What Can You Do?

It's time for a non-threatening song and this one's quite innocuous. It was never played in a bar or heard by anyone until I recorded it back in 1993 or so. That's the charm of Knees Calhoon's Countdown to Terror -- you never know what you're gonna get. But you can count on one thing: the mix is the best there's ever been for these songs. It's doubtful that Knees will ever record them again.

The words, chords and melody were written back in 1965 but the arrangement and guitar parts were done in 1993 or so when I recorded all these songs on a Yamaha 4-track cassette deck. The guitars are my 1966 Gibson ES-335 of course. The drums were a Roland drum machine. The bass was my 1973 Fender Jazz bass. Any keyboards were a relatively cheap Casio keyboard.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Written: White Rocks Dorm, NMSU, Las Cruces NM, 1965

 

The White Rocks dorm was a relic of World War II occupation of the campus by excess soldiers from Fort Bliss. The dorm fee was $70 for the fall semester of 1965 for Knees and Dwight, the Torques bass player, and it was worth every penny. The building was torn down the next semester. Knees wrote this on his bunk, looking out the window at the dust, imagining he was writing a song the Byrds might sing.

Well she don’t have much money

But what I want she gets me

When I say let me do something

She don’t say no she lets me

But you, what can you do?

Her eyes are so inviting

When she asks me how I feel

Her hands know what they’re doin

Her love she can’t conceal

But you, what can you do?

You didn’t sympathize

Or try to disguise your lies

She lets the world go by

And it’s no wonder why she’s mine.

Chess Dump