Where’s My Thing? Background

“From the Roll the Bones album, ‘Where’s My Thing?’ was their second song nominated for a Grammy, in 1991, losing to Eric Johnson’s ‘Cliffs of Dover.’ The song is much more pop-like than the rest of Rush’s work, featuring an upbeat tempo and a brass-like synthesizer line. This song was subtitled ‘Part IV (Gangster of Boats Trilogy)’ originally as a joke, since it’s the fourth part of a trilogy. There is no official continuation of the alleged trilogy, though subsequent instrumentals are similar in style and blend when played in reverse sequential order, starting with ‘The Main Monkey Business.'”—Wikipedia

“No deep meaning here. Just one of those things people say: ‘Where’s that, oh, you know, where’s my thing?’ For once, the lyrics are guaranteed politically correct! [We’ve had few instrumentals, because] as soon as Geddy and Alex would come up with a good musical part, it would fit in with some lyrics I had just written. This time I outsmarted them; I wouldn’t give them any more lyrics until an instrumental was done. It worked.” (Roll the Boats)—Neil in Merely Players

“I was really proud of our record company, that they released ‘Dreamline’ as the first track and then they put out ‘Where’s My Thing?’ for alternative stations or basically anyone who had the nerve to play it. And it made a great alternative for college or alternative radio. It was just a very creative thing for a record company to do, I thought. Not just to be worried, ‘Okay, here’s our marketing strategy,’ they would say, ‘Let’s do this because it would be fun and unusual, and the song is there.’ So I thought that was really a good thing to do. A friend of ours says that it’s just another version of ‘Telstar,’ like all instrumentals are, which is funny. And very true!” (Roll The Bones Radio Special)—Neil in Songfacts

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