Are You Ready For The Fallout?

Fastball were signed to a major label, Hollywood Records, which released "Are You Ready For The Fallout?" as their debut single, but did little to promote it. The song and its album, Make Your Mama Proud, got decent reviews, but the sales numbers wouldn't budge. The band likely would have been dropped, but Hollywood was in turmoil, so there was nobody to drop them. They got to make another album, All the Pain Money Can Buy, which contained the single "The Way." That one took off, leading some fans to discover "Are You Ready For The Fallout?" in their back catalog, but the song remains relatively obscure.

This was written and sung by Tony Scalzo, who along with Miles Zuniga, fronted Fastball and handled the songwriting. It's from the perspective of someone telling a loved one to get his act together, warning there will be fallout if he stays on this path. Scalzo, though, was the one with the issues. "Growing up, I had a lot of problems," he explained in a Songfacts interview. "I was kind of a f--k-up. Wanted to be a rock-n-roller, didn't know what that really meant. And I remember my little brother telling me, 'I wish I could look up to you. I wish that you could be the role model that I would expect from an older brother.' That's where the incentive or the subject matter of that song is coming from, and I turned it around - it's me giving advice."