stage. I've been all over the world with my music. I've experienced all of it."
Patrick knows how to get properly fed up with modern society, and Filter provides him the vehicle to do so. On all of Filter’s albums, Patrick’s vocals are flawless and emotional, and often sound as if he’s on top of the biggest mountain in the world shouting his message as loud and melodic as he possibly can to anyone lucky enough to hear him. His well developed and unique crooning scream conveys complex emotions such as anger, rage, misery, empathetic pain, sadness, joy, and surprise.
Other offerings I would like to recommend include the ballads “It’s Just You” “The Only Way is the Wrong Way” ‘Surprise” “Kill the Day”
Side gigs: the insanely good hard rock album ARMY OF ANYONE with some of the best rock drumming you’ll ever hear by Ray Luzier especially on the song “Goodbye”
Richard’s guest performance singing live with Flyleaf – a brilliant cover of U2’s “In the Name of Love” find it on YouTube
-Cob Carlson-
“You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him”