the matthew show revisited: week twenty three
Timing is important. Especially when it comes to titles.
I moved to New York six months after 9/11. One of the first temp jobs I got was running background checks for the then-new TSA. I got along well with one of my managers, and when he was about to be transferred to LA, he wrote my number in his address book (we had things like that at the time). Significantly, he put a 1% symbol next to it.
"You know what that means?" he asked. "It means you're part of the one percent of the population who knows what the hell I'm talking about."
It's a familiar sensation. Very rarely do I bump into someone who broadcasts on my exact wavelength. A year or so thereafter, I met someone else at a temp gig who, surprisingly, was also vibrating at that secret frequency. This person, however, was trying desperately to be normal. I saw through it, and it unnerved them. This song came out of that friction, and I consider it one of my best.
When the Occupy Wall Street movement came a few years after my second album's release, and the term 'one percenter' took on a new popular connotation, I confess I was crestfallen. Now I have to make a little preamble whenever I introduce this song, as I'm doing now. Much respect to Reggie Rueffer for the magnificent moody violin, and Nancy Giammarco for the lovely backing vocals.