Category: Song-a-Day 2021

I don’t ask too much of life, I’m a regular kind of a guy
but I got a job that makes me scream and yell and cry
my coworkers are panicking, don’t know which way to jump
but I’m hiding in the men’s room and I’m taking a company dump
WHEN I’m feeling ner-vous, when I’m in a slump
I flush my little cares away and take a company dump
WHEN my work life hands me a little plate of lumps
I flush my little cares away and take a company dump

The boss looks like a thundercloud he’s storming up and down
But I saw it coming and I’m nowhere to be found
the sports section is on my knee I’m in my favourite stall
and the only thought that’s in my head is a cheerful “Screw you all!”
WHEN I’m feeling ner-vous, when I’m in a slump
I flush my little cares away and take a company dump
WHEN my work life hands me a little plate of lumps
I flush my little cares away and take a company dump

What am I supposed to do I’m just a normal slob
it’s hard to keep my sanity and also keep my job
I am past my eyes in debt, my wife is up a stump
and the only peace I ever get is taking a company dump
WHEN I’m feeling ner-vous, when I’m in a slump
I flush my little cares away and take a company dump
WHEN my work life hands me a little plate of lumps
I flush my little cares away and take a company dump

This song was written for JS when we both worked for SR Telecom. He had the worst undiagnosed case of ADD I’ve ever seen in my entire life and he took the paper with him into the bathroom and then said go ahead and read it afterward and I’m like NOOOOOOO

The Evening News is also about my job at SR Telecom, and there’s one other song I wrote while I was there that I really like…. maybe you’ll see it tomorrow.

this is also copyright; most of the verses, with deletions and shifts for singability, are in rise up singing. Other versions of this have a traditional melody which is sung faster and is more cheerful. I personally think my melody supports the words better, but as is always the case your mileage may vary wildly from mine.

John and Paul and I used to stand together and sing this in three part harmony.

I really really miss John.

Since there’s still copyright, no lyrics

When I was younger I knew how to be sad
I didn’t run away, I didn’t even flinch, I gave it everything I had
Now I’m too overbooked to cry
I ask how much, instead of why
you gotta notice when it goes, to miss it when it dies
It’s the exchange I make these days I guess
trading my genuine misery for artificial happiness

I wanted my moods to go on a diet and wither away
all the voices in my head to just be quiet and stay that way
all I sought was peace where I went was numb
and millions like me have been that dumb
Only I know how frozen in my anger I’ve become
It’s the exchange I make these days I guess
trading my genuine misery for artificial happiness

Sweet domestic scene, exhausted from play, they sleep in their beds
and why would I wish this brutal unease on their innocent heads
I know that I walk, feels like I crawl
I’m standing up and I’m two inches tall
only the web of habit keeps me going at all
It’s the exchange I make these days I guess
trading my genuine misery for artificial happiness
trading my hunger for god for a seminar on success
trading these low down blues for a brand new party dress

A professional musician and educator told me this was the most nearly perfect folk song he’d ever heard and yes I’ll provide his name if pressed.

There are eight tall lombardy poplars at
the back of the factory
They nod their heads like people gossiping
but they’ve nothing to say to me
If I enter all this data then a slave will be set free
but they’re just pixels on a monitor, they’ve got nothing to do with me
The news is full of violence but it’s quiet on the bus
we’re all being civil what’s the story got to do with us
I get off and dodge great big trucks carrying tons of stuff
and the weather’s good and the stores are full and few of us have got it rough
But in the middle of this plenty I can still find time to want more
Those who are happy with little they’re the ones who really know the score
If I bring you hourly updates the news is seldom good
but there are old people talking on porches when I walk through my neighbourhood
My senses tell me that life is fine, the news is full of death and woe
or else it’s ‘LOSE WEIGHT WITHOUT EXERCISE! and this man can suck and blow!
the news theme’s like a bennie (benzedrine) and my heart’s an 88 (mm, like a cannon)
sure the world is sliding into a pit, but everything is going great

well I told you that I love you in the middle of the roar
and you said that you love me and I forgot what my heart is for
then you said that you would trust me I had to learn to breathe again
how can life be bad, how can I feel sad, when there’s moments like this now and then

From the same recording session in 1981…. or maybe 1982. lil lord Cthulhu but that was a long time ago.

Same thing applies, this is embarrassing. No lyrics will be supplied.

Please do let me know if you actually listened to this, you will get compensatory biscotti.

THIS IS TERRIBLE it’s also 40 years old

I do not want to provide lyrics it’s freaking embarrassing Love with an android/is too hot to handle. YUP STELLAR WORK THERE GIRL.

you were warned

Wrote this just now.

I want you to love me
I want you to care
I want you not to complain
when I prance around in my underwear
want you to forgive me
more thoroughly than Christ
and if you always do the trash
oh man, that would be nice

Now I have to leap up and take flower rolls out of the oven before they burn.

this song is 30 years old… the recording as well

This song is about living in Toronto in the 80s.

Call out the word, see what it brings to mind. Some think of butterflies, and others think of guns. I would ask you to think about what freedom means to a child or a robber or an artist or a convent full of nuns. Chorus Freedom, you’re the most expensive thing. Against the weight of you, I must measure everything. Freedom, you’re the most expensive thing. You don’t just put your money down once, you keep on paying. V2 All along a boulevard of facts and fractal dreams, she’s a cynic, and she doesn’t hear the screams. All along a shoreline of corruption and debris, he’s a realist, and he knows what to see. Chorus All the little things that get magnified, pick your side, try to pretend the canyon isn’t really very wide. The poets have their message but it’s all couched in a lie, that we’ll overcome our differences, all we have to do is try. Chorus. My life makes its demands, the kids fall down and cry, friends arrive and food gets cooked and someday I will die. Freedom be my lover like a person not a thought, and anger me, and make me laugh, and make me life with doubt. Chorus.

 

This was one of John’s favourite songs of mine.

sure feels different in 2021

I miss him so bad right now. So bad. Love you man.

 

Soundtracky stuff – the actual folk song style has a chorus like this (below) and a BPM of about 80-90, so very very different.

And I know that I can lift it

and I know that I can carry it

and I know that I’m going to push

that boulder up this hill

and I know someone will help me

if I do it with a whole heart

and I do it with a whole heart

and I do it

and I will

 

So I’ve diarized to re-record it if I can’t find the original recording from Toronto and the dawn of time.

Ah. Clem, an ex of Sandra’s, of many past posts, has a beautiful property close to Barry’s Bay Ontario. Walking around it was one of the most glorious things that ever happened to me. I mean what kind of a crazy ass dude plants 5 acres of milkweed for the butterflies??? Yes. And there were geese, and a lake full of water lilies and loons calling, and gardens, and weathered barns, and weathered local painted advertising signs, and weathered farm equipment lavished round the joint. It was honestly like a tourist trap with a thousand exquisite views for painting and photography, except there were no tourists and it wasn’t a trap.

Although Sandra and I are no longer on speaking terms and likely could not be reconciled (racism and conspiracy theories and me being a stuck up jerk, among other things, divide us) I have a very happy recollection of her just leaving me be and making supper while I composed this in her living room. I have very rarely been as happy with an instrumental composition as I was when I wrote it, and nothing that’s happened since has changed my mind.

Entertainingly I have ANOTHER song with the name Clem in it, but it’s a Buffy filk, and that comes later. Anthony recorded this on the 4th of January inst.

This one was inspired by Ali Farka Touré – wrote this the year after Paul and I broke up on a regular mandolin (Edith, the Aria mandolin now back with the folks at Planet Bachelor) but I really prefer it on Otto.

Recorded by Anthony @12th St Sound, errors my own.