Dimed Out

Album: The Most Lamentable Tragedy (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • This track is from The Most Lamentable Tragedy, a rock opera in five acts that follows a young man ("Our Hero) who runs into a look-alike whose behavior is much different than his own.
  • This punk anthem fits into the story's second act, and is sung from the perspective of the look-alike. It explores the desire to live life to its fullest.
  • The phrase 'Dime Out' means to turn all the knobs of an amplifier or effect pedal to the maximum "10" position. The band's frontman Patrick Stickles uses it here as a statement of purpose of living life to the fullest you possibly can.

    According to a Titus Andronicus annotation on Genius the term was first introduced to Stickles, "by longtime Shea Stadium staffer Pat Ronayne, who detailed to Stickles one night the settings he would apply to his DOD Grunge pedal in middle school years."
  • Stickes said in Pedal Puddle magazine's May 2015 issue: "People think ['Dimed Out'] means merely making something louder, but these people have never met the feedback loop on a delay pedal or the regeneration knob on an MXR Pitch Transposer. Setting these to ten may not necessarily make the signal louder, but they will certainly make it much, much more extreme."

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