Author Archives: TK

I’m just listening to the plaster crack… [Blue Recollection]

Blue Recollection

I‘m not the first drunk to suggest that he drank not to forget but to not care. I found that the latter state was typically arrived at just before the former.

I also found that, if you were careful, you could get into that state early in the evening and stay in it until, oh, sometime… sometime when it just didn’t matter, anymore.

I found myself stymied by this song over the last few days. I’d recorded a version of it and started to put it up on the web… but as I listened to it, I realized it simply wasn’t up to the high standards of…

OK, no, seriously, even I couldn’t browbeat myself into putting that version up. The next day, as much because I’d written down the song title in a draft of the day’s AYoS blog entry, I found myself both compelled and unable to finish the song. And move on.

But the song defied me. Hell, it laughed in my face. Late each night I tried again to get an acceptable version. It became, you know, a thing.

I finally turned the song inside out and stripped out the familiar blues elements and repetitions.

I suppose I ought to have a periodic disclaimer that stipulates that I’m painfully aware of how far from pitch my singing typically is. I like to think of it as… uh… expressive.

previous:
Saturday, November 05, 2005

BLUE RECOLLECTION

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain’t no more

you’re just a blue recollection
that ain’t nothin’ new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don’t still love you

I wake up at nite
but it ain’t because of you
I’m just listening to the plaster crack
and the clock tick in the next guy’s room

you’re just a blue recollection
that ain’t nothin’ new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don’t still love you

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain’t no more…

Slide Interlude

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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

Tell It to Me Like a Man [Tell It to Me in a Language That I’ll Understand]

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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?

A monopoly on emotion [His or Mine]

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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