1. |
A Friend With A Gun
02:19
|
|||
|
A Friend with a Gun
I think, time to time, that a friend with a gun is on the way.
A moment at peace interrupted at once by your friend with a gun.
Back’s against the wall you can’t run but you eye the umbrella.
No match for your friend with the gun. How’s you end up in this one?
I live with this friend awaiting the end of the me that I am.
“Crashed in, heart sank, cant runs, stumble, bang!” the policemen now say.
Back’s against the wall you can’t run but you eye the umbrella.
No match for your friend with the gun. How’s you end up in this one?
©1999 JS10
|
||||
2. |
||||
3. |
Downtime
03:12
|
|||
|
Downtime
Sometimes if you wait around for the right time you miss the opportunity.
I just sang these words in this order:
Sometimes if you wait around for the right time you miss the opportunity.
With these songs in mind listen further…
Downtime Downtime Downtime.
Can come from uh missed the lyric
Listen and speak towards things mundane.
Ah buh da buh ah nothin’ to say.
A better valley day sunrise
Can come from reflection and in questioning routine.
Listen and speak towards things mundane.
Sometimes if you wait around for the right time you miss the opportunity.
Last week went by pretty quickly, didn’t it?
I’m sure there are time constraints and pressure not to step outside what’s comfy.
You get a better valley day sunrise
From reflection and in questioning routine
You get a better valley day sunrise.
You can listen and speak towards things mundane
From reflection and in questioning routine.
|
||||
4. |
Dust Bottom Blues
03:05
|
|||
|
Dusk Bottom Blues
I saw the setting sun.
Dust on the raven’s wing.
The cloud long, the dusk bottom blue.
I should have called in the first place when I first met you.
Outside I’m listening.
Inside—A lucid dream.
I feel at my dusk bottom blue.
I should have called in the first place when I first met you.
Owww. Owwww.
I saw the lemon red.
I swore the bird was dead.
I think you’d a buried it too.
Last thing I felt was the skin on my face turning blue.
Owww. Owwww.
Listen on Listen on Listen on Listen on….
Last thing I felt in the first place was my face you…
I read the meaning of life isn’t within.
It’s outside—alive in free world!
I should have told you this right when I got to know you.
I should have call in the first place when I first met…
Owwww. Owwwwwww.
Dusk bottom blue…….
©2001 John Snell X
|
||||
5. |
||||
|
20 Songs/Night
I could write 20 songs a night if you didn’t care, you didn’t care how good they are…
Here’s one now! Here’s one Now!
Pen upon the page, the page within my journal sits atop my glass showcase!
Here’s one now here’s one…
Keep the pen ‘a rollin’. The melody is different with each time around. Here’s one now here’s one…
Last time I looked in the mirror I saw 1,000 future ideas look back at me.
Here’s one now here’s one…
Last time I looked in the mirror I saw…
I could write 20 songs a night if you didn’t care, you didn’t care how good they are…Here’s one now, here’s one now.
The quote’s from a John Lennon response to a Bed-In news media event b-b-b-back in ’70.
Here’s one now here’s one now.
|
||||
6. |
||||
7. |
Mental Capacity
02:45
|
|||
|
If I gamble am I a victim or am I to blame?
If I buy things I don’t need to I loose the game?
If I’m not attentive can I really be left to blame
Na nananana
Everything in the world has a cause, and I want to know it all.
I think I’ll send a letter to who’s in charge of it all.
Without a message of perspective we’ll fall.
What’s the big idea I’m supposed to see?
Would tensions fall if I gave you the key?
Must we loose all incentives in a system of equality?
What’s the answer to what’s troubling me?
Everything in the world has a cause, and I want to know it all.
I think I’ll send a letter to who’s in charge of it all.
Without a message of perspective we’ll fall.
Other possible words:
Hanging on to the big picture is hard in a world that offers entertainment.
Advertisers push the pill that kills the little voice inside us.
Can you hear yours still?
And a third verse>>
The funny thing about the answer be
It’s different for you than it is for me.
The more we learn the more we come to see….
What we don’t know can fill a galaxy.
©2002 John Snell X Written May, 2002. Finally finished Feb 5th, 2003 www.JohnSnellX.com
|
||||
8. |
||||
9. |
||||
|
(Starve) The Money-Hungry Cash Cow
It’s left up to the people who have made it to the top of the town.
They’re deciding fate of everybody who is different or down.
Yet I am sticking with the blue grass of the people—The product of the bottom of town! Rockin’ on Rockin’ on Rockin’
Everybody got it? Let’s get it all together right now!
Everybody got it? Let’s get it all together right now!
Put us all together – we can starve the money-hungry cash cow.
Support one another. We need to build our infrastructure.
Buy from your brother and push art to a higher level.
Money, war, and power. They’re fighting us for every dollar.
Follow all your spending. Whose pockets have you been lining?
Keep your money in the class of those who need it
And those who do good with it.
Each dollar lost is a casualty.
Everybody got it? Let’s keep it all together right now.
Everybody got it? Let’s keep it all together right now.
Put us all together. We can starve the money-hungry cash cow.
Support one another. We need to build our infrastructure.
Buy from your brother and push art to a higher level.
We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town. We’ve got to tell the town.
I just wrote this today. ©7/15/01John Snell X www.psychadelicmusic.com
|
||||
10. |
Jogger's Last Stand
02:13
|
|||
11. |
||||
12. |
Song for Mary
03:10
|
|||
|
Song for Mary
One event in time…Loved Mary’s gone.
The other love feels alone.
Nothing can stop free falling.
There’s nothing worse in this world.
I see her carry on.
I wish I could help her out in any way.
Parts of the past are horrible.
Let’s hope the future will work out anyway.
One event in time…Holding still.
That’s what transpires in the end.
Nothing can stop free falling.
I see her carry on.
I wish I could help her out in any way.
Parts of the past are horrible.
Let’s hope the future will work out anyway.
©2000 JS10 Written January 14, 2000
|
||||
13. |
Boogity Boggity 1st Demo
02:13
|
|||
14. |
My Real Lifetime
03:35
|
|||
15. |
Kayak!
04:48
|
|||
|
“Kayak!”
My body kayaked down the river.
My head still hung from that tree
Whose branches had grabbed at my hairline
And attached themselves to thee.
Here I hang ‘till my blood runs dry.
I see, but cl-ow-i-dy.
Without a breath I yell to my ship, nearly disappeared...
“Kayak! Kayak! Please bring myself back to me!
“Kayak! Kayak! How dare you steal my body?!”
My head swings, the leaves rustle ‘round me.
An archer fish spits up towards me.
Branch Crackle! The water surrounds me
And carries me towards my body.
I bounce off rocks, am bombarded by sand--
Nature’s efforts to round and smooth me.
Through it all I send waves to my ship through liquid medium...
“Kayak! Kayak! Please bring myself back to me.
“Kayak! Kayak! How long do you need me to plea?”
Hazy bottom of yellow, oblong, runaway ship above me.
“Twist and tip and tense--Attach!
“Eskimo-roll up me!”
(Written 1994-97. c1997 JS10)
|
||||
16. |
||||
17. |
||||
18. |
Final Kosovo Demo
04:06
|
|||
|
Kosovo
(“The First Casualty of War is the Truth”)
Loosen the mind. Listen the song like a balloon untied.
Less heavy; Less weighted.
Like in the Stream of Unconsciousness record by Ryan Smith:
“Judas Kiss”; “Skid Viscous”.
Now turn your thoughts to war
And those shot and killed in Kosovo.
Beaten. Robbed. House burned. Forced run or die or die from run.
Refugee, glad you fleed.
“My brother’s throat was cut for accent while answering the door.”
Stories told thousand fold.
My thoughts are stuck on war
And those shot and killed in Kosovo.
A grand slam by the bat of genocide.
Frustrate/Too late NATO?
All Yugoslavians now worse off than before NATO
Tried saving by killing.
Milosevic has gained support; Clinton won’t dare abort.
Look stronger. Bomb harder.
My thoughts are stuck on war.
Is the aim of the strike peace or control?!?
Catastrophic consequences abound
From bombing civil infrastructure down.
Nuclear Arms rumored re-aimed
At pro-NATO cities throughout the world.
Russia has threatened keep the peace.
Ground troops may onset WWIII.
Loosen the mind. Listen the song like a balloon untied.
Less heavy; Less weighted.
(Written 3/26-4/19/99. c1999 John Snell
|
||||
19. |
Oakwood Village
02:46
|
|||
|
Oakwood Village
“Who did you eat with tonight?”
“James Whitticker - the man in the wheelchair.”
“Is he the one who’s hard up for hearing?”
“My dear, there are so many hard of hearing.”
Have you seen the new bird in the library?
His name is Joe and was left after the death of Mary.
“I used to be more mobile and limber,
“But it’s sure nice to meet you…
“It’s sure nice to meet you. I admire your independence and vigor.”
And have you seen the new bird in the library?
His name is Joe and was left after the death of Mary.
A package arrived for me yesterday:
Red gifts wrapped from Jim. Oh, I hope he can make it hear someday.
|
||||
20. |
||||
21. |
||||
22. |
It Got Dark Out
05:52
|
|||
23. |
||||
|
“Doze Barn Down/Mettle-Treaded Unleaded”
Song will be on John Snell’s next album Peculiar Songs for a Particular Audience
I’ve got a mettle-treaded, unleaded bull to doze the dirt round.
If you’ve got a farm, I’ve got the bull to doze your barn down.
I built this steel, I-beamed crane machine to change the scene.
It constructs a building’s frame, attach a ball—it knocks the frame down.
The time will come again when all that exists and all that occurs will be a direct result of natural forces. Through time earth’s conditions change and the variety of organisms able to survive on this planet are shuffled. Inevitably humans will eventually be discarded along with the hundreds of species that disappear each day. Mother Nature is too powerful a card player to allow the deck to be stacked against her. Cleverness cannot conquer time. A species need only be defeated once to be defeated forever.
The time frame by which this world naturally evolves is difficult for humans to grasp. We work in a different dimension of time based not even on our existence as a species, but on our existence as individuals. We have taken geologic time – the relative time by which the face of our planet naturally changes – and replaced it with our own Human time scale.
Because the human time scale is a norm for us, we are left foolishly comfortable with the relative speed at which the world around us in changing - even though it’s changing at a rate millions of times faster than ever before. Every day throughout all parts of the world bulldozers, cranes, and blue, cement-pumping trucks are used to turn beauty into industry.
Industrialization has spread from country to country – similar to a spilt watercolor rinse imbedding brown waste into a colorful landscape painting. Eventually the brown waste will spread thin. There will not be the flow of water needed to continue the brown revolution, nor will there be enough water to keep that which is already brown wet. The polluted paintings will dray, warp, and harden.
----Unsustainable Industrial Spread----
It’s growing, building towards some climax like atoms smashing in an atomic bomb. It seems we are working harder and faster towards our destruction without even knowing it.
What then will become of everything we’ve made our world to be? Without the input of directed energy our complicated world of structures and of high order will melt in the mouth of time. In our concept of time the world will be deathly still. Freeways as silent as dusty riverbeds. Berlin, Montreal, Elsalvador, Minneapolis, will all stand empty and useless. Every building’s doors will stay closed. Escalators will remain motionless. Homosapien’s Disneyland will be a picture frozen in time. Brightly colored shallow faces on the ceramic statues left smiling for no one.
I bought a flat, latex, yellow wall-paint gallon can today
To paint these white, sheet-rocked walls—delay decay.
The surfaces of the lily pads are as wet as the bottoms.
Tall, thin cottonwoods are dancing, metronomecly nodding to the band once called wind.
Others dancing are small grains of clear and brown sand.
“Take that you big bastard building!”
I’m here, sitting cross-legged on the cement looking up beyond the Twin Towers visualizing their burial. It’ll happen.
Rain rain, wind blow, earth shake. Nature will work patiently to bury all of our structures under the same materials used in their construction.
But I’m not waiting here hoping to wittiness a burial. You see…there’s a race.
(©John Snell X 1994 & 1997; JohnSnellX@Juno.com)
|
||||
24. |
||||
25. |
Mad Cow Recording
05:02
|
|||
26. |
Mad Cow Disease
04:36
|
|||
27. |
||||
28. |
"Hello? J.A.C. Auto"
03:43
|
|||
29. |
||||
|
I told the plant I loved it took dead flowers off the long stem named it tower I’m amazed at such a super long stalk flower.
One thing to another on a rampage running loosage
I’m a full blown psychological experiment unlike another on the planet makes me wonder how I’ll get out!
Look at me I’m Skatter brained (Scatterbrained)
When I was just a boy I watched TV My momma told me “Play outside, it’s more than healthy” with the bicycle no helmet not a need I was a maniac I longed to be Evil and Kenevil I landed all the weird ways but never on my young noggin.
Look at me I’m skatter brained.
Third verse improve
|
||||
30. |
Wasp Song
04:21
|
|||
|
Wasp Song
9/96 (written and recorded when I was 22)
Erase the shade, light up the town.
Roaches scurry underground.
Those left are starved of love and food.
With roaches gone, there’s no one round
To feed the cages and their contents
Slimy cubes of others watching
Wide-eyed advertising other’s limbs.
Outside the walls lies native world.
A paper wasp’s nightmare unfurls.
To friends he’s not presumed alive.
Long for spiders, long for hive,
While bumping glass the lamp is spied.
The drive for what’s outside subsides.
Forgets his life for high, higher, and high.
The phone will ring real soon, my friend.
‘Tis I who’s on the other end.
A breath, a sigh, your ears grow wide
So wide I’ve room to crawl inside.
Resist and strike inside collide.
I’m you—You can’t possibly hide!
You run, but I am busy building hives.
|
||||
John Snell the Tenth Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minnesota native John Snell (the Tenth) started writing music when he was just fifteen, but his musical admiration was apparent at an even earlier age. John's mother can attest to him dancing to the hum of the vacuum cleaner while he was still in cloth diapers. Since these early days JS10 has written over 200 songs, grown out of diapers, and released more than 6 full-length albums (& 1 unreleased) ... more
If you like Peculiar Songs for a Particular Audience, you may also like:
Sorry I'm So Sensitive
by Bea Stewart
The second EP from Northern Irish singer-songwriter Bea Stewart runs from gentle folk to pillowy pop ballads, all perfectly executed.
go to album
Michelle Stodart’s folk music captures hope in melancholy, addressing the transformational aspects of the most challenging times.
go to album
Veneer (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
by José González
featured on Bandcamp Radio Aug 29, 2023
go to album
Once Upon A Time In Montréal
by Murray A. Lightburn
The folk artist explores grief through these smooth and soulful tracks.
go to album
Our Blood Is Red
by Luke James Williams
Emotive acoustic balladry from this UK musician with heart on sleeve and hushed arrangements.
go to album
Oakland singer-songwriter honors her Haitian heritage with five R&B spirituals overflowing with radiance, fueled by her soft, angelic voice.
go to album
The tender UK psych folk on “Continuum” explores motherhood through song.
go to album
