Monthly Archives: January 2006

Baby Said [part 2]

Baby Said
The question of just who “Baby” is has come up before and less than careful readers will be forgiven if they missed my suggestion that Baby is, to some extent, a composite of ex-girlfriends (mine and OP’s) with a few of my own personality fragments thrown into the mix, too. If you’re trying to create an antiheroine of mythic proportions, you have to draw on everything you have. And then some. Think a little bit Mata Hari and a little bit Janis Joplin as played by… Oh, wait a second… I was slipping into the screenplay pitch.

But, really, I have been toying with the idea of tying some of the Baby songs together with a flimsy excuse for a plot and I may sketch something out a bit later in A Year of Songs.

Sort of a blog opera.

I’m not the first to come up with that phrase — but I’ve been doing a form of blog opera for much of the last decade. Last year marked the tenth year of my music on the web — although the first download was an unlistenably lo-fi 17 second clip that took 2-1/2 minutes to download.

Since then, I’ve been posting music downloads and writing vignettes and backstories for the songs, usually combining text and download links with some kind of graphics.

(I’ve toyed with video/multimedia versions. It’s a whole lot of work. More power to all you video artists and talented Flash animators. It’s all I can do to string a couple of semi-coherent sentences togther.)

Anyhow, I’ve been doing this blog opera thing for a long time but — now — I have an irritatingly catchy name for it.

The first two versions of Baby Said appeared on AYoS on December 25, 2005. With regard to this version, for the record: yes, you are supposed to laugh. In fact, at this point in AYoS, if you ain’t laughin’ already, you better get that checked out.

Baby Said

baby said she’d love me
she’d always stand beside me
baby lied . . . but that’s all right
baby said forever
baby said never say goodby
she left that night

baby said a lot of things a
fool wouldn’t buy
she got caught a thousand times
I sorta let it slide
baby said she loved me
I think she thought she did
baby said a lot of things
she was such a crazy kid…

baby said honey
you ain’t got no money
I like that so
my old man’s made of loot
and it don’t buy no truth
and Baby knows

baby said a lot of things
it was such a crazy time
Baby said remember
cause I’ll see you when you die
baby said its over
over and over again
baby said forever and then we
just begin again

baby said save me
sometimes I think I’m crazy
She’d say anything–even the truth
But once you surrendered
it really was forever and
there wouldn’t be nothing anyone could ever do

baby said a lot of things a
fool wouldn’t buy
she got caught a thousand times
I sorta let it slide
baby said she loved me
I think she thought she did
baby said a lot of things
she was such a crazy kid…

(C)1991, 2000, TK Major

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When You Look Through Me [redux]

When You Look Through Me

 

 

Brown leaves drifted down from nearly bare branches, the last sun of the day came over the hill, a few shafts coming through the trees, catching a few fluttering leaves.

He barely noticed.

His stride was long, as though he was going somewhere. But he wasn’t. Eventually, he would go home. Now he was just walking, drawing the cold air down into his lungs and trying not to think.

Because if he thought, he’d get mad. And if he got mad, he might do something. And that would surely change something. And the last thing he wanted was more change.

Not now when sullen anger ran like cold mercury through him. Not now when his world seemed about to be knocked from its already wobbly orbit.

This version is a bit more aggressive than the first version.

WHEN YOU LOOK THROUGH ME

You ask me where I’ve been
I wonder what it matters
I wonder why you should care at all

I wonder what you see
when you look through me
I feel like a ghost in my own home

Oh but weren’t the old days grand
our lives together like love letters in the sand
raise a glass to the past
but don’t look through
to a time when you loved me and I loved you

I go out walking
you stay home talking
those people on the phone know more about me than I do

I hear your laughter
I don’t hear what you say after
but I hear that I’m a joke in my home town

chorus

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I won’t say that I didn’t have some dreams[Not One of Those Dreams]

XXXXX

 

 

 

 

I did a somewhat different take of this song the first time around. This version may take up-front intimacy to a slightly unnerving extreme — and I manage to perform an almost Sinatraesque dismemberment of the title line when I sing it but I sort of like this, anyway.

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

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Where did you say I signed? [There Ain’t No Heart in My Heart Anymore]

XXXXX

 

 

 

This version of Heart seems often to teeter on the edge of falling apart (a not always successful balancing act that should not surprise AYoS fans). Still, I think I like it better than the previous version here from October, which was a bit faster.

THERE AIN’T NO HEART IN MY HEART NO MORE

There ain’t no heart
in my heart no more
I don’t know where it’s gone
but it’s gone for sure
Maybe it went with you
when you went out that door
but there just ain’t no heart
in my heart no more

i feel like giving up and maybe I should
I cant go on and I know it’s no good
There aint no meaning
in life any more
no there aint no heart
in my heart anymore

The end just means
we begin again
where did you say I signed
I’ve lived this life
one two many times
I don’t think I can take it twice

Too many loves
too many lies
too many broken lives

too much night
too little love and way too little love
and nothing to show for a life

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