Operator

This is another one of those inevitable songs. It has perfect words and melody. And, in my opinion, as important as these in a song, plot.

OPERATOR

 The drums, bass and piano are played by a program I use call Band in a Box. It's the tool I wanted to program back in the 80s for the Commodore computer, which could play three notes at a time, making a chord. I wanted a machine that would play chords that I programmed into it. I'd play and sing along with the chords. Band in a Box is that concept beautifully realized for MIDI and the PC. I plug in the chords to a song and the computer plays it on as many as five instruments of my choosing. I try to choose only the drums, bass and piano. I figure I should be able to do the guitars myself.

Here's what this song looks like in Band in a Box.

  

No Reply

It's Beatle time again here at Knees Calhoon's Midnight Ramble and it's so much fun to go back to 1965 and play those chords that brought so much amazement to young Knees and Skip. We thrived on their songs, like Things We Said Today, that would have a relatively mellow verse or two before going into a rocking chorus, usually in another key.

NO REPLY

The Torques of 1965, as was their wont, would add another layer of excitement to the song by not only getting louder and more frantic during the chorus, but by speeding up like rabid greyhounds. Then, when it came time for the verse again, they would sheepishly slow down to a more normal pace as the dancing teenagers would glare at them with beer-fuddled eyes.

NO REPLY (Torques Version, Nov. 1965) 

With Skip Batchelor providing the vocals and guitar, Fender Tucker, the harmony and guitar, Dwight Babcock the soaring bass, and Bob Amerman the pounding drums, the Torques at the Boys Club probably looked a bit scruffier than in their amp picture.

  

We had bought the amps in Albuquerque a few months earlier. We had planned to get the traditional blond amps but the black ones were brand new from Fender and we couldn't resist. Years later the blond ones came back into vogue and we regretted it. The guitars in this picture would sell for $$$$ today. I traded the green Strat in for my Gibson Es-335 in 1966.

I was messing around with a labeller one day and stuck a label on Skip's Strat on the headpiece over the Fender decal. He was rather pissed when I pulled the label off and the Fender decal came off with it. It probably lowered the value of the guitar a few bucks in 1965 -- and a few hundred in 2013). Sorry about that, Skip!

Sanctuary 2013

Today I decided to see if I could do a better version of an old Knees Calhoon song in the hour I have slated for music. Well, it's better, but it's not much different from the version I recorded in the 90s and presented at the Midnight Ramble back in 2012. I guess I haven't had any major epiphanies since then (besides the harmonizer and the acoustic guitar).

SANCTUARY 2013

I got the idea for this song from my usual source of inspiration, my books. A tip for budding songwriters: if you need a good title for your song, just walk up and down the fiction aisles of a library. There are thousands of words and phrases that have been vetted by venal publishers and editors to be the most provocative, eye-catching titles possible, and they're all lined up on shelves facing you. Just tilt your head a bit to the right.

It might even help if you use the prose of the book, too. Perhaps this song would have been better if I had followed the plot of William Faulkner's book instead of using a situation I found myself in with a woman at the time. 

Papa Cried

How about another adorable pastiche from Legs Muldoon, aka Dugym Qycfyl, aka Jim Weiler? This time it's a country tune in the Merle Haggard vein and Knees naturally thought of "Mama Tried" when he conjured the music. Once again, he should have followed Dugym's directions better, but dramatic pauses for the drums are not easily programmed (at least by me).

PAPA CRIED

I would have sworn that Jim gave me the words to this song back in the 20th century but the lyric sheet says it all.

BONUS COVER!

It was 1960 and Knees was changing the marquee at the Allen Theater in Farmington NM when this movie came to town. He saw it five or six times that week. It had a great theme song which he had no trouble singing; he'd been singing it all his life.

NORTH TO ALASKA

The Way

I first heard this song when I was working at Softdisk in Shreveport LA back in the 90s. It was playing on somebody's radio at work and I remember asking around about that "old and gray" song. Nobody could remember the song or who sang it. Then one day I was at a pizza joint and it played on the TV on a cable channel and I finally found out that the name of the song was "The Way" and that it was by a band named Fastball. Of course I could have found out that on the Internet but my mind doesn't work that way now, much less in the 90s. I figured I had stumbled on a forgotten gem, because it was truly a catchy number with intriguing major/minor chord changes and an extremely rocking chorus.

THE WAY

It wasn't till I got on my current recording kick last year that I actually researched the song and learned it. I found out that the song was very popular in the 90s and may have actually been over-played. As if I would know.

Fastball turns out to be a three-piece band from Austin and if any of their other songs compare to "The Way" I need to listen more. There's even a Wikipedia entry about the song. Apparently, it's based on a true event, when an elderly couple were discovered dead in the desert, a distance away from their car, which had broken down. No one knew they were out.

Backslider's Wine

I recorded this a couple of months ago and have learned a few tricks since then but it's doubtful I will revisit this song, written by Michael Martin Murphy. There were too many football games today to allow me to spend much time at the Ramble. Sorry.

BACKSLIDER'S WINE 

Nothin' You Can Say

I'm getting ideas. About how my recent upsurge in energy and confidence, bolstered by my resurrection of the acoustic guitar and the purchase of a harmonizer, makes me think about re-recording all of those songs I wrote back in the 60s and 70s. I can do them so much cleaner than back then, with better vocals. And to start this new project off, I decided to redo NOTHIN' YOU CAN SAY, a song from 1966 written by my friend Albert "Mo" Moses. 

NOTHIN' YOU CAN SAY

It came out quite a bit different from the version recorded in 1993 and found in the Midnight Ramble for May 27, 2012. Is it better? I dunno. But from time to time I plan to redo some of the old songs. 

Mo wrote the words, chords and guitar lick for this song and had a slightly different melody when he sang it. I used the harmonizer and it seemed to force me to sing the rap-like chant I came up with. So I added on more guitars and more voices to give it that "wall of sound" that I used to dislike so much. 

After I've done a few more remakes, maybe I'll learn if it's a good thing to do. 

Sweet Baby James

It was inevitable that this song would appear in a blog like this. It's one of the world's best campfire singalong songs and I've sung it so often over the years that I didn't need to consult my songbook at all.

SWEET BABY JAMES

Sometimes words and music come together so brilliantly you just have to wonder if humanity is worthy of it.

NOTE: Ambien at work. When I added this song on January 18, 2013 I completely forgot that back on December 28, 2012 I had done the same song. To be fair, it is a different version, using an acoustic guitar and less Band in a Box. There are 2 inserted measures but I left the ending half-assed.

I wouldn't be surprised if I did this again. I'm prone to taking an Ambien at midnight and playing till three. 

For a Smile

We return to the arcane here at the countdown to with another song penned by my friend, Dugym Qycfyl, aka Legs Muldoon. When he found out I was on a recording kick back in the 90s he dropped a binder on my desk. It was filled with song lyrics he had come up with out of his twisted but Adderal-quality imagination. My job was to write the music and record the songs.

A while back we celebrated a couple of his songs, POME OF YOURSELF and THE PEDIPHAGE QUARTET, and if you survived those you'll probably enjoy

 FOR A SMILE

 I feel I must explain how the song came about. When I saw the words I sensed a rhythm (as all good lyrics should have) and immediately sang a simple melody over the first chords that occurred to my hands. This is my usual song-writing method. Think long? Think wrong. I recorded it and didn't really like it. Was it an upbeat song, or a wistful one? Then I looked more closely at the lyric sheet.

 

According to the official lyric sheet, it's both! My high school Latin skills tell me that "lagrimoso" has something to do with tears. "Allegro" means the opposite, I suppose. And lento and presto mean slow and fast. Boy do I not take directions well. 

So I made the song a bit more tearful, and more suited to the season of Lent. As your penance, here is the first version I did, a few months back. Both versions rely on Band in a Box for all the music.

FOR A SMILE (Early Version)

BONUS COVER!

Continuing with adding a cover song to the countdown, here is one of Knees' favorite Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby songs. He even learned the piano part for the recording.

THE END OF THE INNOCENCE

(c) Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby

Kind Woman

All right. It's time for one of my all-time favorite tunes and of course it's from Buffalo Springfield, the perpetrators of about 30% of my all-time favorites list. The first time I heard this song back in 1966 I knew that I wanted to be able to play the guitar like that. Unfortunately I was a tad naive and didn't recognize that it was a pedal steel guitar. Played by Jerry Garcia, no less.

KIND WOMAN

My nephew, Jocco Rushing, who can play circles around me on the guitar, was also blown away by the guitar and singing (by Richie Furay) in this song. I consider Buffalo Springfield's music timeless and I think young Jocco agrees. There is a 3-CD collection of all of Buffalo Springfield's music and I recommend it to anyone who likes classic 20th century music. At least check out Jerry Garcia's steel playing on this song. And this was 1966! 

I'll Be Back

Here's that Beatle tune I promised, which shows off their skills in blending major and minor chords. This one switches from Am to A major at will and has two choruses. Skip and I figured John and Paul were just showing off. We struggled to come up with one catchy idea and they had them to spare.

I'LL BE BACK

The song was rather straightforward after the first pass, with single voice vocals on the verses and harmonizing on the choruses, but since the last half of the verses deserved harmony, I added it and then needed to do something more for the choruses. I ended up singing the song twice, each time with with the appropriate harmonies. But instead of picking the best vocal track, I perversely decided to use them both, so instead of the usual three Knees jammed in your ears you've got six.

Knees Calhoon has one of the world's best anagrams -- HE'S AN OK CLONE -- and at the Loadstar Tower in Shreveport LA where I made my fortune with a computer magazine back in the 90s there were many stories about Knees being a clone. Well, with this song he sounds like three of them, and it really doesn't matter which one is the real one.

Mad World

No, your ears aren't deceiving you. This is a song that is actually less than 20 years old. I picked it up by hearing it at a Taco Bell (about the only place I ever hear any music other than my own) and thought it had the most interesting melody line. It wasn't till I got the words off the Internet that I realized that it's a song to be sung by a disturbed teenager.

MAD WORLD

I've been informed that this song is a staple on the reality singing circuit and I can see why. I can also imagine that singers are expected to do some sort of vocal pyrotechnics at the end. I've only heard one version of the song, by Gary Jules, the writer, and in keeping with my rigid constraints, I mainly just tried to copy the chords and melody. Even with the harmonizer I don't do pyrotechnics. 

Harbor Lights of Venus

I think this song is by Boz Scaggs, but because I am constrained from consulting the Internet to refresh my memory about it, I'm just guessing. I probably have the words wrong, too, since they don't seem to make much sense. I have no idea where I got this song, but the words (and more importantly, chords) are written in my songbook from the 70s.

HARBOR LIGHTS OF VENUS

I sent this mp3 to a friend and he wanted me to emphasize the odd chord in this song. It is truly an odd chord and I'm sure you'll catch it. In the key of C it would be a big B major. You don't find that too often in popular music. Willie Nelson says he has written songs based on a single chord he liked and I bet Boz was doing the same thing.

I wish I had thought of it. Another thing that's great about this song is the title. It evokes an alien world of sailing ships with a nostalgic flair. Only us oldsters remember the song "Harbor Lights" but here is a tune to bridge the generations.

Another Man's Hair On My Razor

Back in the 70s I had an album by a Canadian group called The Paupers, and this was the only only song on it that I remembered. We used to do it at the Las Cruces Inn and the hipper crowd liked it. They thought it was by "The Poppers".

ANOTHER MAN'S HAIR ON MY RAZOR

I couldn't remember what key we used to do the song in and ended up in a much lower, easier key. In fact ALL of my songs are done in a lower key than I used to do them in. Even if I don't consciously move them down, they are lower anyway, because I have my acoustic guitar tuned down a whole step. It makes the strings easier to play and gives it a swampier sound. And of course, it makes it easier for a 65-year-old to sing songs he used to sing when he was 30.

Here's how the younger, more hirsute Knees played this song with the Calhoon Brothers in 1977.

ANOTHER MAN'S HAIR (Bros Version) 

Just a Little

The Beau Brummels were one of my favorite groups back in the day. Their songs had interesting chords and harmony and to my ear the band was like a San Francisco version of the Beatles.

 

In late 1966 they even came to Farmington NM to play at the Boys Club, the same place where I recorded the Torques playing in 1965. Before the show I was talking to some of the roadies backstage (which means behind the boxing ring at the Boys Club) and heard that the guitar player for the opening band had missed his flight. I volunteered and went home and got my Gibson and came back and played with them for their set. I sort of knew the songs and their arrangements and it went okay.

 

JUST A LITTLE

Comin' Back to Me

This recording was done today pretty much as an experiment to see if I could pull off a song without drums. Instead I used a click track supplied by Audacity to play the guitars against, then of course removed the click track. Then I added a bass track, a first for me.

Back in the late 60s I thought the Jefferson Airplane was fantastic and their sound would live forever. It didn't. But for a few years this was not considered too pretentious -- even though, let's face it fellow boomers, it is.

COMIN' BACK TO ME

 

Snow Blind Friend

Ordinarily I prefer pro-drug tunes to anti-drug songs, but this one written by Hoyt Axton and recorded by Steppenwolf is an exception. Kicks, by Paul Revere and the Raiders, is another one.

SNOW BLIND FRIEND

Now that I'm recording songs by other people there are a few ground rules I should explain.

(1) No fair listening to the original song before recording. In other words, I must record the song as I REMEMBER it, not as it was originally played. I have most of the lyrics in my songbooks but I'm allowed to use the Internet to get lyrics that I may have forgotten. I'm not allowed to use the Internet to get chords or melodies, though. In general, it's best if it's been at least two decades since I last heard the song.*

(2) Only one instrument besides bass and drums can be provided by Band in a Box. All others have to be played by me.

(3) The harmonizer must be over-used. Over-use of effects is also encouraged.

(4) The goal is to end up with a 3-minute tone poem with a warm, smooth, moist and leathery texture.

* This rule doesn't apply to songs by The Beatles. I have a book, THE BEATLES Complete Scores, with every song they ever recorded accurately transcribed, so when I veer from their arrangements it's on purpose, or from necessity.

   

Things We Said Today

Yesterday I featured a song that had some nifty major-minor chord changes and today we have a song that further demonstrates the charm and originality of switching from A minor to A Major. When Skip Batchelor and I heard the Exotics play this song in Durango CO in 1965 we were flabbergasted. We'd never heard anything like it and we'd been analyzing songs for over a year. Even surf songs wouldn't dare have the verse in A minor and then switch to A major for the chorus. And since when can a song have two -- count 'em -- two choruses?

THINGS WE SAID TODAY

I've always claimed that having surf music as the first music I learned was a great boon to my enjoyment of playing songs. Prior to surf music (which started around 1962 in most of the world; California a bit earlier) we knew where the chords were going to go, at least in pop music. If people were going to sing the catchy melodies of the 50s the chords had to make sense.

But surf music was 90% instrumental, and a guitar drenched in reverb can play any melody, even one that makes no sense to sing. So the chord structure of surf music wasn't constrained by tradition or reason. You could go from C to A flat to G minor to F diminished -- although I'd go a bit slow on the diminished chords in surf music -- and who's to stop you? 

Skip and I wrote a few surf songs that made no chordal sense, and loved it. But we never thought of switching from major to minor (or vice versa) until the Beatles came along and showed us it could be done, even with melodic singing. Another great Beatle tune that has the same pattern is I'll Be Back -- which, not so coincidentally, is coming up soon here at Knees Calhoon's Midnight Ramble .  

What the hell, here's the Torques version of the song, from a November night in 1965 at the Farmington NM Boys Club, with Skip Batchelor (whom you can see live in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area) doing the singing honors.

THINGS WE SAID TODAY (Torques Version)

Pearl of the Quarter

Whenever I get a comment here at the Ramble I act on it. So here goes with another Steely Dan song. It's another song without a definite genre, although I guess it could be called a New Orleans Rhythm & Blues number.

PEARL OF THE QUARTER

I was always intrigued by the chorus in this song and when I figured out the chords I knew why. It's almost more mathematical than musical. The song, which is in the key of C (let's say) goes up to an E major chord for the chorus. Then the progression is:

E     Em    D    Dm    C    Cm    F    C

Chord fiends may have noticed that I have a penchant for songs that cleverly combine major and minor chords of the same note. Like a song in A major that fugues into A minor, or vice versa. Well, here is a song that has three major-to-minor chord progressions in a row, each one a step lower than the previous. And somehow Donald Fagen manages to place a melody over it that makes sense.

These are the only two Steely Dan songs that I know at this time. Do it Again might be too well known for me to tackle and Reelin' and Rikki are way too difficult.

My goal in the Midnight Ramble is to immortalize, digitally, the best old tunes I used to know. Necessarily, they have to be songs I can actually play and sing, so that cuts out a lot of classics. But it gives me a chance to dredge up some nifty songs that we used to love playing, and aren't heard much anymore, even on the oldies stations. 

 

Dirty Work

This is one of my favorite Steely Dan songs and I am well pleased with the way it turned out. In fact, on the chorus the harmonizer made me sound just like the Dan, except that they did it the old-fashioned way, actually singing the harmony parts. I just pressed a button.

DIRTY WORK 

What kind of song is this? It's not R&R, country, pop, disco, hip-hop. It's a sort of soap opera song about a philandering cougar, sung with unstrained vocals over interesting, melodic chords. There's no genre for it, but I wish there were more songs like this.

There undoubtedly are, but in the musical fog of 2013 it would take me too long to track them down. So I stick with the songs of my younger days. 

Listening Tip: Use headphones or buds for Knees Calhoon music.  The songs aren't "mastered" in the same way professional music is, so the highs and lows are lost when played through computer speakers, and believe me, Knees needs all the highs and lows he can muster.

Killing Time

This is another old song that Knees wrote back in the 70s when he was flying high with the Mighty Calhoon Brothers at the Las Cruces Inn on West Picacho Street in Las Cruces NM. I have live recordings from the bar and a version done at home but they weren't good enough for me to include them in chronological order.

The first version I made with the harmonizer didn't turn out so well and I blamed it on the fact that the chords in this song don't exactly make harmonic sense. The melody fits against the chords okay but good luck finding a reasonable harmony. The fact that it eventually came up with decent harmony lines is a tribute to the technical expertise of chip designers and manufacturers.

KILLING TIME

 

Written: Gallagher Street, Las Cruces NM, 1978

The name of this song was inspired by Thomas Berger’s book of the same name. In the early 80s Knees sent this song into the American Song Festival, a national songwriting contest, and the next year there were two songs out called Killing Time. It was a song title whose time had come. Neither song resembled Knees’ song.


You’re a killer, time’s your victim
He was on our side, still you tricked him
Not so long ago
We had the world on the run
I knew you had friends on all sides of town
We both laughed about the rumors goin round

You never said it
But you made me feel I was the one.

Even though you touched me like nobody else
I’d still have to call it a crime
Cause all the while I was makin love to you
You were only killing time
You were only killing time.

You’re a killer, time’s your victim
He was all we had, still you tricked him
If I hadn’t been so high
I wouldn’t have had so far to fall
I don’t blame you for takin what I had
But it’s all comin back and I feel so bad
You called us lovers
But now you never call at all.

Okay, here's the Calhoon Brothers version from January 13, 1979.

KILLING TIME (Calhoon Brothers version)

The Road

Let's travel back to 1973 when young Knees was playing in Colorado bars and trying to write a commercial song. The one he came up with was so sappy he never played it in any of his bands. There was a flaky recording of it from the late 70s but it was unrevivable and so I didn't include it when it should have appeared.

This version was made in late 2012 after I got the harmonizer.

THE ROAD

Written: Third Street, Durango CO, 1973

 

I grew up in the back of an old Ford

We were drivin too fast to get bored

Daddy kept the radio playin

He said “If you believe in the road

It’s just like prayin.”

Mama left us as we passed through Reno

For a man who was winnin at Keno

Daddy laughed all the way down to Zion

He said “If you believe in the road...”

Then started cryin.

I spent sixteen years on the road with my pa

Drivin in cars, singin in bars

An those sixteen years were the best I ever saw

Sleepin in cars, followin stars.

We were busted drivin through Albuquerque

Seems the man was lookin out for me

Daddy said “It looks like bad weather

But if you believe in the road we’ll be together.”

It seems my real father died in San Quentin

So they sent me upstate for detention

Daddy cursed them as they led me away

He said “If you believe in the road...”

He died that day.

I spent sixteen years on the road with my pa

Drivin in cars, singin in bars

An those sixteen years were the best I ever saw

Sleepin in cars, followin stars.

I'm all out of doodles but here is a picture of my father from before the time I was born. We never traveled anywhere together, as I remember. My parents divorced when I was 6. He reminds me of the hired killer in the first season of Ratched. Good-looking guy.

Hot Burrito #1

The bands I was in back in the 70s and 80s used to do a lot of songs by the Flying Burrito Brothers and this is one of their best. I like to think that it's what Gram Parsons was inspired to write after he learned how to play a diminished chord. They called it Hot Burrito #1, probably because it was so tasty.

HOT BURRITO #1

Obviously, this song inspired me to name one of my songs Hot Potato #1. They both have diminished chords in them.