Category Archives: debut

Stuff falls between the cracks…

This brief whiff of piffle was actually written back in 2014 while I was participating in an online songwriting forum. Not sure but the exercise might have been to write a song on a specific topic when you felt absolutely no inspiration whatsoever

I Bet the Farm on Loving You

I lost my dog
I lost my cow
I lost my tractor
I lost my plow
I lost my combine
I lost my truck
you took them all
and said good luck

ch
I bet the farm
on loving you
and I lost it all
when the divorce went through

I lost the pride
my pa instilled
I lost the land
my grandpa tilled
I lost the deed
the county gives
I lost the will
the will to live

I’d begin again
but where to start
you took my life
you took my heart
you took my friends
and my pastor, too
I lost it all
by loving you

ch
I bet the farm
on loving you
and I lost it all
by loving you

[these lyrics vary slightly from the attached recording; I guess these above should be considered the finished version, maybe, or not]

Share

Don’t Ask a Fool (Why He Falls in Love)


NEW SONG ALERT!*

 

“In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias, wherein persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority when they mistakenly assess their ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from low-ability persons’ metacognitive inability to recognize their own ineptitude.[1]”  Wikipedia entry on The Dunning-Kruger Effect **

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool”
— William Shakespeare  (As You Like It)

Don’t Ask a Fool (Why He Falls in Love)

Don’t ask the sun
why the sky is blue
Don’t ask the river
where it’s flowing to
Don’t ask the stars
why they shine up above
and don’t ask a fool
why he falls in love

Don’t ask me
why I love you
Don’t ask a slave
what he wants to do
Don’t ask a dead man
what he’s dreaming of
and don’t ask a fool
why he falls in love

Don’t ask tomorrow
when there’s no today
Don’t ask forever
if you’ve gone away
Don’t ask for more
when there’s never enough
Ah — but don’t ask a fool
why he falls in love

(C)2015, 2017, TK Major

* New to A Year of Songs, anyhow. I kept pushing and pulling at it but it kept not changing so here it is. ** Oh, and with regard to the Dunning-Kruger Effect? I already know I can’t sing worth a damn. So just don’t go there, my friend. =D

Share

Scared of the Light [acoustic]

ScaredOfTheLight4

 

A quick rough draft of a song written for the RPM Challenge — on the last day. This is not that version — it was really, really, really bad, we are talking laughably so — but rather  this is an acoustic version I recorded for posting to the Internet Archive (the content home of AYoS). The lyrics are unchanged and the melody, or what passes for it, little so.

Backstory: I jotted down the title for this song while watching the “Swan Song” episode of the old Columbo TV show sometime last year. In it, Johnny Cash plays a gospel singer who is also a murderous sinner. The episode leads off with a rousing ‘live’ version of “I Saw the Light,” his character’s big hit of the moment. Many months later, while I was dragging a song out of a clever potential title on the last day of the RPM Challenge — having completely forgotten the inspiration — I took a break while recording to watch a little TV.

There aren’t a whole lot of the Columbo episodes, which were shot as ‘two hour’ specials for airing a few times a year. I’ve gone through them on Netflix twice now and that day, on the 28th of February, finishing “Scared of the Light,” up came Johnny Cash and I quickly realized that the episode had been the inspiration for the song sometime last year and… well, dang… the circle is unbroken…

Two more versions will follow shortly, each very different. Stay tuned.

Scared of the Light

more download and streaming options at Archive.org

From the very first zero
to the very last one
I can see what has happened
I can see what will come

Like a train in a tunnel
like a mole in a hole
like a bullet in a barrel
I know where to go

From the very first day
to the very last night
I’ve been through the darkness
but I’m scared of the light

From the very first zero
to the very last one
I can see what has happened
and I see what must come

From the very first day
to the very last night
I’ve been through the darkness
but I’m scared of the light

(C)2013, TK Major
Share

Pass the dust, I’m apparently under the gravely mistaken impression I’m Bowie…

Scared of the Light [Electric Version]

 

When he awoke, it was dark. His heart was pounding. He felt as though a giant hand was wrapped around him, squeezing the breath out of his lungs. He must have been dreaming but he remembered nothing. He forced air into his lungs, but his breath felt odd and shallow and each breath seemed to take tremendous effort.He tried to shut out the panic but that seemed to make it more acute. He threw off the covers and turned on the light on the little table next to the bed… but its dim and yellow light seemed, if anything, to make his room just that much more oppressive and claustrophobic.

Steeling his grip on himself, he quickly got out of bed and threw on the clothes he’d been wearing the previous night, a pair of bluejeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Glancing at the clock, he saw the red glow of 4:43 a.m. He pulled on his boots and laced them, grabbed his phone and keys, and walked out into the crisp pre-dawn air.

As he often had decades earlier, running from the all-but-forgotten demons of his youth, he found himself walking toward the ocean through the empty, dark streets.

He walked past the lagoon, the shadowy trees looming above languid, almost black water, along the manicured sands of Mothers’ Beach, finally across the trendy little business strip to the bay. As he walked along the crescent of sand, still moving toward the ocean beyond the little bay, the tiniest sliver of golden sun appeared above the houses and trees across the bay.

Until that moment, he’d just been walking. Not thinking. Trying not to feel. Just trying to get away from whatever unknown fear had gripped him in dream so tightly that he feared it would crush the breath out of him.

He searched inside himself for the sense of relief he thought the sun should bring. But all he found was a veil of vague and uneasy dread, pierced by a slim, rosy crescent.

He walked a few steps down closer to the shore, the shift of perspective returning him to the moment just before sunrise. He surveyed the low line of houses, the mirror-like calm of the water. It was beautiful, he recognized numbly.

So beautiful that it seemed a shame to waste it on this moment of vague and free-floating dread.

He paused, pulled his phone out of his pocket, switched its camera on, held his breath just a moment and heard the simulated sound of a shutter snapping open and closed.

_______________________________

 

From the very first zero
to the very last one
I can see what has happened
I can see what will come

Like a train in a tunnel
like a mole in a hole
like a bullet in a barrel
I know where to go

From the very first day
to the very last night
I’ve been through the darkness
but I’m scared of the light

From the very first zero
to the very last one
I can see what has happened
and I see what must come

From the very first day
to the very last night
I’ve been through the darkness
but I’m scared of the light

(C)2013, TK Major

The third (and final?) version of “Scared of the Light”…

(The title of this post is a light-hearted lift from the late, lamented Black Randy — of infamous LA punk/funk provocateurs, Black Randy and the Metro Squad — whose first album was called, “Pass the Dust, I Think I’m Bowie.”)

I’d written out about three quarters of the lyrics and was settling into the chords and melody when I started roughing out the arrangement… something about the way it was going together really made me think of post-Berlin-era Bowie and, I dunno, I ran with it.

 

 

Share