Bill's first records as Smog were released independently. They were experimental and Bill pushed musical boundaries, indeed he even said he was a "guitar innovator" in one song. Sewn To The Sky was released in 1990 when he was about 24. The cover art is a black and white drawing of a tree and a moon. Kings Tongue is about him feeling pretty mean and refers to his problems with the ladies. Confederate Bills And Pinball Slugs is about him wanting to be famous, and the idea of having different faces for different people and audiences. Puritan Work Ethic is a cool song about the problem of money joking about how people don't know how he makes his money to treat the ladies so fine. As an experimental piece it uses audio from the cartoon of the grasshopper and the ant with the grasshopper saying “the world owes us a living”.
Bill's next record Forgotten Foundation was released in 1992 and the cover art is a chair reminiscent of Van Gogh’s chair art works. The song Filament is about how he is a dark person and when his friend leaves the light leaves. This really shows Lisa was right about Bill, he has a dark personality. He even recognises it himself. It comes up in many later songs too. High School Freak is about doctors telling him he should get out of bed. It is not clear what sort of doctors they are. It says he was in a “terrible fight” and he doesn’t want to go out into the daylight. This sounds like he had gotten beaten up as a teen perhaps. He sings about how he comes second to a high school freak, like he thinks he should have been able to beat a freak. Your Dress is a fictional song about a war widow wearing the dress she could buy because of the money her husband sent home from the war. This song is the title track kind of, with lines going “Standing proud among the trees By the side of the road Like some forgotten foundation For a never finished bridge”. Evil Tyrant is a pretty disturbing song we can only hope Bill didn't actually mean, about an evil tyrant who doesn’t rape a woman because it would not impress her. Bill was only young at the time and this was before rape culture was in the media so much. The tyrant then forces the woman to marry him instead, with Bill singing that she couldn’t turn down the opportunity. I am not sure that forced marriages are really that great. But Bill can be a controversial American artist, and in writing this blog I am not saying I agree with all his lyrics. Long Grey Hair is another troublesome song about women, with the narrator finding his mama and dragging her by her long grey hair home. Bad Ideas For Country Songs goes along in the same theme, about needing “a weak girl who won’t put up a fight”… “its so hard to find a decent girl”… “I need a weak girl who can’t put up a fight.” Bad Ideas For Country Songs II “its so hard to find a strong girl on a weak night I need a weak girl — I need a strong drink — who won’t put up a fight”. We can really see that Bill was having a lot of trouble with women even around 1992 when he was about 26. 97th Street is actually about a woman he feels positive towards, Jennifer Herrema from Royal Trux. I’m Smiling is about him being tired of prolonging a fake laugh, when the other person bores him. Bill also has a lot of social issues he sings about over time. But I'm sure we can all think of times when we have had to pretend to smile in a conversation that's just a bit boring. The final song is With A Green Complexion which means jealousy, and Bill does sometimes suffer from the green eyed monster in his work.
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