Baby, I Just Got the Blues

I used to drive around all night.

I'd start out in Long Beach and drive west across the first bridge onto Terminal Island, home to shipyards, a federal prison, and, in those days, a strange little warren of crack-in-the-wall neighborhoods, wedged in between railroad right-of-ways and wrecking yards.

I'd often cross the 'big' bridge, the Vincent-Thomas (which apparently cries out for and often gets a prefix of "Saint" from southbay locals), driving through the darkened streets of San Pedro, past the cliffs at Point Ferman and on along the crumbling, two lane coastal road around the peninsula and up to Torrance or on to Santa Monica or beyond to Malibu, Zuma... and once all the way to Port Hueneme, 85 or 90 miles to the north.

Other times, I'd drive east across Orange County, driving into the then empty hills along the two lane, winding Santiago Canyon Road. There were a few pockets of homes, some ranches. A favorite was a certain tiny canyon community (now all but surrounded surrounded by suburban subdivisions but then isolated and exotic).

In those days, there were lots of ghosts in the hills, with stories of hauntings from the first settlers blending with Indian legends, running together with the fervid urban legends of primitive mid-century media, a time when it could take six months of hard work to determine if a girl ever really did end up with a nest of black widow spiders in her heavily sprayed bouffant hairdo.

There was a semi established tour of old cemeteries. (And, yes, one night I saw something quite odd -- although not in a cemetery... It seemed in every way to be a jaw-droppingly classic shade -- but, trying to be skeptical, it is possible it could have been the way the moonlight played on a bent little old lady in what appeared to be 19th century garb taking a 3 am stroll through a scrub forest 50 yards from an otherwise deserted two lane black top.)

Another memorable night, my long suffering GF and I drove, following my displaced sense of travel longing, up the old Alameda Ave, a way-past-midnight crawl through strange, ghostly, industrial neighborhoods. We ended up in Los Angeles, in the rail yards and warehouse district, watching trucks being loaded and unloaded by an service force of ragtag loaders, paid per job, and openly throwing back hard liquor out of half pint bottles, with harsh laughs that boomed empty loading bays. One night I ended up talking to a few of them for a couple hours, drinking wine with them and smoking cigarettes.

And, a lot of times, my drives would end up at the break of dawn, with a barefoot walk in cold wet sand, fog rolling across some beach, maybe Laguna -- maybe Zuma... but always lost in a swirl of the night's thoughts.

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Baby (I Just Got The Blues)

I drive around all night
looking for nothing to do
I play guitrar til dawn
and every song's about you
if I sleep I might dream
and we all know that dreams don't come true

Ain't nothin wrong with me baby
I just got the blues
Ain't...

walked along the shore
wondering what a smart guy would do
in the Idiot's Guide to Love
I must be listed in the back under "fool"
sure once I had some answers
now I'd settle for some lies that sound true

Ain't nothin wrong with me baby
I just got the blues
Ain't...

It's easy for you sugar but then
everything's easy for you
You know what you want
and you know how to make it come true
But, it's hard for me, doll, to
bid all that we had adieu

Ain't nothin wrong with me baby
I just got the blues
Ain't nothin wrong with me baby
I just got the blues

(C)1998 TK Major

Without Warning

Artistic, romantic types (like us singer-songwriters, yo) often seem to fall in love with goddesses and ghosts. Those conversant in the literature of myth and legend are probably familiar with the deeply troubled relationships that grow when man and immortal become romantically entwined.

I wrote this song in 1974 when I was involved with a goddess -- and a ghost. The goddess was a ringer for 30's screen diva, Carole Lombard, and, by society's then-outmoded standards, was technically otherwise entangled. But I knew it was me she loved, even though she told me she didn't have the courage to be free...

For a young man, a young artist, in that position, deeply torn but deeply in love, intoxicated with the heroic tragicness of the situation, there was little recourse, then, but to lose myself in the arduous work of seducing one of my best friends, a pretty, serious-minded strawberry blond with -- I firmly believe in retrospect -- absolutely no romantic or sexual interest in me -- but who, in her own way, lusted for a sort of platonic but passionate friendship and who seemed to show up, unbidden, on my doorstep at the strangest times.

[UPDATE: I just listened to this again... and, my gosh, it's sloppy -- even by the extraordinarily loose standards of AYoS. Mercy.]

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WITHOUT WARNING

You came without warning
on a Monday morning
the day was all shot through
by shadows from the past
afterimages of the last
time that I was with you

and it didn't take nothing
to see that you were something
that I just had to do
Well it mighta been right
on a Monday night
to release a little energy with you
In the end it came down to you

Now I didn't mean maybe
when I put it to you baby
There's just time space and nothing more
But instead of pain
we could have pleasure again
just like before you heard about the fall

So when you come come
come come come around me
please take some form
please take some from I can see
Well ghosts are fine
but I like some flesh on mine
you can't steal my love
you can't have my love for free
you can't steal my love
you can't have my love for free

Copyright 1974
TK Major

19 Days

This is not a murder ballad.

It's a song about a long-haul trucker coming to the realization that his marriage is over. He thinks about it when he drives. He thinks about it when he lies awake in the sleeper in the back of the cab. And he prays about it in a little church on the way home. Simple, hunh?

That's what I thought.

But I had to stop performing it because people kept coming up afterwards and saying, "Man that's dark. It's so seething and brink-of-violence. So, how does he kill her?"

And... as I read the lyrics now, they may be vague but, yeah, depending on how you read them, they could also be a bit ominous. But, really, what I had in mind was a guy simply breaking out of that thrall of indecision... just before you finally give up on someone you were positive would change your world. Not that, you know, I was ever such a sap. But people have been...


Ever think of all the great songs that started with the phrase "wake up"?

Yeah... well, I just checked, and, as of today, four of the songs so far (out of 71 songs since September 22) from A Year of Songs have the words "wake up" in the first 3 words of the song -- and one more has "woke up."

Don't ask me why. If I had to guess, I'd say I was subconsciously on a quest to come up with a line with the classic elegance of "Woke up this morning / got myself a beer" (Jim Morrison) -- which, I've always felt, pretty much sez it all.

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19 Days

Wake up pretty baby tell me what the
hell is going on ... I been
on the road for 19 days
and you act like I ain't been gone

I been thinkin' 'bout the days
when we thought our love was true
[but] I been thinking my forever
might be better off without you

Driving 16 hours a day
gives you lots of time to think
I been thinking bout a lot of things
that could drive ya to the brink

I been thinkin' 'bout the days...

the truck stop sign is flashing
through the window of the cab
I wake up sweating
from that same old dream I have

I been dreamin' 'bout the days...

the little church was quiet
on a Tuesday afternoon
I sat and thought about us
until I knew what I had to do

(C)1998, TK Major

Drunk in Algiers

This was written when I was playing in punk bands and reflects the series of investigations into the JFK assassination and various government conspiracies that took place in Congress in the late 70s in the wake of Watergate and the Nixon implosion.

When I was a kid, I stayed up late with my dad one night to watch the early 30's Mummy. When it came to the part where the workers burying the pharoah (or whoever the heck he was supposed to be) were slain with spears -- and then the spearsmen were themselves slain with spears, all to keep the burial place secret,I thought, damn, that's cold.

In this song, I imagined the protagonist as the last surviving triggerman in the JFK hit, living out his days drunk in Algiers, waiting for the inevitable day when some mysterious strangers would burst through the door, guns blazing.

The guitar accompaniment on this version was improvised on the spot, since I had no real recollection of the chords I used to use. As always, I recorded the rhythm guitar and vocal in one pass and, as I often do, I then went back and overdubbed a lead guitar.

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DRUNK IN ALGIERS

I was on team one
and I'm not saying that I'm scared
but the rest are dead
and it's probably just a matter of time

they know where I am

one of these days a stranger
walks into this little dive
and bang
no witness left a live
one of these days they're gonna cowboy me

one day late indian summer
standing on a grassy knoll
just a little squeeze of my trigger finger
changed the history of the world

shoved my AR 14 up inside my overcoat
me and my time man shimmied down the manhole
made our way through the Dallas sewers
team one changed the history of the world

(C)1979, TK Major

San Bernardino Rose

Forget walking along the River Seine at twilight.

There's something about eating french fries in your truck in the moonlight at a San Berdoo truckstop, your beautiful, passionate, and barely legal girlfriend at your side, a little smudge of ketchup on her cheek, begging you to reach out...

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San Bernardino Rose

San Bernardino Rose
I am so alone
and there's so many bad things
Bad things I have done

I know that you're barely a woman yet
hope you'd come to understand
San Bernardino Rose
I want to love you
I need to be your man

Truck stop French Fries
Catchup on your cheek in the pale moonlight
I hold you you kiss me
I know it's wrong when it feels this right

I know that you're barely a woman yet
I'd hope you'd come to understand
San Bernardino Rose
I want to love you
I need to be your man

(C)1990, TK Major

Carrot

There was a time, in that lost era of my early manhood, when I judged life to be essentially a balancing act between work (writing and music) and love -- or, more properly, romance.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the beautiful Icelandic girl who was, briefly, a muse, mentor, and colleague in the painfully difficult reinvention of myself from poet to songwriter. (Far more painful, without doubt, for those around me.)

This song was the first of my early songs to win largely favorable comment from my friend and it was the first time I ever felt what I'd later realize was a form of professional pride (which does, indeed, I would later learn, often go before a nasty, if occasionally comic, pratfall).

To be frank... it was probably one of the first of my songs to have recognizably repeating sections and some sort of coherent structure. My earliest work leaned hard toward the fever-dream stream-of-nonsense school -- with literary, metaphysical, and scriptural references thrown in to spice up the already indigestible gumbo.

In fact, this song refers to that phase in my life (talking to girls all night and playing long rambling songs til dawn... it was a phase I had a hard time growing past). My artistic ambivalence and deep-seated alienation may have seemed like shtick -- sometimes they even did to me -- but in the long run it became obvious that they were all too real and, at the risk of being overly self-revelatory, I think it's safe to say that that reality permeates my creative work.

Ya think?


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Carrot

(In the Course of Events)

In the course of events
I've seen my goals hanging just like a carrot in front of my nose
In the struggle for those higher attainments, hell,
I've been to the top
and I've seen the drop on the other side

And I don't care if your money's no good
I don't care if both your legs are wood
I don't care what your ma says to do
Just come away with me

It takes time to get where you want to go
and its never quite the same when you get there
but that doesn't stop me cause there's still a couple things
I'd like to try with you and you never can tell
it might work out all right

You can sit and talk about life all day
as much as you can talk your questions wont go away
it's a conversation that leads me to say
just come away with me

I've been burned before
and I'll get burned again
I guess that's the same for everyone
I know what I need
I know what I want
I know what I get --
they don't always correspond

You can sit and talk about life all day
as much as you can talk your questions wont go away
it's a conversation that leads me to say
just come away with me

(C)1974 TK Major

Thelma Lou

Maybe they weren't Orpheus and Eurydice or Romeo and Juliet... but, for me, one of the great tragic love affairs has always been Barney and Thelma Lou.

When I was a kid, I could never figure out how the ultimate goofball, Barney Fife, could snag a warm, cuddly, pretty gal like Thelma Lou -- particularly when his boss and pal, the tall, good-looking sheriff, Andy Taylor, ended up with the slightly stuffy and decidedly less creamy schoolmarm, Helen Crump.

Barney, of course, wanted to be "somebody" before he finally popped the question to Thelma Lou and headed out to the state capital, Raleigh, to make a name for himself, becoming an investigator, if I recall correctly, for the AG or the state police.

When the 20th high school reunion came around, Barney came back to Mayberry, ready to finally propose to the love of his life, Thelma Lou, also back in town for the reunion.

His eyes met hers from across the room and time froze for a second -- at least for me, watching at home -- for a few moments it seemed like happily ever after would come to Barney Fife. But, alas... it turned out Thelma Lou's handsome, lawyer fiance was just out parking the car. Smiling broadly and putting his arm protectively around Thelma Lou, he greeted Barney with a confidence that made it clear Barney stood no chance at all.

As the Fates decreed.

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Thelma Lou

The day that you came back to town
he thought he'd be seein' you around
he thought he could pick it up
where he put it down

but he thought he'd treat you right this time
just like he dreamed about each night
just like he prayed he'd have the
brains to do this time

Now he'll never know
why he ever let go of you
Thelma Lou
he dreamed he'd make it right
but none of those dreams
ever did come true
and now he just dreams of you
it will always be Thelma Lou
nothing anyone can do
it will always be dreams of you
Thelma Lou

Now he was just a nothing way back then
but he couldn't believe how you could pretend
not to care about all the things you couldn't have
if you stayed with him

So he pushed himself hard just to get ahead
and he woke up one day in an empty bed
and he looked in the mirror and
he realized the years -- and you -- had fled

Now, he'll never know why he ever let go...

Well he always thought he'd get one last chance
but all he got was one last dance
as your fiance watched
from across the crowded room

But he held you so close like he didn't care
it was like no one else in the world was there
and still it was too late
for him to say "I love you"

Now he'll never know
why he ever let go of you
Thelma Lou
he dreamed he'd make it right
but none of those dreams
ever did come true
and now he just dreams of you
it will always be Thelma Lou
nothing anyone can do
it will always be dreams of you
Thelma Lou

19 June 2005
(C)2005 TK Major