Tag Archives: lust

On a Monday morning…




You know the old saw about the mechanic driving the smoke-belching, beat up, barely running car… As a database guy in real life, you’d think I’d be more on top of my own IT…

But until recently I’d been using a highly informal matrix of data queries, guesswork, and eyeballing to figure out which of my ~150 songs was most due for a new, improved version — or at least a shot at one — here in AYoS.

But I finally broke down and used some of the handy dandy aggregate query functions that Bill Gates kindly hammered into my local DB manager, Access, and set up a kind of one-stop for quickly spotting songs that had only been done once or twice and/or which had never had a version score high in my idiosyncratic personal rating system (which is currently hidden from your sight, thank you very much).

Without Warning 

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Even though this song, “Without Warning Blues” goes back at least a few decades, a reasonable performance had so far escaped me. This one just barely clears my rather low bar.

Without Warning 

You came without warning
on a monday morning
the day was all shot through
by shadows from the past
afterimages of the last
time that I was with you

and it didn’t take nothing
to see that I was something
that you just had to do
Well it mighta been right
on a Monday night
to release a little energy with you
— it mighta been right
in the end it came down to you

And I didn’t mean maybe
when I put it to you baby
There’s just time space and nothing more
But instead of pain
we could have pleasure again
just like before you heard about the fall

so when you come come
come come come around me
please take some form
take some from I can see
Well ghosts are fine
but I like some flesh on mine
Ya can’t steal my love
Ya can’t have my love for free

Copyright 1974
T.K. Major

(C)2008, TK Major

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Even if I wanted…

Head Full of Crazy, Heart Full of Fire

OK. Responsible guys need songs of lust and yearning, too. (Not that I’ve ever been one but us songwriters like to stretch every now and then.)

Actually, the protagonist’s purported responsibility evolved through the course of several revisions. At first, it was just that he’d invoked the line “… if I had you to sleep by my side / if I had you to be my bride… ” (Which I recall thinking at the time was one of the first time one of my protagonists had ever expressed even a slight desire to get married… though those protagonists are, in other respects, a wildly divergent lot, from saints to the worst kind of sinners.)

But that apparently wasn’t good enough for my fevered, novelty-seeking imagination… because in the next revision of the song, a few years after it was initially penned, I decided to point my motorcycle toward the ramp up to the shark tank with this line: “When his girl loses her head / a man’s gotta think for two.”

The delightfully archaic patriarchalism delighted my perverse sense of humor — and actually seemed to bring the whole conceit of the song (“what it’s like to be a man”) home…

Anyhow, it may seem a pretty straightforward take on the new chastity and I suppose, on one level, it is… but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a few chuckles out of it. I know I did…

Head Full of Crazy, Heart Full of Fire

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previous versions
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Wednesday, April 26, 2006

lyrics
Head Full of Crazy, Heart Full of Fire

When I see you
and I look in your eyes
I get a head full of crazy
and a heart full of fire
but I cant talk about it
and I cant act on it
and I couldnt really stop it
even if I wanted
I’m tellin you so that you understand
that’s what it’s like to be a man…

… I work all day and
I sweat in the sun
I’ll work all by life
and I’ll die when it’s done
but if I had you
to sleep by my side
if I had you
to be my bride
if I had you
I’d be glad to be a man

Now I know that you
would really like to stay
but have responsibilities
that must come into play
I must think of what’s right
— what’s right for you
When his girl loses her head
— a man’s gotta think for two
but that’s what it’s like
that’s what its like to be a man
(C)2007, TK Major

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The engine of desire…

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

Without lust… could there be rock and roll?

It would certainly set sexual procreation back a few squares, anyhow. And that would put a big dent in the evolution of the species… if young girls weren’t attracted to young guys with high tight pompadours… pretty soon back into the primordial slime with the whole ballgame. Er… so to speak.

Anyhow…

So far, A Year of Songs hasn’t produced too many of what you might call “definitive versions” of my tunes but I’m thinking this one is kind of in the running. (Not, mind you, that it is in any way slick or well recorded. In fact, the vocal is about three times too loud. But, hey, it’s close enough for A Year of Songs.) The “studio version” is pretty definitive, too, in its way, a big, roiling techno-swamp-boogie morass… watch out for the alligators.

This version, though, might seem at first blush to be a bit of a tribute to Brit folk master, John Renbourn — though I tremble to mention his name while talking about my modest efforts. Then again, I don’t have 20 fingers and, after listening to Mr Renbourn’s playing for years, I’m convinced he does. (But he did manage to keep the extras hid, somehow, when I saw him a few times at the tiny McCabe’s guitar shop concert room in Santa Monica in the 80s.)

full ‘combo’ version (2000)
Internet Archive page for this recording
previous versions
March 23, 2006
September 27, 2005


Pretty Little Head

baby I’ve been alone for such a long time
these feelings 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

(C)1989, TK Major

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

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.

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
Tell it to me in a language that I'll understand...
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

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