Now, Baby, It's Never

I've got a sixth sense for when things are over. Little things like the suitcase on the lawn, changed locks, restraining orders. There are subtle signs a man of the world can pick up. Call it a vibe if you will.

One of those things is the icey kiss.

For my generation, one of the most famous is the scene coming out of the tunnel in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

That kiss is burned into my consciousness. It's a scene of exquisite subtlety. A single arched eyebrow reveals that the heroine is, for all purposes, dead, her body taken over by an unfeeling alien. Ah... it really speaks to me -- for me, really...

Anyhow, in this song, I was going for that moment of shock -- a kiss that reveals everything the hero of the song knows is wrong, that burns him to his soul. A kiss that makes a mockery of love. Or something. Actually, I just wanted to write a song with the word aqueduct in it. And I think I've succeeded. Success is all about setting attainable goals.

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Now, Baby It's Never

Everything you say
seems to mean goodbye
Though we talked forever
I never did know why

Now baby its never
our time wont come again
This time forever baby
This time it's the end

Tonight when I kissed you
it burned me to my soul
Everything I thought I knew
was all a lie I know

Now baby its never...

I walked along the aqueduct
just before the dawn
The sun looked old and tired as it came up
but at least the night was gone

Now baby its never
our time wont come again
This time forever baby
This time it's the end

(C)1991, TK Major

So, How Does It Look from the Stars?

The sweat stung his eyes as he wiped his forearm across his grimy brow, shifted his weight to the broom he'd been using to sweep in front of the little bodega, and looked up toward the 7th floor penthouse terrace.

For a few moments that steamy summer night, the city was quiet and he heard melodic laughter skitter across the rippled surface of some subdued piano jazz. It sounded like a real piano and he knew from delivering there once that they had a big white one shaped like an ocean wave.

A handful of people drifted out to the edge of the terrace and he saw her once again. She leaned back against the terrace wall as she seemed to listen to someone he couldn't see, her pale hair drifting in the summer air as though in the languid waters of a rowing pond.

In the apartment over the bodega, he could hear his kid sister suddenly rolling through the city's radio stations on her big old portable aimlessly, looking for somewhere she'd never been before.

(C)2001, TK Major

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So, How Does It Look from the Stars?

I've been up to your penthouse but
I... I was afraid to look down
I've been all around the world
but I'm only at home on my own side of town

I've been up all night
trying to find
the right way to come down
I been inside out and I know all about
the emptiness all around

everything happens for reasons
but we never get to find out what they are
from way down here it all looks pretty big
so how does it look from the stars


you laid it all out
and I wanted so much
to just pick up
what you put down

I can taste it right now
but still somehow
I've finally found
the power to shine on

everything happens for reasons
but we never get to find out what they are
from way down here it all looks pretty big
so how does it look from the stars

(C) 2001 TK Major

Fans of this song take note: this is among the songs I plan on revisitng a time or two during AYoS, so I hope you won't feel shortchanged by the not-quite-there version above or by my reprinting the vignette I wrote in 2001 to promo the online release of the 'studio version' of the song.

In fact, next time, I plan on writing a bit about Dead End, the play (and movie) that helped inspire this song. Recently, I was lucky enough to see a big budget revival of the stage play and it was pretty amazing. Think looming, chaotic tenement stage set and -- get this -- a wharf over a huge tank standing in for the East River. Anyhow, that's next time.

By the way, if you listen to any of the studio versions of AYoS songs, I would recommend you listen to this one (or perhaps the studio version of "Baby, I Just Got the Blues"). If you're not familiar with my (one man) band one blue nine, you may be surprised.

JoZynn, JoZynn

Okay.

Unlike the guy in this song, I've never had any kids. And, though a few girlfriends have abandoned me pretty good (I have been dropped by the side of the road in a strange town)... no one has ever left me with 3 crying, scared babies.

Well... I did have a bunch of cats, but their mom stuck around. Of course, she was much more trouble than her kittens were. Anyhow, where was I?

Oh yeah. I don't know where this stuff comes from. Well... in this case, I was starting from my own exotic spelling of a girl's name, as part of my self-commissioned Barista Cycle Project, the source of a handful of AYoS songs, so far.

The girl whose name inspired this song could not have been less like the "JoZynn" in my song. She was a grad student in something like 17th century British literature, kind of quiet, quite sharp, with a sly and sophisticated sense of humor. As I was recasting the spelling of the name, I searched for something that would grab the essence of the trailer trash bad girlfriend/worse mom anti-heroine of the song... I happened to have seen a tricked out Z28 Camarro, just the kind of thing my JoZynn would zoom off in with her new boyfriend...


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JoZynn JoZynn
JoZynn JoZynn
look at the mess that you're leaving me in
JoZynn JoZynn

JoZynn JoZynn
all is forgiven
come back again

3 little babies down on the floor
2 scared 2 cry
1 thing for sure
Nothing means nothing anymore
except those kids
JoZynn JoZynn

JoZynn JoZynn...

All this time you been away
it's nothing to me
it's just be a day
if you just come back again
JoZynn

JoZynn JoZynn...

3 lonely kids
1 angry man
2 hurt 2 cry
for God's sake woman there's
a million things
you'll never understand
JoZynn JoZynn

JoZynn JoZynn
JoZynn JoZynn
look at the mess that you're leaving me in
JoZynn JoZynn

(C)1996, TK Major

Head Full of Crazy, Heart Full of Fire

Just about every time I ever sang this song in front of people I know, someone has laughed out loud at the line, "I work all day and I sweat in the sun"...

Fair enough. The song is certainly not autobiographical.

And there's certainly more than a little whimsy.

But, you know... there's just a little bit of truth in it. Maybe it does take a real man to tell his girl no.

Heh.


[Warning: there are some technical difficulties with this recording... but the performance was so breathtaking... no, that's a lie. It's a typical slapdash performance. It was just that the clock was ticking and I needed to get this up and get on with life.]

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Head Full of Crazy, Heart Full of Fire

When I see you
and I look in your eyes
I get a head full of crazy
and a heart full of fire
but I cant talk about it
and I cant act on it
and I couldnt really stop it
even if I wanted
I'm tellin you so that you understand
that's what it's like to be a man

I work all day and
I sweat in the sun
I'll work all by life
and I'll die when it's done
but if I had you
to sleep by my side
if I had you
to be my bride
if I had you
I'd be glad to be a man

Now I know that you
would really like to stay
but I have responsiblities
that must come into play
I must think of what's right
-- what's right for you
When his girl loses her head
-- a man's gotta think for two
but that's what it's like
that's what its like to be a man

(C)1990, TK Major

25 Guitars

Southern California has more washed up stars than Mexican and Thai restaurants combined. Any AA or NA meeting is going to have at least an Emmy or Grammy winner or two and maybe an Oscar winner, ya never know.

Most of them had an orderly descent from the firmament, cushioned by gradually fading popularity, side jobs, new careers.

But the idea that grabbed me from the very first line out of my mouth as I wrote this song ("Go back home and tell all the kids / this is what it's like when your hero hits the skids") was a guy who suddenly seemed to just snap, throwing away or losing everything almost overnight.

As I saw the protagonist (AYoS fans will be nodding their heads knowingly, they can see it coming now), he had doomed himself by abandoning the girl back home in his ambition and lust for adventure. (What? You were thinking his business manager embezzled all his dough?)

I wanted to capture that tractionless, slow-mo panic as everyday chores become herculean challenges and doubt erodes the most basic presumptions. I also wanted to give expression to my estimation of the moral depth of the music business in LA.

It's worth noting -- as I think there's room for unintended interpretation in these lines -- with the reference to a "noose" I was looking to suggest a phantasmagoric public execution -- against the expected context of suicide. To me, the "bottom dropping out" is the trap door in the gallows. He laughs the whole way down because it's such a relief when he finally quits trying to hold his life together.

And -- at the risk of overexplaining (oops, too late) when he wakes up in the gutter and he's dreaming that he dreamed he threw it all away -- he's not really talking about the condo and the 25 guitars.

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25 Guitars

Go back home and
tell all the kids
this is what it's like
when their hero hits the skids

go out to the farm and
tell my ma and pa
the higher you climb
the farther you must fall

I started out thinking
that I'd always know the score
now I hardly know
what I was counting for

I lost my one true love
my agent and my car
my condo and my dog
and twenty five guitars

but baby I was lost before
I ever got to town
I threw the map away
the day I let you down

yeah I hit the big time
but the big time it hits back
and all the way up
I was looking back

Wake me up and say its all a dream
we could drink coffee and talk about what it all means
I dreamed I dreamed I threw it all away
If I could just wake up back in your arms today

I was on the fat side of heaven
how come it felt like hell
each day was a struggle
one day I just fell

The bottom dropped out
I laughed the whole way down
with a noose around yer neck
LA is a much nicer town

Wake me up and say its all a dream
we could drink coffee and talk about what it all means
I dreamed I dreamed I threw it all away
If I could just wake up back in your arms today

Go back home and tell all the kids
this is what it's like when their hero hits the skids

(C)1997, TK Major

The Day My Cigar Went Out in the Rain

A rainy day toward the end of winter, 1973.

A radiant young girl in an ancient, raggedy mink coat and a pair of jeans and hiking boots splashing in leafy gutters...

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You were wrapped up that day
in an old fur coat
we were splashing in puddles
in the lane

That was one day
I won't ever forget
the day my
cigar went out
in the rain

I was going to send
for the letters I wrote
to see what life
was like in the past

The times that we laughed
and the times that we cried
fall away from the light
so fast

(C)1974, TK Major

[A note on the photo above: I took this last winter not far from where I first kissed the girl in this song, But actually, I just wanted an excuse to put it up. Nice sky, huh?]

Burning and Bitter

I'll admit it.

I haven't always been the paragon of street-smart, wised-up self-knowledge and steely-eyed maturity that I am today.

In fact, even when I was old enough to know better but still young enough to have not yet been smacked down really, really hard, I could be a bit of a jerk.

As one of my other, much later songs had it, "I let you down hard and I blamed it all on you," which pretty much summed up my standard operating procedure in those days. Narcissitic

The slip of a song below (from 1975 or so) is a case in point.

You'd think, from the scant lyrics, that the girl in question was a she-devil, a high priestess of temptation of Biblical proportions.

She was actually a very down-to-earth, warm, passionate young working mom in her mid-twenties, a couple of kids to feed and clothe, just starting out on what would be a very successful career as a health professional. We were romantically entangled for the better part of a year, the kids and I liked each other, I liked her, she liked me... but I wouldn't commit to an exclusive relationship with her -- on principle, I said -- and she eventually blew me off a bit unceremoniously. (As I so richly deserved.)

But at least I have this song...

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Burning and Bitter

Burning and bitter
are my thoughts tonight
I can taste the poison
of the lies I heard tonight
I have seen my soul
like the falcon you gunned down in flight
You're a sorceress
you're a temptress
but you're oh
so sweet in the night

(C)1975 TK Major

Burning and Bitter

I'll admit it.

I haven't always been the paragon of street-smart, wised-up self-knowledge and steely-eyed maturity that I am today.

In fact, even when I was old enough to know better but still young enough to have not yet been smacked down really, really hard, I could be a bit of a jerk.

As one of my other, much later songs had it, "I let you down hard and I blamed it all on you," which pretty much summed up my standard operating procedure in those days.

The slip of a song below (from 1975 or so) is a fairly self-awareness-free expression of that sad pathology. You'd think, from the scant lyrics, that the woman in the song was a she-devil, a high priestess of temptation of Biblical proportions.

She was actually a very down-to-earth, warm, passionate young working mom in her mid-twenties, a couple of kids to feed and clothe, just starting out on what would be a very successful career as a health professional. We were romantically entangled for the better part of a year, the kids and I liked each other, I liked her, she liked me... but I wouldn't commit to an exclusive relationship with her -- on principle, I said -- and she eventually blew me off a bit unceremoniously. (As I so richly deserved.)

But at least I have this song...

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Burning and Bitter

Burning and bitter
are my thoughts tonight
I can taste the poison
of the lies I heard tonight
I have seen my soul
like the falcon
you gunned down in flight
You're a sorceress
you're a temptress
but you're oh
so sweet in the night

A note on this recording: I suppose I should apologize for the barage of bad guitar that envelopes these meager lyrics. But it is all too appropriate to recapturing, however briefly, the excesses of my lost youth.

(C)1975 TK Major

A note on this recording: I suppose I should apologize for the barage of bad guitar that envelopes these meager lyrics. But it is all too appropriate to recapturing, however briefly, the excesses of my lost youth.