Category Archives: acoustic

Devil’s Quicksand

Devil's Quicksand

Like anyone else who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, I saw my share of absurd and usually absurdly funny anti-drug movies and slide shows — as well as one jaw dropping “seniors only drug rap” at my high school hosted by a narcotics squad officer in his late 20s.

The officer was “really popular with the kids” according to the school official who introduced him.

Maybe it should have raised an eyebrow when Office Kool (we’ll call him) told the assembled seniors that when he tried marijuana “under a doctor’s supervision” it “scared him to death” because it was like “a thirty minute orgasm.” (I later read that this was a regular feature of his anti-drug speils as he toured area schools.)

Officer Kool was, a year or two later, himself arrested for taking indecent liberties with underage Explorer Scouts in his charge (aged 15 and 17, if I recall). He copped a plea and fell off my radar.

A number of years later, 6 of the 7 school board members running the district during that period were also indicted for a number of crimes ranging from embezzling and kickbacks to theft of district property and supplies.

But the good people of Orange, California, seemingly never learn. Only a few years ago the then-current school board was in the national news again, this time for canceling all afterschool activities and clubs in order to avoid allowing a student club called the “Gay-Straight Student Alliance,” which had been immediately banned but had prevailed in local courts. Rather than follow the court order and allow the club, the school board, dominated by, ahem, social conservatives, simply ceased all afterschool clubs and activities.

After they were turned out, local, er, social conservatives banded together to back a single candidate, hoping that by focusing all their promotional and organizational efforts all on one man, they could elect him.

And elect him, they did.

Unfortunately, they apparently didn’t do much homework on their man, who gives every indication of being very seriously mentally disturbed. He has accused local government and business leaders of trying to silence him; his allegations have included court papers accusing the management of a regional supermarket chain of trying to kill him.

Anyway, I go on at length to show you the cultural milieu (to stretch a phrase) I grew up in — and how easy it was to assume that every warning coming out of the mouths of the buffoons in charge was either the product of ignorance or delusion — or an outright lie.

When they were promoting marijuana by attempting to warn young people away from it, the harm was limited (if even measurable).

But when they got to the the part of their woefully laughable act that focused on heroin and cocaine… that’s where the damage really took hold. Because they’d already wasted all the good scare tactics on marijuana — there was nowhere left to go but “… and heroin’s even worse.”

I was lucky, in that in addition to being a voracious reader as a kid and reading first hand accounts of addiction from believable sources (Bill Burroughs comes to mind), my quest for the wink-and-nod contraban of alcohol* brought me into contact with decidedly unglamorous young junkies. I remember cleaning up drool in the back of my car after several liquor store runs with my buddy’s sister’s brother-in-law’s junkie cousin and his little brother, a 14 year old junkie. It stuck in my mind and always resurfaced when I found myself in a nihilistic and willful mood…

(* In those days, adults were usually glad to find out a kid drank, because a lot of hippies eschewed alcohol, and the adults apparently assumed drinking meant the kid didn’t smoke pot or use other drugs. Adults really were not street-smart back then. My generation brought that gritty knowledge to your popular culture, America. Think about that when you’re coming to visit us in the rest home.)

All that brings me to this disclaimer about today’s song: This is the kind of goofy, over-the top preachment that your hip uncle warned you about. It’s ripe with lurid exaggeration — or what would seem like it.

But — the thing is, kids — some of this shit is real. Worse than killing you, it can make you wish you’d never been born.

I’ve lost family and friends to drugs — the most recent was just a few months ago, a friend who had been sober for the better part a decade. 11 years ago, his example beating crack addiction had given me the courage to quit drinking.

But he started using again, on and off. It looked like ‘drug shame’ kept him away from some of his oldest friends at a time when maybe he really did need a friend. He was a very smart, savvy, and strong person. But he wasn’t strong enough to take that last load of junk.

So, laugh with me through this song — I was laughing out loud at some of the stupid stuff I pull in this song (I stepped out of my de facto format a little, here, and instead of adding a second guitar, added two back up vocal tracks that included a fair bit of ad libbed nonsense) — but while you follow our hapless hero on his hellbound descent, remember, it really could happen to you.

The Devil’s Quicksand

It’s your second chance for the very last time
with your head in your hands and your future behind
grab your life pull as hard as you can
cause your up to your neck in the devil’s quicksand

if she told you once it was good advice
but a thousand times now that’s just a slice
of some other reality you’d prefer to ignore
it’s just that easy you shut the door

on the love she gave it was just too good
and you always hated how she understood
and you walked away and you felt so free
in the park that day spinning under the trees

but now its cold and the darkness comes
and the drugs wear off and your chums are scum
and the cyst on your arm is turning green
and the one-eyeds guys sez it’s the worst he’s seen

so you drag your ass to the ER room
and you wait 12 hours while the TV booms
and the little kids and the sobbing man
and the angel of death is right at hand

you just cant wait and you run outside
in the streetlight night you stop and cry
“is this their pain–or is it mine?”
you ask yourself but you knew all the time

it’s your second chance for the very last time
with your head in your hands and your future behind
grab your life pull as hard as you can
cause your up to your neck in the devil’s quicksand

twenty cents is all it takes
but ya drop the dimes cause ya got the shakes
ya try again an ya get ’em in
but the the phone just rings and your gut caves in

your knees give out ya hit the ground
people walking by just step around
ya see the sky you see the rain
ya see your ashes in a bag in a paupers grave

but the phones in your hand and your hanging on
and just before the dark her voice comes on
and ya tell her “baby just one last time”
she doesn’t say nothing you hear her crying

her sobbing lasts for such a long time
you almost forget why you’re on the line
then it comes back like a drano slam
you got one last chance slip this jam

“come on baby i’m on the bricks”
you can almost hear her kitchen clock tick
“I ain’t done nothin’ in 36 hours
and I need a place to take a shower”

and then it comes and you know you’re dead
her hollow laugh fills up your head
she drops the phone and it hits the floor
you hear her walk away and laugh some more

it’s your second chance for the very last time
with your head in your hands and your future behind
grab your life pull as hard as you can
cause your up to your neck in the devil’s quicksand

[A special note on the length of today’s post: Please… next holiday season… no coffee shop gift cards.]

Let’s Not Talk About Girls

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Let's Not Talk About Girls

This was written during a break at a practice session for my old band Machine Dog in 1980.

We were just sitting down, no doubt opening up beers, in the back of the furniture store we practiced in. It was a long night — we had a bunch of new songs to learn and were getting ready to play a party, which would be our first time in public.

It was after the third practice set and we were feeling a little spun, I think.

Our 19 year old drummer had a a loud kit and was a hard hitter, so we all played loud. When you’re playing like that, and you stop, there’s a strange kind of silence.

On one hand it feels so good you don’t want to break it — but the sudden quiet produces a kind of tension, too — and makes the ringing in your ears that much louder.

Finally someone said, “What should we talk about?”

Our lead guitarist, Rick, who had a new GF (now wife — they’re still married folks! Where’s that bug-eyed emoticon when you need it?) said, “Let’s talk about girls.” (Which is the title of an old Chocolate Watchband song, I think.)

Knowing my role in the band (as in life, it would seem), I blurted: “Let’s not talk about girls.”

Someone said, “There’s a song there.”

I grabbed my notebook and got busy.

The original was nearly three times as long and had an elaborate call and response form that I must have been intentionally trying to make annoying.*

[* Someplace in the late ’80s I recorded a version of “Let’s Not Talk About Girls” on my old 4 track that cut around half the song’s 8 or 10 stanzas (as it had been originally written). This time, I changed the verses around and got rid of one more stanza I thought was superfluous and kind of distracting. And you thought these things started with just two verses and a chorus, huh?]

Machine Dog was a punk/new music band, to be certain, but we’d joked so often about putting together a side project to only play flower power hippy love-in music (which drove the drummer, a metal-punk, crazy) that we’d actually come up with a few songs in that style — this was a natural.

Rick the lead guitarist would bring flutes he’d made out of PVC pipe and play them into the PA with the reverb turned up all the way. He loved to ‘overblow’ (that mid-70s flute-freakout technique).

I’d typically string together a bunch of intentionally trite major 7th progressions on a guitar, James, the other primary singer-writer, would often play some bongos or another guitar, sometimes joined by the drummer, if he hadn’t stormed out to chain smoke out on the sidewalk.

Someplace in this sorry old world (maybe in my own garage), I hope there are still a few tapes with some of the hippy noodles we did while we were on the break timer. (No, I can’t remember if we had a break timer or not. Maybe one night. Everyone did have jobs. Strike that. Everyone over the age of 19 had a job. But our practices seemed to be sprawling, semi-social events, nonetheless. And the furniture store was our secret clubhouse.)

I remember one improvisation that ended up labeled “She Was a Flower Girl” (or something to that effect — not the Cowsills song)…

It started with fingerpicked, reverby Stratocaster and Rick’s lilting flute; a couple of us began improvising some appropriately sappy lyrical content, flower girl, sunny day, love, peace… and then someone picked up another guitar that had a fuzz pedal plugged in and punched on and someone started pounding a tribal rhythm on something and someone started screaming about the Manson family and… it was Machine Dog again.

Let’s Not Talk About Girls

let’s not talk about lonely nights
or waiting for her to come home
we all know what it’s like
don’t think that your’e all alone

let’s not talk about girls
let’s not talk about broken hearts
let’s not talk about love and
how love can tear you apart

let’s not talk about togetherness
hearth home or family
let’s not talk about how it all falls apart
for all the world to see

let’s not talk about girls
let’s not talk about broken hearts
let’s not talk about love and
how love can tear you apart

They Own the Judges

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They Own the Judges

Like several other early works from my ‘suitcase of songs’ this song bears sign of neither my discerning and subtle sociopolitical analysis — nor my often arch sense of humor. Making it, more or less, a screed. A rant. Not even a proper diatribe.

Back in ’75 or ’76 when I wrote this, I knew it wasn’t exactly a sophisticated, subtle rendering. It was not long after Gerald Ford took over the presidency from the disgraced Richard Nixon, immediately granting Nixon a pardon for any crimes he might have committed, no matter how grievous, even though Nixon hadn’t even been formally charged with any of the numerous violations of law that forced his resignation. Clearly, the fix was in, and the “loyal opposition” was busy toadying up to the powers that so evidently still were.

Now, I really was a political (and economic) naif back then — and was held that way, in part, by my own cynicism.

Today, as a businessman and longtime politics junky (other folks watch football), I have a considerably deeper understanding of how things really work. It has made me — in some ways — a bit more hopeful, and considerably more practical.

And the way I see it, I should end up more or less in the political center, on average.

I’m a firm believer in small government, fiscal responsibility, environmental responsibility, free, fair markets, clean government, and a strong and effective defense. Defense, mind you… I’ve always thought the US should be working to defend itself rather than embarking on foreign military misadventures in what are usually vainglorious attempts to “extend American power.”

Me, I think “empire” is geopoliticalese for “jumping the shark.”

I would think that those seemingly quite (small-c) conservative values should put me more or less in the center of the political spectrum — yet I find myself, along with a sizable, sometimes near-majority, number of my fellow US Americans, increasingly marginalized by both of the two major parties, whose policies increasingly flaunt the core values of a lot of responsible, thinking US citizens.

Yes, there are alternatives — but they are not moderate alternatives. They are, in some fundamental ways, more extreme. It’s not that I don’t have deep sympathies with, say, the Greens or agreement with a number of Libertarian principles.

But, if the US political system were truly responsive to the will of the governed, a mainstream, middle-of-the-road guy like me ought to find some sort of agreement with one or both of the “mainstream” parties. Instead of finding them to be closet brownshirts and neo-Know Nothings on the one hand and spineless, hypocritical toadies on the other.

You know, not to put too fine a point on my political malaise.

Oh… WTF… let’s dedicate this one to the one person majority on the Supreme Court that aborted the 2000 presidential election.

They Own the Judges

they own the judges
they own the congress
they own the papers
and the magazines

they own the cops
they own the armies and
they think that they own
you and me

they own the doctors
they get rich from our suffering
they own the churches
and the sinners inside

they own the colleges
the print-outs of knowledge
they own and use history
to their own ends

they own the farms
they own the farmers
they own the factories
and the workers lives

they own the gangsters
and they run the wores
they own Vegas
and the gamblers trapped inside

they move in the shadows
of presidents and corporations
the means of production
in a handful of hands

you can’t live without money
they enslave us with wages
they pull the strings
that make you and me dance

Without a Thought of You

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Without a Thought of You

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, now, but I used to run with the art damage crowd.

I wasn’t doing my grocery shopping around gallery opening calendars, like some of my friends whose periodic white wine, cheese and cracker binges showed up like tree rings as striations on unpainted fingernails — but I did my share of gallery crawls and loft parties, nonetheless.

My friends had by and large decided that they were hip and anything they did was, therefore, glamorous — and they were great guides through the urban cultural jungle, pulling me aside to whisper about this artist or that critic lurking in some alcove or doorway or backgrounding me on the current scandals and gossip.

Of course, ultimately, there is the art. But the great thing about a mediocre opening or a show filled with pretentious, metooist claptrap was that it left more time for serious — sometimes vengefully serious — drinking. Show me bad art, will you? Your cheap chablis will feel my wrath, gallery swine!

[And let me here apologize to all you gallery owners I helped run out of business back in the ’80s and early ’90s. Yes. You were right, I was a deadbeat. I never bought a damn thing.]

If you hang out on that scene long enough, sooner or later you’ll see a few earnest, hardworking artists who somehow got swept up in the action. You’d think they’d know better.

One supposes it’s usually the allure of cute or sexy or dramatic girls or young men, timelessly in black, who stare into the artist’s eyes and tell them they’re, you know, deep. No matter how deep you actually are, that stuff can turn you around for a minute or two.

Without a Thought of You

To think that I once
felt sorry for you
it’s all that i can
bring my puny brain to do

you must think me quite naive
and don’t think I ain’t gonna leave
I just want you to know
what you put me through:

I won’t ever have a dream
without knowning it won’t come true
I won’t ever think of lonely
without a thought of you

Fallin’ for you
was a stretch for me
all your arty friends,
important people to bleed

as every artists knows
every show that
opens must close
you can put it in 30 pt type
in my review:

I won’t ever think of lonely
without a thought of you
i won’t ever have a dream
without knowning it won’t come true

I won’t ever think
forever
without knowing it’s
really never

I won’t ever think of lonely
without a thought of you

10-4-95
(C)1995, TK Major

[A note on the photo at the top of this post: Stumped for an image for this song, with about half the post written, I decided to take my tiny digital cam out for a walk. This image came straight out of the camera, with no mods except resizing to fit this space. I’d actually been trying to shoot clouds in the puddle, was settling for palm trees, and didn’t realize my own reflection had snuck into a corner of the snap.]