Tuesday, June 8, 2010

JJ Newberry


Here's a tune that deserves a better debut than an OJ and Absolute Tuesday night. But the world ain't perfect and with the acid rain winter on the march I think we'd all better smoke them if'n we got them. The chords are C, F, G, with a strategic A minor and E minor thrown in for that melancholy sound.
Lyrics:
My buddy bought a dog there
but it died of Guinea Worm
you could order a grilled cheese sandwich
chicken soup to keep you warm
we used to play Nurf football
in the dinnerware aisle
Bradley threw a pass to me
but I missed it by a mile
Chorus:
JJ Newberry
where have you gone
there's a tear in my eye
Peddlers and Dollofs, Sessions and Gallagers
where do little stores go to die?

We got caught shoplifting
at the drug store
Laverdiers I think it was called
it ain't there anymore
Pic N Pay sponsored a baseball team
gave us a chance to play
they used to pass out those bright red uniforms
every May
Chorus

Twinkies cost a quarter
at the corner store
they had an arcade game called Venture
I played 'til my fingers were sore
I saw Star Wars at a theater
that got tore down the other day
I was only gone a year
now it's all gone away

Chorus

Portsmouth is full of history
Penny Candy and Hot Dogs
We've got graveyards old as time
and houses made of logs
Don't ever watch the news
to find out who is right and who is wrong

One Day it's there
The next day it's gone.
nothing stays the same
that's why we write love songs.

Chorus
Repeat first lyric with...
I missed it by a mile
I missed it by a mile
I miss you by a mile

Handbags and Gladrags

This is a tune I picked up in Mexico. I heard it once or twice in the one room apartment, writing odes to Kerouac and drinking beer with a hooker chaser and I thought, "I can sing that tune." But it took a year to get a damn piano to do it properly. I haven't figured out the exact piano lick but it's just a variation on a D major chord into a C major chord. Then G Major. Then A major. the chorus is b minor, A major, then D major then E major. Then G major and A major back to the lick.

Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.