Author Archives: TK

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

more stream & DL options

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

Share

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

more stream & DL options

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

Share

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

more stream & DL options

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

more stream & DL options

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

more stream & DL options

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

Share

If I sleep I might dream…

Baby, I Just Got the Blues

You could start out drinking in a trucker bar on West Anaheim Street in Long Beach, end up closing a bar in Bakersfield and still find yourself driving back into downtown LA with an hour to spare before dawn…

What to do with your time?

About this version: I’d been meaning to drag my laptop and a mic over to my buddy Kurt’s house for a long time and something like this version of this song would have been a good candidate for a bongo part by the intuitive and adaptive percussionist.

My own sub-beach party overdub on the recording below can only hint at what might have been if I’d just got my ass in gear…

Carpe that diem, baby.

Baby, I Just Got the Blues

more stream & DL options

previous AYoS versions
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Saturday, June 17, 2006

lyrics
Baby, I Just Got the Blues

I drive around all night
looking for nothing to do
I play guitar til dawn
but every song’s about you
if I sleep I might dream
and we all know that dreams don’t come true

Ain’t nothin wrong with me baby
I just got the blues
Ain’t…

walked along the shore
wondering what a smart guy would do
in the Idiot’s Guide to Love
I must be listed in the back under “fool”
sure once I had some answers
now I’d settle for some lies that sound true

Ain’t nothin wrong with me baby
I just got the blues
Ain’t…

It’s easy for you sugar but then
everything’s easy for you
You know what you want
and you know how to make it come true
But, it’s hard for me, doll, to
bid all that we had adieu

Ain’t nothin wrong with me baby
I just got the blues
Ain’t nothin wrong with me baby
I just got the blues

(C)1998 TK Major


[full version on Soundclick | requires Flash]


(C)2007, TK Major

Share