I Can See Myself in My Guitar

This is the headstock of my first guitar. Sharp-eyed comics fans will note the faded image of the Silver Surfer, which was sliced off the cover of Silver Surfer issue # 2 with an X-acto knife. This, I believe makes it the most expensive (if not valuable) guitar of its class, ever. Well... how was I to know? It was 1971 and it felt like the whole world was tipping on the edge of the apocalypse. The last thing on my mind was the future value of a comic no one else I knew had ever heard of...

But, actually, it was my third guitar (below) that was the first one I really fell in love with... a love affair that has mellowed with time but is no less deep to this day.

That battered old Yamaha came to me at a time when I was really down. My little house had been burglarized and my big, shiny dreadnaught steel string had got sucked out into the night with 300 of my most recently played LPs, my turntable, my tape deck, a bunch of my tapes... a bummer.

I moped around for a couple weeks without a guitar, being a broke student with a couple of part time jobs. Finally one of my friends mentioned his brother in law had an old guitar he wanted to sell. I was a little let down when I heard it was a nylon string classical -- the Silver Surfer guitar was a nylon guitar and it was virtually unplayable, and had a flat, lifeless sound I could never make work for anything but scratchy rhythm.

But I came over and met his brother in law, a young hippy guy. He pulled out this Yamaha G-130A classical, a little dinged, the plastic (!) varnish worn away a bit on the butt, in a cardboard case. But it had a sweet, warm tone, completely unlike the 'Surfer. I asked him how much he wanted for it.

Thirty-five or forty, he said. I offered him $37.50, which gave him a chuckle and we shook hands.

I've loved that guitar ever since.

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I Can See Myself in My Guitar

I can see myself in my guitar
I can see myself in my guitar
It's getting kind of old but it's shiny
I can see myself in my guitar

I can see myself in my car
I don't care what anyone says we'll go far
I can see myself in my car
out in the country, we'll go far, we'll go far

I can see my self in everything
ain't nothing cosmic, it's just there
I can see myself in you
and you know and you know
I see you everywhere

I can see myself in my guitar
I can see myself in my guitar
It's getting kind of old but it's shiny
I can see myself in my guitar

Spit in the Ocean

I wrote this song when I was working in a gas station in a very rough part of town. You might think, from the lyrics, that I was feeling small, myself, but, much to the contrary, I felt like I was on top of the world. I had a job. I had a car. I had a nice little house I was renting in a decent neighborhood. I had a beautiful, whip-smart girlfriend. And the people around my gas station, by and large, had nothing. So, in a sense, I was writing about myself.

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Spit in the Ocean

You must think you’re oh so very
terribly important
with your car, your house, your maid,
your butler and your porters.

But seen from the stars
you’re the same as all of us are.
And it might seem a queer notion
but we’re all just spit
in the ocean.


Hop upon a plane
run around the world
Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Berlin
and they're all full of your kind of girl.

You can have all the ones you want
you can play with people’s lives.
You can have all the rope you want
but soon enough they expect that noose
to be tied.

Seen from above
just another slightly balding head
a little bit of dandruff on the shoulders
but you’ll be dead
soon enough, anyway.

Hiding in your villa
on the Dalmatian Coast.
Your blue ribbon Afghan hound at your feet
the one that you prize the most.

But your baby’s got the rabies
and he’s gonna bite your foot.
ain’t there an end to the indignities
through which a human being
must be put.

Seen from the stars
Just another chunk of rock in space.
little ones crawling about on it
but they’ll be gone
soon enough, anyway.

You must think you’re oh so very
terribly important
with your car, your house, your maid,
your butler and your porters.

But seen from the stars
you’re the same as all of us are.
And it must seem a queer notion
but we’re all just spit
in the ocean.

(C) 1975, T.K. Major

When Ashley Said Goodbye

It's another scorcher here in south Cali... not as oppressive, maybe, as yesterday -- unless you're foolish enough to decide to catch up with your quixotic blog/podcast (I know, I know, all blogs are quixotic. I'll go one better, all communication is quixotic. But it's too stinkin' hot to argue about engines of futility... Where was I?) ...not as oppressive unless you close all the windows, trying to shut out neighborhood noise to better please your audience (that would be you, noble and perhaps imaginary reader).

The lyrics, I think, are more or less self-explanatory. It started off heading towards being a catalog song (a bunch of girl's names strung together with oneliners about them) but I'm not a fan of the form and diverted it to a general discourse on the nature of love... at least as it relates to simple-minded pop songs.

I wanted an old-timey kind of sound so I used my 3/4 sized spanish guitar that I bought for $50 at a music superstore. It's my go-everywhere guitar. I was going for a small, cheap sound -- and I think I nailed it.


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When Ashley Said Goodbye

Amber said hello when Ashley said good-bye
I said hold on but there's no wondering why
when love wants in, love can knock down yer door

I said Amber, I think this is forever
she said baby you're yanking on my tether
when all is said and done love will even up the score

Love will fool ya -- love can kill ya
Love is all that love can give ya
and still you keep coming back for more


Love is funny -- love is cruel
Love'll make Einstein act just like a fool
Love'll make a tomcat dive in-a swimin pool

All these toys all these games
all these pretty dollhouses going up in flames
if you play around enough you know you're gonna get burned

Love will fool ya -- love can kill ya
Love is all that love can give ya
and still you keep coming back for more

Kristin (Was Never Here)

It's too hot to think, here... it's certainly too hot to strap on a pair of headphones. I recorded this last week and put it aside for just such an occasion.

Kristin was written for an album of "girl name songs" back in 1996, The Barista Cycle. The women behind the names that inspired the songs were real -- they worked at my favorite coffee shop -- but the songs and the girls in them were entirely fictional. (Still it made for a few awkard moments with a couple of boyfriends and husbands.)

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Kristin Was Never Here

Kristin was never here
You didn't see her slip in the back way
You didn'st see her float up the stairs
You didn't see her perfect hand on my door
Because Kristin was never here

She loves me twice as much as him
Lord, I know that's true
but she loves those kids 10000 times more
and, man, I know that too

Nothing adds up or works out right
Nothing's gonna make it so
I've run the numbers a million times
at the bottom line I gotta go

Kristin was never here...

one last time I swear we only kissed
for a moment there were only two
eternity is where parallel lines meet
and all lies are true

You didn't see her slip in the back way
You didn'st see her float up the stairs
You didn't see her perfect hand on my door
Because Kristin was never here

____________

Did I mention it's hot here? Stinking hot. Melting plastic hot.

Hot, hot, hot.

Hot.

(And, yes, my Riverside and San Berdoo brothers and sisters -- I know I don't know the meaning of the word.)

Pretty Little Head

I got pain in my head and a fire in my loins...
and a whole lot of empty in my heart.

Love... loneliness... longing... lust. A continuum of consternation. The engine of desire.

I thought we were getting way too moody here... Indian summer seems to have kicked in. And with the sudden rush of warm winds and blue skies comes... longing... desire... and lust.

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full version (2000)

Pretty Little Head

Babe I've been alone for such a long time
this loneliness tearin' me apart
I got pain in my head and a fire in my loins
and a whole lot of empty in my heart

If you had a thought in your pretty little head
Then maybe we could talk
today we're alive tomorrow we're dead
so I think right now we'd better rock


I look in your eyes and I wonder what
is going on in your mind
Are you really where you are
or where you'll be tomorrow night?

your leg touches mine beneath the table
I feel your hand slide up my thigh
I feel kinda dizzy I feel kinda high
I feel like I'm gonna die

If you had a thought in your pretty little head
Then maybe we could talk
today we're alive tomorrow we're dead
so I think right now we'd better rock

Looking for Trouble

It was a rainy Saturday in the early summer of 1981. I was sitting on a wooden chair at the edge of a storm-roiled sea outside a little, rundown motel a half hour north of Ensenada in Baja California, Mexico. The sea spray mixed with a drizzle that left a thick salt film on the new $20 guitar resting across my leg. I stared out across the choppy sea and thought about the last three years...

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LOOKING FOR TROUBLE

Some people say
Love is a game
but I'm telling you now that I wasn't playing
when I fell in love with you

Here I go again
Looking for reasons where there aren't any reasons
Here I go again
looking for trouble... I'm already in trouble


That day in my car
don't say you don't know
You held me so close
begging me to let go
I told myself you were just confused

Here I go again . . .


You always said
that it was fate
I'm telling you now
that I was framed
when I fell in love with you

Here I go again . . .


A dog barks
the wind howls through the night
I whisper your name and
stare in the fire
I can' keep myself from calling out to you

Here I go again
Looking for reasons where there aren't any reasons
Here I go again
looking for trouble... I'm already in trouble

Copyright 1981
T.K. Major

I recorded this about 2:45 am last night. And I'm afraid it shows in the beyond-world-weary vocals. What should come off as, oh, I dunno, muted anguish, or something, instead suggests a zombie on 'ludes. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating.

This is one of the tunes I was planning on revisiting a time or two, anyhow, so I guess that's for sure, now. But, of course, this project/blog/indulgence is not at all about vanity in that sense, but rather soul-baring, which, no doubt is its own form of vanity. And, to that end, here's the story behind the song...


It was a rainy weekend in the early summer of 1981. I'd got out of the hospital a few months before, a two months stay in the aftermath of a nasty motorcycle wreck, and just that Thursday had broken up with my girlfriend of 3 years.

Through most of the 70's I'd spent a lot of time in the Mexican harbor city of Ensenada. In those days it was a scruffy town with wonderfully rundown bars. 98% of the gringos (and they were, they really were) hung out in one bar -- which could, indeed, be a great bar, when it wasn't full of N. Americans. That was a big, battered cantina with an ornate, carved 19th century bar and a huge mirror that had been broken so many times they supposedly had a glazier on retainer who kept spares in a warehouse just outside down. That was Hussong's.

But if you stayed away from Hussong's it was possible to do some serious drinking in a commodious environment (deep and shady old tuck and roll booths, Mexican music on the jukebox and nobody paying much attention to you) without hearing any English or rock music. I favored a bar in a seedy district on the outskirts of the tourist area called the Club Del Mar. It was the bar where many of the street mariachis parked their guitar and violin cases during their business hours and, in the late afternoon or early evening it was possible to hear some pretty great playing as bands warmed up. And some pretty crumby playing, too. You had to love it.


It was not so much with a broken heart as the need to just dull some existential pain that I headed down to Mexico that weekend. I may have loved my girlfriend but it was clear neither of us was in love. The breakup had been coming since before my motorcycle wreck and was, frankly, long overdue. In fact, it was probably delayed by the wreck. My g.f., God bless her, stuck by me during the dark months in the hospital (actually they weren't that bad... it was worse after I got out, since I'd developed a nice little morphine/demerol jones) and we both tried to make it work, I think, for a while after I got out. But the breakup was inevitable.

Still, the g.f. had been overtaken by some odd jag of regret, prompting a very brief and tumultuous re-ignition of emotions that saw us get oh, so, briefly back together and then -- in contrast to our original, polite and adult breakup -- to break up all over again, this time with a noisy finality that left no room for doubt.


So, I found myself in a party town but not in a party mood. I got there late Friday night but, by then, my favorite place to stay, a little, nearly abandoned motor court built right on the beach had closed for the night and I ended up far north of town at a much newer but still rundown motel, built on a rocky beach below a choppy, storm-whipped inlet. My room was the northernmost on the little strip of rock.

The next day, rain spattered the large and filmy sliding glass door that opened from my room onto a small, exposed concrete patio. I drove into town but couldn't get in the groove in any of my favorite haunts. I got a late breakfast, bought a $20 guitar in tourist 'music' shop, had a beer -- and bought a case of Bohemia -- and drove back to my motel north of town.

In late afternoon the drizzling rain mostly stopped and a few fingers of sun opened out onto the distant sea. I took my $20 guitar out onto the patio. There was no furniture so I brought one of the straight-backed wooden chairs from the room out and put it near the edge of the concrete patio. The storm driven waves were breaking on the rocks just beyond, and within minutes the guitar and I were coated in a thick salty film. The choppy sea mirrored the dark gray of the clouds and smacked the rocks with fitful fury, often drowning out the sound of the cheap, plywood guitar.

But it felt great.

I started playing a kind of Am to Dm7 vamp with the one flatpick I luckily found in my car. A light drizzle mixed with the ocean spray and I thought for a moment about going inside... but then I thought if you can't play a $20 guitar in the rain, what can you play. And before I knew it this song was spilling out...

I actually wrote two more songs out there, that evening. If anyone else was around, they must have thought I was nuts. But it was a magical few hours.

Sometimes it makes a certain sense to not come in out of the rain...

Kingdom of Fools

T his is my latest finished song. Recently, I saw a bumper sticker with big, bold letters on a patriotic red, white, and blue background that read "THE POWER OF PRIDE"...

... and I thought to myself: What about the power of humility?

There are those who wrap themselves in flag and holy verse to justify what looks to all the world like pride, greed and foolishness. You can't help but wonder if many of those folks have actually read the scriptures they so enthusiastically and frequently bang.

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The Kingdom of Fools

Ain't no such thing
as too high to fall
aint no place so low
you can't get there
if you crawl

Ain't no bro'
so close you can't play him down
'cause in the kingdom of Fools
only one can wear the crown


Ain't no truth so pure
you can't turn it to a lie
ain't no love so deep
you can't drain it 'til it's dry

ain't no flower so pretty
you can't crush it to the ground
in the Kingdom of Fools
only one can wear the crown


Ain't no lie
that can ever make you see the truth
and your whole life 'til now
is just so much living proof

Ain't no one but you
can keep you from where you're bound
'Cause in the Kingdom of Fools
Only one can wear the crown


______________________

blog within a blog...

B ack in the 80's a friend of mine gave me the old upright grand piano she'd bought for $100 some years before. It was beat to heck, had some broken keys, and was pretty out of tune, but a sensitive piano tuner who loved old pianos was able to bring it more or less into fighting trim and for 15 years it had a central place in my living room.

When I traded the sprawling space of my former mid-urban home for a small, beachside flat, I wrestled with a way to fit the big ol' thing into my living room -- but it ended up in the garage, as I had always suspected it would. If I move things around, I can play it down there -- and I promise that at least one AYoS recording will feature it -- but it's not something I can do everyday. And, in this tightly packed neighborhood, it's not something I could probably get away, anyway.

So that left me with what keyboardists call plastic 'boards: my two synthesizers that are also "controllers" that can control virtual synthesizers on my computer, or other hardware synthesizers via the MIDI music communication protocol.

Plastic 'boards have that somewhat derisive name because, while they may offer many of the control parameters needed to communicate with various synthesizers, digital pianos, and so on -- they mimic the light plastic keyboard of the eletric organs of the 60's and 70's. They have a feel to match: light and fast, to be sure, but completely unlike the mechanical hammer action of a real piano. And, while hammer action MIDI keyboards have been around for many years -- 'real' pianists seldom feel comfortable with anything else -- they've been quite expensive in the past, usually running into the thousands of dollars.

For that reason, I've soldiered on with my platic boards, ignoring the surreal disconnect between the rich, big piano sounds coming out of the speakers and the tinky, downright squirrelly feel of the keyboards.

Now, however, our future benevolent overlords, the (formerly "Red") Chinese, have applied their justly famous production skills to knocking the bottom out of the hammer-weighted keyboard market. Small furry, rodent-like mamal that I am, I decided to scurry among the falling bodies of the dinosaurs and snag up a new Chinese-made 'board from the company CME. While my old keyboard controllers were 60 key 'boards, this is a full scale 88 key range, with the most "piano-like" action I've played in a MIDI controller 'board.



There are no onboard sounds -- but the action is so good that, with my favorite grand piano samples running in my computer, I can play and, at least for brief, idyllic periods, forget that I'm not playing a real piano.

No digital sample set, of course, will ever replace or completely replicate the sound of a real piano -- especially not one like my 110 year old upright. I could lose myself for hours on that old box, letting my hands go where the muses led, hearing the echoes of a century of sounds -- and emotions -- seemingly stored in its wood-ivory-and-iron frame. By contrast, the muses would barely give me a a few fleeting moments with my hands on my old synthesizers, leaving just me and my puny brain to try to figure out how to make music.

But, now, I can feel them starting to come back around after almost two years. They're skeptical, I can tell. It's easy to scare them off. But, if I close my eyes and try to lose myself in their music, sometimes I can coax them to stick around. And the music they give me is so much better than the music I make...