Category Archives: acoustic

Baby’s On TV

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Baby's On TV

The rec room curtains drifted in and out of the open window, so slowly as to be all but unnoticeable. A fly droned several times around the room and smacked itself against the smudged and dingey closed half of the window.

He looked at the fly and knew it wanted to die.

The rec room TV was stuck on MTV. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if the sound worked. But one night a few weeks back someone had put a pool cue through the speaker so far it got stuck and stayed there sticking out into the room like a flagmast. But the picture was great and no one had bothered to turn the set off since then.

Now, laid off for at least a week by a downturn at the plant, he was idling away the days nursing beers that soon turned warm and flat, watching Beavis and Butthead reruns, and thinking about what how good he had it before Mavis Jean went off with the talent scout from the spokesmodel try-out fair.

It was looking like it was going to be another hot, smoggy San Bernardino Christmas but the deep greens and bright festive reds on the TV transported him for a few moment s to the fantasy Christmas he’d imagined everyone else enjoyed when he was growing up: a smiling family gathered around a glowing hearth, snowflakes fluttering outside frosty windows.

And as he floated in the sway of the moment, the family holiday was replaced by sleek images from a trendy perfume ad, a stark modern art montage leading up to an oddly familiar, hollow-cheeked, waif-like face filling the screen. And then a series of flash-lit jump cuts to reveal Mavis Jean’s too-skinny body draped in dark pajamas, her blank eyes staring hypnotically into the camera.

Her lips moved a tiny bit. At first he thought she was blowing a kiss to the camera as her level gaze held the camera. Then he realized she must be saying something… and it was hard to tell for sure, but he was convinced he knew what what it was:

Sucker.

Today’s acoustic version:

Full version on Soundcloud

Baby’s On TV

Send for the doctor
send for the priest
The End must be coming
’cause Baby’s On TV
She’s talking with her eyes

She couldn’t hold a job
could hardly spell her name
now she’s lunching at the polo lounge
and wintering in spain
(she’s speaking from her heart)
she’s talking with her eyes

I’d been expecting
to be surprised
but when I saw that advert
the sun fell from the sky
she’s talking with her eyes
saying what a fool I’ve been to never realize

just an average girl next door
without an ounce of style
now she’s a jetset darling
soul-kissing me good-bye
shes talking with her eyes

I met her in a cross-dress bar
down in San Antone
She was draped across some gigolo
and most of her clothes were gone

Her eyes were blue her hair was green
and her legs were impossibly long
but most of all it was her blank-eyed stare
that really turned me on

I knew right then
she was the only one
who would ever break my heart
I took her home and we settled down
in the Camelot Trailer Park

But Fate intervened in the mall that day
at the Spokesmodel Try-Out Fair
they loved her look they loved her legs
they loved here blank-eyed stare

send for a doctor send for the priest
the End must be coming
’cause Baby’s On TV
Shes talking with her eyes

Shes got clothes She’s got cars
she’s seen with politicians
she’s seen with handsome stars
I’m sitting home watching baby on TV

Babys on TV
Babys on TV

she’s talking with her eyes
saying what a fool I’ve been to never realize

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I’m Gonna Write a Soap Opera

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I'm Gonna Write a Soap Opera

 

 

 Why tell your story to the tabloids and settle for a one time payout and a little cheap notoriety?

With a properly jaundiced eye and a flexible sense of ethics, you might just parlay an interesting set of friends into an ongoing paycheck.

I’m Gonna Write a Soap Opera

I’m gonna write a soap opera
you’re gonna be the heroine
I’m gonna show the world just how ya think
I’m gonna write a soap opera
I won’t have to make up a thing
When we get the ratings back
you know I’ll take you out for a drink

I’ll get a famous model
to play your part for you
I was gonna ask you but you’re always busy
We’ll get a famous model
I know she’ll do real good, too
When the plot gets thick
She’ll be skinny enough to wriggle through

I’m gonna sell the rights
everywhere I can
there’ll be games and dolls and underwear
I’m gonna sell the rights
I suggest you buy up while you can
I said I’d make you famous
I think by now you understand

(C)1990, TK Major

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I Called Your Name

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I Called Your Name

The sun poked down through tall pines in a mountain canyon in early fall a long, long time ago.

The air was cool but the sun was warm on his shoulders and back as he squatted on a rock above the little creek watching insects skitter across the surface and small, silvery fish darting in and out of the shadows. A big crawdad waved its arms a bit and crawled under some rocks.

She was a little farther up the creek, her long, freckled legs draped across a sunny rock, her even-more freckled face turned, eyes closed, to the sun.

They’d talked for hours, for days, for years, for centuries, until their thoughts seemed so synchronized that speaking out loud seemed unnecessary. He could close his own eyes and feel the sun on her face as though it was his own, the rock underneath her.

But something was missing.

Some part of him that had always been there was now gone. He couldn’t find it… even though he wasn’t sure quite what it was. But it was gone. He knew that.

As the day began to fade and the canyon chill set in he began making the fire as birds darted from tree to tree or sang their evening songs.

Later they sat wordlessly staring into the fire. He glanced at her face in the flickering light… her face that was so familiar, her face that he’d traced with his fingertips and kissed a thousand times was a mysterious shroud… he could feel her thoughts like a distant storm… but all he knew was… she was going.

I Called Your Name

y’know I called your name
when I was afraid
but you were upstate
and you didn’t come
though I thought you might

there was a time when I’d play any game
just to be alive
there was a time
long enough to wait
time enough to wait
time enough to bring it back
and stash it away

a man thought you were the queen
did not mean a thing
but I thought it did
and if you were the queen
I wondered
and I wondered
how you kept it hid
and how did you steal
that shining light
how did you steal that blinding light
how did you steal that shining light from me
how did you steal that pure white light from me

(C)1972, TK Major

[This is, more or less, the third real song I ever wrote. The second (which won’t be appearing here unless I make an archaelogical dig into the darkest reaches of my garage) was a bit of an epic involving spiritual paralysis, crafted around a central metaphor of the carved ebony icons I saw being sold under the elevated railway near the Gare du Nord in Paris in 1971. I don’t even remember what the first one was about.]

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