Monthly Archives: April 2007

What…? Not this Old Beast again?

Have You Embraced the Beast?

War! What’s it good for?
Say it, say it, say it again…

So… this song, below, is certainly not one of my best songs, by a stretch. And, yet, I’ve posted a slug of versions of it here on the AYoS parade of songwriting shame…

What gives?

It’s this damn war, I tell you.

Like the overwhelming majority of US citizens, I’m sick to death of it, sick of the suffering of others, sick of the squandered sacrifices of our men and women who feel called to fight, sick of the lies, and sick of the excuses of those politicains and legislators who claim they were fooled into supporting it.

That, my friends, is a sock full of shit.

The truth about what US intelligence analysts really thought about Saddam and the supposed threat he posed to the the Middle East and the US was known then, as it is known now.

It was, indeed, in — if not all the papers — certainly in responsible, mainstream publications like the Christian Science Monitor and plenty of others, even if the supposedly liberal New York Times seemed to focus all its energies on promoting this most foolish of modern boondoggles of death, destruction, and cynical profiteering.

And it was well covered in the British and Australian press who had a lot less temerity when it came time to speak “truth to power” and seemed far less worried about offending those whose first response to the 9/11 attacks was to rain death and destruction indiscriminately on any handy villains, guilty or not.

Now… don’t get me wrong.

I did support the incursion into Afghanistan to get the people who our intel officials did think were behind the 9/11 attacks — and who, in fact, were bold enough to take credit for it. Hell, I thought just the act of claiming credit was worthy of some serious ass-kicking…

But there was — in the words of our very own intel and security experts — “little or no credible evidence” of Saddam Hussein’s purported involvement with the attacks.

Yet, there we were, confronted by the sorry spectacle of not just the idiot-president’s own party of warmongering lackies (full disclosure: I am a Republican) rushing to join the gangpile of those willfully ignoring the truth — but the “loyal opposition” — the then-Democratic Congressional leadership joining the festival of deception and disingenuity, rushing to vote for war against a nation for which there was little or no credible evidence of involvement in the monstrous attacks on New York and Washington.

So… yeah… this Old Beast, again…

A note about today’s version: This recording was actually made in early 1998 as part of the AYoS precursor, TK Major’s Song of the Day. Unlike the mostly acoustic/folk AYoS, the SotD project was all over the map, production and style-wise but this song, with its string arrangement (OK, synthetic strings, to be sure, I’d already spent the retirement money I could have devoted to hiring a real string section) and putatively soothing background vocal harmonies, was an odd duck, even for that polystylistic culture jumble.

Have You Embraced the Beast?

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previous versions
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Thursday, January 11, 2007

lyrics
Have You Embraced the Beast?

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul on (for) the finer things?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They’ll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?

(C)1984, 2007, TK Major

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All the way up… I was lookin’ back

25 Guitars

Everybody there used to be somebody once…

Everyone had a story. Some had been factory workers laid off from a string of jobs. A couple had been suits, grinding away in corporate offices. There was an accountant. He liked to joke that he’d help the others with their taxes for a swig of Mad Dog 20/20.

For a while, there was even a doctor, a foreign guy who’d been caught overprescribing. Word was he’d overpribed half the inland empire and, when he lost his license and his world came down around him, warrants out for his arrest, the doc had run away, eventually spending all his cash and ending up under the wide overpass, on the railroad right-of-way… not more than a quarter mile from the harbor. With the rest of the nobodies who used to be somebody.

When people asked the lanky, long-haired guy with the cloudy blue eyes for his story, he kept it simple:

“One day… I just fell.”

That was it. All you could get out of him. He kept to himself and slept somewhere else, only coming into the encampment to trade and occasionally score something to take the edge off. Folks said he drank — but he drank alone. Someone said he often sat by the bluffs along the beach, a pony bottle in an inside pocket of his worn, gray parka.

One day some college kids came down into the camp.

“We heard about this guy, here. He used to be a rock star.” They said a name and a younger guy with half his teeth missing, taping a battered baby stroller back together with duct tape said, “Yeah, I heard of him.”

The college kids passed around a photo. It was one of those head and shoulder shots with the top of a guitar showing and a rough and chipped brick wall in the background.

“Oh, yeah. That guy. He comes around here maybe once or twice a week. He’s kind of a loner. So… what? He was a big rock star? When?”

When? A long, long time ago, indeed. A million miles and ten thousand years ago.

A condo, a fiance, a fancy car, an agent, a dog, and 25 guitars ago…


25 Guitars

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previous versions
Tuesday, December 06, 2005

lyrics
25 Guitars

Go back home and
tell all the kids
this is what it’s like
when their hero hits the skids

go out to the farm and
tell my ma and pa
the higher you climb
the farther you must fall

I started out thinking
that I’d always know the score
now I hardly know
what I was counting for

I lost my one true love
my agent and my car
my condo and my dog
and twenty five guitars

but baby I was lost before
I ever got to town
I threw the map away
the day I let you down

yeah I hit the big time
but the big time it hits back
and all the way up
I was looking back

Wake me up and say its all a dream
we could drink coffee and talk about what it all means
I dreamed I dreamed I threw it all away
If I could just wake up back in your arms today

I was on the fat side of heaven
how come it felt like hell
each day was a struggle
one day I just fell

The bottom dropped out
I laughed the whole way down
with a noose around yer neck
LA is a much nicer town

Wake me up and say its all a dream
we could drink coffee and talk about what it all means
I dreamed I dreamed I threw it all away
If I could just wake up back in your arms today

Go back home and tell all the kids
this is what it’s like when their hero hits the skids

(C)1997, 2007, TK Major

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It’s easy to start thinking you’re… you know… somebody

Virtualized McVilla on Como



It’s easy to lose your perspective in this world. It’s easy to start thinking you’re… you know… somebody.

Even though, in the end, you will certainly be nobody.

But, with the household staff buzzing around you like so many worker bees making things nice for the queen, it’s easy to forget that inside that Greek-columned mausoleum, inside that marble crypt… you’ll be just as dead as the nameless drunk in potter’s field.


Spit in the Ocean

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lyrics
Spit in the Ocean

You must think you’re oh so very
terribly important
with your car, your house, your maid,
your butler and your porters.

But seen from the stars
you’re the same as all of us are.
And it might seem a queer notion
but we’re all just spit
in the ocean.

Hop upon a plane
run around the world
Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Berlin
and they’re all full of your kind of girl.

You can have all the ones you want
you can play with people’s lives.
You can have all the rope you want
but soon enough they expect that noose
to be tied.

Seen from above
just another slightly balding head
a little bit of dandruff on the shoulders
but you’ll be dead
soon enough, anyway.

Hiding in your villa
on the Dalmatian Coast.
Your blue ribbon Afghan hound at your feet
the one that you prize the most.

But your baby’s got the rabies
and he’s gonna bite your foot.
ain’t there an end to the indignities
through which a human being
must be put.

Seen from the stars
Just another chunk of rock in space.
little ones crawling about on it
but they’ll be gone
soon enough, anyway.

You must think you’re oh so very
terribly important
with your car, your house, your maid,
your butler and your porters.

But seen from the stars
you’re the same as all of us are.
And it must seem a queer notion
but we’re all just spit
in the ocean.

(C) 1975, T.K. Major


dub style (Soundclick, requires Flash):

(C)2007, TK Major

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All Fools’ Day

Kingdom of Fools

3 newly recorded songs dedicated to The Fool…

I told my self
Life has no meaning
I told myself
I should stop dreaming
I told myself
I should stop being such a fool

Three songs about three different kinds of fools… [and let me hasten to point out that while All Fool’s day caught me off guard today with the startling news that Apple was leaving the home computer market, I must still have been subconsciously thinking ahead: yesterday’s song — which went up quite late last night — and is kind of interesting if I do say so myself — had the line: “…in the Idiot’s Guide to Love I must be listed in the back under ‘Fool’…”

Kingdom of Fools

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previous versions
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Tuesday, February 28, 2006

lyrics
Kingdom of Fools
Ain’t no such thing
as too high to fall
aint no place so low
you can’t get there
if you crawl

Ain’t no bro’
so close you can’t play him down
’cause in the kingdom of Fools
only one can wear the crown

Ain’t no truth so pure
you can’t turn it to a lie
ain’t no love so deep
you can’t drain it ’til it’s dry

ain’t no flower so pretty
you can’t crush it to the ground
in the Kingdom of Fools
only one can wear the crown

Ain’t no lie
that can ever make you see the truth
and your whole life ’til now
is just so much living proof

Ain’t no one but you
can keep you from where you’re bound
‘Cause in the Kingdom of Fools
Only one can wear the crown

(C)2007, TK Major

__________

No Fool

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previous versions
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Friday, February 24, 2006
Friday, January 26, 2007

lyrics
No Fool

Sitting all alone
by my telephone
Waited all day
but that’s okay
I could wait all night
and that would be all right
for a woman like you
I would wait all my life

Sometimes I pull myself together
and I go downtown
I’m all dressed up
and I wander around
and I feel like a fool
I can’t stop thinking of you
When you’re all alone
this city’s so cruel

I walk along the river
until the stars come out
I sit by myself alone in the dark
and I wonder
Oh yes I wonder
I’m just like a child
but I am no fool
I know it’s over

(C)1980, TK Major

(C)2007, TK Major

__________

I Should Stop Being Such a Fool

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previous versions
Friday, October 13, 2006
Friday, January 26, 2007

lyrics
I Should Stop Being Such a Fool

I told my self
Life has no meaning
I told myself
I should stop dreaming
I told myself
I should stop being such a fool

I told myself
love’s just a lie
I told myself
I should get wise
I told myself
being kind is just being cruel

Lookin in my heart
was like lookin’ in a well
and if there was a bottom
you couldn’t really tell
as dark as midnight
all the way down to hell
one day I looked in
and then I just fell

Then I looked in my soul
and I saw that it was empty
and I said to myself
just like the rest of them
and i said out loud
from here on
it’s all ’bout number one

But I added that up
and I factored in forever
I subtracted my dreams then
divided that by never
When I saw the bottom line
I sat down — I knew that
I was done

Lookin in my heart…

Back then I told my self
Life has no meaning
And I told myself
I should stop dreaming
Then I told myself
I should stop being such a fool

But then I thought to myself
what’s it all for?
and I thought to myself
must be something more
and I realized all at once
there’s more than one kind of fool

(C) 2006, TK Major
(C)2007, TK Major

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