Monthly Archives: August 2006

It’s your second chance for the very last time

The Devil's Quicksand

The cartoonish admonitory that is the subject of today’s post is a tribute, in its way, to the pre-Just Say No anti-drug movies I watched on rickety, flickering 16 mm projectors as a none-too wayward youth. (I was, likely as not, the guy tasked to setting up and monitoring the projector.)

Thanks to the goofy, over-the-top antics of a lost generation of young educational film actors (“And now from his triumphant role in ‘Your Hygiene and You’ comes…”) some very unfunny drugs actually gained a sort of anything-for-a-laugh charisma.

Projector geek I may have been but I got hip and cynical later and had many exciting adventures that do not bear talking about here (ahem). Still, I somehow managed to dodge the obvious and dangerous drug traps (unless you count alcohol, that is, but we’ll save that for another post). Unhappily, not all my friends and loved ones have been as lucky.

Drugs can make you a clown — like the pathetic dude in this song — but at least in death a junkie can suddenly become a complex, troubled person again, gaining again a little of the dignity squandered in life.

previous AYoS version (2/19/2005)
Internet Archive page for this recording

Special Insider Sneak: The long-hidden electric version

The Devil’s Quicksand

It’s your second chance for the very last time
with your head in your hands and your future behind
grab your life pull as hard as you can
cause your up to your neck in the devil’s quicksand

if she told you once it was good advice
but a thousand times now that’s just a slice
of some other reality you’d prefer to ignore
it’s just that easy you shut the door

on the love she gave it was just too good
and you always hated how she understood
and you walked away and you felt so free
in the park that day spinning under the trees

but now its cold and the darkness comes
and the drugs wear off and your chums are scum
and the cyst on your arm is turning green
and the one-eyeds guys sez it’s the worst he’s seen

so you drag your ass to the ER room
and you wait 12 hours while the TV booms
and the little kids and the sobbing man
and the angel of death is right at hand

you just cant wait and you run outside
in the streetlight night you stop and cry
“is this their pain–or is it mine?”
you ask yourself but you knew all the time

it’s your second chance for the very last time
with your head in your hands and your future behind
grab your life pull as hard as you can
cause your up to your neck in the devil’s quicksand

twenty cents is all it takes
but ya drop the dimes cause ya got the shakes
ya try again an ya get ’em in
but the the phone just rings and your gut caves in

your knees give out ya hit the ground
people walking by just step around
ya see the sky you see the rain
ya see your ashes in a bag in a paupers grave

but the phones in your hand and your hanging on
and just before the dark her voice comes on
and ya tell her “baby just one last time”
she doesn’t say nothing you hear her crying

her sobbing lasts for such a long time
you almost forget why you’re on the line
then it comes back like a drano slam
you got one last chance slip this jam

“come on baby i’m on the bricks”
you can almost hear her kitchen clock tick
“I ain’t done nothin’ in 36 hours
and I need a place to take a shower”

and then it comes and you know you’re dead
her hollow laugh fills up your head
she drops the phone and it hits the floor
you hear her walk away and laugh some more

it’s your second chance for the very last time
with your head in your hands and your future behind
grab your life pull as hard as you can
cause your up to your neck in the devil’s quicksand

(C)1997, TK Major

Share

I’ll keep it on the VCR and watch it over and over again…

Someone said something...

They found you in the arms
of another man
the needle still in your vein
You finally transcended
Now you’re cheating on a higher plane

Someone said something
or I’d have never known
Someone said something
and I never went home…

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous AYoS version

Someone Said Something

Someone said something
or I’d have never known
Someone said something
and I never went home

They found you in the arms
of another man
the needle still in your vein
You finally transcended
Now you’re cheating on a higher plane

Someone said something . . .

What are a few bad habits
between old friends?
You were a junky and a trollop
but I loved you to the end

Someone said something . .

Policemen and photographers
and a local station’s mini-cam
I’ll keep it on the VCR
and watch it over and over again

Someone said something
or I’d have never known
Someone said something
and I never went home

(C)1984, TK Major

Share

A thousand girls have told me so…

California eucalyptus

They used to call me the bard of bitterness, denial, and regret. Well… it was kind of a one-liner I made up to put on my show flyers. But… you know.

I think I mentioned sometime last year that a girl I’d once dated, early in our relationship, asked me to sing her a love song. “I don’t mean you have to sing it to me,” she said. “That would seem a bit presumptious, I think.” College girls…

“Just sing me something romantic and I’ll pretend it’s about me.” And she laughed.

I had my songbooks right there — I’m almost completely incapable of performing any of my songs from memory (crazy as that might seem considering most of them have no more than 3 or 4 chords spread over 3 or 4 quatrains) — so I started flipping through them, giving one line descriptions of each song as I flipped by…

“Drug overdose song. Betrayal song. Threw-it-all-away song. Another betrayal song. Fare-thee-well-and-flog-off song. Another threw-it-all-away song…

“Ah, here it is, my love song: ‘I Must Be F—— Nuts.’ I knew I had one.”

(It’s a good one but I’ve yet to figure out how to do it justice in this blog. It’s… well… it’s a bit vulgar. But it is a love song.)

Anyhow, those who’ve been following this blog will probably have already guessed that there were a lot of threw-it-all-away songs in those books. It’s like, oh, you know, a recurring theme, I guess. Though anyone with access to a DSM might come up with a less charitable characterization.

I’m not really sure why I like this one so much… except maybe that I crack myself up every time I sing the line quoted in the title of this post. I’m certainly not the libertine the line would suggest but there’s still some kind of poetic truth there, nonetheless.

Internet Archive page for this recording

AYoS version 19 November 2005
AYoS version 2 March 2006

She’d Be Mine

Last time I saw her a couple years ago
she was shovin a couple of kids in a white volvo
the sun came down through the eucalyptus trees
it made her hair just glow like it always used to be

just then I wish I could have said the words
that I could never say
cause if I’d told her baby I’ll be yours
she’d be mine today

the pool house the beach house the boat house by the lake
I’ll be damned if I can remember a thing
yet everytime I think about holding hands in school
my heart just pounds like it always used to do

right now I wish I could have said the words…

sometimes when I sleep I call her name
a thousand girls have told me so
I thre it all awaly and now I want it back
and I know it can never be so
[I know it can never be so]

and right now I wish I could have said the words
that I could never say
cause if I’d told her baby I’ll be yours
she’d be mine today

(C)1998 TK Major
October

Share

If I had time to count the lies…

Not one of those dreams...

He lay on the bed, watching her.

He was never any good at reading her. He never felt like he knew what she was thinking.

He was drinking, once, with the guy she had gone out with before him.

“Most people,” that guy had said with drunken conviction, “have a mask they hide behind. And when you get to know them, they let it down a little and you start to see what’s there. With her,” and his eyes glinted a little in the dim bar as he paused, shot glass in hand, for effect, “with her, it’s just one mask after another. At first, you think, ah, a mystery. I love a mystery.”

The ex-boyfriend threw back the tequila and went on. “But the mystery becomes like a bad surrealism movie… there’s no…” His eyes seemed to unfocus for a moment. “There’s no coherency. A true sociopath would…” he stopped suddenly.

“I’m sorry, man. I must be drunk. I was just talkin’ shit. I mean, well, she is a piece of work, and we both know that… but she is a real double E-ticket ride. If you want the thrills, you gotta stand in line. Oh, wait. God, I’m drunk. Let’s have another round…”

Internet Archive page for this recording

AYoS October 09, 2005
AYoS January 28, 2006

Not One of Those Dreams

If I had time to count the lies
or that hours that you stole
but it ain’t like me to wonder why
all the same there’s some things one needn’t be told

I can see it in your smile
it’s there behind all your words
something dancing behind your eyes
I can tell that you think it’s
me that’s gonna get burned

It ain’t like you’re the only one
that ever threw away love
I’ve sinned your sins and some again
it’s all the same, it’s all been done

I can see it in your smile…

I’m not saying that I’m sorry
I won’t say I didn’t love you
I won’t say that I didn’t have some dreams
but not once did I dream they’d ever come true

I can see it in your smile
it’s there behind all your words
something dancing behind your eys
I can tell that you think it’s
gonna be me that’s gonna get burned

(C)1981, TK Major

Share