Baby was the ultimate be-careful-what-you-wish-for present. A pretty little Pandora’s gift box of trouble that any red blooded young man would be delighted to find lying under the Christmas tree.
Requiring more maintenance than a fleet of Jaguars, Baby could accelerate from zero to absolutely insane in 6 seconds flat, swinging in dizzying arcs between coyly demure and wide-eyed man-eater, from maudlin sentimentality to steely disdain to weeping, soul-melting anguish. And back again.
Best left to connoisseurs and aficionadi…
A note on these recordings…
I’ve included both a (more or less) straight folk version as well as a (hopefully) funky (but still quite acoustic) version. You can also hear the ‘studio’ version on my one blue nine soundclick page. The one blue nine version is, I think, kind of droll. The basic mix has been kicking around for a few years and was DL’d thousands of times at the old mp3.com (where it made the ‘hard house’ top 10). Earlier this year, I came up with an acapella harmony intro that’s good for a chuckle or two, I think. I wish I could tell you I was a natural whiz at harmonizing with myself, but technology played a big roll in the new intro.
BTW… the inclusion of two AYoS versions today puts us even after the Holiday Clip Show. I’m now back on mission. A song per day. I won’t try to slack off again. Clip show… what was I thinking?
folk version:
acoustic funk version:
[full club style version on Soundclick (2000) | requires Flash]
Baby Said
baby said she’d love me
she’d always stand beside me
baby lied . . . but that’s all right
baby said forever
baby said never say goodbye
she left that night
baby said a lot of things a fool wouldn’t buy she got caught a thousand times I sorta let it slide baby said she loved me I think she thought she did baby said a lot of things she was such a crazy kid
baby said honey
you ain’t got no money
I like that so
my old man’s made of loot
and it don’t buy no truth
and Baby knows
baby said a lot of things it was such a crazy time Baby said remember cause I’ll see you when you die baby said its over over and over again baby said forever and then we just begin again
baby said save me
sometimes I think I’m crazy
She’d say anything–even the truth
But once you surrendered
it really was forever and
there wouldn’t be nothing anyone could ever do
baby said a lot of things a fool wouldn’t buy she got caught a thousand times I sorta let it slide baby said she loved me I think she thought she did baby said a lot of things she was such a crazy kid
Mythic super-anti-heroine alert. Yep, it’s yet another Baby song.
Like Prometheus, half-man and half-god, chained to his rock and feasted on by birds of prey day after day only to be magically restored the next, ready to be tortured and maimed again… forever (for the crime of sneaking the gift of fire to Man… those “full” gods could be downright mean), the increasingly mythic Baby, child-woman, goddess-whore, seems doomed to appear endlessly in my songs.
Who is Baby? I asked in an earlier post.
I suggested that, while there were undoubtedly aspects of old girlfriends and love interests, Baby also probably represented a willful, destructive part of myself, as well.
I also noted that when I had just started playing guitar and writing songs as a 20 year old failed academic poet I swore I’d never use the word “baby” in a song unless I was referring to an infant. The Brian Eno song, “Baby’s On Fire,” however, opened up my mind and gave me new license to rise above pretense and embrace pop music as an idiom. Yo.
Anyhow, moving right along, we don’t really know much about Baby — at this point — except that she is apparently in the permanent past tense. A song not yet on AYoS, “When Baby Can’t Go On” seems to suggest that she may have written her own coda, perhaps by taking one final moonlight swim. (Not to be confused with the also upcoming “Swim or Die.”)
The nice thing about writing her out by swimming her out to sea is that it has an open-ended lack of finality… what I like to think of as a disturbing lack of closure.
Because Baby is not at peace and she never will be… she’s a restless, hungry soul, doomed to move through my songs, bringing lust, longing, and ultimate sorrow to our hapless hero again and again.
You’d think the poor sap would learn.
Baby Was a Friend of Mine
the first time I saw her
I knew it was too late
a shadow fell across my soul
I asked her for a date
Baby was a pistol
way too hot to hold
baby was a big mistake
some things you cant be told
but baby
was a friend of mine
baby was a friend of mine
she couldn’t keep from cheating
she never did stop lying
but baby was a friend of mine
Now, Baby drove me crazy
for almost seven years
then she drove away one day
with a repo-man from Sears
I found her in a Motel Six
out in San Berdoo
she was watching Lucy re-runs
and sniffing airplane glue
but baby
was a friend of mine…
Now the last time I saw her
she said that it was fate
I thought for sure you’d save me
(she) said as she turned away
I thought i saw a tear
slide across her face
I thought I saw forever
just as it slipped away
but baby
was a friend of mine
baby was a friend of mine
she couldn’t keep from cheating
she never did stop lying
but baby was a friend of mine
