Monthly Archives: December 2005

Without Warning

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Without Warning
Artistic, romantic types (like us singer-songwriters, yo) often seem to fall in love with goddesses and ghosts. Those conversant in the literature of myth and legend are probably familiar with the deeply troubled relationships that grow when man and immortal become romantically entwined.

I wrote this song in 1974 when I was involved with a goddess — and a ghost. The goddess was a ringer for 30’s screen diva, Carole Lombard, and, by society’s then-outmoded standards, was technically otherwise entangled. But I knew it was me she loved, even though she told me she didn’t have the courage to be free…

For a young man, a young artist, in that position, deeply torn but deeply in love, intoxicated with the heroic tragicness of the situation, there was little recourse, then, but to lose myself in the arduous work of seducing one of my best friends, a pretty, serious-minded strawberry blond with — I firmly believe in retrospect — absolutely no romantic or sexual interest in me — but who, in her own way, lusted for a sort of platonic but passionate friendship and who seemed to show up, unbidden, on my doorstep at the strangest times.

[UPDATE: I just listened to this again… and, my gosh, it’s sloppy — even by the extraordinarily loose standards of AYoS. Mercy.]

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 you were something
that I just had to do
Well it mighta been right
on a Monday night
to release a little energy with you
In the end it came down to you

Now 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
please take some from I can see
Well ghosts are fine
but I like some flesh on mine
you can’t steal my love
you can’t have my love for free
you can’t steal my love
you can’t have my love for free

Copyright 1974
TK Major

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19 Days

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19 Days

 

This is not a murder ballad.

It’s a song about a long-haul trucker coming to the realization that his marriage is over. He thinks about it when he drives. He thinks about it when he lies awake in the sleeper in the back of the cab. And he prays about it in a little church on the way home. Simple, hunh?

That’s what I thought.

But I had to stop performing it because people kept coming up afterwards and saying, “Man that’s dark. It’s so seething and brink-of-violence. So, how does he kill her?”

And… as I read the lyrics now, they may be vague but, yeah, depending on how you read them, they could also be a bit ominous. But, really, what I had in mind was a guy simply breaking out of that thrall of indecision… just before you finally give up on someone you were positive would change your world. Not that, you know, I was ever such a sap. But people have been…

Ever think of all the great songs that started with the phrase “wake up”?

Yeah… well, I just checked, and, as of today, four of the songs so far (out of 71 songs since September 22) from A Year of Songs have the words “wake up” in the first 3 words of the song — and one more has “woke up.”

Don’t ask me why. If I had to guess, I’d say I was subconsciously on a quest to come up with a line with the classic elegance of “Woke up this morning / got myself a beer” (Jim Morrison) — which, I’ve always felt, pretty much sez it all.

19 Days

Wake up pretty baby tell me what the
hell is going on … I been
on the road for 19 days
and you act like I ain’t been gone

I been thinkin’ ’bout the days
when we thought our love was true
[but] I been thinking my forever
might be better off without you

Driving 16 hours a day
gives you lots of time to think
I been thinking bout a lot of things
that could drive ya to the brink

I been thinkin’ ’bout the days…

the truck stop sign is flashing
through the window of the cab
I wake up sweating
from that same old dream I have

I been dreamin’ ’bout the days…

the little church was quiet
on a Tuesday afternoon
I sat and thought about us
until I knew what I had to do

(C)1998, TK Major

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Drunk in Algiers

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Drunk in Algiers
 

This was written when I was playing in punk bands and reflects the series of investigations into the JFK assassination and various government conspiracies that took place in Congress in the late 70s in the wake of Watergate and the Nixon implosion.

When I was a kid, I stayed up late with my dad one night to watch the early 30’s Mummy. When it came to the part where the workers burying the pharoah (or whoever the heck he was supposed to be) were slain with spears — and then the spearsmen were themselves slain with spears, all to keep the burial place secret,I thought, damn, that’s cold.

In this song, I imagined the protagonist as the last surviving triggerman in the JFK hit, living out his days drunk in Algiers, waiting for the inevitable day when some mysterious strangers would burst through the door, guns blazing.

The guitar accompaniment on this version was improvised on the spot, since I had no real recollection of the chords I used to use. As always, I recorded the rhythm guitar and vocal in one pass and, as I often do, I then went back and overdubbed a lead guitar.

DRUNK IN ALGIERS

I was on team one
and I’m not saying that I’m scared
but the rest are dead
and it’s probably just a matter of time

they know where I am

one of these days a stranger
walks into this little dive
and bang
no witness left a live
one of these days they’re gonna cowboy me

one day late indian summer
standing on a grassy knoll
just a little squeeze of my trigger finger
changed the history of the world

shoved my AR 14 up inside my overcoat
me and my time man shimmied down the manhole
made our way through the Dallas sewers
team one changed the history of the world

(C)1979, TK Major

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