Tag Archives: vamp

I just wanted to get to know ya — not roll with you in the dirt

Stood Up to Your Love

Like Odysseus lashed to the mast, like Hefner sacrificing himself on the altar of satyrdom, he was driven to the edge of madness not by her — because she was only a woman — but by the continual thought of her.

Even when he was with her he longed for her.

Even as the hours got twisted in the sheets caught up between them he found himself scheming to get her back into a bed she hadn’t yet left.

It was really a shame that he didn’t much like her.

Certainly, he thought she was smart enough but vain and self-obsessed in a way that made her seem slow to understand anything that required a stretch of imagination or — more improbably still — a leap of empathy.

But his thoughts collected around the idea of her like iron filings around the end of a magnet. And every time he shook them free they were drawn inexorably back to her… to the idea of her.

Stood Up to Your Love

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previous versions
Friday, November 04, 2005

lyrics
Stood Up to Your Love

ya said its hard to love you
and I useta find that true
but now its impossible
no matter what I do (but)

I stood up to your love
I stood up like a man
I gave and gave and gave
until I didn’t give a damn

if this is the best love
ya can shove into my face
maybe you should save it
cause I seem ta lost the taste

I used to see ya
in your fishnets and mini skirt
I just wanted to get to know ya
not roll with you in the dirt

but then thats your idea of love baby
no matter who gets hurt
youre gonna do what youre wanna do
and youll get yours first

well im here to tell ya
best not count me truly yours
cause party of the second part
done just ran around the world

I don’t know how ya lost control
but one day I just woke up
one day I was a zombie
a slave to this thing you call love

the next day the fever broke
the mirror was icy still
I looked for your reflection
as you sat on the window sill
For the first time I saw your eyes
the icey timeless calm
I knew I was almost lost
and my soul was almost gone

(C)1990, TK Major
(C)2007, TK Major

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Bygone days…

Victrola

 

I have a real soft spot for the music of thirties — and there was, of course, a great leap forward in technology between the scratchy records of hte twenties and the relatively good sounding records of the 30s. Also, the advent of affordable amplification tubes took record players from the all-acoustic stylus-to-cone system to something that could entertain a room full of people.

But recording was still pretty documentary, at that point… multiple mics and mixers could spotlight instruments and help achieve creative blends and “moving” mixes (instead of having soloists literally move closer to the recording cone for solos during the earliest days of all-acoustic recording).

Now… some great recordings were done in the 50s (particularly in jazz and classical)… the fi was finally hi… toward the end of the decade, people started tracking with an eye toward stereo.

But — and the fact that I came more or less of age during the decade undoubtedly is not coincidental — for me, some of the most creative arrangements and recordings came out of the 60s.

Multitrack technology was still somewhat limited. Most pop was tracked to 3 or 4 tracks (and much of it was still recorded with little thought of stereo mixes)… but there was a burst of arrangement creativity that exploded across pop music… everywhere you turned, people were mixing it up, stylistically. Folkies snuck in electric guitars and keyboards or went the other way with (often quite creative) string and woodwind arrangements. Jazzers adopted some rock elements but also reached outside traditional ways of looking at jazz — and even music itself — adopting composition techniques from orchestral avant-gardists… and rock… rock/pop absorbed it all and mixed it up even crazier.

The creativity extended into the 70s, of course, but that was also the era when the suits started really getting scientific about how to coopt and manipulate musical and social trends… the early 70s “underground disco” scene which had seemed so cool, even subversive, all but died out but eventually was K-marted into the Saturday Night Disco Fever Era… Within a decade, the outrage and provocation that had been the original punk rock was being marketed in mall stores targetted to supplying off the rack punk wear to “disaffected” suburban youth. (“Disaffected” from any meaningful culture, I might say, cynically.)

There’s been plenty of cool music since, of course, I’ve enjoyed a lot of hip hop over the years, I liked the electronica scene during the 90s, I liked the new blues movement where hip hop and other postmodern elements reinvigorated some beloved but shopworn forms, I appreciated the return of roots consciousness to the periphery of the country music scene.

But… you know… I was almost a teenager when I first heard the Beatles… I was an angry young man when I got into the political bands of the era like the (old) Jefferson Airplane or MC5… I was a questing outsider listening to Jimi Hendrix or Bitches Brew… I guess it’s kind of predictable that I’d be drawn to the music of the era when I really came alive as a music listener and began to think that maybe I, too, might find some way to make music.

And now… completely unrelated… a song I wrote a few years ago…

Who’ll Stop Lorraine?

Internet Archive page for this recording
May 11, 2006 version
December 16, 2005 version

I’ve known Lorraine since we were kids
and I’ve always been amazed
Every time she went too damn far I thought
Who’ll stop Lorraine?

I saw her hunt down Billy Jim
he was doomed from that first day
I saw her rip his heart in two and thought,
Who’ll stop Lorraine?

From the hotel bar to the airport lounge
Everyone knows her name
Over and over I ask myself,
Who’ll Stop Lorraine?

Finally one day I’d had enough
I sat her down looked her in the eye
Lorraine I love you, girl, but straighten up,
’cause, Lorraine, you’re wreckin’ people’s lives

From the hotel bar to the airport lounge
Everyone knows your name
Over and over they ask themselves,
Who’ll Stop Lorraine?

I never thought Id see a tear in her eye
I never thought I’d see into her soul
but since that day she’s come so far
and God I’ve come to love her so

From the hotel bar to the airport lounge
Everyone knows her name
Over and over they ask themselves,
Whatever became of Lorraine?

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From the hotel bar to the airport lounge…

Who'll stop Lorraine?

He was terrified.

He’d known her for years. They were best friends. Sometimes more. It was beyond complicated.

He’d watched her for years, like a man who finds himself, transfixed, watching one terrible crash after another in a perpetual storm of dark and roiling emotions, too stunned to even feel sympathy for the victims or shame for his wide-eyed spectatorhood.

But now, he was going to say something. He was going to break the rules that had allowed them to twine without tying (as she once had said).

Now, he was going to try to save some fool’s heart…

previous AYoS version 16 dec 2006

Who’ll Stop Lorraine?

I’ve known Lorraine since we were kids
and I’ve always been amazed
Every time she went too damn far I thought
Who’ll stop Lorraine?

I saw her hunt down Billy Jim
he was doomed from that first day
I saw her rip his heart in two and thought,
Who’ll stop Lorraine?

From the hotel bar to the airport lounge
Everyone knows her name
Over and over I ask myself,
Who’ll Stop Lorraine?

Finally one day I’d had enough
I sat her down looked her in the eye
Lorraine I love you, girl, but straighten up,
’cause, Lorraine, you’re wreckin’ people’s lives

From the hotel bar to the airport lounge
Everyone knows your name
Over and over they ask themselves,
Who’ll Stop Lorraine?

I never thought Id see a tear in her eye
I never thought I’d see into her soul
but since that day she’s come so far
and God I’ve come to love her so

From the hotel bar to the airport lounge
Everyone knows her name
Over and over they ask themselves,
Whatever became of Lorraine?

(C)2001, TK Major

 

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Don’t Let Dee Dee Dog You ‘Round… Again

Don't Let Dee Dee Dog You Around

 

 

 

 

Another mythic she creature… half-goddess, half-vampire, and all woman… No, wait, that was Sister Monica at St Anne’s. I didn’t go there, but I heard all about her from the my pal, who went there.

No, the Dee Dee of this song is the queen of the strip mall vamps. Beyond floozy. Beyond tramp or trollop…

previous version [Oct 10]

Don’t Let Dee Dee Dog You ‘Round

Don’t let Dee Dee dog you ’round
If you knew her old tricks you’d haul yer bones outta town
Let me share the wisdom that the pack has found
don’t let Dee Dee — dog you ’round

You’re new round here
so let me clue you in
there’s a firestorm of trouble
you’re about to jump in
her name is Deborah Dale
won’t wanna hear that again
‘Cause Dee Dee means danger — and damnable sin

We all ’round here we’ve seen it before
we pretty much know what you’ve got in store
she’ll rip out your heart and tear up your soul
there ain’t a man here in town that she can’t control
–all the same, we all love Deborah Dale

In the trailer parks
and the liquor stores
in the strip mall lounges
‘midst the strip mall mores
one light shines above all the rest
its the same flame that draws
the moths to their deaths

Don’t let Dee Dee…

A fool and his money are soon famous round here
and the vampires have radar for a fool full of beer
most suck out your money then they leave you alone
but Dee Dee don’t stop til she’s drained out your soul

We all ’round here we’ve seen it before
we pretty much know what you’ve got in store
she’ll rip out your heart and tear up your soul
there ain’t a man here in town that she can’t control
–all the same, we all love Deborah Dale

Don’t let Dee Dee dog you ’round
If you knew her old tricks you’d haul yer bones outta town
Let me share the wisdom that the pack has found
don’t let Dee Dee — dog you ’round.

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