(Plenty of mistakes here. Oh well. Better luck next time. It’s just a test flight.)
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(Plenty of trees and rivers in these parts…)
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Little Milton’s Repose
through your charnel houses high
you’ll return to the sky
from fields hung high with fire
from the day and from the night
everyone returns
if you run
you will learn
down rivers green with gold
if you’re young if you’re old
to your scattered bodies go
you’ll return to your home
everyone will return
if you swim
or if you burn
everyone returns
(I just don’t know that this marks the way to Ivy. Maybe this is some other project altogether, must make a note in my journal…)
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wonderful leaves turning gold, turning brown
wonderful leaves are falling down
we live in the leaves
and hear the roots singing
we’re shaking like bees
we set the leaves tumbling
wonderful leaves spinning round spinning round
will we leave them on the ground
the roots in my heart
but the year gets long
let me show lost ages
delicate and crumbling pages
wonderful leaves turning gold, turning brown
wonderful leaves are falling down
sometimes its spring sometimes its fall
beautful fall
ill get the leaves and keep them all
wonderful leaves turning gold, turning brown
wonderful leaves are falling down
wonderful leaves spinning round spinning round
will we leave them on the ground
(Sort of hopeful and sad at the same time?)
Even When the Road Has Gone:
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(Demo. All of these are demos to varying degrees.)
(Even further down the road I found a broken old mandolin. Or maybe not. Maybe a little sentimental, but it’s a true story as far as it goes, I can see it out my back window. So I just call it like I see it. True story.)
(I recorded my icckkyyy junior high school musical song. Shove it in your locker!)
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(For the girls with all the boyfiends. Little Johnny is sitting in the gymnasium, all alone with his guitar, his best friend, the guitar. He doesn’t even have a pick. Sniffle sniffle. Boys don’t cry, they don’t cry.)
Gold Mine:
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Part of ‘Fairy Tales for the Antisocial’. Scraping the bottom of the barrel here. That’s what she said! Remember how I promised you that I wouldn’t have any more rough stuff up here? I lied. This is pretty rough. All the more reason to wait for a … more refined version. Maybe.
The Best Things In Life:
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Poker, Joker, Flush to Ten?
Yet another piece of ‘Fairy Tales for the Antisocial’, from the archives.
The dentist gave me some painkillers after a root canal, and I ate them all at once. Honest.
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Well the Ivy thing is a long time coming and all this ‘High School Musical’ type stuff gives me an idea. I can take some old songs of mine that are just sitting around dead and make something out of them. I can call it… ‘High School Musical’.
This first song is amazingly old, about a guy who does everything right in high school, jumps through the hoops, then has to wonder what the big payoff was supposed to be. I know that guy.
Jack Shit
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Everybody has to get a shitty job in high school. Jobs are basically shit. Man I have a bad attitude. I resent everyhting that isn’t art. Man, I have a good attitude.
Eat At Bertha’s #1
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A little later that song morphed into a joke, a fake ad about a fake diner called ‘Bertha’s Diner’. It was part of a rock opera called ‘Fairy Tales for the Antisocial’. Which I started writing in high school. The central character was a guy called Jack, as in Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Killer, and rhymes like the house that Jack built, etc., etc.,
Bertha’s was a real place actually, I never went there but they sold shellfish. They had bumper stickers that said ‘Eat At Bertha’s’. I cut out the ‘At’ and the ‘s’ part and it said ‘Eat Bertha’ and I stuck it on an old keyboard (which I still can’t really play). Bertha’s went out of business real quick I think.
Eat At Bertha’s #2
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A bunch of progressions and concepts in these songs showed up in the Mondokhan projects becuase they were good progressions and I had no idea that I’d be doing this… maybe I won’t. They’re all pretty awful.
Anyway, this one was written around the same time and is about a little kid, not a teenager, but I think it still fits the theme…it’s a christmas story…
Under The Tree
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Since this record will be about high school, you have to have a song for the kids who beat up other kids. In this case, it’s becuase they were freaks first. I mean, doesn’t that just fucking piss you off?
Okay, this is the roughest thing I’ll ever post, I promise, but it passes as a Demo. Just listen to Frank Blacks Demos for the pixies. I mean, shit.
Disease Called Freak
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Every project has to have an instrumental, so in the spirit of writing a song in less time than it takes to play it… the only newish song so far:
Boys Vs. Girls
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And last but not least, I had to include some stuff I actually wrote when I was fifteen and in high school… oh, the shame…
Emily Street
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Mary Is A Bitch / No Illusions
(missing some lyrics… I just didn’t have the nerve…)
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It could be all these are better off dead but, whatever. It’ll sound good when it’s good and done.
Of course. It’s always about a woman when you get to the root of it. A woman, or lack thereof. And so the boy came to his conclusion.
Ana’s Attic:
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And with his lofty reverie of an actual house with an actual person in it, I left him behind as well and continued my search for Ivy.
Oh, I see. Right. I had no idea. Gosh.
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And Car Dude continued his tale…
Not counted among the permanent residents of what these people called ‘Wahoo’ was a young fella who apparently lived out of his 1981 Toyota hatchback. As the car was non-functional and immobile on account of it not having any wheels left, those wheels having been given up some time ago by the young man to pay off debts owed to old Bertha at the nearby diner for ‘food taken and eaten’, I don’t see why he shouldn’t be considered a resident especially since the rednecky dude lived in an RV. Maybe it’s becuase the Chinaman and the Russian said the kid ‘talked funny’. Anyway, the kid began his tale, starting tomorrow and moving back.
World Without Wheels
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I lost the mixes for these songs and rescued these versions from the myspace page. They have been myspacified and are of an even lower quality than they would have been! But that doesn’t matter at this point.
Needle
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World Without Wheels
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Ana’s Attic
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There’s this Russian guy, he lives in the old defunct gas station, he must have come over with the Confucian. His name is Max, and when I visited him, he assured me that he stood astride the Berlin Wall with a pickaxe as that wall fell beneath him, and he shared a little story about what really brought about the fall of the Soviet Union…
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Max then told me he believes history is made by individuals eating other individuals. I then left.
Letter from Yeltsin to Gorbachev, 1991
im sorry gorby but youre gonna hafta leave
take your ugly wife and your big important party
take down your flag, see, mine’s red white and blue
here’s your marching orders for you
all I said was that she was greedy like a vole
and all your goodwill was falling down the hole
and I told Vladimir she had an ass like a house
and that the people want a little mouse
screw your demotion, gorby, i’ll get my revenge
ill be president and i’ll drink all day again
like when I worked on houses for the proletariat
all the toilets worked in my oblast
i kept a secret from myself since ’32
now I can build the houses, gorby, here’s one for you
not unlike the one your party built for my dad
when he got back from the gulag
One of my favorite little songs. Needs a new recording (and performance) becuase this one sucks.
Santa Monica Sun
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And this man, also from some strange clime or time, crossed a million waves to be here, to sing to me, him alone, it seems, and unlike the trailer man and the chinese passenger, his brow was light. Perhaps he still gazed upon the stars.
A Million Waves:
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the waves break on the sides
gotta keep the sail wide
then im rocked for a million miles
of endless waves and my heart says
that is all that awaits
a sleeping bag around me
i guess ill sing my self to sleep
old tin cans rattling
and ancient whispers
keep me breathing
and my heart beating
keeps me wise and pulling lines
in the light of the sun
in the morning
A stranger, not from here at all, a man of foreign visage and demeanor, with a permanent crease on his brow, but a fellow scientist I gathered.
Oh, Gunpowder:
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they went looking for the essence of life
did they find it?
they went looking for the balance of everything
did they find it?
sulfur
saltpeter
a paperweight
and honey
sulfur
saltpeter
a paperweight
and honey
they went looking for the origin
did they find it
in the beginning was the explosion
did they find it?
oh gunpowder
you are forever
sulfur
saltpeter
a paperweight
and honey
sulfur
saltpeter
a paperweight
and honey
they went looking for immortality
did they find it?
they went looking for perfect morality
did they find it?
oh gunpowder
they found you, oh gunpowder
we killed each other
and set each other free
and the fireworks went flying
sulfur
saltpeter
a paperweight
and honey
sulfur
saltpeter
a paperweight
and honey
What a sad shell of a man, an empty shell, and I shuddered to hear his song.
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then theyre gonna put you in the tunnel
then theyre gonna lie you on the table
what am i gonna say to your mom
shes gonna think that its my fault
x rayed rose
x rayed rose
x rayed rose
x rayed rose
then theyre gonna stick you with a needle
then theyre gonna cut your pretty petals
then theyre gonna prune your thorns
baby are you gonna be reborn
baby are you gonna be reborn
The first inhabitant of Wahoo was pretty straighforward, the local type, lots of those guys in these parts. Did I know, before he opened his mouth to sing, he lived in a big old RV?
Some Disenchanted Morning:
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i’ve been stuck in this old trailer
in the darkness and the rain
down by the field where i met her
at the edge of the hay
i spun my wheels into the mud
it raining hard and im stuck real good
she told me I missed all of my chances
and i wont get any more
in a cold trailer with no romances
waiting at my front door
all the powers down tonight
the water’s coming up over the dike
some disenchanted morning out on the sea
my door is wide open will you run into me
some disenchanted morning here’s hoping
your door is wide open come on baby
come on baby
come on baby
On my way to Ivy, or where I hoped Ivy would be, I passed through a little town called Wahoo, population: five. The five people told me that ‘Wahoo’ was Indian for ‘Really Fucked Up’. Anyway, each one gave me a song.
A Million Waves:
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Some Disenchanted Morning:
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Oh, Gunpowder:
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X Rayed Rose:
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They all started at the same time, but after a while I deciphered the cacaphony and realized that they were all just telling me what they did that summer, in their own way.
Gosh, golly, Betty Jean, here’s one for the high school musical. I thought I did everything right and this is it?
86
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Another Very Very Very old song that was never recorded, and that’s possibly a good thing. I managed to patch together a rather unlistenable demo for the most maudlin part of my high school musical. Enjoy. Or not.
Lullabye
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This is a newer recording of a very very very very VERY old song. I dropped a verse, did some spit and shine, and here it is. More High School Musical. This was recorded in Glorious Mono then
S T E R E O I Z E D
You’ll just have to use your imagination for the kick ass guitar solo.
Fires On The Beach:
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When the afternoon gets too deep for me
Let’s go outside and meet the sea
Tonight we’ll build a fire on the beach
When we can join in
With the other kids
Let’s kick our feet like dying swans
And fall out of reach
And laugh and yawn
Shake your body, baby
Like it’s all that you’ve got
Tonight we’ll build a little fire on the beach
Lay down with me
Wrapped in a sheet
You and me, we got time enough to dream
Of monarch butterflies
That dance across the dawn
When the chrysalis is gone
Can’t you hear their song?
When the afternoon gets too deep
Let’s go outside and meet the sea
Tonight we’ll build a fire on the beach
(I think this might be more of a Mondokhan song, but here you go…)
my last flight
running late for a paper plane
jet lag comin back again
superhero of the runaway
saving time i lost today
check my bags
i’m home tonight
im holding on tight
for my last flight
flying kites in a mindstorm
falling back on a cruciform
cut the string and rock and roll
wait for me, im halfway home
sometimes i get so high
i cant come down
sometimes i see you burning on the ground
sometimes i believe, sometimes i forget
I took a ride up on a rainbow
and lost my grip
check my bags
i’m home tonight
im holding on tight
for my last flight
In the symmetric turbulent wake
of a flat paper plate
today a distinguished scientist has made
the discovery of rain
falling on his face
(One of these lines is a throwaway… can you guess which one?)
