Categories
Los Angeles Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire

The Vanderlus

 

This is a morality song about the Vanderlus, an ordinary confederate couple with the classic southern problems of over-exuberance, intolerance of boredom, and a proclivity for jumping back and forth between the fire and the frying pan.

Jackson Rice with Alana, golden cube, rabbit, ribbon, teardrop, clouds and rectangle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: The Vanderlus

Categories
Dusty Stables Los Angeles Music & Songs

Love it don’t grow on no trees

 

Genevieve with cigarette and straw hat.This song makes me miss Kentucky!

City people are different from the rest of us, because they feel they have options. Their minds are in two places at once- half on what they are doing, and half on all the other things they COULD be doing. In the country you think, “Yay, I have a husband, and he is way better than nothing!” but in the city you might think, “Hmmm… could I be kissing Rod Hotwings right now if I weren’t tied down to this guy?”

To make matters worse, cities lead to hierarchies, so it’s not just that you could be with someone different, you could be with someone better. Someone richer, funnier, more metrosexual… Whereas in the country, people see themselves more as puzzle pieces. When two puzzle pieces fit together, you know things are as good as they’re going to get.

Download MP3: Love It Don’t Grow on No Trees

Categories
Los Angeles Music & Songs Uncategorized Yellow, Gold, Kings, Fathers, and the Sun

Manfriend

 

Man with brown egg on egg-stand, living in a robin's egg blue world.
Nothing makes a man look more sensitive than standing next to an egg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Manfriend

Categories
Music & Songs Nashville Red, Soldiers, & Fire Uncategorized

On A Mexican Trail

 

Garth Brooks and his horse on a mountain path in Mexico.
A picture of Garth Brooks on a mountain path in Mexico. Did he manage to escape the Nashville Blackbird?

 

A song about the Mexican Fire Bird… a gigantic orange bird who helps people escape constrained, repressive circumstances (including prison).  The Mexican Fire Bird frequently guides people out west to where the grid of the earth is wide and spacious and they can once again take deep breaths of exhilaration and adventure.

The Mexican Fire Bird has many friends, but also enemies, including one black bird so large he is the size of four cars (and bigger when his wings are spread.) He snatches musicians with his beak and carries them way up high, so high that everyone can see them, a shining star at last, until he drops them onto a large pile of rocks by a creek somewhere in Henderson County, Tennessee. After that, I don’t know what happens… probably he eats their remains.

Some people say this black bird makes his nest on top of the large bat building in downtown Nashville. But at any rate, he is a sworn enemy to the Mexican Fire Bird. Because the Mexican Fire Bird teaches people to seek the fire within, and the Nashville Blackbird can only prey on those looking to find fire in other peoples’ eyes.

 

 

Download MP3: On a Mexican Trail

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Los Angeles Music & Songs

Murder

 

At the time I wrote this song I had a pink snake named Little Bun. She looked like a very long and thin hot dog bun. I thought having one animal from each of the animal kingdoms would bring me good luck in life. It is hard to say if it worked. I loved Little Bun but never got over the fear of her biting me. Sometimes, when entering a public situation where I felt nervous or awkward, I would take her with me and let her discreetly twine around my arm. My fear of her biting me caused my social anxieties to fade somewhat.

Oh, Lonesome me. Little Bun holds a broken mirror and crosses to the other side of the river, crying.
I painted this when Little Bun died. I like to think it is a picture of her crossing the river that leads to the next world. Goodbye Little Bun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Murder

Categories
Los Angeles Music & Songs Uncategorized

The Mailman

 

The Letter. Black Hole watches his mailbox, as a menacing figure peers at him from behind a curtain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love mailmen, but I have no idea what made me write this perverted song about them. Nonetheless, it is the first song I ever wrote.

 

Download MP3: The Mailman

Categories
Music & Songs Nashville Red, Soldiers, & Fire Uncategorized

Mikael

 

Mikael: Nude bald woman with sword and shield.   A song about the angel of fire…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Mikael

Categories
Los Angeles Music & Songs

Take this World

 

Naked woman fallen in battle.

Carlos Castaneda (my hero, although I reluctantly admit that he appears to have been a manipulative psycho rather than a true sorcerer) wrote that when people sleep together the female sends her energy to the male for the next seven years. In an ideal situation, though, the man will return the energy he receives through his genitals back to the woman through his heart.

This seems reasonable, although I tend to think either gender could set up a cord through sex which siphons off their partner’s red energy for an extended period of time. I guess you could call them sex predators.

How do you know if you’ve been attacked by a sex predator? If you start to share the sentiments expressed in this song and become too detached from life, too unconcerned and selfless, too passive and unmotivated.

 

Download MP3: Take This World

Categories
Los Angeles Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire Uncategorized

Massanuttin

 

Introduction to the true story of the fairies who fought in the Cival War.

 

For some reason, I love confederate soldiers and they pop up frequently into my imagination.* Obviously, the south was in the wrong, but still I tend to think that the soldiers did not fight alone, but had fairies fighting with them side by side. Why would fairies fight for the Confederate army? I don’t know. My best guess is that they wanted the south to remain agricultural and undeveloped, so that they would have a place to live and their societies and cultures would not be destroyed. But in the end, they were. It is strange how even in the most black and white circumstances, there will always be more to the picture than we can see.

 

* I don’t like slavery.

 

Download MP3: Massanuttin

Categories
Los Angeles Music & Songs Uncategorized

Snowball in Hell

 

Paul Conway, heart-throb, with flying polka dots.It is nearly impossible for me to sing this song all the way through without screaming “NOOOoooo!!!!” and throwing down my guitar to hide my head in a pillow. It just embarrasses me to no end. It makes me feel like a cheesy, greasy guy driving around in a convertible and tank top, whistling at the ladies. Not that I dislike oily men, btw, I just don’t feel comfortable BEING one myself.

But James thinks I should include All my songs on this blog- The Complete Set- and I try to do as I’m told. Anyway, you can’t go through life just slashing out all the things you don’t know how to appreciate. I used to live that way, and now I really wish I could get my tie-dyed Iron Maiden t-shirt back. It was beautiful.

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Snowball in Hell