Daily Archives: March 21, 2006

Public Service Advertisement [Rubber Room Rock]

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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…

today’s acoustic version:

full version:

RUBBER ROOM ROCK

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

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

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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.

Today’s acoustic version:

Full version (1998):

previous version [Nov 20]

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

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