Monthly Archives: October 2007

It’s just one trainwreck after another…

Trainwreck Life
New Song Alert!

I‘m no good at being noble.

But it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of one little person don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Someday you’ll understand that.

Not now.

That’s what I told my cat when I sat her down to finally spill those very same beans on the global warming situation.

Sweetheart, I told her, the world has always been ending… the gravity pulling us toward the edge of the abyss is sometimes the only thing keeping us moving forward… but I know you’re worried about the polar bears. And I am too.

It may be too late for them and it’s always too late for us…

But we’ve got each other.

And we’ll always have that…in the cosmic sense, anyhow.

Trainwreck Life

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lyrics
Trainwreck Life
(working title)

It’s just one trainwreck after another
it’s just one disaster followin’ the t’other
It’s a wonder I can get back on my feet
to fall again

Some catastrophe
Some calamity
more adversity
more insanity
it’s the way it goes in the world
of mice and men

Cataclysm and devastation
tragedy and desolation
yet I know it’s the way it goes
my friend

double debacles and treble trouble*
cauldron of misfortune set to boil and bubble
I’ve seen the future it’s
more of the same to the end

Waterloo was just a hiccup
Little Big Horn just all a big mixup
When everything is ashes
maybe we can all be friends

Suns explode and worlds collide
all us little specks along for the ride
the fabric of time and space
someday willl mend

Cataclysm and devastation…

Suns explode and worlds collide
all us little specks along for the ride
in the end it all — comes down to the end

2007-10-28
(C)2007, TK Major

*It came to my attention after writing this song that I, for my whole life,  had been using the number three pronunciation of debacle. After that realization, every time I heard someone using the number one, soft a [ah] (or the never-heard-’round-these-parts second-preferred short a), it bugged me. Not least because if I changed my pronunciation, it would through the rhythm of the song off. I finally hit on changing the lyric and doubling up the cadence to the line above — double debacles and treble trouble — from the orginal debacles and double trouble. 

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If They Could Put You in Jail for Dreaming

If They Could Put You in Jail for Dreaming

New Song Alert!

I wrote this song a couple weeks ago and, after posting a very rough acoustic version and getting some feedback in a songwriting forum I sometimes hang out in, I decided to try to put together a fuller, combo version.

I had posted this briefly last week but thought twice about the performance and some of the instrumentation so I pulled the post and reworked the song.

If They Could Put You in Jail for Dreaming

Now, here is my confession
I’m the guilty one
I knew just what I was doing
and now look at what I’ve done

there isn’t any mystery
about just who’s to blame
the saddest little crime in history
has been added to my name

If they could put you in jail for dreaming
I’d never see the streets again
I’d be lying in my cell
telling stories to myself
and dreamin’ bout what might have been

I stole a chance for happiness
then drove it into a ditch
I stole the secrets of hate and love
then I forgot which was which

If they could put you in jail for dreaming...

I know my biggest crime
is something I did not do
it’s a shame and a sin I didn’t
follow that whim
and steal away with you

If they could put you in jail for dreaming


2007/10/18 TK Major
(C)2007, TK Major

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This Used to Be America

This Used to Be America

New Song Alert!

Preachin’ democracy…

It’s still preachin’. With all that entails. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spending so much time listening to country, mountain, and rural gospel lately. They ain’t afraid of no preachin’….

Anyway, when the phrase “This used to be America”* came to my lips the other day (in one of those listening-to-the-news-too-much rants my cat is getting used to) I sat down to write what I hoped might be some classic agitprop… I don’t think I actually got there… and I wasn’t actually going to let this out of the work folder but, I dunno, I listened to it this morning and thought, shoot, I’m feeling this. I’m feeling it right now.

When the general once in charge of the US war on — excuse me, in — Iraq calls that catastrophic misadventure a “nightmare without end” — I figure there’s some wiggle room for a little Monday morning jeremiad from an aging, disillusioned US businessman (that would be, you know, me.)

This used to be America, you know.

But we could still be who we know we should be…
This Used to Be America

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lyrics
This Used to Be America

This used to be America
This used to be the land of the free
This used to be the United States
but nothin’s like it used to be

we put ourselves in the hands of fools
threw our birthrights away
put the bottom line at the top of our world
let the god of greed hold sway

it takes 200,000 bullets
to kill one enemy
that what the DoD numbers say**
if you don’t count peripheral casualties

Americans don’t torture
We don’t kill recklessly
thats what the man in the white house says
that’s how we want it to be
but it’s gettin’ pretty hard to believe

blowback’s a bitch
but how could we know?
though our experts kept telling us so
we fed the tiger we got by the tail
and now we just can’t bear to let him go

This used to be America
This used to be the land of the free
but I swear it’s not too late
for the United States
we can still be who we know
we should be

(C)2007, TK Major

* When I googled the phrase — which I figured had certainly been in use before — I found it had been the working title for a book by…

** DOD – Department of Defense; this figure of 200,000 bullets for every enemy death in Afghanistan and Iraq is based on US Department of Defense estimates of enemy soldiers killed and the amount of ordnance used in training and combat. Yes… one FIFTH OF A MILLION BULLETS for every enemy soldier killed. Of course, this does not count “peripheral casualties” — for which estimates range from about 25,000- 30,000 (more than the number of enemy killed — this is the US government’s estimate) to as many as a 100,000. Of course, that does not include those who died unnecessarly from malnutrition, privation, and other war-related causes which some well-grounded studies have suggested range from 500,000 to one million extra deaths.

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Owned…

They Own the Judges

It was the Nixon Era and I was young and angry and I knew this wasn’t a very good song but I was young and angry and it was the Nixon Era.

I present it here because maybe neither I nor the nation have really learned that much…

They Own the Judges

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previous versions
Tuesday, December 27, 2005

lyrics
They Own the Judges

they own the judges
they own the congress
they own the papers
and the magazines

they own the cops
they own the armies and
they think that they own
you and me

they own the doctors
they get rich from our suffering
they own the churches
and the sinners inside

they own the colleges
the print-outs of knowledge
they own and use history
to their own ends

they own the farms
they own the farmers
they own the factories
and the workers lives

they own the gangsters
and they run the wores
they own Vegas
and the gamblers trapped inside

they move in the shadows
of presidents and corporations
the means of production
in a handful of hands

you can’t live without money
they enslave us with wages
they pull the strings
that make you and me dance

(C)1976, 2007, TK Major

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