Tag Archives: tell-all

Exploiting emotional investment seminar

I'm gonna write a soap opera -- you're gonna be the heroine

 

Sure… you can try to cash out your relationship to the tabloids… but the money from that is here and gone like a found bindle of… someone else’s forgotten dreams.

No… to fully exploit your investment in a relationship you’ve gotta grow it. Now, we’re pretty much talking about mushrooms on a corpse, here, of course.

But circle of life and all that… media life.

This version of Soap Opera is a bit of a reinvention, musically. It’s still a blues but I recast it into a set of mostly harmonic minor progressions that give it a mock seriousness that amused me. I like to be amused, so here it is.

January 23 version
March 18 version

I’m Gonna Write a Soap Opera

I’m gonna write a soap opera
you’re gonna be the heroine
I’m gonna show the world just how ya think
I’m gonna write a soap opera
I won’t have to make up a thing
When we get the ratings back
you know I’ll take you out for a drink

I’ll get a famous model
to play your part for you
I was gonna ask you but you’re always busy
We’ll get a famous model
I know she’ll do real good, too
When the plot gets thick
She’ll be skinny enough to wriggle through

I’m gonna sell the rights
everywhere I can
there’ll be games and dolls and underwear
I’m gonna sell the rights
I suggest you buy up while you can
I said I’d make you famous
I think by now you understand

(C)1990, TK Major

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I’m gonna write a soap opera and you’re going to be the heroine

Soap Opera

I always figured I’d grow up and be some kind of Madison Avenue type. I liked their style in the movies. They seemed to have the prettiest wives — or the hippest bachelor pads if they weren’t married.

And, from my studies in front of the television, I knew that Mad Ave types had more sophisticated ways of dealing with sticky interpersonal entanglements — and particularly creative and craftful ways of dealing with situations that might see the less sophisticated resorting to insult, invective, or even violence.

What better way, I always thought, of doling out a little comeuppance than to put a troublesome ex-love or a friend who has betrayed you smack in the middle of his or her own soap opera, you know, a real TV soap opera. Finally a chance to argue it all out before the court of public opinion — all, of course, without the ex-friend’s input, which would only get in the way of the poetic truth of the situation.

A note on today’s song: Today’s entry is a bit different. It’s still highly informal, but it’s more a full band demo for a possible project.

[revised mix posted Sunday, 2006-03-19 23:30 UTC]

previous AYoS version (Jan 23)

I’m Gonna Write a Soap Opera

I’m gonna write a soap opera
you’re gonna be the heroine
I’m gonna show the world just how ya think
I’m gonna write a soap opera
I won’t have to make up a thing
When we get the ratings back
you know I’ll take you out for a drink

I’ll get a famous model
to play your part for you
I was gonna ask you but you’re always busy
We’ll get a famous model
I know she’ll do real good, too
When the plot gets thick
She’ll be skinny enough to wriggle through

I’m gonna sell the rights
everywhere I can
there’ll be games and dolls and underwear
I’m gonna sell the rights
I suggest you buy up while you can
I said I’d make you famous
I think by now you understand

(C)1990, TK Major

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Paperback

Get Down BabyThere was one thing on my mind when I wrote this song.

I wanted to get in the line, “Get down, baby, get out tonight” — in something that couldn’t be mistaken for a party song.

And I think I nailed that aspect. No one will party to this song and if they do, well, I’m not responsible.

I was thinking about this song after the fact and realized that it fits nicely into my plans to re-invent myself as a bitter old has been. As opposed, you know, to a bitter old never was. It’s probably a minor distinction to most folks, I suppose, but I think my brothers and sisters in the music biz will appreciate it. At any rate, I have a song, Tell All the Kids, that’s specifically about my fall from grace. Or the fall from grace I never had. But, anyhow, that ain’t this song.

So, as this song spilled out not quite a decade ago, I realized I was telling its story from the point of view of some imaginary, long-suffering rockstar, addressing, for what he evidently hopes is the last time, his histrionic, soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend as she pursues a theatrically anguished voguing session attop the retaining wall of his penthouse terrace.

Get down, baby.

AYoS acoustic version:


produced version:

 

Paperback
AKA Get Down Baby (Get Out Tonight)

Everywhere it sez you love me
but ya never read the truth
’cause when I look into your eyes
I can see who’s getting screwed

Get down, baby. Get packed,
get out tonight.
You’re gone, baby,
that’s right you heard me right.


A secret’s not a secret
unless it has been told
our private life’s not really ours
until all the rights are sold.

Get down, baby…


you will get some mileage
from that small town trollop trip
but the journey’s strictly one way, babe
and heavenward ain’t it

Get down, baby…

history will tell us
all about the truth
until that time I’ll do fine
your quickie paperback will do

Get down, baby…
get packed, get out tonight
you’re gone
baby
that’s right
you heard me right

3/10/96

(C) 2005, TK Major

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