Because I couldn't have you... [I Slept with Your Sister]

Rivalry between siblings is the engine that drives a fair amount of literature and myth. When sex and/or romance or some combination of the two spike the fuel for that engine as they often do... you've got one high maintenance machine. Or something.

Anyhow, the song below is my humble effort in that tradition.

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I Slept with Your Sister

I slept with your sister
cause I couldn't have you
She was younger she was prettier
and she wanted me too

we rolled and we tumbled
all night long
and then the phone rang
just before we were done
It was you on the line
from the phone downstairs
maybe you were lonely
maybe you were scared
and maybe I'll never know
why you were there

I slept with your sister
'cause I couldnt have you
she was younger she was prettier
but it didn't ring true

we rolled and we tumbled
all night long
and when the phone rang
just before dawn

It was you on the line
from the phone downstairs
maybe you were lonely
maybe you were scared
and maybe I'll never know
why you were there

2003-08-21
(C)2003, TK Major

I'm just listening to the plaster crack... [Blue Recollection]

I'm not the first drunk to suggest that he drank not to forget but to not care. I found that the latter state was typically arrived at just before the former.

I also found that, if you were careful, you could get into that state early in the evening and stay in it until, oh, sometime... sometime when it just didn't matter, anymore.

I found myself stymied by this song over the last few days. I'd recorded a version of it and started to put it up on the web... but as I listened to it, I realized it simply wasn't up to the high standards of...

OK, no, seriously, even I couldn't browbeat myself into putting that version up. The next day, as much because I'd written down the song title in a draft of the day's AYoS blog entry, I found myself both compelled and unable to finish the song. And move on.

But the song defied me. Hell, it laughed in my face. Late each night I tried again to get an acceptable version. It became, you know, a thing.

I finally turned the song inside out and stripped out the familiar blues elements and repetitions.

I suppose I ought to have a periodic disclaimer that stipulates that I'm painfully aware of how far from pitch my singing typically is. I like to think of it as... uh... expressive.

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previous:
Saturday, November 05, 2005

related:
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Friday, March 24, 2006

BLUE RECOLLECTION

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

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


I wake up at nite
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
that ain't nothin' new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don't still love you

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

Slide Interlude

Q Lately it seems like your AYoS posts have been increasingly late and increasingly brief. Where are all those goofy little vignettes I've gotten in the habit of reading while listening to your podcast?

What gives?

A We musicians and songwriters have a technical term for the answer to that question. We call it the day job.

It's both the engine of freedom which keeps us from having to perform back-to-back versions of "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" in subway stations and on popular promenades as well as the perennial distraction that drags us away from the important business of making original music few will likely ever hear and even fewer will care about.

Which might seem to provoke the question: Why bother with music at all in the first place?

Might as well ask the caged bird why he sings...



SLIDE INTERLUDE

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Tell It to Me Like a Man [Tell It to Me in a Language That I'll Understand]

When I was a young man, it seemed to me that the problem with women was that they just weren't straightforward enough about their needs. It always seemed to me then that any interaction between the sexes became an interlocking dance of cryptic, even unrecognized protocols and elaborate interpersonal transactions, typically culminating in entirely predictable, and occasionally mutually satisfying outcomes.

But, when I finally met a woman who approached life and love like a man -- beautiful, smart, talented, and funny as she was -- she scared the living daylights out of me.

And, looking back, I should have been even more scared.


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Tell It to Me in a Language That I'll Understand

Tell it to me baby
in a language that I'll understand
I don't speak french italian
hollandaise or hindustan
you look like a straight talkin' woman
why don't ya give it to me like a man


don't put it between the lines
I won't get the inference
don't get into that dialectical material
let's just split the difference
Why don't ya come right out and say it
and then let's see the evidence

I know ya got something to say to me doll
don't bother putting it in words
I think I know what you're thinking
only I think I thought of it first
I guess the question is
Can we fall in love right now
or do we gotta talk all night first?

(C)1990, TK Major

A monopoly on emotion [His or Mine]

Did you ever have the notion
you ain't gotta monopoply on emotion?

Honey can't you tell my pain is real...

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His or Mine

how come you love me
how come you hate me
how come you just won't leave me a alone
did you ever have the notion
you ain't gotta monopoply on emotion
honey can't you tell my pain is real

honey come here put your hand on my heart
there's a world of feelings trapped inside
look in my eyes
and tell me once and for all
honey make your mind up
are you his or mine

how come you love me
how come you hate me
how come I can't tell them apart
where was your conscience
when your mind told my body
to make sure that your soul
had my heart

honey come here put your hand on my heart
there's a world of feelings trapped inside
look in my eyes
and tell me once and for all
honey make your mind up
are you his or mine

Monday Morning Redo [Chain of Mondays]

Let's try this again...

Yesterday's version of Chain was so incredibly awful.... all I can do is blame it on time-change lag.

(Which is, admittedly, utter BS, in my case, since I work off my bio clock far more than I'm bound by the more rigid confines of societal time... as anyone who has ever waited for a supposedly appointed meeting with me probably knows all too well.)

Anyhow... here is the best version of this, my latest song. Which is not to say it's any good. But, you know, it's hella better than yesterday's...

So, that's progress. Innit?

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Chain of Mondays

a thousand mondays
that's just 19 years
put your head down
put yourself in gear

before you know it
the day is done
fall asleep
and there's another one

chain of mondays
wrapped round my life
chain of mondays
'til the end of time
chain of mondays
there's no wondering why
chain of mondays
'til the day I die

I'm good at what I do
but what I do is dumb
pushing things around
all day long

what's it all for
don't ask me
i'm just a well-worn gear
in the big machine

chain of mondays...

don't take off my shackles
i don't want to be free
cause theres nowhere to go
and no one to be

been at the grindstone
for so damn long
there's nothing much left
except this song:

chain of mondays...

(C)2006, TK Major

A thousand Mondays

[This version was so awful that I redid it the very next day.]

This version of this new song is the musical equivalent of dragging your sorry backside into work so impaired, so trashed, so worthless that you really should have stayed home.

It's a mess... but it's here, reporting for duty.

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Chain of Mondays

a thousand mondays
that's just 19 years
put your head down
put yourself in gear

before you know it
the day is done
fall asleep
and there's another one

chain of mondays
wrapped round my life
chain of mondays
until the day I die

I'm good at what I do
but what I do is dumb
pushing things around
all day long

what's it all for
don't ask me
i'm just a well-worn gear
in the big machine

chain of mondays...

don't take off my shackles
i don't want to be free
cause theres nowhere to go
and no one to be

been at the grindstone
for so damn long
there's nothing much left
except this song:

chain of mondays...

(C)2006, TK Major