grindstone | A Year of Songs

Monday, January 8

One of the things that happens when you write songs — especially if you record them yourself — is that by the time you have anything presentable to the public, you, youself, already hate the song. Or are at least totally sick of it.

So I’m here to share that with you in the form of what I’m calling a songwriter demo, essentially a rough first draft production, with keyboards, drums, back up vocals and so forth — of “Chain of Mondays,” which, no, you’re not mistaken, was also the subject of last Tuesday’s “Monday on Tuesday” post commemorating the first workday of the new year.

And today is the first Monday.

So it’s all legit.

And, besides, this song has never had a proper rough production demo and it’s almost a year old — so, it’s all for a good cause.

I started out looking for an anthem but what I’ve got so far is a kind of garage rock…

chain of mondays
songwriter demo (first draft full production)

[UPDATE: I decided the recording I’d posted here was just too flawed to put up on the web. Imagine, if you can. Please feel free to enjoy one of the previous versions…]

previous AYoS versions
Monday, February 13, 2006
Monday, April 03, 2006
Tuesday, January 02, 2007

chain of mondays

a thousand mondays
that’s just 19 years
put your head down
put yourself in gear

before you know it
the day is done
fall asleep
and there’s another one

chain of mondays
wrapped round my life
chain of mondays
until the day I die

I’m good at what I do
but what I do is dumb
pushing things around
all day long

what’s it all for
don’t ask me
i’m just a well-worn gear
in the big machine

chain of mondays…

don’t take off my shackles
i don’t want to be free
cause theres nowhere to go
and no one to be

been at the grindstone
for so damn long
there’s nothing much left
except this song:

chain of mondays…

Monday on Tuesday

There were times, back when I was a drinkin’ man, that pretty much every day was Monday, a rude, jangling intrusion into sweet peaceful nescience.

The necessity to drag oneself out of bed, day after grinding day… man, some days that was just so hard. And then to go to work on top of it, as well? For crying out loud, what do they want out of a man?

But work gave me refuge from primal existential dilemmas, as well… a hidey hole where, as long as I kept my head down and worked toward getting the day over with and keeping from slipping behind, I could be free of nagging doubts about just how worthwhile my continuing existence was. Well, maybe not free of them, perhaps, but I could at least defer them.

And at the end of a long day of work, there was always the bottle. Like a djinn whose work was done, I would coil back into that sweet, dark prison…