Category Archives: acoustic

Baby was a pistol way too hot to hold…

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Baby Was a Friend of Mine

He sat there.

The phone was still in his hand. Finally he put the handset in the cradle.

Outside, the sun was so bright it seemed to bleach the color out of the street.

The view in front of him, his feet, the carpet under them, a loop of telephone cable, flattened out until it was just an abstract pattern.

The past seemed to exist all at once, the future not at all; it was unimaginable, a big hole in the middle of it where she would have been — a black hole that sucked all possible futures into nothingness.

Except he was still here.

Seconds ticked into minutes and then into hours. As the room settled into deeper and deeper shadow, he finally tried to stir himself.

It was easier to just sit there. If he sat there long enough, he thought, maybe he would just go to sleep. And, in the morning, he would wake to find her still there, that it was all a dream, a strange hallucination — or he would wake with the realization that, this time, she was gone forever…

previous versions
Friday, November 18, 2005
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Wednesday, July 26, 2006

lyrics
Baby Was a Friend of Mine

the first time I saw her
I knew it was too late
a shadow fell across my soul
I asked her for a date

Baby was a pistol
way too hot to hold
baby was a big mistake
some things you cant be told

but baby
was a friend of mine
baby was a friend of mine
she couldn’t keep from cheating
she never did stop lying
but baby was a friend of mine

Now, Baby drove me crazy
for almost seven years
then she drove away one day
with a repo-man from Sears

I found her in a Motel Six
out in San Berdoo
she was watching Lucy re-runs
and sniffing airplane glue

but baby
was a friend of mine…

Now the last time I saw her
she said that it was fate
I thought for sure you’d save me
(she) said as she turned away

I thought i saw a tear
slide across her face
I thought I saw forever
just as it slipped away

but baby
was a friend of mine
baby was a friend of mine
she couldn’t keep from cheating
she never did stop lying
but baby was a friend of mine

(C)1992, TK Major

(C)2008, TK Major

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The water’s cold, the moon is pale…

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Forget Her Eyes

There had been a lot of women. At least by the standards of happy, well-adjusted people. That’s how he figured it these days.

But for a long time, he’d been proud on some level he knew to be infantile, silly, superficial, tawdry… but proud, nonetheless.

He’d lost track but one day an old pal challenged him to count them up.

There were more than he remembered, and he felt a secret thrill as he tallied them up… but as the scribbled list grew, there were more and more question marks for last names, and more than a few forgotten first names, as well.

And as the list grew, so too did his increasing sense that there was something ultimately pathetic about the list. There were a lot of flings, of course, a handful of one night stands, a little cheatin’, a little slippin’ around…
But there were some relationships he really tried at… or at least that’s what he’d told himself at the time. But every time a love affair or relationship went down in flames, he consoled himself with the promise of adventure and new romance.

And after a while he began to wonder if maybe it wasn’t just adventure and romance that he was seeking. Maybe the hard work of building a relationship — as more than a couple of girls had phrased it — maybe that was just too much work.

Adventure, romance, sex… that was the easy part...

previous versions
Monday, November 21, 2005
Tuesday, March 14, 2006

lyrics
Forget Her Eyes
[aka Swim or Die]

forget her eyes forget her voice
forget her soft caress
she’s just some phony made up girl
up inside your lonely head

forget the night that could have been
the time that never was
forget the dreams that turned to lies
then crumbled into dust

swim or die
it’s understood
I know just what to do
swim or die
it sounds- so – good
if I could only move

the waters cold
the moon is pale
the lights sparkle on the pier
the musics faint & far away
the ocean’s like a mirror

I see myself for what I am
it all becomes so clear
just a wave upon the sea
and this ocean’s just a tear

swim or die
it’s understood
I know just what to do
swim or die
it sounds- so – good
if I could only move

(C)1996, 2008, TK Major

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Scared of livin’, tired of dyin’

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When Baby Can't Go On

The little house was boarded up.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see. It was summer now and hotter than you’d expect but it had been the end of winter then. Spring had been so close. You couldn’t feel it. But you could see it on the calendar.

A week before it happened, he’d been out to see her.

They sat in her little parlor.

An antique painting of a frozen lake hung over a low fire in a stone fireplace, but her gaze was on the icey lake twenty or thirty yards beyond the unfogged glass of the parlor window.

Neither of them said anything for a half hour. He looked in her eyes for a few seconds. It seemed like the first time in the whole visit. He hugged her tentatively as he got up to leave, feeling uncomfortable yet really wanting to hang on to her, try to pull her into the room with him. But he let her go with what he meant to be a jaunty sort of wave and she smiled a little and, for just a moment, really a tiny sliver of time, her blue eyes came alive and he knew they were there, together, maybe just for that instant.

She walked out onto the porch with him. The air was cold and wet, the sky an undifferentiated gray. She smiled again, but her gaze was over his shoulder.

Thinking about how they’d walked, drunkenly, one clear mid-winter night years before onto the ice, he’d said, “Looks like spring is right around the corner. Don’t you be going out for a walk on that ice. I don’t want to get some telegram when I get back to the city.”

Now, in the summer, he stood on the porch. The only thing that could possibly be bluer than the lake was the sky. Scrub birds chirped busily in the brush and a woodpecker hammered at a distant tree.

He stood, looking out across the lake for a very long time.

This version of this song’s a bit shaky, even by AYoS standards (I have a preset macro for pasting the phrase even by AYoS standards into my blog entries, by the way) but it reflects the restless evolution of this song as it struggles toward self-actualization.

previous versions
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006

lyrics
When Baby Can’t Go On

When Baby can’t go on
she wont wonder why
you open up the bottle
and go home when its dry
when the darkeness hits the dawn
and the ocean meets the sky
there’s never in her “always”
and forever in her “goodbye”

baby lived forever
for almost thirty years
then she sailed away one day
on a ship of frozen tears

baby had a house those days
way up the shore
we all knew that she was hiding
but we never knew what for

baby lived forever…

the last time i saw her
i knew it was her time
there was sadness in her laughter
and a long-way-off in her eyes

baby lived forever
for almost thirty years
then she sailed away one day
on a ship of frozen tears

1998-08-06
(C)2008, TK Major

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