This one has a tragic history. I wrote it from an honest place. It took about as long to write as it takes to play it. Sometimes they just fall out.
The band was still a thing but my life was a mess. It's like a love song for the type of swinging heathan I was and the sort of partnering that seemed to happen amicably at the time.
Being the kind of “public figure” that I was, dating harlots briefly drew devicive attention.
The first time I played this song live, a table of single girls hissed at it from right up front. At me, really.
When it was a new song, I only ever played it once. That hissing was enough for me to decide to skip it as part of the live show. It's merely a trifle.
I didn't play in front of people for about a decade after the 20-teens. When I started to play again I had the support of some of the old gang. The sound guy from a place I used to play with the band was working at a little restaurant owned by a guy who had all the band records and they asked nice and I played. At the restaurant it was the same sound guy, now a little older and married: Trevor.
Trevor confided in me that this song was his wife's favorite song of mine. I shouldn't judge, but I did. I was like, really? He assured me it was true. So I learned it. It's simple. I'd save it for later in the show when she came for him and then play it.
It became a thing. I'd play it when she showed up and then she would discretely say thank you to me after. It was nice. Trevor was apeice of work, but he gifted well.
He died in his sleep, probably from alcohol related things. He and his wife were my neighbors when he died.
Around a year later she was hit by a car on a bike ride and died.
Now I don't know if I should play it or not. I bet I will on Friday, but what it means to me now is so much more complicated than what it meant when it came out of me the first time.
At the end of the day they're not for me and perhaps just feelings button pushers and I might as well have been playing it the whole time to anyone within ear shot. I feel self conscious enhabiting these old songs, because they are from a me that once was but is no longer. Like a snap shot from a drunken make-out on top of a parking ramp.
A Broken Hearted Girl with a Dirty Mind
I want a broken hearted girl
Who wants my time
I need the letter of her law
Like she needs mine
Inspired and tattooed
And about to go blind from waintin’
A broken hearted girl with a dirty mind
She knows my way from all over town
A broken hearted girl who gets around
She begs me to stay. Then she changes her mind
Cuz to a broken hearted girl, I'm a waste of time
.
It's the first song on an inappropriately named record by the band Shame Train called SPLENDOR
Which you can buy right
here:
