Pls note: while listening, visualize a high-budget music video in which beautiful scientists attempt to crush diamonds with a variety of implements while ignoring my text messages. Or something.

Listen to The Hardest Thing in the World

G
The hardest thing in the world
Is to do nothing
The hardest thing in the world

The hardest thing in the world
Is to pick up that beer
And let it sort itself out

'Cos you don't deal in patience
You remove all doubt
The hardest thing in the world

B C5 D5
Yeah you're a man of action
B C5 F
And you want answers
B C5 D5
But things don't work that way
B F
Not even among dancers

G
The hardest thing in the world
C D Is to shut your

G C D
Mouth and let it be

G C D
But you can only do damage

By gilding

C D
The lily

(B)
We all get the point
You've got a lot to offer
But when you close the joint
You're emptying your pockets

The hardest thing in the world
Is to let chemistry sort itself out
To not appear desperate
To not be desperate as well

A6 D5
But you were born for
C5 G6 G
Gestures and the stage


A6 D5
To let things take their
C5 D6 C5
Course is not your way

D5
Hey I feel you
I feel you

The hardest thing in the world
Is to do bupkis
When you feel like
Somehow you should be able to
Turn them on to you 

Tags: mp3, music, songs

In fulfillment of shadesong's request for a birthday poem, and also partial fulfillment of my pledge to do something creative for certain people in 2009, I hereby submit There Are Scars, a Lou Reedish number very much inspired by Her Songfulness.

Click here to listen to There Are Scars.

Lyrics and chords follow.

G                    C
There are scars that define us
G                    C
There are scars that shine
G                          C
There are scars we don't remember receiving
G                             C
It must've been a pretty good time

E7                        Am7
There are scars we didn't ask for
E7                Am7
In places I won't say
We make them ours anyway

There are scars that keep us warm
There are scars that align
(Yours and mine)

There are scars we are proud of when we see them in the mirror
Every time

There are scars that whisper
There are scars that bind

There are scars that are mostly internal
But now and they show outside
There are scars that provide
There are scars that are tougher than steel
Scars that slowly fade away
Day by day

There are scars that will never heal
Sometimes I like it that way

F#                           G#        A#       
I'm slightly broken and it's not a bad thing

            D#          C#        B            
I won't get jaded and I won't get bored
You won't be ignored

There are scars that never cease to inspire
Our souls will never be poor
Mine and yours

I push the limits and I run out of wax
Sometimes I burn my fingers
Don't want to relax

There are scars that drive us
There are scars that attract

We don't just linger what we do is abide
And I refuse to make a suicide pact

There are scars
There are scars
Yours and mine
There are scars
There are scars
Yours and mine
Yours and mine

Tags: audio, mp3, music, shadesong, song-meme-2009, songs

Last week I pledged to create something for the first five people who replied to the post. Surprisingly, only four people did. If you want to be recipient number five, go comment on that post now Edit: aaaand shadesong makes five!

So I recorded a little ditty called Australia, which you can listen to or download on tommybgoode.com.

But the big catch here is that I wrote this song with lucky recipient xtingu's voice in mind, not my own! So I'm really hoping to hear her version of it. Possibly in partial fulfillment of her own obligations under the very same LiveJournal meme.

xtingu, I can record a karaoke backup track if need be. Working with musicians more instrumentally skilled than myself is also more than okay!

I ended up recording this with my mac's built-in mic, which did a pretty good job, considering. But at least I wound up ordering the proper cable for my real mic. I'll probably rerecord it once I have that, and do separate vocal and guitar trax, and so on.

( Lyrics and chords. )

Tags: audio, mp3, music, song-meme-2009, songs, xtingu

It's been a long time since I did the Songs to Order project.

Just now I was poking around tommybgoode.com and clicked on it on a whim and just started listening.

With a year's distance from all the flaws and screwups and shit that bugged me only because I was too close to it...

Whoa! This is a diverse and entertaining little indie album I should be completely proud of! Even the production values are pretty tolerable.

Why the hell did I stop?

Edit: eek my editing is spotty on the last few, which is a shame because some of them are strong songs.

Edit of the edit: but "Not Dracula" rules! I was hung up on the fact that it wasn't a particularly valid example of trip-hop and missed how good it is on its own merits

Tags: music, songs

Hey, I got podcasted again. The podshow "I Still Get Demented" played "Comic Book Man." The podsafe music network did nothin' for me for close to a year, but more recently my stuff has been played twice. I have no idea how many listeners that amounts to... probably a modest number... but it's neat to see the stuff finding some sort of audience.

You can find "Comic Book Man" and the rest of the Songs to Order project on tommybgoode.com.

Tags: music, songs

"Hey, Tom hasn't written a song in a while! Oh wait..."

Make with the clickage yo!

I don't have much time for songwriting these days, much less editing. But I just got my guitar back and I was real happy to see it.

This strikes me as a very possible song for Somebody Else to perform, and I'd really love to hear that. As in xtingu on vocals. With, oh I don't know, the Joe Trainor trio. Hey, I can dream.

P.S. If simple links to MP3s are still a problem for some people (i.e. they don't play), let me know. I can do the flash player thing if needed.

Tags: audio, mp3, songs
Current Music: malkovich? malkovich!

'07: release songs on the Podsafe Music Network. Zero plays for months. Forget all about it.

'08: out of nowhere, MicheBelz Hollywood features Zap Pow in her latest podcast ep.

Whaddaya know, it works!

Tags: music, songs

The latest installment in the KITCHENROCK series. Rise to the Occasion is a simple song, musically, but I love that lick.

There were good takes of other songs last night but I haven't had time to pull them down from the cam correctly yet. Did you know they charge better when the power strip is plugged in?

Last night this didn't get fully encoded on YouTube for about an hour, so only two people were able to watch.

Tags: guitar, recordings, songs, videos, youtube

An acceptable rendition of "Rise to the Occasion." Getting a little more comfortable with the camera. Have realized the vocal/guitar imbalance is now due to the camera, rather than me: the tripod is shorter than the vocalist. It's at guitar height. Duh.

(Just uploaded this, so if you are reading my every post within milliseconds you might hit it before YouTube is ready to let you watch.)

Tags: guitar, music, recordings, songs, videos, youtube
Current Location: My Kitchen, er... Not Ontario
Current Music: Malkovich? Malkovich!

I'm not supposed to do this yet. I'm supposed to play with the video camera rolling for nine or twelve weeks until I don't even know it's there. And I'm supposed to wait for nohx to set me up with video editing software that doesn't make the baby Jesus cry. And I need to figure out how to ohhh so slightly stretch an audio track in Audacity so that it remains perfectly synced with the video, so's I don't have to use the dodgy audio from my video camera.

But... what the hell: it's a snapshot of where I'm at today.

P.S. YouTube has one reference to another Tommy B. Goode. He's Japanese and he can seriously play, even in a Munch mask.

Tags: music, songs, tom's life, youtube