Sometimes guys like me get an idea that seems so surpassingly absurd, so enticingly what I believe on the street they call “dumb ass,” that no amount of effort in bringing it to pass seems squandered.
Such was the case the day I decided to write a paean to the sexiest mother on the block, my imaginary best friend Somerset’s mom.
(I’m in Love with) Somerset’s Mom
Ever since Somerset
and me were kids
I’ve been in love
with that mother of his
All thru hi skool
I was burning up
I tried to tell her
but I wasn’t man enuff
I’m in love with somerset’s mom I’m in love with somerset’s mom
went away to college
as far as I could
dated girls my age but
it didn’t do no good
Now I’m back
with a PhD
but I don’t even understand
my own psychology
I’m in love with somerset’s mom I’m in love with somerset’s mom
3 grown kids and a bad divorce
but she still looks fine
now I’m grown myself — I’m back
I’m gonna make her mine make her mine
I’m in love with somerset’s mom I’m in love with somerset’s mom
For a long time now, I’ve had a couple of extended works in mind. One of them I’ve mentioned before: the Codename Baby opera. (I just made that name up, just now. Whaddya think? No, I didn’t think so, either. Still airballin’.) That work, of course, as envisioned, will cannibalize a bunch of my songs featuring the Baby character, drawing a tragic arc through those existing sets of lyrics. (I mean, it’s opera, right? You ever hear of a happy opera? Right.)
Anyhow, while I didn’t have it specifically in mind when I wrote this grim jeremiad, another project bouncing from the back burner to the warming tray and back again has been a novel or other work built around a powerful mega-preacher. I’ve toyed with it as the story of a crisis of faith, a murder mystery, a love story, an end-of-times thriller, a Faustian spinoff… I try to be flexible.
After I wrote this song, I realized it fit the fuzzy extended concept of that project, which eventually became known as the Flood project.
Approach it within whatever context your own mind cares to wrap around it — including that of a plain ol’ mad-as-hell rant against mankind, which, of course, at core, it is. (I get paid by the comma. You knew that, right?)
Time for Another Flood
People think heaven is behind the sky
People thinking crazy things and not thinking why
They think the answer’s going to fall from above
I think the answer is another flood
It’s time, time for another flood It’s time, baby, time for another flood
People live in wickedness and dwell in greed
They’ll murder their brother to get more than they need
They even rape the Mother and swim in her blood
I call on the Father for another flood
It’s time, time for another flood It’s time, baby, time for another flood
All of this truth has all been a lie
Our immortal souls have already died
The time for salvation has come and gone
and all that’s coming now is another flood
It’s time, time for another flood It’s time, baby, time for another flood
Anyhow, this intentionally vague bit of nonsense falls in with the previous AYoS entry, Angel’s Vacation (and even steps off on that post’s graphic) only working the alien side of the equation. If someone wanted to think of those songs (and perhaps others that momentarily escape me) as something of an homage to Nicholas Roeg’s Man Who Fell to Earth, I wouldn’t try to disabuse them of the notion. But they’re not related to the rash of late 80s, early 90s angels movies, none of which I’ve seen.
GOING HOME
Wake up baby turn your light down low…
I want ta see your pretty face
one more time before I go
They’re coming for me in the morning coming to take me home…
When you see that light in the sky
that’s when you know I’m going home
[bridge]
When you see that light in the sky that’s when you know I’m going home…
Don’t try to call me baby
cause they ain’t got no telephone
(C)1991, TK Major
I wrote this riding my motorcycle home one lunch hour in 1980. Compton to the southern tip of Long Beach in 12 minutes. It wasn’t something I did every day but, when you work in a big warehouse in Compton and you ride the bus 3 hours a day when it rains… sometimes it’s almost like magic to be able to see the ocean and make a cheese sandwich in your own kitchen on your lunch hour.
I pulled up in front of the shoebox-sized apartment I had at the time on the Alamitos Peninsula, threw the bike up on the center stand and ran upstairs and grabbed a guitar and my notebook. (That’s notebook, as in spiral-bound… this was 1980.)
Simple chords underlay the melody I’d had in my head… a modified 12 bar blues. There was another verse in between the current second and third, which I eventually dropped.
At the time, I was writing a lot of dark, cynical, and/or just plain depressing songs (imagine, if you will), many of which ended up performed by Machine Dog, the band some friends and I had formed. By contrast, this seemed almost cheerful, with its vaguely reggae feel and sappy, wait-by-the-telephone protagonist.
NO FOOL
Sitting all alone
by my telephone
Waited all day
but that’s okay
I could wait all night
and that would be all right
for a woman like you
I would wait all my life
Sometimes I pull myself together
and I go downtown
I’m all dressed up
and I wander around
and I feel like a fool
I can’t stop thinking of you
When you’re all alone
this city’s so cruel
I walk along the river
until the stars come out
I sit by myself alone in the dark
and I wonder
Oh yes I wonder
I’m just like a child
but I am no fool
I know it’s over
(C)1980, TK Major
