Waving Goodbye 07: Advent Calendar

I jumped and I fell and I found myself  facing twenty-five doors all lined up in a row.  I opened the first one, and inside it said, “Each door is day.”  I opened the second, which said, “Each day has a number.”  The next said, “Each number has a secret symbol”.  Then, “Each symbol is an opening”. “Each opening holds a treat.”  “Each treat is the whole world.”  “Each world is a face.”  “Each face is a saint.” “Each saint has a bird.”  “Each bird is a stained glass window.”  “Each window has a message.” “Each message is a piece of candy.” “Each candy is a sunrise.”  “Each sunrise is a candle on a cake.” “Each candle is a nail in your coffin”.  “Each coffin holds a gift”. “Each gift can be counted.” “Each counting is a snowflake.”  “Each snowflake makes a storm.”  “Each snowstorm is a globe”.  “Each globe is a stage”.  “Each stage hosts a tragedy”. “Each tragedy is a window.” “Each window is a mirror.”

The last door just had another door behind it.  When I opened that door, there was a song inside.  The song was called “Advent Calendar”.

Advent Calendar lyrics

Waving Goodbye 06: Jack of Diamonds

I went down to the Sibyl’s cave to have my fortune read.  She was very good, all business. I crossed her palm with silver, as they say, and she started the reading.  The first card was the Five of Spades.  “Ah yes, disorder.  That’s you.  That’s your situation.  It’s all of us.”  Then she turned up the Wheel of Fortune. The blue sphinx and the red jackal. The Sibyl was quiet for a long time and I wanted to make a Vanna White joke.  Finally she said, “Well the Wheel is turning, that’s the thing to remember.  When it’s right side up, good fortune, when it’s reversed, disaster.  What it means for you…very hard to say.  If you can tell which way it’s moving, you can see it turning and win any play.  But sometimes you think you can see which way it’s moving and you’re wrong.  That’s the worst.  Very bad.  Now this one…aha.  The Queen of Clubs.  That’s, well, I don’t know if that’s in your future or not.  It never hurts to hope.  And then the Hanged Man?  Sweet boy.  Very good to see indeed.  Some say he’s the martyr, some say he’s the little bird in the tree who was killed with a shot. It’s very surprising to see him here anyway.  Now this one…Jack of Diamonds.  He brings the news, do you understand?  The door is open, but then it will close.  You’re the one who will have to decide.”

I understood. I walked to the door. I jumped.


Jack of Diamonds lyrics
Tracy can check my Tarot references for accuracy

Waving Goodbye 05: It's A Sin To Despair

When the drought finally ended and the rains came it didn’t feel like relief, it was just muddy and cold and dark all the time.  It didn’t rain hard, everything was just always wet. Then we realized it wasn’t going to stop, we’d waited so long and then finally when the rain came it wouldn’t stop, and some of the guys decided to head out but I thought I’d just stay behind. “Johny you should come,” but I, I don’t know, it seemed kind of crazy, two cubits of this and three cubits of that, gopher wood or whatever, it didn’t make sense to me. An ark, you know, it’s not a boat, it doesn’t have oars or sails, it’s just a box.  It doesn’t go anywhere, it just holds things, so anyway maybe I should have gone along but I’m glad I didn’t, and they were getting in that thing and with all those animals and I like the animals, but I know not everyone does.  It was still raining, it was so bad, so dark and ugly, and they all were hunched over with their coats over their heads getting onto that ark.   I don’t think they saw me but I was waving, bye you guys, see you later, I’ll be here, if only it weren’t so muddy and awful, anyway see you later.  I’m hoping for the best. It’s a sin to despair.


It's A Sin To Despair lyrics

Waving Goodbye 04: Why Should I Weep

I know it’s foolish, but I keep walking by that café we used to go to, which of course is closed now and completely unlikely to open anytime soon, and even if it did, I don’t think I’ll be seeing you in there.  But I still shade my eyes and peer through the window, imagining that you’re sitting inside, laughing at some stupid thing on your phone, reaching without looking up for your latte and not quite finding it, and what it would be like if you looked up and saw me and waved. Oh, Johny.  Hi. And I started singing that song you always used to sing about the rose in the hedge and the bird in the tree, shot by some careless boy, and the mermaid. The mermaid makes me think of you: I might hear your voice in a dream but I’ll probably never see you again. You’re not in the song any more.  And then—I know this will make you laugh—I started tearing up, not for me, not for you, not for the friends I’d never see again, but for that poor little bird,  killed for no reason.  And I know what you’d say if you were here: Why should you weep, Johny, why should you cry?  He’s gone but his song still hangs by.  I’m sure that’s what you’d say if you were here.


Why Should I Weep lyrics

Waving Goodbye 03: Papa Stay and Fight

I finally went over to see the old man, much as I didn’t want to.  He was lying in bed with a little thin sheet over him, the window open.  He started talking to me, mumbling, his lips weren’t even moving.  It was like how he’d tell me stories when I was a kid, except now he was the one lying down, and I the one kneeling beside him.  “You know how it is, Johny…frogs, lice, pestilence, wild animals.  There’s nothing left here.  I thought I’d even lost you.  Can’t you just put me in a boat and row me over to the other shore?  Look at me.  I’m covered with sores and boils, you can see how it is.  I can’t stay here.  Can’t you see that? There’s a place on the other side of the river where I can be healed.  I don’t want to stay here.  Can’t you take me there?”  “I know Pop,” I said.  “Except I’m staying.  Can’t you stay a while too?  I know it’s probably only going to get worse. I guess…listen, get out if you can.  I’m staying here.”


Papa Stay and Fight lyrics

Waving Goodbye 02: At the End of the World

I knew it was a mistake to get off the bus here, but it was dark and I was lost. I thought, well this would be as good as place as any but basically it isn’t. It’s not as good any, not by a long shot. I know now I got off at the wrong place and now I can’t get home.  I don’t know what I was thinking. There’s a bus that comes by like once a week at some crazy time, Wednesday at 3:17 or something, nobody seems to know.  I keep thinking I’ll be there when it comes by but then I keep missing it, I don’t even know how I manage to waste so much time, but I look up and realize I’ve missed it, it won’t be by again for who knows when, another week or something, I don’t even know.

One day I thought I heard someone say when the bus would be coming, and where it would stop, so I went there in the morning and I waited. Did nothing but wait all day.  Finally, incredibly, after I don’t even know how long, forever, here it comes, and I grab my stuff and get on, and the bus driver says, “That’ll be $6.75 back in to town, sir” and I try to give him a ten, I don’t care, and he says, “Sorry my friend, exact change only.  You don’t have anything smaller?  Don’t worry, get some change and I’ll be back,” and he waved, and pulled away and I just felt like crying.  And I’m still here, I guess I’ll spend the rest of my life right here, here at the end of the world.

Waving Goodbye 01: The Longest Night

For the Along Came Jones CD release show Dennis asked me to write little introductory texts for each of the songs, so I'll present them here 12-nights-of Xmas fashion.  Jimmy, now that the line at the post office should be shorter I'll resend the CD.  Still the Singapore address?


We didn’t think it could happen but it did, every time we thought, well at least things can’t get any worse they did and then they’d get worse than that.  It seemed as if everyone was leaving and I certainly couldn’t blame them.  Some of the guys said, hey Johny you should come with us, but I couldn’t, I should have but I didn’t.  I knew things would get bad, but I, first of all, I wanted to see the old man one more time.  And then, even though I knew you’d be gone, I knew it was ridiculous, but I went to the old places just to see if you’d be there.  Of course not. Everyone was getting out, no one was looking back, and even though I knew it was going to get worse I just went to bed and lay down.  I lay down and I waited.  For what?  For Santa Claus? I don’t know.  For the end of the world? I don’t know.  I lay down in bed and thought about you.  I could hear the bells up in the sky—but what were they?  Were they, like, sleighbells, jing jing jing, or was it that other thing, you know, the toll of the bell, the end of the world.  And then I see the moon’s full, and it’s all red, and a shadow crosses it, it’s Santa, right?  That’s Santa, isn’t it?  And I see your face in the moon, just like Jackie Gleason’s, smiling seraphically above us all, and I don’t know what to do.  It’s the end or it’s the beginning.  It’s the longest night of the year.



Longest Night lyrics

Granpa

i want a grandpa Christmas every year

Along Came Jones: Waving Goodbye Theme Song

Along Came Jones will do a presentation of the "Waving Goodbye" album in full in January, so I wrote a theme song for the show:

Hello! Hello! We’re Along Came Jones
There’s Myles and Kathy Sparling
My name’s Dennis, this is Pete
There’s Tim, he’s such a darling

Please do not text on your phones
Or play some Words With Friends
Just listen most attentively
And clap hard at the end

Some words may be offensive
And not fit for the kiddies
Please cover up their little ears
If we sing of ass & titties

We’re Along Came Jones, and now we’ll wave
Goodbye and not hello
We’re not leaving yet, that’s just
The name of tonight’s show!

Chorus girl: And now… on with the show!

Happy birthday Jymn. You hoped and you hopped and you hopped and you won!

Girl Let's Go For A Ride

Wrap your hair up in a scarf
Come on girl, we’re taking off
We’ll crank Blondie till the speakers are fried
Can’t take the top off my Toyota
We don’t care, not one iota
Girl, let’s go for a ride

Come on darling please say yes
We won’t need phones or GPS
My lack of direction will be our guide
We’ll go to Stinson, up Route 1
We’ve got fog, who needs the sun?
Girl, let’s go for a ride

Let’s turn east and drive this sucker
All the way past Winnemucca
Till we reach the Continental Divide
Or maybe it would be smarter
To head south to Porta Vallarta
Girl, let’s go for a ride



This is dedicated to my dog Odetta, who does dearly love going for a ride.  Note that the scarf/off rhyme in the first verse requires a Jagger-garage white bluesman pronunciation: scowrff

This Prison is a Paradise

Once this world was a prison

Enclosed and yet a blank

Now this prison is a paradise

And for that I’ve you to thank

Once I found I was trapped by

Walls I could not break through

Now this prison is a paradise

And for that I thank you

Dreams, ah I have dreams

I see the world breaking at the seams

And yet now I’ve found peace

I’ve found release, yes I’m released

I couldn’t bear this tiny world

That time and trouble shrank

But this prison is a paradise

And for that I’ve you to thank

Happy happy birthday baby

Hey Johny, thinking of you.

The Prince's Rejoinder

Used to be charms rhymed with arms

Both were currency

To trade and barter for romance

For bliss, for ecstasy

What rhymes with cunt?

A cake of bundt?

What rhymes with cock?

A strap of jock?

How our currency's debased

It's lost intrinsic value

You can't get nothin' for somethin' now

The market won't allow you

You get nothing

You get something

Everything's a bargain

Everyone's an easy lay

We're all broken-hearted

Don't I wish that I could lie

In love in your embrace

Beauty sketched - serene, eternal -

Here upon your face

The spirit that moves me,

The spirit of grace,

Charms, beguiles, intoxicates

Let's lie forever in this state

Between rest and bold desire

Let's lie, the pith of truth to taste,

So sweet, it burns like fire.

La Belle au Bois Dormante

Of all the gifts I’ve been given, though it may sound perverse

My favorite was the one that some called a curse

That I should grow up perfectly, like a flower bud

But fall into a sleep like death when first I saw my blood

And here you are to wake me

You’ve stormed the palace door

But oh my dear Prince Charming

Can’t I sleep five minutes more?

It was you who slayed the dragon, who braved the thorny hedge

Just as I had hoped for, just as you had pledged

We’re living out the story, each the archetype

But what if, when you taste the fruit you find it’s still unripe?

And here you are to wake me

The one I’ve waited for

But oh my dear Prince Charming

Can’t I sleep five minutes more?

When I awake we’ll lead a life of banquets, hunts and balls

We’ll have the servants wipe 100 years of dust off those glass halls

And happily ever after I will be the Charming wife

But can’t I sleep a little more before we start that life?

Now you’re here to wake me

But please my sweet señor

Oh please my dear Prince Charming

Can’t I sleep five minutes more?

Along Came Jones: Waving Goodbye

Yeah, so the Moron said you should come out with me, I have to wait for the bus, it leaves at 5 AM but there’s a bar next to the bus station, just come out with me, and I did, we went to the bar next door to the bus station and stayed up all night drinking. The bar wasn’t very nice. The people looked all gray in the bar light and most of them were just staring, not at their phones like normal people but just, you know, waiting.  And the Moron said, yeah so I guess I’m really going, I have to go see the old man, I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone, and it made me feel bad, I didn’t really want him to have to go and I had a feeling he wouldn’t be back but I didn’t know what to say, so we talked about stupid stuff, and he looked at me with that dumb, perpetually surprised look that’s so infuriating, until finally he said well I guess it’s time, it was just before 5 and we went out to the bus and the Moron said OK well thanks for coming out and got on the bus and found a seat and put his stuff overhead and took out a book and started to read.  And I was just standing there and he looked up and waved and then looked back at his book and the bus pulled away and I was just standing there, goodbye goodbye goodbye.  And that was it, the bus was gone, the Moron had left, goodbye. The sun wasn’t even up and it smelled like diesel fuel and I tried to remember how to get back home. 

Another year has gone by
Due to the orbit of the earth
And so we once more celebrate
The day of Tracy's birth

Many happy returns of the day Tracette!

While you're wondering what to do with your life

You've done something to your face. An eye's a little smaller, something's happened to your mouth. My body's improving, but it will never change. Every little bloom, fluorescence, suggests decay in foretelling. If it's not broke, you can't fix it. If it's impatient, it will mistake. The fields, the jungle, are over-subscribed. The market's high, but it will fade. My mother, the liar, has discovered honesty in literature (!) at an advanced age. That means, I hope, permission to be ugly, mean, unkind. Though permission is not and never was and will never be required to be an asshole. It comes naturally. Fighter planes roar across the evening sky, practicing for the show, which is itself a dry run for the real thing. Then, again, everyone will suffer and die and wonder at the wasted, golden years gone by. What happened? Was I dreaming? Why didn't I prepare? The end is always the same, anyway. It's what you leave behind -- but that's out of your hands, and has been since it came out. There's been a murder next door. Don't yet know who killed and who died. It came to light by the smell. Around the same time, the garden was being plundered by thieves who shit to mark their attendance at your place. All this while we're sleeping and the guard's afraid to leave the guardhouse. When that happens, the police have to hurt somebody. No wonder the poor girl hung herself in her cell. Let's make a pact. OK, let's lie, but pretend we believe it and maybe some of it will come to pass -- like the existence of Switzerland from the Treaty of Vienna. It was a small clause, but helped a lot of people who have lived and died since 1815. Bless them.

After the well-loved sing-along classic!

Anyone got the lyrics to the Pete Gilbert masterpiece?

An Almost-Pefect Day

A lightweight tribute to Lou:

Sitting outside, reading Frank O’Hara

Spinach omelette and café au lait

Billie’s singing “Say It With A Kiss”

This could be an almost perfect day

It was foggy when I got up this morning

But by noon the fog had blown away

If only you were still here in my life

This would be an almost perfect day

If I manage to forget

That you’re not here to turn to

And I can learn to

Practice self-deception

The day’s complete perfection

Tonight I’ll meet up with some friends for cocktails

And when it’s time to finally hit the hay

I know I’ll go to bed alone and lonely
Still, it’ll be an almost perfect day

Happy birthday, dear Critter.  Ain't no snafu.

Time Enough To Cry

If some day, when I am dead and buried

You forget and smile instead of sigh-

                                                      ing sadly

Don’t feel badly, please do not be worried

There is always time enough to cry

If you find that veils look silly

Or you don’t have time to buy
                                            some black clothes

Save the roses, do not bring my lilies

There is always time enough to cry

Some may scold

If they hear you sing

You’ll be told

You should bring

                           some flowers

There's no rush to come and say goodbye

There is always time enough to cry

                                                                                                   

What's so funny

I was lucky to be in London for work this evening. Great house band, including Roxy/Bryan Ferry stalwarts Mel Collins and Neil Hubbard. Wish you were there.

I got to see both Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser within the last two weeks.  In addition to a couple of hot songs of his own, Mr. Kaiser did "Alice in Blunderland" with the Beefheart tribute band I used to play with.  His band included a drummer whose name I hadn't heard before, but whom I'd heard before, on records at least, William Winant.  It's nice to live near Mills College!

Time to bring back the Exploding Meat Puppet, James?

Happy birthday Jymn!  Nothing can stand in your way when you're a boy!

Aladdin James

Saturday night was the year-end office party. Theme: Glam Rock. I was one of two guys of about 400 who had actually been alive for that phenomenon. As I had recently a chance to visit the fantastic "David Bowie Is" exhibition when visiting Jai in Chicago, I was well prepared. If you haven't seen it recently check out the "Boys Keep Swinging" video. I forgot how hilarious it is.

Why We Fight II

Uniformed men line the streets, armed for our protection
To guard us from those criminals who have the wrong complexion
When things go wrong they know that they’ll be let off by the jury
And this is in the USA, in Ferguson Missouri

So this is why we fight, brothers
This is why we fight
Now's not the time to stop and rest
For this is why we fight

I'm not sure how long these will stay up:

New Bryan Ferry

New Robert Wyatt anthology

Why We Fight

A first draft of an Election Day song....


Some will fall in glory, and others fall in shame
Still others give up because both sides seem the same
Some fear humiliation, some direct attack
But sometimes when we’re broken, new roots grow through the crack

And this is why we fight, brothers
This is why we fight
Though sometimes we must stop and rest
This is why we fight

Happy happy birthday baby

Many happy returns of the day, Tracette, and my best to Tim the Horse!

Jack of Diamonds

A re-write of "Rye Whiskey", more or less:


Jack of Diamonds, he said go ahead boy and spin it
Jack of Diamonds, he said if you want it you’ll win it
His two one-eyed brothers are sleeping or dead
The king offed himself with a sword through the head
Everything can change in the tiniest minute
Oh, Jack of Diamonds

Jack of Diamonds calls the Queen out to bring you good luck
And when she appears you will know you’ve been struck
Before you can see it you’ll be hit by the flash
That opens the future and wipes out the past
Your one chance at freedom mows you down like a truck
Oh, Jack of Diamonds

Jack of Diamonds says pull it, there’s no time to wait
What looked like mere chance will be turned into fate
He says now’s the moment but you’ll have to jump
There’s only one card left but he’ll make it the trump
Oh why did I listen, it’s already too late
Oh, Jack of Diamonds

The modern world's not so bad...

Greetings from Singapore. I've taken up a job here as MD of Citco Fund Services. Still keeping a place in Mumbai and Bangalore. Will be traveling to the US a bit more regularly in the next year. Where shall we meet? Email me at tiojymn@gmail.com. Cheers!

Waving Goodbye

You just love the one who leaves you
You just love to watch men go
You love waving from the window
Humming the saddest songs you know

At the airport or bus station
The only time that we embrace
Is when you watch me going
A brave look on your face

Don’t want to travel
I’d rather stay
You only see me
When you see me slip away

You watch me pack my suitcase
So happy that you get to cry
You always love the one who leaves you
You just love to wave goodbye

Happy birthday,  Poppa.  I'll let my train be my feet if it's too far to walk to you.

Sorry to hear about Jim Rockford, Jim.  He had a good run.

The Overnight Journey From the Last Darkness To This One (by River)

Lie, let the darkness come
Let yourself float down the river
Down its sweet, dark stream
Rest, let go of the day
Don't be afraid of night
Dream the hardest dream

You can’t take flowers with you
Just one smooth small stone
Ravens and owls will watch you
You’re not alone

See, the sun starts to dissolve
Goes out like a spark
But stars can only shine 
When the sky’s grown dark

Lie, hear the river’s song
Words that cannot be spoken
Words that melt in light
Drift into the night
Dream the hardest dream

RIP Tommy Ramone
Now there were none