i thought that if you had an acoustic guitar...

MP3: Temporarily Not the K-Man (5.4 mb)

With all due respect to Pete Seeger, I'm not a big fan of folk songs or protest music though I can certainly see their purpose. Maybe it's just those 'round the neck harmonica holders...they look like evil orthodontia from Patrick Bateman's closet to me.

I initially intended this blog entry to examine my feelings about the current political climate and discuss the role of perspective in shaping our beliefs. But, much like folk music - yeah yeah workers' rights, teach the children blah blah blah - it became a little tiresome. And I'm anything but ambitious.

So instead of diving into how watching the History Channel makes me think the history of man is nothing but the history of war, or how reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States might lead one to believe it's all about the oppression of the lower classes, or how it all often seems to just be about Booty and the Beat, I'll just say that every opinion is colored by what one believes, which in turn is influenced by one's point of view, and so on in circular fashion - and facts are often manipulated to serve a purpose. Why do I believe what I believe, in other words.

I'll also avoid wondering if corporately-owned news outlets that cater to their owner's vision are as dangerous as government-controlled news agencies, or if it seems wrong that during recent record-high gas prices one of our oil companies posted the highest profits ever by any company in US history, or whether it's more important to be loyal to your country than it is to mankind or the world as a whole. I don't have enough hair or weed to get into all that, but I think you can tell where I'm coming from.

Instead, I'll leave you with this raggedy folk song, based on a friend's true adventure. The opposing viewpoint is just as valid sure, but it's not as vital or song-worthy. As I said, I don't particularly go in for this sort of protest stuff...it just seemed the right platform for the subject matter, and it was kind of fun & sloppy.

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hey, that's no way to say goodbye

MP3: Goodbye to Summer (Version) (3.9 mb)

Two goodbye songs in one month, hooda thunk? Summer deserves a send-off as well, and despite the big ugly mess it was on the Jersey Shoreline CD, I always liked this song for some reason and so decided to give a shot at re-mixing it to see if it might be more presentable. It's still a bit of a mess, but I have no shame....


GOODBYE TO SUMMER

I remember the waves on the beach
How they knocked me over
Like the miracle strip with the sand in your suit
Swimming time for you is over

Goodbye to Summer
Say it isn't so
Slacks and umbrellas
Summer has to go
It has to go

All the jellyfish on the sand
Like clear blue piles of dogshit
And the shrimp in the beer and the snake in the box
Uncle Monster lurking somewhere

Where's your choice for sleeping tonight?
By the open ocean window
There's the smell of the house
We were all in the shower
We all knew each other well then

Goodbye to Summer
Say it isn't so
Rep ties and blue blazers
Summer has to go
It has to go


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draggin' the line

MP3: Goodbye Old Maple (6.1 mb)

A few weeks ago, we had to take down one of the old maple trees, the one by the patio. It was a siamese twin of a tree at one time, its counterpart having been removed a few years back due to the illness which finally invaded this one. Like most any living thing, it was a source of much delight and much frustration: a great shade provider for us on summer hot days and a tarp of sorts against the rain when running across the patio, but it also littered the place with little helicopter leaves that stained the bricks and there was increasing danger of branches falling onto the casa. It was also very beautiful, but made a nice bridge for renegade raccoons - like the one(s) I mentioned in July - to find their way into our space.

Well the other afternoon at dusk Kate & I were out there looking up at the sky, and she mentioned how nice it was to be able to see it so vastly now without the foliage blocking the view. She was also glad there was no longer a "highway for the raccoons" to make their way into the attic. But we were both a little sad too that the tree was no longer there, majestically and kind as it had been for so long.

I never thought, "there's a song in all this" (why would I?), there just was one. I think it sprang from the desire to somehow honor that gone maple tree before we got used to its absence and went about our days as though it was never there.

Now, I'm no tree-hugger, but when I was younger I thought Magnolia You Sweet Thing was a love song to a tree, and I didn't find anything odd about that at all.


GOODBYE OLD MAPLE

It's good to see the sky on a dusky afternoon
And there's no highway for the raccoon
And there are no helicopters crashing in our yard

We thought the sun might burn us away
But it's been a cool Summer
So we're doin' fine
And in Fall when rain comes around
I'll miss the shelter that kept me from drowning

So goodbye old maple tree
You always had a plot for my baby & me
Goodbye old maple tree
You really meant a lot to my baby & me

Goodbye sweet maple tree
You really meant a lot to my baby & me
Goodbye old maple tree
You always had a thought from my baby & me
Goodbye old maple tree
You really meant a lot to my baby & me
Goodbye old maple tree
You always had a plot for my baby & me
Goodbye old maple tree


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golden living dreams of visions

MP3: Lion Water Sign (3.8 mb)

In the Zodiac, the sign Aquarius is known as the water-bearer, and is almost always depicted as pouring water from some small vessel he's been toting around. And yet, for some astrological reason, Aquarius is an air sign (as opposed to a water sign which, I think, would make much more sense).

I bring this up because when I wrote the first verse of this song some few years ago - and there it sat, as they do, for many many forgotten days, until it finally stood up this weekend and shouted, "Finish me!" as they often eventually do as well - the dangerously little knowledge I possess of astrology had me presuming that I, as an Aquarian, was a water sign, due to the aforementioned carrying around of water and all that. I mean, it makes sense right? Wrong, Winston Tong. I am an air sign, as are the rest of you wet and watery Aquarians out there (and you know who you are). Well dry me off and call me Fluffy...you do learn something new every day, don't you?



LION WATER SIGN

You are a lion, and I am a water sign
I think things are looking good
You are a lion, and I am a water sign
I think things are looking good
When you start to roar
And I call you a bore
We're on our way

You are a nightgown, and I am your thorny crown
I think Heaven's smiling now
You are a (k)nightgown, and I am your thorny crown
I think Heaven's smiling now
When you dress me up
And I hand you the cup
We're on our way

There has got to be no reason for it all
But it doesn't mean there doesn't have to be
If you feel like throwing metal forks around
Well then go ahead....

You are a prayer, and I want to be the mayor
I think we could win this town
You are a prayer, and I want to be the mayor
I think we could win this town
When you start to rise
And there's less nay's than aye's
We're on our way

You are a knick-knack, and I am a bric-a-brac
I think we are on display
You are a knick-knack, and I am a bric-a-brac
I think we are on display
When you flash your ass
And I smash through the glass
We're on our way

There has got to be no reason for it all
So just go ahead....


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low rider is a little higher

MP3: The Whole Point (1.3 mb)

July has been weird. Filled with malfunctioning tires, computers and airplanes - as well as guests both welcome and not (sure, raccoons are cute and they can really take you down with those little faces, but the hours they keep could make a shy bald buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder) - we're lucky to be in such good spirits these days.

With that in mind, here's a quick song from the vault as I haven't had the opportunity to record anything new for you this month.


THE WHOLE POINT

And so it goes
I keep looking for a way
To make my lows much higher
Than they are today.


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bodies...i'm not an animal

MP3: Everyone I Know Has A Body (5 mb)

It's been said that the only reason we have bodies is so we'll be able to take our heads to the places they want to go. That's kind of funny when you think about it, but it implies the body is just a shell - a container - for the mind, and that tends to reinforce the feeling of separation between the two.

I'm inclined lately to think of the body as being like ice cream, and our consciousness is the flavor that permeates throughout it. But then, I love ice cream and haven't thought this through to the last delicious bite, so don't hold it against me (although, if I said you had a lovely body you could certainly hold that against me, arh arh).

In the meantime, we all have bodies in their various shapes and conditions, and just as you probably wouldn't want to spend your whole life inside your house knowing there's a big world outside, why should we be so concerned about staying in our bodies all of the time?

Marble Tea Cover Song Alert:
The Fuel Burning Oracle has injected Who's Been in Your Dreams with his usual psychedelically experimental garnishings. You can find it in his MySpace player, and I'm pleased as punch! Be sure to check out his other tunes while you're there....


EVERYONE I KNOW HAS A BODY

Everyone I know has a body
Everyone I know has a body
Have you ever seen someone
Who doesn't have a body?

Everyone I know has a home inside their head
Everyone I know has a home inside their head
Have you ever met someone
Who doesn't have a body?

Drawing mandalas
And watching Captain Kangaroo
Let's go skinny dipping
In the energy pool

Toss that tambourine
And shake your maracas while you got 'em
We're just embryos
In the time machine

Everyone I know has a body
Everyone I know has a body
Have you ever known someone
Who doesn't have a body?

Drawing mandalas
And watching Captain Kangaroo
Let's go skinny dipping
In the energy pool

Toss that tambourine
And shake your maracas while you got 'em
We're just embryos
In the time machine

Have you ever been someone
Who doesn't have a body?


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syd meets the marble tea

MP3: Alphabet (2.8 mb)
(written by Syd Meats)

Some of my favorite songs are witty, British and short. Much of that probably owes to a childhood love for the infectious tunes of Herman's Hermits and the chance discovery of Monty Python's Flying Circus on PBS in the early '70s. I became a die-hard Anglo-fan with a short attention span and, despite the occasional tryst with prog-rock, my love affair with brief and humorous things from the UK has carried on to this day.

In any case, Mr. Hobbes may be surprised to discover that one of the developments of the modern world that led not only to a life less nasty but also to my further appreciation of the very short song, was the recordable cassette tape - particularly when compiling an assortment of songs for friends or self into the magical mixed tape. Ah, yes. You want just the right songs in just the right order, and very often there was just about 2 minutes of blank tape at the end of each side left to fill. What a perfect opportunity for the very short song to slide in and round out the festivities so nicely! I found myself collecting these tiny tunes to use as needed, but perhaps it was also an excuse to find more of them for my own personal gratification....

It comes as no surprise then that I fell immediately in love with a song called Alphabet by Romsey's own Syd Meats, Prince of Pies and Piper of Prawns. A singer-songwriter of (mainly) humorous songs, he's also a great mate and one helluva bloke. Check out his MySpace page to hear some of his songs and say Hello. His Alphabet is a whimsical and surreal seduction song in the fine English tradition that brings to mind Robyn Hitchcock's I Got a Message for You and Syd Barrett's Love You with its seemingly nonsensical wordplay and seventh note inflections.

Oh, and lest you think I changed a verse just to plug my favorite computers, I'll have you know that it's really a quiet nod to those nutty Bonzos.

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a new free single for tax day!

MP3: Good In Black (5.1 mb)

Hey, before you check out the new free blog song, let me tell you about the new free Marble Tea single. I'm calling it the Back in Time / Demi Moore Single since the song titles themselves are rather long. On the A-Side we have The Girls Who Went Back in Time and on the B-Side Please Don't Cut Your Hair Like Demi Moore. These songs originally appeared on the out-of-print Jersey Shoreline CD, but they've been freshly remixed and mastered for your aural delight right here in the laboratory. You can download the single (for free, in case you didn't hear) at:

http://www.marbletea.com/music.html

In case this next bit of code doesn't show up in your browser, you can listen to it in the player at the top of the page on that link I just gave you.






I hope you enjoy it.

Now, about this Good In Black song. I used to live with a triumphant feline named Sidney The Mega-Cat who was feared far & wide around the complex, but who also suffered extreme bouts of abstract melancholia. When we took walks together, he'd never hesitate to enter a neighboring apartment, nonchalantly gliding past the hissing resident cat with a smirk. He was big and brave and fearless, but on other days he'd only sit and stare, that giant mug stuck in silent contemplation of the stereo's VU meters while I wrote songs about girls. This is one of those songs, another old recording that I've pulled from the vault and cleaned up a bit (but just a bit). This too I hope you'll enjoy.

GOOD IN BLACK

Sidney sits and stares all day at the stereo
I joined him today I think I'll stay
I like it
He never says too much
I wonder what he's thinking
Does he need affection?
I know all about that affection thing
or lack of it, do you?
I know you do
You know I meant to tell you:

You look good in black
You look good in black

Sidney has a special way and a certain foe
I watched him today keep it at bay
Amazing
You never see those things coming
that'll take you down
But you get a feeling
I know all about those creepy little
coming up kind of things, do you?
Uh huh oh yeah.
I was going to tell you:

You look good in black
From the front, the side and the back
While you're dressing
I'm requesting
That you put on the black

Sidney sits and stares all day at the stereo
I joined him today I think I'll stay
I like it
He never says too much
I wonder what he's thinking

You look good in black
You look good in black

Zambiland, zambiland
Zambiland, zambiland

Interiors
Amp radio
Magic fortune teller
Rainbow

A Postscript:

Dylan Kight moved his once-a-week song blog to http://www.wildernessofthemind.com/. Check it out.

Sunburst Carrier has just released their first EP. It's called Sound Sensitive and it's beautiful. Lilting, cascading guitar-esque instrumentals for melancholy illumination. Sidney would've loved it.

Kate recently turned me on to Just Fontaine, and their new Four Views EP is another must-have. Great sardonic Brit-pop that fits squarely into my collection.

And if you haven't picked up the latest Max Eider disc...wtf are you waiting for?! I thought it was brilliant the first time I listened to it, but now I want to be buried right in the same coffin with it. Get your own, Spotty.

Who needs major labels?


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the final countdown

MP3: Don't Look At Me That Way (1.5 mb)

At the risk of ending up like George Oscar Bluth II (GOB), banned from the Magicians' Alliance for revealing the tricks of the trade, I am going to tell you how easy it is, my dear friends, to become your own personal pop star.

This month's song (sketch, really) was recorded quickly and completely in Mau's Brooklyn apartment using nothing more than my old iBook and a crusty acoustic guitar with ancient strings (indeed, I tuned it as best I could but was later told that its neck was in such a precarious condition that the strings needed to be tuned down...way down).

My intention was to keep myself busy while he was out by laying down a song idea in Garageband (which comes free with every new Mac) and then importing it into Logic for further fleshing when I was back home. Well, as often happens, I promptly forgot about the recording and, since I neglected to write down the chords or any other ideas surrounding the genesis p-orridge of the tune, I was unsure of what to do upon rediscovering it on my hard drive. Ah, I know: I'll put it up on the weblog as an example of how easy it is to do this stuff so maybe everyone else will give it a go as well.

So yes. While it's not a particularly good song (or even a complete one), you can see what possibilities abound. There was no external hardware involved (not even a pick!), meaning that I recorded the guitar and vocals without headphones directly into the iBook using its built-in microphone (that tiny little hole on the right side of the monitor...this is an older iBook, before the built-in iSight cameras), and used only the stock plug-ins etc that come with Garageband. The drums are one of the included GB loops that I dragged into the project without modifying, and the bass is one of GB's software instruments whose notes were played using the computer's keyboard.

As GOB would say: Ta-da! It's really amazing what can be done in less than an hour with this modern technology, even if that lead guitar sounds like some song from Mau's collection of 70s Yacht Rock.

But with all these modern advancements, why can't I get The Final Countdown (GOB's theme song) to play as a ringtone on my cell phone?


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life goes on within you and without you

MP3: Faces on a Train (5.2 mb)

You know how sometimes you'll be having a conversation about one thing and several minutes later you'll be talking about something totally different and you think "How did we start talking about that?" and when you look back through the topics you discussed you see how one thing led to another (yeah yeah yeah) and often it's only one or two steps but sometimes it's quite many and you'll see how things fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, but not really like a jigsaw puzzle because the shapes of thoughts aren't that well-defined, they're more like amoebas shape-shifting around like the particles in our bodies which, they say, are constantly morphing and so leads many to believe that the body can heal itself, and still others to feel that it goes much further than that since everything is comprised of these malleable, affective particles and so why is it so hard to believe that someone like Uri Geller could bend spoons with his mind when really all one would do is cut the perceived distance and difference between the utensil and themselves into smaller chunks until there was no distance and everything was one thing?

Well, here's a song about travel.


FACES ON A TRAIN

Faces on a train
The streets of Madrid, Spain
So many to see, so few to know

Getting on the boat
And heading to the sea
Staring at the waves that rise and fade

You can't count them all, they all become the sea
All the waves in you are all the waves in me

Pieces of a dream
Like pearls across the floor
I raise my arms and fade into the sky

Everything I am is everything that is
I listen closely and I found out what it says

Cells in a body
Bodies in a country
Countries in a planet that spins and hums
[sing that stanza twice, please]

Faces on a train
The streets of Madrid, Spain
So many to see, so few to know

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you may say i'm a dreamer

MP3: I Wish It Would Snow (Electrically) (4.5 mb)

****************************************
LATEST NEWS

These songs are now available as a Podcast on iTunes. Check it out here:



Also, you can download each past years' tunes in separate tidy packages for ultimate Marble Tea convenience here.

****************************************

It just occurred to me that this is two months in a row where the songs dealt with wishing. Hhmmm, how 'bout that then? We could talk all night about wishing and dreaming (and hoping and praying, and anything else Burt and Dionne might warn you against), but there are other matters to address now so let's save those explorations for another fireside, shall we?

First let me tell you quickly about this song. True, there's a free acoustic version available as part of the Slave to the Tuna EP. This more electric rendition first appeared on the out-of-print 2001: A Case of the Tea CD, but I'm offering up here the cleaned up version that Jeff Booth so graciously set his knobs to. Considering the state of my timing and singing, I think he pulled it far out of the mire!

Second, I'm stent-free baby, so how 'bout we get a little snow on the Shore, eh?


I WISH IT WOULD SNOW

She said,
"I wish it would snow all winter long
Because I need something fun to tickle my little tongue.
Oh, flurries are fine: dusting my face and glitter my hair,
But they're infrequent, just like my lovers,
And I'd rather just stay in bed...."

She said,
"I wish I could do whatever it is that you do."
Well, this forced him to laugh and re-evaluate everything.
"No, don't wear my shoes: I'm always tripping and stumbling about.
And even though they look like they fit
Well, they're really far too big...."

I never understood selective generosity
And why does the shame of the past
Govern my thoughts like a fog?

She said,
"I'm waiting for you down by the dock,
And I'm tempted to throw myself in to see what Shelley saw."
Are kind words enough for someone whose head may burst into flames?
And in her diary the words are all true
But it never seems the same:

I never understood selective generosity
And why does the shame of the past
Govern my thoughts like a fog?


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if 6 was 9

MP3: If Wishes Were Fishes (3.9 mb)

Pardon me for being an old hippie, but I think that in much the same way Love can wound or heal, Vision can be a prison or it can be freedom. How do you see the grass, Glasshopper?

Er...I mean, how do you see the glass, Grasshopper? Half this or half that?

As an experiment, this song was recorded in Garageband (as opposed to Logic) so that I could reacquaint myself with that astonishingly ubiquitous program.

IF WISHES WERE FISHES

If wishes were fishes
Then dreamers would fish
For wishes and fishes
And dishes delish
And I'd still be in a boat
Out on the ocean

If money was honey
It'd hang from a tree
Like honey but money
And all very free
Would you still stick your paws
Down in my wallet?

Don't get any ideas about my beehive
Don't get any ideas about my fish

If oranges were violent
We'd all be surprised
We'd put them in cages
And run for our lives
Maybe they're not dangerous
Just different

If lovers were dolphins
They'd never say 'No'
They'd always be happy
And ready to go
Would I keep dangling worms
Into the water?

Don't get any ideas about my oranges
Don't get any ideas about my girl

If doctors were lawyers
They'd put us on trial
Disease is illegal
Buy your health in a vial
Maybe we should reassess
Those fishes

If vision was prison
Well maybe it is....


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