Category Archives: acoustic

Up against the wall…

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10,000 Years[update 2006-11-11 – mp3 content corrected]

“The true revolutionary is guided by love.”
– Che Guevara

Nah… it’s not one of those up-against-the-wall things… but it’s that disconnect between the notorious phrase of itimidation, harrassment, and implicit death threat and a story of timeless, hopeless love that fired up my creative energies… not unlike how a chemical battery generates current, I suppose.

You’ll notice that there’s some real ambiguity in these lyrics. I considered different ways to try to make the song less ambiguous — but each one seemed to diminish the song, rob it of power. So I left the words more or less the way they spilled out.

You’ll have to figure out for yourself what goes on in this song…

Internet Archive page for this recording

studio version [soundclick]
May 26, 2006
October 31, 2005

10,000 years

Up against the wall
the moon was in her eyes
I felt her heart beat
I heard her sigh

I touched her cheek
a tear met my hand
I didn’t know it then
but that tear fell to her plan

10,000 years
is not a day too long
since the world began
I’ve been hangin round here
waiting for you to come along

I have seen that shining light
one too many times
I have heard the angels sing
while I riddled the devil’s rhymes

I have seen your eyes
burn into my soul
I have seen the truth
and I will never again be whole

10,000 years…

I’d do it all again
and still come back for more
I know how it’s all gotta end
but I’ll never know what it’s all for

Until the end of time
there’s not that long to go
I thought I knew heaven’s secrets
what the hell did I know?

10,000 years
is not a day too long
since the world began
I’ve been hangin round here
waiting for you to come along

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This time tomorrow, I reckon where I’ll be…

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Tom Dooley

 

It’s Public Domain Sunday.

I just declared it.

So, today’s entry is the traditional folk classic (or an abbreviated, radically reworked version thereof), “Tom Dooley,” a song of love, betrayal, murder… and possibly deception and cover-up, depending on what back-story you buy into.

This rather irreverent (and remarkably sloppy) version is a veritable simulation of being stuck in a backroom jam session at a party circa 19-something-or-other with me behind the guitar (and me on some rather chaos-driven bongos… obviously, it’s kind of a cubist, asynchronous simulation).

Internet Archive page for this recording

Tom Dooley

(Traditional)

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

I met her on the mountain, there I took her life
Met her on the mountain, stabbed her with my knife

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

This time tomorrow,
reckon where I’ll be
Hadn’t been for Grayson,
I’d-a been in Tennessee

Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Hang down your head and cry ah poor boy, ah well-ah
Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

This time tomorrow,
reckon where I’ll be
Down in some lonesome valley
hangin’ from a white oak tree

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

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The engine of desire…

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If you had a thought in your pretty little head...

Without lust… could there be rock and roll?

It would certainly set sexual procreation back a few squares, anyhow. And that would put a big dent in the evolution of the species… if young girls weren’t attracted to young guys with high tight pompadours… pretty soon back into the primordial slime with the whole ballgame. Er… so to speak.

Anyhow…

So far, A Year of Songs hasn’t produced too many of what you might call “definitive versions” of my tunes but I’m thinking this one is kind of in the running. (Not, mind you, that it is in any way slick or well recorded. In fact, the vocal is about three times too loud. But, hey, it’s close enough for A Year of Songs.) The “studio version” is pretty definitive, too, in its way, a big, roiling techno-swamp-boogie morass… watch out for the alligators.

This version, though, might seem at first blush to be a bit of a tribute to Brit folk master, John Renbourn — though I tremble to mention his name while talking about my modest efforts. Then again, I don’t have 20 fingers and, after listening to Mr Renbourn’s playing for years, I’m convinced he does. (But he did manage to keep the extras hid, somehow, when I saw him a few times at the tiny McCabe’s guitar shop concert room in Santa Monica in the 80s.)

full ‘combo’ version (2000)
Internet Archive page for this recording
previous versions
March 23, 2006
September 27, 2005


Pretty Little Head

baby I’ve been alone for such a long time
these feelings tearin’ me apart
I got pain in my head and a fire in my loins
and a whole lot of empty in my heart

If you had a thought in your pretty little head
Then maybe we could talk
today we’re alive tomorrow we’re dead
so I think right now we’d better rock

I look in your eyes and I wonder what
is going on in your mind
Are you really where you are
or where you’ll be tomorrow night?

your leg touches mine beneath the table
I feel your hand slide up my thigh
I feel kinda dizzy I feel kinda high
I feel like I’m gonna die

If you had a thought in your pretty little head
Then maybe we could talk
today we’re alive tomorrow we’re dead
so I think right now we’d better rock

(C)1989, TK Major

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