Tag Archives: betrayal

I walked around the world

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Sometimes I think about ya...

The Let Down.

He didn’t see it coming.

He thought he was happy. Maybe, even, in love. And for the longest time she seemed to be in love with him.

In fact, he kept telling himself, there was no reason to think she wasn’t, still.

So, why did he feel like it was inevitable?

And, knowing its inevitability, there seemed no reason to put it off.

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Internet Archive page for this recording

November 20, 2006
March 20, 2006
studio version

Sometimes

Sometimes I think about ya
think about, think about
think about the things
I thought I’d do for you

Sometimes I wonder
how you’re doing now
I think about it
but I think it turned out best
when I think it through

I know I let you down
I let you down, I let you down
I let ya down hard
and I blamed it all on you

I threw your love away
and I laughed and I laughed
I laughed until I died
and when I came to…

the world — it was dead
and I walked around and I walked around
I walked around the world
but I couldn’t find you

I tore my soul open
it was empty, it was empty
a tunnel into nowhere
and I never got thru

sometimes I think about ya
think about ya, think about ya
think about the world I mighta had with you

(C)1999 TK Major

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I’ll keep it on the VCR and watch it over and over again…

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... and I never went home

Passive aggressive.

I always thought that had a kind of cool sound, conjuring images of a leather jacketed hoodlum leaning against a lampost, the 24/7 tug of jaded, world-weary amusement pulling his thin lips into a tight grin.

But the guy in this song ain’t that kind of passive aggressive. He’s the real kind. In the backstory that’s evolved in my mind for this song since I wrote it in 1984, he’s drinking in the neighborhood dive, just like every night when he sees the paramedics in front of his house on the 11 o’clock news. When they haul his wife out under a sheet, followed by another body, this one with a familiar pair of worn cowboy boots he recognizes as his best friend’s, he mutters, “Damn junkies,” and keeps drinking.

Passive aggressive. I heard those words in anger a few times. I wish it could say it was a misdiagnosis.

But, like my late father, my ex-girlfriends just keep getting smarter every day.

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[full version (c.1994) on Soundclick feat. Jeff Turmes, sax | requires Flash] 

Someone Said Something

Someone said something
or I’d have never known
Someone said something
and I never went home

They found you In the arms of another man
the needle still in your vein
You finally transcended
Now you’re cheating on a higher plane

Someone said something . . .

What are a few bad habits
between old friends?
You were a junky and a trollop
but I loved you to the end

Someone said something . .

Policemen and photographers
and a local station’s mini-cam
I’ll keep it on the VCR
and watch it over and over again

Someone said something
or I’d have never known
Someone said something
and I never went home

(C)1984, TK Major

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A betrayal of Biblical proportions [Burning and Bitter]

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Burning and bitter

It’s all in the backstory, babe.

You’d think this song was about a betrayal of Biblical proportions, a temptress so demonic, yet so enticing as to destroy any fool with the temerity to cast a glance her way.

But as I pointed out when I posted a much different (and essentially somewhat silly) version back on December 4th, the young woman I had recently broken up with when I wrote this song was a sweet and level-headed mother of two young girls who simply wanted me to decide what I wanted. When I wouldn’t — or couldn’t — give her an answer, she moved on.

But I was a dumb ass kid, a few years younger than her, a crummy job but big dreams of adventure. The last thing on earth I thought I wanted was responsibility.

Story of my life.

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previous AYoS version (Dec 4)

Burning and Bitter

Burning and bitter
are my thoughts tonight
I can taste the poison
of the lies I heard tonight
I have seen my soul
like the falcon
you gunned down in flight
You’re a sorceress
you’re a temptress
but you’re oh
so sweet in the night

(C)1975 TK Major

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Government Witness

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Government WItness

 

Like a lot of people in the 70’s, I was fascinated by the so-called radical underground, whether I wanted to be or not. No one could escape the media fixation with celebrity fugitives like Patty Hearst.

I conceived this song as a basic song of romantic betrayal — with the twist that betrayal takes the form of turning government witness.

I made sure that, in classic gangster movie tradition, the antihero is promised the ultimate punishment for his crimes — a bitter fate compounded by what he sees as his lover’s treachery. So don’t start up with me for glamorizing criminals and terrorists.

The song was originally performed with my band, Machine Dog. There’s a link below to a download of the Machine Dog version of “Government Witness.”

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Machine Dog version

GOVERNMENT WITNESS

Someone’s been bleeding us
a young man wake up each day old and tired
I got my gun and my silver bullets
gonna get me a government vampire

Hanging on the chain link fence
got my silver cross my Smith & Wesson .38
But when they turn on the juice
I’m crucified on the electric gate

If this is real life
I guess I’ll get used to it
I’ll be all right as
soon as I get over these electro-convulsive fits

Shackled in my place
inside rthe federal courtroom dock
Staring at your face
floating in the witness box

You’re looking right through me
just like you never heard my name
but you used to lay right next to me
in our little hideout by the lake

If this is real life
I suggest you get used to it
You’ll be all right
as soon as you find a heart to fit that hole in your chest

Governmewnt witness
who would have dreamed you’d be a government witness
Government witness
go ahead — deny you are a government witness

You must have lied to me then
Why can’t you lie to them now
Will you be lying to yourself
while I sweat it out in the death house — death house

This is real life . . .

Copyright 1980
TK Major

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