Blue Recollection

I wake up at nite
but it ain't because of you
Oh yeah I wake up at nite
but it sure ain't because of you
I'm just listening to the plaster crack
and the clock tick in the next guy's room

Ran that through the Babelfish translator and came up with this:

Despierto en la noche pero no está debido a usted.
Oh, sí. Despierto en la noche, pero no está seguramente debido a usted.
Soy el escuchar justo la grieta del yeso y el impulso del
reloj en el cuarto del individuo siguiente.

Which translated back to this:

Wide-awake at night but it is not due to you.
Oh, yes. Wide-awake at night, but it is not surely due to you.
I am right to listen the crack of plaster and the impulse of the clock
in the quarter of the following individual.

[Okay, okay. I know this smacks of being a cheap shot to not have to write anything. So?]

Tomorrow or the next day I should be posting a song that was the result of grafting these lyrics to another short set of similarly themed lyrics (hey, that's about 30% of my oeuvre, ya' know?)... in the name of efficiency, as much as anything. I'm a database guy. We hate unnecessary redundancy...

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BLUE RECOLLECTION

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
Yes the last thing I remember
You were walking out that door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain't no more

you're just a blue recollection
I swear that ain't nothin' new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don't love you


I wake up at nite
but it ain't because of you
Oh yeah I wake up at nite
but it sure ain't because of you
I'm just listening to the plaster crack
and the clock tick in the next guy's room

you're just a blue recollection
I swear that ain't nothin' new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don't love you

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
Yes the last thing I remember
You were walking out that door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain't no more...

Stood Up to Your Love

Though totally different in musical feel, today's song mirrors yesterday's in some ways. The music is darkly funky (or aspires to be) but the lyrics are a bit self-consciously grim.

If yesterday's "Hasta" (below) had a bit of playful, if sardonic whimsy, "Stood Up" is decidedly darker and meaner.

There's a nastiness to lines like "If this is the best love you can shove into my face..." that might give a clue as to why I have sometimes been known as the Bard of Bitterness, Denial, and Regret. Like you were wondering...

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I STOOD UP TO YOUR LOVE

ya said its hard to love you
and I useta find that true
but now its impossible
no matter what I do (but)

I stood up to your love
I stood up like a man
I gave and gave and gave
until I didn't give a damn

if this is the best love
ya can shove into my face
maybe you should save it
cause I seem ta lost the taste


I used to see ya
in your fishnets and mini skirt
I just wanted to get to know ya
not roll with you in the dirt

but then thats your idea of love baby
no matter who gets hurt
youre gonna do what youre wanna do
and youll get yours first

well im here to tell ya
best not count me truly yours
cause party of the second part
done just ran around the world

(C)1990, 2005 TK Major

Hasta la Vista, M'Cheri

Breaking up... sometimes it's hard to do, sure. Still, often enough, it produces a grim satisfaction. Like finally getting around to pulling that ol' stump out in back of the shed or cleaning the attic or finally having the doc take care of that boil on your...

Anyhow, the title of this ditty is a tip of the ol' beret to those dadaesque 70s cult art-glamsters, Sparks. (We shall not mention their new wave career in the 80s.) Unfortunately, the name of the song in question escapes me.





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Hasta la Vista, m'Cheri

I'm sorry I have to go
but I thought you might like to know
it's not my heart
that bade us part
It's my soul
that said I had to go

Sometimes love tears us apart
sometimes it's best not to start
sometimes you find
that love's truly blind
and usually you're just not too smart


(So it's)
"Hasta la vista mon cheri,"
It's just another way to say "Ciao, Baby"
Sayanora, auf weidersein
I'll see you when I see you again.


I don't know when I'll see you again
but at least we're parting as friends
Maybe I lied
oh, but Baby I tried...
A mistake I won't be making again.

I'm sorry I have to go
but I thought you might like to know
It's not my heart
that says we must part
It's my shrink that says you gotta go

Copyright 1986, 2005
T.K. Major

Daddy's Rented Cadillac

I did go to a high school prom in my dad's Cadillac but, unlike the guy in this song, I had a date, didn't wreck the car, and survived to tell the story. (Not to mention that my dad's Caddy was a genteel 4 year old de Ville he picked up for a song from some prosperous relatives.)

Like so many of my songs, this one started with a phrase (the title phrase in this case) and sort of fell out from there. When I was a kid, first driving, I used to drive up in the then rustic hills above Orange County, California, and we used to go ghost hunting up there playing hooky from boring parties or dances. I like to blot them out, but I know I had a lot of close calls on the roads up that way.

Indeed, one time driving back from an especially long loop that took me the length of Santiago Canyon road (back when it was a moonlit, winding, two lane blacktop) and all the way down to Laguna, I had pulled out onto Pacific Coast Highway north of town and was heading up one of those long grades when the sky ahead of me lit up almost like daylight.

This was the late 60's and I honestly thought they'd finally dropped the Big One on LA to the north. I couldn't think of any other explanation.

It was with a sense of fascinated fatalism that I continued driving up the hill. As I topped the crest, I was temporarily blinded by the intensity of the light.

For a moment I was afraid I might crash into something and then the light dimmed perceptibly and my eyes adusted as well.

The two southbound lanes were consumed in huge flames, almost obscuring a fuel tanker and what looked like one or two cars. It was all I could do to drive by the intense heat. A CHP car was just rolling up from the north, dropping flares behind it.

I drove by, thinking, close call.

I really expected nuclear war back then.

Everyone did.


This version uses chords I improvised on the spot, since I was a little hazy on the actual chords as I'd written them back in '81.

I'd been listening to Jack Tarr and some other chanties and folk songs and I wanted to get that kind of dark, folk ballad feel.

BTW, the round faced, vaguely South Park-looking character behind the wheel of the Caddy in the pic above [and let me tell you, it was plenty hard to get him in there behind the windshield... it only looks like it's transparent, you know] is none other than my alter ego, my frequent bulletin board avatar, my better half:


(While I don't actually have any studded wristbands and never did, I do have a Pop Group T-shirt just like that. Well, to be honest, I have 3, because I decided I liked how good it looked on my avatar, here, and... maybe I've been on the internet too long.)

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DADDY'S CADILLAC

When I left the high school dance
in my daddy's rented Cadillac
I didn't know what trouble was
I didn't know there was no way back

The moon was a hole in the night sky
heaven knows who was looking in
The night was a hole in my life
and I didn't know I was falling in

I made it past dead man's curve
and the cliff at the top of the hill
I glided deftly through the hairpin turns
past the old graveyard that's not quite full

I drove up that twisted mountain road
straight up into the night
Now I was totally all alone
drving through a hole in my life

My heart was pounding but my hands were dry
The engine was throbbing and the gears whined
My mind was racing at the speed of light
and my knuckles on the wheels glowed ghostly white

My life was the road and the road was my life
as it twisted and turned into the night
The road was the world and the world was night
as I rounded the bend and drove straight into the light

My eyes were shadows in the back of my brain
My mind was unravelling and my soul was in flames
The car was gone I was cut loose in space
Dogs from heaven laughed in my face

I was spinning I was falling I was going down
fallilng through a world without light or sound
I was watching from a hill from far away
when the Caddy hit the gas truck --
great balls of flame!

Copyright 1981
T.K. Major

Stupid Shoes

Okay... this song is... well, stupid.
And I don't mean "good" stupid.

I was a hippie kid and went barefoot year round as soon as I got into college. The concept of fancy clothes and shoes was as foreign to me as a Mai Tai to an eskimo.

But at some point, I became aware of the power of shoes over certain women -- and I became aware that there were certain men who would callously wield that power, dangling obscenely expensive, obscenely uncomfortable -- and, ultimately, obscenely stupid -- shoes in front of their helpless objects of desire, enthralling them in a way which seemed to smack of a dark and mysterious magic, as to the nature of which I could only speculate.

[DISCLAIMER: This song is sung from the point of view of a protagonist who appears to be a sadist and a dangerous sociopath who will stop at little to achieve his sick ambitions -- namely, pleasing the unseen girlfriend/wife he addresses throughout the song. It contains lyrics with threats of cruelty to animals as well as ransom kidnapping. We would like to make this very clear: AYoS in no way endorses threats of cruelty to animals or the kidnapping the heirs of large, industrial fortunes. Unless there's a really, really good reason.]

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This song is so stupid, I'm not even going to post the lyrics. And look at the crap I have posted already. Think about that.

10,000 Years

I don't exactly believe in reincarnation (the way most people think of it) but I've always been fascinated by the idea of lovers tagging each other through eternity. The notion that a reluctant soul (not that I believe in souls the way most people think of them) might be drawn -- tricked, even -- back to life is an idea I've come back to again and again. (Along with half the other hack writers out there.)

I'm afraid this version is a bit on the stiff side. I was really struggling just getting through the darn thing... maybe because I like the song a lot but have always felt that there isn't that much in the words or the chords and that the song depends a lot on the singer (that would be me, of course) to pull off some melodic and emotional nuances that don't always get across.

At any rate, the compare-and-contrast crowd will definitely want to check out the 'produced' version at the bottom of the download/play links. I've always been fond of the recording, myself, because it captures a substantially different aspect of my singing.


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10,000 years

Up against the wall
the moon was in her eyes
I felt her heart beat
I heard her sigh

I touched her cheek
a tear met my hand
I didn't know it then
but that tear fell to her plan

10,000 years
is not a day too long
since the world began
I've been hangin round here
waiting for you to come along

I have seen that shining light
one too many times
I have heard the angels sing
while I riddled the devil's rhymes

"I have seen your eyes
burn into my soul
I have seen the truth
and I will never again be whole"

10,000 years...

I'd do it all again
and still come back for more
I know how it's all gotta end
but I'll never know what it's all for

Until the end of time
there's not that long to go
I thought I knew heaven's secrets
what the hell did I know?

10,000 years
is not a day too long
since the world began
I've been hangin round here
waiting for you to come along

Little Blue Vacuum Cleaner

This song from 1973 used to drive one of my frequent music playing buddies absolutely nuts. It was written while I was in the grips of a fascination with what we might call "cosmic whimsy." The simplest objects and ideas had deep metaphysical resonance for me, imbued with a sublime and reassuring humor. (Well... you know, it seemed sublime at the time.) Maybe it was the grimness of the war or the absurdity of mainstream society... maybe it was that do-it-yourself primal scream therapy program I came up with for myself.

Of course, one man's whimsy is another's terminal cuteness, and my pal Caz Camberline, who has over the years suffered through scores of my songs in various performance circumstances, could never swallow the cute formalism of the metaphysical central metaphor.And then there was the vacuum cleaner/highway shoes jump... I really didn't have an answer for that one. Still don't.

Now, that's what A Year of Songs is all about.


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Little Blue Vacuum Cleaner

Got yer little blue vaccuum cleaner
got his paregoric got his own Dust Preener
got that San Antone
Got that Dorothy Malone

Got the finity blues
Walking round the city in his highway shoes

Everything he see he suck it right up
nothing left to do he turn on himself
everything that's outside must be in
everything is known, you just begin again

Got that Einstein Circular Space
got that black hole -- he want a little taste
Got the world up inside his head
Where will it go when he finds out he's he's

Welcome to samsara now go home
welcome to my universe--here, God is on the phone
You're welcome to wonder what it's all about
But please don't try to tell me when you find out

Got the finity blues
Walking round the city in his highway shoes

(C) 1973,1996 TK Major
(Transcribed from memory with minor revisions Jan 2 1996)