Watch the sky go around... [Emily]

The version of Emily below borders on punk folk, at least in relation to how I normally play the song. This version is faster, edgier, looser... but it's still fingerpicked, midtempo. The neofauvist angle is more in the abandon of the vocals (translation: once again I throw aside my first GF's admonition that Effort is a sign of incomplete mastery.)

download [2.3 mb]
play [broadband]
AYoS radio [broadband]

EMILY

On a lake
the faded yellow row boat
drifts in lazy circles
while I fall in love with you

Emily Emily
watch the sky go around
Emily Emily
watch the sky

Willows weep
tears melt in cool water
your white cotton dress
you warm brown legs
your deep green eyes
Emily

Emily Emily
watch the sky go around
Emily Emily
watch the sky

(C)1982, TK Major

War on Alcohol [Another Dead Soldier (in My War on Alcohol]

I lay awake at night, baby
but it ain't because of you
I'm just listening to the plaster crack
and the clock tick in the next guy's room...

download [2 mb]
play [broadband]
AYoS radio [broadband]

ANOTHER DEAD SOLDIER (IN THE WAR ON ALCOHOL)

Woke up this morning
wondering about last night
kinda think I coulda took some drink
but my memory just don't serve me right

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

Just another dead soldier
in the war on alcohol
put him with his brothers
line 'em up against the wall

Just another dead soldier
in my war on alcohol
I won't be satisfied
til I've killed them all

I lay awake at night, baby
but it 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
but that ain't nothing new
I'm gonna drown than memory
it'll be the last thing I do

Copyright 1982, T.K. Major

If you had a thought in your pretty little head...

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

download [2.4 mb]
play [broadband]
AYoS radio [broadband]
previous AYoS version (Sept 27)

full version (2000)

Pretty Little Head

baby 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

Down in Bankruptcy Court # 9

In the first 224 or so years of the United States, we ran up an awe-inspiring 5,807,463,412,200.06 (5.8 trillion dollars) of debt. Debt, that like all debt, incurs interest payments -- that is a continuing burden to the nation and its taxpayers and businesses.

But since 9/28/2001, the President and the Congress have managed to spend and borrow their way into a 44% increase in the national debt in just six years for a total debt of $8,351,722,841,145.07. (8.35 trillion dollars)

So this song of trailer trash economics is sent out to the President and all his men...

download [2.1 mb]
play [broadband]
AYoS radio [broadband]
previous AYoS version


Bankruptcy Court No. 9

my baby left me
left me sad and cryin...
she said I'm takin the plastic
leaving all these bills behind


I got a hearing monday down in
bankruptcy Court Number 9...
My baby won't be there with me
an neither wil my credit ine


Oh baby those checks you wrote
to the dress and jewelry stores
You hung so much bad paper
they won't take my (dough) cash no more

Telecredits got a file on you
takes a thousand floppy disks
TRW blew a main frame
just counting your bad checks

You drove me to the poorhouse
and shoved me thru the door
but first ya picked my pocket
to make sure they was no more

(C)1988

Public Service Advertisement [Rubber Room Rock]

You'd think it goes without saying to not hurl yourself off PA towers at at concerts yet I've seen folks do it, just like I saw a couple guys try to drop out of an old fashioned movie theatre balcony into a row of metal framed theatre chairs. Those guys were both carried away in stretchers and one of them already had a sheet all the way over him.

People do stupid stuff.

When I was at the Grand Canyon I saw a handful of people sunning themselves on an outcropping that was a good, long, running jump. And the drop below it was, oh, I dunno... 600 feet? To make the jump back to terra firma, they had to get all the way back against the canyon edge of the outcropping, run a few yards across it and leap as far as they could to get across.

I watched one of them make the jump and my own heart almost jumped into my throat just watching.

It was so colossally foolhardy.

Anyhow. All that's by way of introduction to this song, which posits that too may stage dives will eventually put you in the rubber room, where you'll be doing...

The Rubber Room Rock

download [2.1 mb]
play [broadband]
AYoS radio [broadband]
previous AYoS version (Dec 22)
full version:
download [2.3 mb] play [broadband]

I used to twist and do the jerk
they don't let me do that no more
now all I do is do the worm
in my straight jacket down on the floor

but I still rock
I still rock
I do the Rubber Room Rock
Oh yea I rock
I still rock
I do the Rubber Room Rock

Used to slam and bang my head
ten thousand stage dives or more
dove forty feet from a PA tower
and went three feet into the floor

But I still rock
yeah I rock . . .

None of my friends are no fun no more
they just sit in the dayroom and stare at the floor
they come back from the lab with rings round their eyes
therapy's so expensive -- they lobotomize

But they still rock
oh yeah we rock
we do the Rubber Room Rock
Oh sure we rock
unh hunh we rock
we do the Rubber Room Rock

(C)1986, TK Major

I tore my soul open... it was empty [Sometimes]

He woke up in a motel in Yuma looking at a cockroach.

He couldn't remember exactly how he got there but he was pretty sure he didn't have a truck, anymore. He fumbled on the bedstand under the imperious gaze of the cockroach, finally gripping his keys. Sure enough, the key to the Chevy was gone.

It all started when he didn't come home from the bar one Friday night to the little garage apartment he'd shared with her since high school.

It wasn't that he didn't love her or think she loved him. He knew she did. He'd never doubted it until the moment he realized it was only that love that was holding her to him -- that a sensible woman would have dumped his dark, driven, compulsively drunk ass long before.

That realization broke him like a twig.

He was drinking alone at the bar and thinking. And it just hit him and he knew what he had to do. He had to leave.

She would find someone new, someone who would be better for her. And he'd be free to go to hell, which is basically what he felt like he had to do.

It was a win-lose situation, but as long as she was doing most of the winning and he was doing most of the losing, it seemed right.


download [1.4 mb]
play [broadband]
AYoS radio [broadband]
previous version [Nov 20]
studio version

Sometimes I think about ya
think about, think about
think about the things
I thought I'd do for you

Sometimes I wonder
how you're doing now
I think about it
but I think it turned out best
when I think it through

I know I let you down
I let you down, I let you down
I let ya down hard
and blamed it all on you

I threw your love away
and I laughed and I laughed
I laughed until I died
and when I came to...

the world -- it was dead
and I walked around and I walked around
I walked around the world
but I couldn't find you

I tore my soul open
it was empty, it was empty
a tunnel into nowhere
and I never got thru

sometimes I think about ya
think about ya, think about ya
think about the world I mighta had with you

(C)1999 TK Major

I don't care -- I believe in you, anyway [What Promises Mean Today]

I know what promises mean today
I don't care I believe in you anyway

I wrote those lines in 1973 or 1974, a time when promises really didn't seem to mean much.

People felt betrayed by every institution from politics to religion, burned by every emotion from hate to love.

download [2.1 mb]
play [broadband]
AYoS radio [broadband]
previous AYoS version (Oct 27)

What Promises Mean Today

I know what promises mean today
I don't care I believe in you anyway
I don't care what anyone says
I'll believe in you until I'm dead
But at the rate things are going
That could be any day
I don't care
I believe in you anyway


You say you're my lover
my sister my brother my friend
I'm surprised you don't claim
to be my mother my father
and the priest that the church said they'd send at the end

And I still don't care what anyone says
I'll be loving you until I'm put in my grave
but at the rate things are going
that could be any day
I don't care I believe in you anyway

I know what promises mean today
I don't care I believe in you anyway

(C)1974, TK Major