Wave Motion Gun

In our interview with Marcy Playground lead singer/songwriter John Wozniak, he explained: "That's a song that a lot of people seem to really dig. It's one of those impression songs. In the end, it's telling the story about me trying to convince my friend not to do heroin anymore. And that became a theme of my life because I went to college in Olympia, Washington, in the early '90s. It was sort of a port area in the Pacific Northwest where all the heroin trade was coming through. And everybody was on it at the time in the early '90s. And all my friends were sort of disappearing, and I didn't know where they were going. I found out they were all doing heroin. And they were doing it together, which is really a weird thing. But I never did it. It was not something I was ever interested in. In fact, drugs are something that never really interested me, except for some experimentation. But I just started watching friends die and disappear and drop out of school and stuff, and turning up in houses in San Francisco and s--t like that. And my one closest friend I tried to convince to stop doing it, and that's what that song's about."
John isn't sure if the subject of this song knows it's about him. He says, "I haven't spoken to him in 15, 16 years. I have no idea if he's dead or alive, actually. Some people I don't need in my life, even though I love them. You have to protect yourself sometimes."

John Wozniak is a self-described "nerd," who wrote a song with a Dungeons & Dragons concept for their debut album ("A Cloak of Elvenkind"). It's no surprise that he would look to the world of anime for this song title: the Wave Motion Gun is a weapon in the series Space Battleship Yamato. It's very powerful, but leaves the ship defenseless for a time after firing it. Not a bad metaphor for drugs.