Hit hard, go fast, get low, get moody, and do whatever feels good. The motto of indie rock group The Stone Foxes rings true to their music. The six-piece based out of San Francisco just wrapped up a fall tour with Social Distortion, and is looking optimistically to the future. Recently, the band opened up about their hit song, “She Said Riot,” and it’s backstory.
“She Said Riot” combines two major themes in recent San Francisco and American history- the Occupy movement and the drastic gentrification in San Francisco that followed.
The song is written from the perspective of someone watching the rapid gentrification happen around him, as friends and artists get pushed out of the city in exodus. He recalls a vivid memory from an Occupy protest of an empowered girl who said “RIOT!”, a memory that then inspires him to get proactive.
Many artists and musicians have left San Francisco in recent years because of the rising cost of living, mainly due to the city’s booming tech industry. Those loved streets and places where artists once gathered, shared ideas and grew together have been forced to close down or change drastically. The main character in this song is looking at all these changes take place, but now with a fire lit inside him to “steal the streets back.”
Whether the mass media has properly recognized it or not, the Occupy movement was an empowering moment in modern civil rights. The story in the song is based on real stories we heard from friends and experienced ourselves during the Occupy days.
The funny thing is, the song actually just started with the music. This is one of those songs where the mood and sound of the music evoked a certain kind of story. A few lines came out right away when we were jamming the instrumental parts in the studio. “We’re in the streets, kicked out in the summer…” From there, a concept started to form and later the lyrics were crafted to best fit the story we wanted to tell.
Lyrics
We’re in the streets
Kicked out in the summer
And now you’re looking for a new location
You think we’re going under
But the kids are all raging, no time for staging
The kids are all, the kids are all raging
We came of age
on these streets
You took my hand
you said feel the way my heart beats
And the kids are all raging, no time for staging
The kids are all, the kids are all raging
Come on right here she said riot
Riot she said riot
Riot she said riot
When we ran on these streets
We never thought that we
Would grow older and
Give away our dreams
They brought the guns
They took us uptown
Spun the story in the news
Like they took down the underground
