Let's Hear the Protocol Theme Song!


(And now, you will see that I can go on and on about the things I love, just as I go on and on about the things I hate...)

What is "Protocol," besides the name of my blog? Apparently, "Protocol" is also the name of a Bad Religion song that never came to be. Here's the story of the other Protocol:

The Offspring's greatest hits album is a dual disc with a DVD, where Noodles and Dexter tell the stories behind the songs. One of my favorite stories was about the song, "Come Out and Play." (It had something to do with cooling off flasks of autoclaved culture medium before pouring it into Petri dishes!) My other favorite was about the origin of the song, "All I Want."

While working on the album Ixnay on the Hombre, they planned to have a "Bad Religion song-writing contest," to come up with a song with this band's distinctive sound and hefty vocabulary (Bad Religion frontman Greg Graffin has a Ph.D. in sociology.) Dexter came up with a song he called, "Protocol," which was going to be about how people might act, "All robotic in their movements," etc..

After Bad Religion's guitarist and Epitaph Records executive Brett Gurewitz rejected the Offspring's idea for a song, they ended up turning "Protocol" into "All I Want." It goes like this:

All I Want

Day after day your home life's a wreck
The powers that be just
Breathe down your neck
You get no respect
You get no relief
You gotta speak up
And yell out your peace
So back off your rules
Back off your jive
Cause I'm sick of not living
To stay alive
Leave me alone
I'm not asking a lot
I just don't want to be controlled
That's all I want
All I want
How many times is it gonna take
Till someone around you hears what you say
You've tried being cool
You feel like a lie
You've played by their rules
Now it's their turn to try
So back off your rules
Back off your jive
Cause I'm sick of not living
To stay alive
Leave me alone
I'm not asking a lot
I just don't want to be controlled
That's all I want
All I want
I said it before
I'll say it again
If you could just listen
Then it might make sense



That's a pretty good theme song for my blog, as it is. But, still, I kind of want to hear the original one - the "Protocol" song that was intended as a joke on Bad Religion and Epitaph Records! Maybe it's time to dig out the old Thesaurus and re-work the lyrics to "All I Want;" maybe throw in some more of those "G.R.E. words;" maybe make the song be about people who try to sell you behind your back without your input into the deal and then still expect you to adhere to....the Protocol.

I'm not rejecting this idea. I think it's a good one.

"All I Want" is the Protocol theme song.
All I want is the Protocol theme song!

Get it?!?

(Have fun watching as I become a parody of myself!)

Ya
ya
ya
ya
ya!!!!