“Seriously” was Spitboy’s first song. We started working on it the night guitarist, Karin Gembus, came to play with us, the night she joined the band. I had written the song using a few of the only chords I knew on guitar and wrote the lyrics about a night I was sexually harassed at a party at my house in West Oakland by two guys in a band from Salt Lake City, Utah.
It’s quite a kick ass song, in spite of my obvious amateur song-writing skills, with the odd loping opening and even odder break. What it lacks in musical maturity it makes up for in straightforward toughness and a certain vulnerability. Plus it has those three quick hard stops in the second verse right before the chorus.
We stopped playing “Seriously” live after a couple of years because it didn’t quite fit what would become the Spitboy sound, but it lives on as a track on the Ebullition Give Me Back compilation. The odd opening does allow for a welling of emotion and the satisfaction of screaming “Well, honey, I got news for you!”
Seriously
Subtle cues warn me
I’m on to you
You’re spewing your best
but babe
manipulative charm does not have me impressed
Not interested wasn’t good enough for you
All girls play hard to get
You ain’t no fool
Consideration for how I felt wasn’t important at all
To you a girl, is a girl, is a girl
(chorus)
Well, honey, I got news for you
It doesn’t work that way here
I don’t listen for the shots you call
Babe, you take me seriously or don’t take me at all