Category Archives: microprose

Two fools for the price of one…

Two Fools

Fool.

Terminator menu system-like, I see a short list of possible angles and ledes…

1) Since the beginning of time, the fool has symbolized man’s ambivalence about the relationship between knowledge, wisdom, and grace…

2) The idiot. The savant. Are they not two sides of the same illusory coin of enlightenment…?

3) In the medieval courts, who better than the sovereign’s own chosen fool to plumb the inner machinations of that court or even to orchestrate those intrigues…

I dunno.

Here are two songs that both have the word fool in the title.

The first is something of an oldie, going back to the early 80s but here rearranged somewhat, different chords, a slightly darker feel.

The second is, even by the rough standards of AYoS, pretty sloppy. Intentionally sloppy — but that’s like intentionally ugly in a painting: you have to be an artist to make it work. Here, we just have sloppiness. Still, there’s a cheery, who gives a good goshdarn exuberance to it that matches the relatively optimistic lyrics.

Relatively optimistic, that is, for this writer. I still manage to get in a line about falling down the well of one’s own soul, bottomless, hell, yadda yadda. So, anyhow…

4) None of the above.

No Fool

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous versions
9 November 2005
19 February 2006

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

I Should Stop Being Such a Fool

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous AYoS version
Friday, October 13, 2006

I Should Stop Being Such a Fool

I told my self
Life has no meaning
I told myself
I should stop dreaming
I told myself
I should stop being such a fool

I told myself
love’s just a lie
I told myself
I should get wise
I told myself
being kind is just being cruel

Lookin in my heart
was like lookin’ in a well
and if there was a bottom
you couldn’t really tell
as dark as midnight
all the way down to hell
one day I looked in
and then I just fell

Then I looked in my soul
and I saw that it was empty
and I said to myself
just like the rest of them
and i said out loud
from here on
it’s all ’bout number one

But I added that up
and I factored in forever
I subtracted my dreams then
divided that by never
When I saw the bottom line
I sat down — I knew that
I was done

Lookin in my heart…

Back then I told my self
Life has no meaning
And I told myself
I should stop dreaming
Then I told myself
I should stop being such a fool

But then I thought to myself
what’s it all for?
and I thought to myself
must be something more
and I realized all at once
there’s more than one kind of fool

Coming to your hometown before too long…

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Have you embraced the Beast?

He never thought he’d be glad to see tanks rolling down Main Street.

But after masked gunmen with machine guns and grenades killed the mayor and half the city council, he decided maybe martial law wasn’t so bad.

The regional authority said it was the foreign fighters but the rumor spread quickly through town that the gunmen spoke only awkward, oddly accented pidgin Spanish among themselves and several times lapsed into what sounded like American English, recognizable even in the chaos of death and destruction.

But there was no knowing. The police had mostly either been killed or had deserted.

When the tanks rolled into town, it was a relief — even if a lot of folks suspected it was the regional authority behind the attacks, anyway.

Six months later and the regional authority had been commandeering private homes to bivouac troops — or extracting exorbitant “resettlement avoidance fees” from those who could come up with the money. The schools hadn’t opened in five months. There was only electricity 4 hours a day most days.

Since the water plant had been bombed, citizens were dependent on regional authority water trucks — and if you wanted to make sure your four hour wait for water was fruitful, you had to cough up bribes to assure yourself a place in the front of the queue.

Bribes were the rule. And when there was no money or no electronics or no furniture, then people sold what they could; it was a desperate, clawing marketplace of desperation and doomsday carnality.

He found himself obsessing these days on how it all started. Sometimes it felt like it must have been this way for generations — but he remembered the crisp winter day little more than a decade earlier, the abortion of an election and the installation of the loser as president.

He hadn’t thought it was such a big deal at the time — after all, he’d voted for the appointed president along with something considerably less than half the voters. Still, it was close, he had told himself. Someone had to do something.

But , now, every time he traced it all back… that’s where everything seemed to start — like the first mortal error, the first offense against the gods in some epic tragedy.

___________________

Not, you know, to put too fine a point on it (or perhaps too ham-fisted a fist)… but this song below is dedicated to the appointed president — who I –unlike the protagonist in the vignette above, did not vote for:

Internet Archive page for this recording

December 13, 2005 version
February 15, 2006 version

Have You Embraced the Beast?

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul on (for) the finer things?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They’ll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?

All these toys — all these games…

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When Ashley Said Good-bye

He remembered thinking, “Oh, god, now she’s in love.”

There he was, just crawling out of one bed and now, here he was, with this new girl, spent, lying easily across him, propped up on an elbow tucked between his arm and his ribs, a goofy smile on her lips and a faraway look in her eyes. He thought at the time that they must look like a European coffee advert.

He had thought he was going to give himself some time, some emotional space. But before he knew it she was watching TV at his house four nights a week and cooking him breakfast.

She was warm and comfortable and and one day, just as he found himself getting used to it and liking it — she was gone.

There was no talking to her. There was no asking why. Did he do something? Not really. Was there someone new? Not anyone who means anything.

Was there any chance? No.

He couldn’t believe he asked.

Before her, he wouldn’t have.

He mooned around for days, then weeks. His buddies tried to get him to go out but he sat in the long summer evenings, watching the sky darken through his open window, as the shadows drew the room into darkness and an open bottle of whisky kept an even inch in the bottom of a tumbler by the couch.

He studied the indigo sky over the tops of his bare feet and tried to think about nothing.

It was getting easier everyday.

Internet Archive page for this recording
16 May 2006 version
29 September 2005 version

When Ashley Said Goodbye

Amber said hello when Ashley said good-bye
I said hold on but there’s no wondering why
when love wants in, love can knock down yer door

I said Amber, I think this is forever
she said baby you’re yanking on my tether
when all is said and done love will even up the score

Love will fool ya — love can kill ya
Love is all that love can give ya
and still you keep coming back for more

Love is funny — love is cruel
Love’ll make Einstein act just like a fool
Love’ll make a tomcat dive in-a swimin pool

All these toys all these games
all these pretty dollhouses going up in flames
if you play around enough you know you’re gonna get burned

Love will fool ya — love can kill ya
Love is all that love can give ya
and still you keep coming back for more

This Christmas is different…

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This Christmas is going to be different...

Christmas 1983 was stormy and wet. One storm would blow out and another would be on its heels. The occasional shaft of sunlight poking through the clouds seemed like a miraculous reassurance.

It was wet and I was soggy most of the time. In those days I had to use a cane because of complications subsequent to a very nasty motorcycle wreck. Walking, even standing, was often painful, especially in the rain — but I was in school and working on a handful of school and realworld recording projects for other people. And I was young and determined to make the most of my forced time outside the 9-to-5 grind. (I don’t mean to make that sound heroic in the slightest… except that I look back on that era and think, Damn, where’s that guy now that I need him?)

I was between entanglements… uh, I mean I wasn’t involved in a deep interpersonal relationship that Christmas. And Christmas wasn’t my best time of year in the best of years.

So, I was bracing myself, with this song, for some proper yuletide melancholy and writing myself a pseudo-ritualized gameplan for dealing with the day. Like the lonely spinster secretary with her carefully planned holiday dinners for one, I knew avoiding unexpected decisions, second thoughts, or anything but carefully channeled contemplation was a risk not worth taking.

Now… in one of my few nods to preparation or research for my AYoS posts, I looked at last year’s post that accompanied the then-new acoustic version of this song. And — while I know it will only add to snowballing ambiguity regarding my credibility and the literal truthfulness of my scriblings — I have to say that I do not now remember Christmas 1983 as I described it. I was drinking brandy in my coffee and I did put the Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” on my stereo (as well as Brian Eno). I think I simply wasn’t prepared, last year, to admit that I would purposefully — if lightheartedly — live out the scenario I’d just written.

Ah, but that was then. I’m so much younger than that now.
Merry Christmas!
This is my new kitty, Sophie. She’s not mad; her ears just do that.

Happy holidays to you all!

This Christmas
(original Avant-Garage Holiday Songwriting Festival version, 1983)

Special note: you may need to use your tone/EQ controls on your media player to tame some high frequency nastiness in this nearly quarter century old 4 track recording.

Internet Archive page for this recording
December 20, 2005 version

This Christmas (Is Going to Be Different)

by TK Major

There’s rain in the streets, rain in the gutters of this city
Seems like it always rains at Christmastime here
There’s rain in my heart, rain in my shoes and in my soul of souls
and if they have rain in heaven you can bet its raining up there

Now Santa Klaus is all around just like big brother
His twinkling eyes follow you wherever you go
People spending money buying fancy toys for themselves
Then give them to the kids and wonder why they feel so old

Ah, but this Christmas is going to be different
I’m going to have a happy holiday
This Christmas is going to be different
Cause I don’t think I can take another blue Christmas day

Christmastime Nineteen Hundred 81
Driving up the coast with the wife in our beat up SAAB
It was raining all the way, we fought all the time, it was our last chance
we headed for ‘Frisco, we made it to Reno, it was that kind of trip

The earth drifts from the sun, the days get cold, it’s Christmas
if you’re with someone you’re warm, but alone is alone, on Christmas
The nights are long, more time for dreaming on Christmas
But when you wake up you find its all just a dream on Christmas

Ah, but this Christmas is going to be different …

Sitting round the fire, watching the rain on Christmas
i got some brandy in my coffee, trying to crank up some cheer
I got the Pistols on the box, god save the queen, je suis l’anarchie
Well I’m trying real hard to make it turn out okay this year.

Ah, but this Christmas is going to be different
I’m going to have a happy holiday
This Christmas is going to be different
Cause I don’t think I can take another blue Christmas day