A Moment's Notice (2008)

[new writeup coming soon]

Bodie Dennis: electric bass & vocals; electric & acoustic guitars, electric pianos & organs, accordion, melodica, the occasional synthesizer, harmonicas, recorders, tone generators, various percussion (tambourines, shakers, triangles, glockenspiel, tubular bells, castanets, snare drum & floor tom overdubs, frame drums, riveted cymbals, finger snaps, beer bottle, bicycle wheel, fire bell, hair brush, metal file box, doorstop, many looped samples, & a few sound effects).

John Lundin: drums.

Joe Sorren: drums on 'Painted Legs' and 'Korngold Blue', cymbal overdubs on 'The Mourning Dove and Joan'.

Initial tracks were recorded in Bozeman, MT from May through July of 2004.
Early editing and overdubs were done in Sacramento, CA Sept of 2004 through March of 2005.
Every now and again, recording was continued in Flagstaff, AZ from April of 2005
until the album’s eventual completion in January of 2008.
Portions of 'The Mourning Dove and Joan' were recorded at
Lost Dog Productions in Flagstaff, AZ during February of 2002.

Mixed at Beedee Sound Labs, Flagstaff.
Produced, engineered and mixed by Bodie Dennis.
Mastered by Roger Seibel at SAE Mastering, Phoenix, AZ.
All music and lyrics by Bodie Dennis.
Album design and layout by Stuart Hatter.

Mr. Dennis wishes to thank no one in particular and dedicates this album to himself.

So there.

All lyrics by Bodie Dennis. Used by permission.

Parts Unknown

Dim the stars, spread the tar far and wide
Stuck to the heels of a dealmaker’s dumbbell pride.

Better, best, windows dressed, progress thrives
Twenty-four seven three hundred and sixty five.

Oil slick rainbows in pothole skies.
Indestructible bell jars of bye-gone pie.

Grass is grown, fuses blown, parts unknown.

Scat cat flack, mountain shack, black and blue
Reconstructed from memory with emery boards and glue.

Sampled drums, yuppie scum, gumball spies.
Sportin’ in all the misfortune that money can buy.

Poorly lit pixies in surgical gloves.
In the name of our DJ and brown bag love.

Sticks and stones, skin and bones, parts unknown.

[Bridge]
Mother of pearl and little bastard sons,
A faster gun, their slapstick slurry
Tapped, for fun they run away,
But only twice on Sundays.
Substitutions have been made.

Terry Malloy and every checkered past,
The furnace blasts, the Hamiltons and Trasks sing, “Hide your love away”,
But not on Lennon’s birthday.
It comes and goes without a...

Present tense, wire fence, common
Sense of smell, truth withheld, Seldom Seen.
With their hands in their pockets their dockets they claim are clean.

Gumshoe tales, paper trails, jailbird flown.
The appointed committee took pity upon their own.

Hell bent on leather them boys never learn.
Drop a line to whomever it may concern.

Monotone Dictaphone, worker, drone.
Sack of Rome, home sweet home, parts unknown.

Flick of the Wrist

Bric-a-brac and broken chairs.
Current affairs.
Nobody cares.

Trainer bras and company brass.
My Bonnie Lass.
Head of the class.

Suffragettes with their curves encrypted,
Saliva dripping from pencil tips.
A fatal blow drops another Joe from the list
With just a flick of the wrist.

Bitter apple poison tip.
Fully equipped.
Caught in the zip.

Grotty goose-step green recruits.
Pinko-proof suits.
Snappy salutes.

There’s a lord protector in touch with his hormones.
The third world is throwing stones,
But Johnny Law flips his safety off and insists
With just a flick of the wrist.

Paper hats and lack of taste.
Glitter and paste.
A terrible waste.

Catty-cornered king of the squares Learning to share.
Gum in your hair.

With little Isaac dismounting the see-saw,
The bully beats his own knuckles raw.
It’s two for flinching and one just because you exist.
It’s just a flick of the wrist.

Isabel Burns

Isabel Burns loves a secret,
Files her ‘P’s under ‘Q’,
Can’t keep her hands off the merchandise,
But hides the good silver from you.

Isabel learns things the hard way.
Her leadership fails to inspire.
Dying of thirst with your divining rod
Sitting on top of her fire.

At the Hollywood graves, she pretends that she prays,
Waking the stars when she laughs.
Barefoot in the dirt with Hefner’s rabbit on her shirt,
Isabel washes her trash.

Presence has no need for passion,
Poetry dies without a sound,
But theory and practice will be wrestling
Isabel Burns to the ground.

Isabel burns to the ground.

Passerby (A Moment’s Notice no. 2)

I was only a passerby
To the pilot lights of their minds.
I took a connecting flight
From unexpected delays in morality plays.

They were splashing their guilty eyes
With plastic capfuls of Simple Green,
Smackin’ their tambourines,
Letting the kids take turns with the slash and burn.

And with only a phone call from home their crossbones were flown.
Past donor’s stonings were shown in sepia tone.

Everybody’s got a problem to solve.
Everybody’s got a problem to solve.
Everybody’s got a god on their side
That threatens to be kind.

Everybody’s got a problem to solve
And you’re mine.

I was only a passerby
To the Jones’ archaic smile.
The salesman rehearsed a while
And then he chartered his queen from a vending machine.

Possessive apostrophes
Were holding score-cards above their heads.
He said something someone said
And then his sweetie concurred with a salad of words.

But oh she’s a dish she went n’ had his physician dismissed.
Accomplished her she decommissioned her kiss.

Everybody’s got a problem to solve.
Everybody’s got a problem to solve.
Everybody’s got a spanner to toss
For when everything is fine.

Everybody’s got a problem to solve.
Everybody’s got a problem to solve.
Everybody’s got a simple prop
To occupy their minds.

Everybody’s got a problem to solve
And you’re mine.

Bottomless Sky

Earthtones and solitude and bloodshot ledger blues,
Josey Collins dressed like the wine he abused.

Toting excuses like a bag of worn out shoes,
Many soles departed for the ones he would use.

Observatory Mesa, oh my stars how some could spend
So little time on a fortune of friends.

A playmaker’s nightcap could mean less than every sigh.
The top selves of parody and a bottomless sky.

A bloodhound wandering through a silent partner’s song,
A drone of broken leashes dragged along.

He unraveled tight ropes just to demonstrate his ties.
It was a freefall of acrobats in a bottomless sky.

Painted Legs

Painted legs in the dandelions,
California wishbone breeze,
Summer dress on my sweet sparrow’s nest
For the church mouse jubilee.

Painted legs at the five and dime,
Matinees in faux designs,
Hepburn neck with her modest effects,
Plastic pearls and plunging lines.

And she defines her success
Par l’amour, more or less
With the finest of fools at her knee.
Professors and thieves with hooks up their sleeves
And they don’t look a damn thing like me.

Painted legs in the fireflies,
Lazy limbs and bedroom eyes,
Eight track tapes, mosquito net drapes,
And not a single thing in between her and I.

Not given to possess,
My baby stockingless,
Painted legs.

Even So

Contrarians in corduroy, (Only goes to show, but even so)
Their windows painted shut, (Only goes to show, but even so)
They probe the walls with stethoscopes (Their bellies ache and their noses glow)
In search of god-knows-what. (Only goes to show, but even so)

They’ll burn all your keepsakes, preach causes like cheapskates
While the barkeep’s receipt tapes are puddled on the floor.

But even so,
It’s so convenient to believe
In what they don’t need to know.
Even so…

The copper-tinted operatives, (Only goes to show, but even so)
Orange soda in their veins. (Only goes to show, but even so)
Boards are waxed and hacks are bored (Falling over with the truth in tow)
In a danger boy campaign. (Only goes to show, but even so)

Those sandbagging eye-sores. The chicks they all try for
Get wet when they dive for the shuttlecock in vain.

But even so,
The only pressure they can measure
Is the one they let go of.
Even so…

The catatonic activists protect their paisley hands
As a black-eyed pea presents her pod with a list of her demands.
Does he slip her out and be discreet or does he brain her where she stands?
Like cherry pits her bits of blood go bouncing down the strand.

Well it’s not the blue boy’s chief concern (Only goes to show, but even so)
When the sergeant’s red phone rings. (Only goes to show, but even so)
They’re chopping crusts in white bread busts (Never mind the chatter on the radio)
On a broken taillight sting. (Only goes to show, but even so)

And the Jacks they work under
Find safety in numbers.
Elections steal thunder
From another ball cap clan.

Korngold Blue

Hey, steady as you go, Billy’s kind of slow
Though you’d never know it to look at him.
Though nothing’s in the tin, neater than a pin,
He comes swingin’ in just like Eryl Flynn.

Tale spinning through a straw, hearing what you saw
Broken like a law should they miss their cue.
Green copper on a cent, yellow belly leant,
Johnny Ford magenta and Korngold blue.

The orchestra screams of a much-whispered story.
Anthracite dreams of a steam-powered glory.
Figurines and in-betweens
Through the smoke of a token cigar.

As they draw chardonnay from the Warner lot tower
A boxer’s ballet keeps telling you how there
Always is a place for this,
But it’s never wherever you are.

See Kitty split a dime, matinee at five,
Then she bats her eyes at the soda jerk.
Lay swelling in her mind ought to fall in time
With their pantomime but it never works.

Hey, honey, rest assured, no one’s ever bored
Long as something sordid is troubling you.
Sun flaring on the lens, careful how it bends.
Indigo intentions of Korngold blue.

The orchestra screams of a much-whispered story.
Anthracite dreams of a steam-powered glory.
Figurines and in-betweens
Through the smoke of a token cigar.

As they draw chardonnay from the Warner lot tower
A boxer’s ballet keeps telling you how there
Always is a place for this,
But it’s never wherever you are.

The Mourning Dove and Joan (A Moment’s Notice no. 1)

Does she look down on me? I only ask ‘cause you’re her best friend.
I’ve had too many nice girls with test signal eyes
say, “You lost me. Could you start again?”
Well I’ve been down here an hour now watching the lights make their pointless commands.
Making history’s most perfect snowball only to have it melt in my hand.

I wanna’ find her, Joanie.
I wanna’ find her here right now.
So she can drag me to that checkered floor back at Joe’s Place
And dance like we don’t know how.

Slidin’ on the ice in the alley
Chuckin’ bad pennies at the moon.
Hidin’ from the help in that filthy downtown diner
And laughing at our reflection in a spoon.

Is she even out tonight? I thought sure that she’d be with you.
I saw ol’ Tucker McGee with a party of three, but he was the only one I knew.
He told me I looked like hell, but that it wasn’t his place to care.
And feelin’ so hard-pressed, he just pointed to his chest and said, “This ain’t no thorofare.”

I need some help here, Joanie.
Just nod if this is making sense.
With just a glimmering notion of nighthawks and handsaws
You’ll settle some arguments.

What had been either is or it isn’t
A has-been if ever there was.
By morning this will all only seem like it matters,
But right now it really does.

[Bridge]
Final cuts and high heel strut cantatas.
What’s it gotta’ do with me?
Lovers buzz like hives of bees
rom camera phones, jalopies moan,
My bones are frozen... Please!

I’m so exhausted, Joanie,
But you’re so damn pretty here in this light.
It’s not every girl can wear those street lamps like halos,
And yet you’re alone tonight.

Rolling like your eyes in denial,
you could burn every kiss from my mind
With just the chemical effect of that hourglass-shaped raincoat
And a warm place where it can dry.

Well we can crash the nobility and steal the bait from their furnished flats,
Or we can lose all our sense by a tap handle fence, but I don’t see the point in all that.
Do you still live on Border Street? Do you ever smile more than half way?
I’ll bet some spit and a song I can make it happen by dawn, so tell me, Joanie, what do you say?

Powder Room

You’ve been had. Loved and left unsaid.
She does pirouettes inside the shell of your head.
Under wraps in a showgirl’s shawl.
And for show and tell she just does nothing at all.

She says, "the need to be discreet is nothing you and me can’t open up about.
So I’ll see you at the rendezvous provided that they see us taking separate routes.”
But the secret’s out.

In tails. And she arrives at four
With your jacket hanging from her passenger door.
Half past nine, she goes to fix her face
And gets her fix from you in an inappropriate place.

After-party busy bodies hang around like droplights in a salvage yard.
You stumble in with all the grace of every bottle dropping from behind the bar.
Oh there you are.

Well, she bites your ear and whispers, “Think of something, dear.”
You’re one off on your buttons acting weird.

But her silver spoons are right behind you with their brooms.
Feather dusters in the powder room.

Throwing coins at her second floor,
She hears a stranger’s voice and she assumes that it’s yours.
You’re a fool, but you clean up nice.
Just keep your creases sharp and take your handler’s advice.

You keep her from the agony of loving you ‘cause that’s the kind of friend you are.
But everywhere you go you’re trailing sugar from the bottom of her cookie jar.
Well that’s bizarre.

Well, she bites your ear and whispers, “Think of something, dear.”
You’re one off on your buttons acting weird.

But her silver spoons are right behind you with their brooms.
Feather dusters in the powder room.

Or So I’m Told

It sounds true.
Crushes are blue,
And spinsters turn cold,
Or so I’m told.

Your blood thins
To needles and pins,
You swim in your clothes,
Or so I’m told.

The tender nerves,
Sahara dune curves,
The opium trade on her skin.
Love is wide,
Pounding like tide,
You never seem to know the trouble you’re in.

She smells young,
Dissolves on your tongue,
And it never gets old,
Or so I’m told.