I don’t need your
baby blues
Or your sexy
sleeve tattoos
I can do bad on my own
So you just leave
This girl alone!
You done met your match with me
Cuz I been all you’ll ever be
I got this thing!
Young man? Ya hear?
So buy yourself another beer.
What’s that you say?
I sure look good?
To a tool like you-
I’d think I would!
Yep, I’m a bitch
Just like you say-
I’m the bad ass bitch
that got away!
This little ode goes out to all the Tools out there that will be celebrating today’s Hallmark Holiday by scouring the local venues looking for lonely women.
My contribution to Dylan’s First Line Friday on MLMM wherein the first line, “Screw you, lover boy” was supplied.
“You can’t just leave!” April hollered from the front porch as she watched Dave continue across the snow covered yard and hop in the truck.
Dave cranked up the defrost, turned on the wipers, and when the frost had cleared enough so that he could see through the windshield, took one last look at April. Standing barefoot in the dusting of freshly fallen snow in her pink Hello Kitty jammies, she looked so much like the girl he had fallen in love with. But she wasn’t that girl anymore. And truth be told, he was no longer that guy.
“Sure I can.” He said aloud, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him, threw the truck in reverse and gave it some gas. “Just watch me go.”
*****
They had met in college. April was working on a degree in Political Science and had dreams of going to law school. Dave wasn’t working too hard at anything but perfecting his twelve ounce curl, but despite their very real differences, they had fallen in love and gotten a place together off campus.
Dave eventually dropped out, sobered up, and took a job with his dad’s construction company. He took over the role as sole breadwinner, while April, although she dabbled at housework, stayed focused on her studies.
Over the years, they talked about having kids many times. Fought about it a few more times than that. But always, when the dust cleared, they found themselves agreeing to disagree. He was still working his way up in the company anyway, and she was still in law school. The time to start a family had never been now. On that they had always agreed.
Finally this past summer while visiting Rome on holiday, they agreed the time had come to start a family, even throwing pennies into the fountain in Trevi in hopes that their first born would be conceived in Rome. After all, in the past year April had made partner in the firm, and Dave had succeeded his father as owner of the company. The timing could not have been more perfect.
They had been trying for months before Dave happened onto a piece of information that led him to believe April had a tubal ligation years before, one of those weekends she was supposed to be taking a deposition out of town.
Today, his suspicions had been confirmed.
*****
Agreeing to disagree was no longer an option. It was time to go.
So without taking even one last look, Dave put the truck in drive, hit the gas, and went.
We Just Disagree was written by Jim Kreuger, a guitarist for the band fronted by and named after a former member of the band Traffic, Dave Mason. Mason sang lead, and Kreuger, harmonies on the version of the song that made it onto Mason’s album, Let It Flow, in 1977.
We Just Disagree
Been away, haven’t seen you in a while
How’ve you been, have you changed your style?
And do you think that we’ve grown up differently?
Don’t seem the same, seems you’ve lost your feel for me
So let’s leave it alone ’cause we can’t see eye to eye
There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy
There’s only you and me and we just disagree
Ooh ooh ooh, oh oh oh
I’m goin’ back to a place that’s far away, how ’bout you?
Have you got a place to stay?
Why should I care when I’m just trying to get along
We were friends and now it’s the end of our love song
So let’s leave it alone ’cause we can’t see eye to eye
There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy
There’s only you and me and we just disagree
Ooh ooh ooh, oh oh oh
So let’s leave it alone ’cause we can’t see eye to eye
There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy
There’s only you and me and we just disagree
This post is my response to Song Lyric Sunday’s call for songs that contain the personal pronouns, I/Me/Them/Us/You/We.
It also contains the three phrasal prompts offered this week on the OLWG #140. The phrases were:
In the early morning hours of May 28,1992 following yet another filled to capacity show in one of the counties largest venues, a very stoned Woody Wannamaker, lead singer and guitarist for the up and coming band, Gauntlet, was weaving his Bronco up a mountain road with one of the more beautiful perks of being an almost famous rock star naked from the waist up, arched over the console- her lips firmly planted- in his lap.
Woody never saw the twelve point buck enter the roadway. He never heard the massive thud of the Bronco hitting the buck, or the scream of ripping metal when the Bronco face-planted into the tree that stopped the truck from going over the mountainside.
He also never saw the crushed skull of his then nameless young companion being extricated from its fateful position in his lap, where it had been the only thing between him and the imploding steering wheel upon impact.
What he did see was everything he had worked for his whole life disappear. What he did hear was a judge sentencing him to ten years in the state pen. And when he had done his time, all he heard was “Sorry, man” from everyone who was anyone in the business.
That is until JJ offered him a position running sound lines for a second rate metal band that was opening for the band that was opening for…
He had taken that job. It was supposed to be a stepping stone. He was supposed to network. Make connections. He could still sing. He’d find something.
But he never did.
Today he was running sound for the headliners. He was one of the top sound tech’s- one of the most sought after men in his field- but in the early morning hours, when he lay awake in bed the tortured visions of all that could have been playing out before him, all he felt for his current station in life was contempt.
He hated the band. He hated the guys he worked with. He hated the screaming crowds, the cast off chicks, the lonely hours spent on the road making a name for somebody else.
But above all he hated himself. He hated the miserable man he had become as a result of putting all his efforts into mourning a life- that he had killed just as surely as if it too had died in the front seat of his Bronco that night.
A life he would never again have the opportunity to live.
Mlmm’s Music Challenge is hosted by Jim Adams. He provides the song, and you go where it takes you. My piece is based on Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead’s dedicating the song to their “surly and recalcitrant equipment boys.”
This week’s song was The Race Is On which was recorded by numerous artists, the two featured in Jim’s post being The Grateful Dead, and George Jones.
She ordered a couple of Alabama Slammers, and motioned Joey to the bar- the only sure way she had of getting his full attention. They saluted each other, with the customary tip of the head, slammed the short glasses of Amaretto, Southern Comfort, and a squirt of Seven-Up on the bar, and shot the sweet thieves of reality down their throats before they had a chance to effervesce onto the bar.
Her lips wet and sticky, her heart beating so loudly she was sure it could be heard over the painful rifts of AC DC’s “Balls To The Wall”, and her body still unhealed from having been branded yet again with the fiery hot poker of make up sex, the one thing that welded them together- she grabbed his arm, pulled him close, and said, ”Cant we just promise to love each other, forever, no matter what? I mean, no matter who’s right or who’s wrong, no matter who screamed first or who threw the first punch, no matter who came home last night and who didn’t, no matter who goes to work every day, and who does’t? I mean No. Matter. What.?”
“Sure baby.” he said with that drunk crooked little smile of his- and a wink- probably intended for the girl on the opposite side of the bar most likely to buy his next drink.
Then turned and walked away…
Joey is the codependent lamentations of a woman very much in love with a man, who is very much in love with alcohol. It was written and performed by Johnette Napolitano and her band, Concrete Blonde in 1990 and released on their third album, Bloodletting. It was written about Napolitano’s troubled relationship with Marc Moreland of the band Voodoo Dolls. Naplolitano wrote the words in a cab on the way to a photoshoot in Philadelphia, having already laid the musical tracks some weeks earlier in England. Moreland eventually died of liver cancer as a result of his fondness for alcohol in 2002. The two were no longer together.
Joey
By Concrete Blonde
Joey, baby – don’t get crazy
Detours, fences, I get defensive
I know you’ve heard it all before
So I don’t say it anymore
I just stand by and let you
Fight your secret war
And though I used to wonder why
I used to cry till I was dry
Still sometimes I get a strange pain inside
Oh, Joey, if you’re hurting so am I
Joey, honey, I got some money
All is forgiven. Listen, listen
But if I seem to be confused
I didn’t mean to be with you
And when you said I scared you
Well I guess you scared me too
But we got lucky once before
And I don’t want to close the door
And if you’re somewhere out there
Passed out on the floor
Oh Joey, I’m not angry anymore
And if I seem to be confused
I didn’t mean to be with you
And when you said I scared you
Well I guess you scared me too
But if it’s love you’re looking for
Then I can give a little more
And if you’re somewhere drunk and
Passed out on the floor
Oh Joey, I’m not angry anymore
Angry anymore, angry anymore
This is my response to Jim’s Song Lyric Sunday call for songs containing the any of the following words: Babe/Cutie/Doll/Honey/Sweetie. Baby counts. Doesn’t it?
“But you don’t understand. The dream’s so real. It’s you, but it’s not you at the same time. I mean, I can see you’re a, a, a… Oh I don’t know, an animal. I guess you’re like a gorilla or something. But at the same time, there is no question in my mind that it is you. It’s something, something in the eyes maybe. Something that lets me know I’m loved. I’m safe. Like, everything is gonna be okay. Like we’re gonna be okay.”
“You’re sick. Sounds to me like you wanna make it with a monkey!”
“Augh! I don’t even know why I tell you these things! Really, you can’t be serious about anything.”
“Sure I can. I seriously think you gotta thing for monkeys! Eeek! Eeek! Eeek!”
“And you- you gotta thing for drunken little girls.” Lita takes a step back and gives Ozzy an accusatory look from under her fringe of bleached blonde bangs..
“I do not. Don’t even joke like that. That’s over. You know that. It’s over. I’m not that guy anymore.” Ozzy reaches out for her, but Lita takes a step back.
“C’mere.” He smiles. Tilts his head. Motions for her to come closer. “No, really. C’mere.”
Lita shakes her head, ‘no’. Gives him her best ‘pouty’ mouth.
“C’mon, now. C’mere, baby.”
Lita relents and loses herself in Ozzy’s arms.
“Now close your eyes.”
He tightens his arms around her and pulls her closer. He strokes her hair comfortingly. She can feel the warmth of his breath as he presses his lips to the crown of her head and breaths the words, “You know I love you, baby” into her hair.
But then he stops, tenses up, as if alarmed and begins picking diligently at something on her scalp.
“Oh my god! What? What is it?” Lita wiggles free and looks desperately at Ozzy.
Ozzy is caught up. He’s examining whatever it was he found in Lita’s hair.
“What is it?” Lita’s tone is becoming desperate.
He rolls it around on his finger. Examines it some more.
Then ‘eats’ it!
“Eeek! Eeek! Eeek!”
Close My Eyes Forever was written by Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford during a night of drunken jamming in an LA recording studio. Earlier in the day, Sharon and Ozzy had presented Lita with a life-size duplicate of Koko the Gorilla as a housewarming present. The following morning, still at the studio, Lita was too drunk to drive Ozzy home, but did manage to navigate her own way home, with ‘Koko’ riding shotgun.
The song was first released as a solo endeavor by Lita on her namesake album, Lita, in 1988 and then re-released as a remix with Ozzy in 1989.
Close My Eyes Forever
Baby, I get so scared inside
And I don’t really understand
Is it love that’s on my mind, or is it fantasy?
Heaven
Is in the palm of my hand and it’s waiting here for you
What am I supposed to do with a childhood tragedy?
Chorus:
If I close my eyes forever
Will it all remain unchanged?
If I close my eyes forever
Will it all remain the same…
Sometimes
It’s hard to hold on
So hard to hold on to my dreams
It isn’t always what it seems
When you’re face to face with me
You’re like a dagger
And stick me in the heart
And taste the blood from my blade
And when you sleep, would you shelter me
In your warm and darkened grave
(Chorus Repeat)
Will you ever take me?
No, I just can’t take the pain
But would you ever trust me?
No, I’ll never feel the same…Ohh…
(Solo)
I know I’ve been so hard on you
I know I’ve told you lies
If I could have just one more wish
I’d wipe the cobwebs from my eyes
(Chorus Repeat)
Close your eyes
Close your eyes
You gotta close your eyes for me….
Thru Violet's Lentz 