1. |
Read My Blog
01:35
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Read My Blog
By John Sobol
I cant believe you don’t read my blog
You walk around in a fog
You’d rather spend time with your dog
Read my blog read my blog read my blog
I wrote about the first time we met
I started writing and I ain’t done yet
I even wrote about your pet
Read my blog read my blog read my blog
Well you follow a blog by a chimpanzee
But I can’t get you to follow me
Maybe you’ve got a social disease
Well I got it too
And it’s called you
I cant believe you don’t read my blog
No I won’t go camp at Scugog
I’d rather stay home and blog
Bout yr dog bout yr dog bout yr dog
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2. |
140 (Characters or Less)
03:57
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ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY
By John Sobol
One hundred and forty
That’s all I’ve got to give
It may not be enough
For all your fancy stuff
But baby, one forty’s where I live
Once upon a time I read a book
uh-huh
And you wouldn’t believe how long that took
a hundred and ninety pages
that’s a lot of paper cages
140 is the key to me
I can’t imagine a time
When people typed line after line
Alone at their desk, in their dusty garret
If that’s communication, baby I’m a parrot
It all just seems so random
Without followers or handles
But 140 is comfy and cute
You can say bout anything, even the truth
You can tweet while eating Dim Sum
You can even tweet while kissing someone
140 that’s the number for me
I can remember a time
When people typed line after line
Alone at their desk, in their dusty garret
If that’s communication, baby I’m a ferret
It just all seems so random
Without followers or handles
Baby I can tell by the way you hold your phone
that you’d know what to do
With one hundred and forty
characters or less
Oh baby won’t you start
Following that hash tag I call my heart
It’ll beat 140 times each minute
If you will only start tweeting in it …
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3. |
Do You Remember Dial-Up?
03:15
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DO YOU REMEMBER DIAL-UP?
By John Sobol
Do you remember dial-up?
All those years ago
Do you remember dial-up?
When the world ran slow
Caught before a frozen screen
Modem lights blinking green
Stuck in place like a meteorite in space
Buffering a dream
2 hours
to download a new song
most of December
for king kong
it felt like time was breaking down
Breaking up in a broken frown
Yet there we were slaves to 28.8
Suspended animation lying in state
Tiny numbers that meant so much
Heart flickering with hope
From 2.1 up to 3.5 and sometimes even 4.8
It wasn’t much, it wasn’t enough,
how did we ever cope?
Sliding down this long and lonely slope
That fateful sound that rang
Down the telephone line
Eeee-oooo-wheeerrrrr
How it boggled the mind
We were wideyed owls in the night
Waiting on a better time
Once you were out on a limb
Now you check your phone and grin
Last chorus:
‘cause now its here we ‘re living high-speed lives
Bandwidth as cheap as grass
But once in a while
I crack a smile
For a time in the distant past…
In the distant past
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4. |
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Where’s Chelsea?
By John Sobol
Chelsea you‘re not here to be queer
Chelsea you’re not here to make peace
Chelsea you’re locked up in your cell tonight
Tucked in by all America’s might
Chelsea you’re not here to cry
Chelsea you’re not here to try
Chelsea you’re locked up in your cell tonight
Tucked in by all America’s might
Somewhere a boy is dreaming of heroes
Skinny and strong and true
Somewhere a girl is dreaming of heroes
Heroes just like you
Chelsea you’re not here to be brave
Not here to misbehave
To save me to save us
To burn DVDs
To stand like a man with your mouse in your hand
And to say I’m not giving my freedom away
My freedom to love and my freedom to choose
My freedom to give and my freedom to use
The gifts my god gave me
To stop us killing babies
To stop blasphemous murder
To stop war
And I’ll stop crying under my bed Chelsea said
And I’ll use my head and I’ll use my heart
and I’ll use my hands and I’ll use my art
And I’ll tear down the walls that shield us all
From the lies that are told down washington’s halls
Down telephone lines
And email chains
The words that explain how the world’s wars are maintained
And I’ll do it for you and for me and for us
Though I didn’t really think it would come down to this
‘cause now I’m just a shell
In Obama’s living hell
And if you please I don’t feel well
Somewhere a girl is dreaming of heroes
Skinny and strong and true
Somewhere a boy is dreaming of heroes
Heroes just like you
Bradley you‘re not here to be queer
Chelsea you’re not here to make peace
Chelsea you’re locked up in your cell tonight
Tucked in by all America’s might
But Chelsea your deeds made some wrongs right
And we hope you sleep well tonight.
Chelsea we hope
You sleep well
Tonight.
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5. |
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I’m going down to the rocky shore
Where I have been many times before
I’m going down to go out with the tide
Got to get to the other side
I’ve been down this hole before
They say the devil’s underneath the floor
But I don’t go down there no more
I go down to the rocky shore
Do you ever find yourself outside a store
Trying not to go in that door
But it ain’t if you’re rich or you’re poor
It’s whether you’re down on that rocky shore
Rocky road rocky ride rocky moon
I thought I stopped the bleeding but I spoke too soon
I’m pretty sure that on the shore you’re gonna bloom
Bloom like bleeding Rocky Raccoon
Went down to the rocky shore with my phone
Broke it into pieces through it in the foam
Watched it turn to water watched it turn to bone
Watched all the angry birds flying home
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6. |
Retire to Facebook
01:48
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Retire To Facebook
When I get old
I’ll retire to facebook
And squat upon that great blue sea
Though I can’t afford a home
At least I won’t be alone
All my faceboook friends
Can come and visit me
And I hope that you will like me when I;m old
And like my retirement page too
It may be a little thin
But given the shape I‘m in
There’ll be room enough for me and room for you
I shared my hpes and dreams with the young and old
And I’d share them all again
But all that sharing’s got me is
Copyright cops who’ve caught me
Seems I’m a pirate and I’m
Headed for a bitter end
You can take away my job
And you can take away my joy
Leave me with nothing but a mouse
Like a link to an empty page
I’m growing old in an empty age
Just a clicking on that icon of my house
When I get old
I’ll retire to facebook
And squat upon that great blue sea
Though I can’t afford a home
At least I won’t be alone
All my faceboook friends
Can come and visit me
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7. |
Hit Send
01:22
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Hit Send
By John Sobol
It all started when you hit send
It all ended when you hit send
A new beginning
The same old end
When you hit send
It all mattered when you hit send
You were in tatters when you hit send
Act react
Ya can’t take it back
When you hit send
I don’t wanna pry
But can you deny
That you hit send
I can’t lie
Your reply
Was like a bomb going off
It all started when you hit send
You were uncharted til you hit send
Make more enemies
Make more friends
When you hit send
Did you intend
When you hit send
To set a bomb off
to set a bomb off
to set a bomb off
to set a bomb off
bomb off
bomb off
bomb off?
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8. |
I am an iMan
02:28
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I Am An iMan
By John Sobol
I am an iMan
An iMan’s what I am
Oh man I mean have you ever seen
An iMan as iManly as me
When my baby wakes me up in the middle of the night
I know just where she’s at
She gives me that smile that’s when I start to dial
‘Cause I’m an iMan an’ I got an app for that
Then she reaches out and touches me
In my iPod and my iPad
And next thing you know an iLife starts to grow
And soon I’m an iDad
I am an iMan
An iMan’s what I am
Oh man I mean have you ever seen
An iMan as iManly as me
Now I remember my first iMac
With a whole 32 megs of ram
But even then I knew
Like blueberry know’s blue
That I’m an iMan’s that’s just what I am
Then I got myself an iBook
And when the time came an iPhone
Now I’m never alone though no one’s ever at home
I’m an iMan and I’m out on my own!
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9. |
St. James Informationary
02:24
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St. James Informationary
By John Sobol
Well I went down to St. James Informationary
I saw my identity there
It was stretched out on that long double monitor
So sweet, so smooth, so bare
So I went to see the white hat hacker
“You’re in a bad way”, he said
“the trojans and the keystroke loggers
got your data and now your data’s dead”
Well let it go, let it go, I won’t miss it
I’ll make a new version of me
Then you can search the world wide web all over
But you’ll never find my old identity
Next I went to see that black hat hacker
In his cave of silicon dynomite
And I paid the heavy price he required
To set all this insanity right
Now I’m dead I’m dead please bury me
Forget I ever existed at all
I’ll survive only as a memory
Of a deleted post on a facebook wall
Now that’s the end of my story
Let’s pound another round of booze
And if anyone should come a asking just tell them
I’ve got the St. James Informationary Blues
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John Sobol's SoundBytes
Pocketful of code...music for spies...desktop campfire...whistleblower blues...deleted songs for deleted dreams...
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