Category Archives: commentary

Your Eyes Have It Tonight

Frankly I’m hoping y’all are pretty much hung over, preoccupied, or otherwise semi-oblivious and I can sneak this attempted song past without too much fuss.

The lyrics to this song have as much intellectual depth as the protagonist — a petty con man trying to take advantage of a gullible woman — has moral depth.

What, you might ask yourself, does a self-respecting songwriter do when he finds that the nasty little bit of nonsense he hoped he could turn into something of redeeming lyrical value ends up being a nasty song-length bit of nonsense?

Well, I can’t answer for self-respecting songwriters, but I usually find myself hoping for a Killer Riff… which, all too often — as here — never comes.

Your Eyes Have It Tonight

I never felt like this ever before
well maybe just once or twice
I guess that it’s Love I can alaways tell
the answer is always in the eyes

Your eyes have it tonight
they glow like the stars above
your eyes have it tonight
Tonight I guess we’re in Love

I been around the world five or six times
I never saw nothing like you
All those places all those faces
It took all this time to get to you

Your eyes have it tonight…

I just got back from the Orient
I was doin a job for some friends
my letter of credit’s hung up — I aint got no dough
but at least in you, I got a freind

Your eyes have it tonight…

Let me stay with you for a couple of days
I swear I won’t get in the way
I got some business — collect on a couple of debts
and then I’ll be on my way

Your eyes have it tonight
they glow like the stars above
your eyes have it tonight
Tonight I guess we’re in Love

9 August 1987
(C)1987, TK MAJOR

13th Bar Blues

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13th Bar Blues

Okay… we’re in a groove. Sin, dissolution, degradation. We’re starting the year off right.

I try to present the lighter side of drunken depravity here, though, with a jauntily sloppy blues. (I realize the description of an AYoS song as “sloppy” is an exercise in redundancy — but I couldn’t figure any other way to get ‘jaunty’ in there.)

Me, I was a happy drunk. And a very, very lucky one. Of course, when I was coming up, there was a lot more tolerance of drunks. It scared me a bit, even then — or it should have. I’d snuck under the radar so much and had so many lucky breaks that I could feel it in my gut that I didn’t have any more coming. For awhile I drank at home. But for someone used to being out and carousing 6 nights out of 7, my dull groove of beer and television just provoked more drinking. One night about 11:25, watching a Cheers rerun and opening my twelfth beer that day, I bottomed out. I wasn’t particularly drunk. I was just tired. Tired of drinking. (And tired of Cheers reruns. My gosh.)

Thirteenth Bar Blues

It was the thirteenth day
of the thirteenth month
The clock on the wall
struck 13 o’clock
It was the thirteenth bar
on the thirteenth block
I had me twelve beers
and ordered one more for luck

13th bar blues…

Thirteen nightsticks
and thirteen cops
thirteen minutes
of gettin’ beat up
13 bones broke
in 13 ways
the judge said
Son, I’ll give you 13 hundred Dollars
or 13 days…

13th bar blues…

Sept 1, 1991
(C) 1991 TK MAJOR

Just Like a China Doll

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Just Like a China Doll

There’s always one guy who holds out… who thinks he’s too smart to fall for the latest girl or the latest drug. He laughs at all his friends when they make fools of themselves — or worse — and he swears it will never happen to him.

But whether it’s for a bottle blonde with a dangerous aggenda or a pipe full of something really wrong — this guy may be the last to fall but he’s going to fall and he’s going to fall the farthest.

I took the idea for the chorus from the street term, doll eyes, the dull, lifeless eyes of someone under a big load of sleepytime drugs like heroin or barbiturates.

Just Like a China Doll

She’s got eyes
just like a china doll
They look painted on
and yet they’ve seen it all

All around Long Beach
and all the way to LA
the shattered lives are scattered
the hearts are spiked up on staves
— From the Ocean to the mountains
from the birthplace to the grave
Once you behold her
nothing will ever be the same

She’s got eyes
just like a china doll
They look painted on
and yet they’ve seen it all

Everywhere you go
everythings about the same
they wander around dazed
just barely whispering her name
— They walk in front of buses
they throw themselves under trains
but the sick smile on their faces
show those sorry saps are still glad she came

[bridge]
well I looked into her eyes
and I saw my life flash by
Now I wake up screaming
every night dreaming doll’s eyes

I looked into the void
and I saw myself fall in
i see it every time
i see it in her eyes
t’s always been

Here I stand the last man to fall
under her spell
a moment close to heaven
an ice age on the cold side of hell
and how can I face F# ~ E ~ / Bm D A E
the other lost souls I find
When I laughed at all of them and then now
here am I the last in line

She’s got eyes
just like a china doll
They look painted on
and yet they’ve seen it all

The Triple Zip Flip

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The Triple Zip Flip

In 1996, for a few moments, I envisioned myself making a cottage industry of millennium-themed songs, of which this would be only the first.

It was, perhaps happily, the only.

Still, I did record a kind of techno house version of this song in my little project studio back in 1999, and posted it on the old Mp3.com… it was one of my least popular tracks, ever. I gave up trying to flog it. It whimpered through the fall of 1999 with a few plays and downloads a day, while other songs got scores and occasionally hundreds. (I tried for 10 seconds to revive it in December, 2000, the true millennium eve, but I knew it was futile.)

But… look… here it is, again, America and The World.

I figure, even though the millennium was pretty much a bust, vis a vis buildup, eventually there’s going to be a millennium nostalgia craze. I’m going to be there.

By the way, this special 2005 Edition of the Triple Zip Flip includes the seldom heard “lost last verse” which was really the song’s punchline — but which I cut, anyway, for reasons which may prove obvious.

Happy New Year!

acoustic version

‘studio version’

The Triple Zip Flip

Some people say its the end of the world
I say “C’mon all you boys and grab a girl”
Some people tell you it’s the end of time
I say “all the more reason to get off the dime”

It’s been a long long journey
hope you liked the trip
c’mon everybody
do the Triple Zip Flip

Maybe there’ll be famine, maybe flood
for sure there’ll be suffering and rivers of blood
but that’s just one more year like all the rest
another year older and closer to death

It’s been a long long journey…

The mighty shall tremble
the wicked shall fall
about the same time the good folks
learn how not to crawl

judgement will come
judgement is due
let’s just hope they don’t
judge — me and you

It’s been a long long journey…

its just like the prophet said long ago
first there is Knowledge then the neighborhood goes
one little taste it all gets way out of hand
write a few lines of code make a world out of sand

they say Information just wants to be free
so far it’s been trapped inside of you and me
but I hear that Info has got a new plan
go live in cyberspace and make a monkey out of man

It’s been a long long journey
hope you liked the trip
c’mon everybody
do the Triple Zip Flip