"CITY SLICKER"    J.Y. / Steven A. Jones
"The idea of the song is that boredom is death -- and, for me, going outside of the city means I'll usually wind up bored. I'm a neurotic person -- I have to have a lot of things going on at once. Everything is available in the city if you want it; actually, there's probably too much available! Musically, this song is meant to establish myself apart from Styx. It's ass-kicking rock & roll."

"SOMETHING TO REMEMBER YOU BY"    J.Y.
"This is one of those double entendre songs. The character in the song is asking for his lover to leave him with a souvenir or... well, I'II leave that to the minds of the Washington Wives."

"WAITING"    Jan Hammer / Colin Hodgkinson
"I was attracted to the brooding Eastern European feel of the song. Ordinarily, I don't relate as well to ballads -- but this one touched me. I also wanted to stretch out on the record and show people I'm more than the guy who wrote hard rock songs for each Styx album."

"STILL FEEL YOUR LOVE"    Mic Fabus / J. Hammer / C. Hodgkinson
"I'm not really a romantic lyricist -- it's rare for me to write a song with the word 'love' in it. The only song I've written recently with the word 'love' is 'Heavy Metal Poisoning,' in which I refer to the Love Canal. But this song had the right blend of elements for me to be able to sing it with conviction and believe in it."

"NO MISTAKE"    J. Hammer / C. Hodgkinson
"On the opening of this tune, that's Jan Hammer on synthesizer sounding like Jimi Hendrix reborn. Hendrix was an early and important influence on my guitar playing."

"RUNNING OUT OF TIME"    J .Y .
"I subscribe to this publication called Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist. It talks about the time clock that's running out because of the nuclear buildup around the world. That's what initially inspired the song. But it's also about a relationship."

"CHAIN ME DOWN"    J .Y .
"This one is about a character that a person can slip into. People will sometimes do the craziest things, then wake up the next morning and can't remember what happened... not unlike a werewolf."

"PRISONER OF WAR"    J. Hammer / C. Hodgkinson
"This one's a stark and scary song. It allowed me vocally to put a different personality into it that isn't on any other song. In a sense, I guess we're all prisoners of war. Now isn't that uplifting!?

"WILD DOGS IN THE NIGHT"    J .Y .
"This one was inspired by the sounds of wild dogs and coyotes I used to hear when I spent some time in the Los Feliz area of L.A. But as the song says, some people aren't quite housebroken either."

"EMPTY PROMISES"    J.Y.
"The lyrics are about politicians, and about being misled by them. Some things, I guess, never change."

 

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