Monthly Archives: April 2006

Slide Interlude

Slide interlude

Q Lately it seems like your AYoS posts have been increasingly late and increasingly brief. Where are all those goofy little vignettes I’ve gotten in the habit of reading while listening to your podcast?

What gives?

A We musicians and songwriters have a technical term for the answer to that question. We call it the day job.

It’s both the engine of freedom which keeps us from having to perform back-to-back versions of “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” in subway stations and on popular promenades as well as the perennial distraction that drags us away from the important business of making original music few will likely ever hear and even fewer will care about.

Which might seem to provoke the question: Why bother with music at all in the first place?

Might as well ask the caged bird why he sings…
SLIDE INTERLUDE

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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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A monopoly on emotion [His or Mine]

A monopoly on emotion

Did you ever have the notion
you ain’t gotta monopoly on emotion?

Honey can’t you tell my pain is real…

previous AYoS version

His or Mine

how come you love me
how come you hate me
how come you just won’t leave me a alone
did you ever have the notion
you ain’t gotta monopoply on emotion
honey can’t you tell my pain is real

honey come here put your hand on my heart
there’s a world of feelings trapped inside
look in my eyes
and tell me once and for all
honey make your mind up
are you his or mine

how come you love me
how come you hate me
how come I can’t tell them apart
where was your conscience
when your mind told my body
to make sure that your soul
had my heart

honey come here put your hand on my heart
there’s a world of feelings trapped inside
look in my eyes
and tell me once and for all
honey make your mind up
are you his or mine

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Monday Morning Redo [Chain of Mondays]

What? Paris again?
 

Let’s try this again…

Yesterday’s version of Chain was so incredibly awful…. all I can do is blame it on time-change lag.

(Which is, admittedly, utter BS, in my case, since I work off my bio clock far more than I’m bound by the more rigid confines of societal time… as anyone who has ever waited for a supposedly appointed meeting with me probably knows all too well.)

Anyhow… here is the best version of this, my latest song. Which is not to say it’s any good. But, you know, it’s hella better than yesterday’s…

So, that’s progress. Innit?

Chain of Mondays

a thousand mondays
that’s just 19 years
put your head down
put yourself in gear

before you know it
the day is done
fall asleep
and there’s another one

chain of mondays
wrapped round my life
chain of mondays

’til the end of time
chain of mondays
there’s no wondering why
chain of mondays
’til the day I die

I’m good at what I do
but what I do is dumb
pushing things around
all day long

what’s it all for
don’t ask me
i’m just a well-worn gear
in the big machine

chain of mondays…

don’t take off my shackles
i don’t want to be free
cause theres nowhere to go
and no one to be

been at the grindstone
for so damn long
there’s nothing much left
except this song:

chain of mondays…

(C)2006, TK Major

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