song titles

"make like jesus"
"while you were out"
"to know you is to spare you"
"(a) box of shadows"
"nancy's lazy horse (stagnancy)"
"thank you ms. irrelevance"
"(but) you can't put sorry in a can" - about drinking away your troubles

song title / lyrics

a gentle giant rubs his forefinger and thumb
in an alley, in the city's darkest dirty slum;
i hear the sounds from miles away
reflected off the sky and raining down like
the soft snow of static from in between the dial's lines
i pull them over my shoulder and wrap myself in the noise
and as i roll and face the wall,
your memory shivers beside me with no covers at all

***********

if i were a more patient writer this could flow a lot better... but you get the idea: laying and listening to the radio alone in bed at night in the winter... alone, but trying to share the covers with a memory.

"sharing the covers with a memory"

?

lyrics

time has found us
and carried us far enough.
so i heard your last words
and i felt the warmth of the fire.

song title / lyrics

"once upon a thorn"

i tangled the angles,
enraging the angel
who curses these verses
and all that i know

we sing our new songs
the sounds leave our mouthes
and now it belongs
to the air and it's gone,
yes, it's gone
oh, it's gone

in december the embers are cold,
in december the embers are cold.

song title / lyrics

"(there's) nothing here but rain and cold"

the birds sang their goodbyes,
trees full of wings unfold,
they headed south for warmer climes,
there's nothin' here but rain and cold.

(needs more, but you get the idea)

song title

"we met on judgement day"
a song about meeting the girl of your dreams on judgement day, and only having that one day together.

it's sad, but it could be worse... they could never have met! that's what bittersweet songs are all about. they squeeze a lifetime of joy and extacy into one day; they know the world is ending, they are uninhibited in their passion and openness; the lingering question- if it wasn't judgement day, would they have allowed themselves to come together? would they have reached out and touched what was right there? or would they be paralyzed by self-doubt and inhibition borne of their respective past-heartbreaks and dissapointments... for isn't it beter to have one day of true pure happiness, rather than a lifetime of missed opportunities, regret, false starts, near misses, and misunderstandings?

song titles

"force majeure"
"made of blood and blossoms" or "blood and blossoms"
"i spoke with the moon"
"my dearest friend is rice"
"i left you some bitterness"
"can i taste your name?"
"in the middle of june"

lyrics

with clenched fists i will run
to the feet of an angel
and attempt to draw blood from the stone

song titles

"i can't stand this feeling"
"(but i just stopped) six steps from your door" [six feet, six paces, etc...]
"we're in the middle"
"it doesn't matter"
"water colors"
"time well spent"
"all that i see" [or "all that i see is you"]
"dance on a diamond"
"the brave do not repent"
"bird in a sphere"
"my name is delilah"
"it breaks my hand"
"there are branches in my arms, asleep"
"now i look stupid"
"a cup of lightning" or "a cup full of lightning"
"fashionably latent"
"on the banks of goodbye"
"stairwell to sorrow"
"as grey as she could go"
"a gently flowing wrinkle"

song titles

"not today"
"a serious crime"
"skoal lessons"

song / album titles

"a jug of wine and venom"
"once upon a time you were listening"

song titles

"into the sun"
"almost magic"
"mass ejection"
"drenched fields"
"prominences"
"halo event"

song title / lyrics

"defiance at the top of the stairs"

a morning memorandum
of blazing hot incentives
a bursting seething brief case
all tumbling through fixed space

the pacing of the dust motes
through dismal, empty spaces
a face across the mirror
defiance at the top of (the) stairs
.. but nobody's there

cast your net and beat the bushes
reduce to demonstration
the circumstantial evidence...

thrown into the shady corner
down in dust, and wrapt in clouds
so hid from mortal vision,
a crown of thorns that no one wears
and nobody cares...

lyrics

untitled, by c2677

when i was young
i dined on rum
and whiskey liquid fire
but now i'm old
the bottle's done
and sits atop a funeral pyre

in an old book
there is a picture
that's waiting to be found
in musty yellowed pages
with worn corners, it is bound

song title / lyrics

"Neuron Bridge to the Baying Wolves" by c2677

under logarythmic skies,
countless massless clouds go by.
the curvature of eyes unite-
reveals their blossoms at first light

in antiviral membrane fusion,
deflect my noninvasive rays.
and the distance 'tween the darkest grains
absorbs the ocean's waves.

dismembered stellar corpses
orbit underground
a light breeze blows and scatters feathers
their headstones can't be found

song title / lyrics

"plasma eye"

i spy
incredible ions
the storm spectacle
in the rich, smooth dome of sky

your free electrons
curl up and cry
in the easeful blush
of the northern down

song title / lyrics

"Your Graduation Day" by the IOD

Hollowed out crow eye sockets
Collecting colonies of throbbing pink maggots
Burning flesh wrapped in a diploma of fire
Choke on the powder of ground-up skulls

Yes, this is your Graduation Day.

song title / lyrics

"Stage Agony" by the IOD

A square is always a square, that's what they say
But when you crawl yourself through me all the shapes decay

A kiss is just a kiss, that's all we're 'supposed to know
But when it rings through veins and wrists it's hard to say hello

A clock-keeper on the tower
A madman in the alley
The broom that sweeps while mothers weep:
This is the grand finale

All hands will surely fold in prayer, or so the saying goes
Unbound they bleed the prophecy until the cancer shows

A mirror always tells the truth, and rarely does it fail
But woe the ghost who ties his post upon that crippled sail

A clock-keeper on the tower
A madman in the alley
The broom that sweeps while mothers weep:
This is the grand finale

song title / lyrics

"dust factory"

we're all made of stardust,
from the black smoke of death.
the dirty seeds of life
are the sun's hot breath

the sons of ancient light
were forged in dying stars.
our brothers cold and dark, alone
shiver where they are

concept album

about an astronaut who, because of a freak accident during a mission involving the space station or something, finds himself alone in a disabled capsule, slowly drifting away from the station, and earth. he doesn't know what went wrong, he only sees earth getting smaller and smaller through his single tiny window. he cannot recieve any communications- his reciever is dead, but he has power, life support, and all of the supplies destined for the station- enough to sustain him for many months. his instuments show, however, that his transmitter is working- so he starts sending messages. at first it's the standard SOS... asking what happened, 'do you copy?', giving estimates about his position, inquiring about rescue- but, nothing... as earth shrinks to a tiny dot, he gets loses morale, gets more desparate... he assumes he isn't going to ever hear back, but he's confident they can hear him... he starts describing what his situation, reporting what he's doing- how he has supplies for months, he's rationing... but he doesn't see how they could rescue him, and he even insists that they should not send someone for him, that it would be too risky, it would endanger more people... as he begins to accept his fate, he starts asking that they relay messgaes to his family and loved ones... and as he speaks into the transmitter, he sounds as if he is talkign to them directly, as if they were listening... he tries to tie up loose ends, say things he wants them to hear, to know, before... before he's gone... as he goes on with his message to his family, he begins to have flashbacks, reocunting earlier periods of his life... skipping aorund to the future... imagining what could be- his children growing up, getting married, grandkids... in his halucination/speech he is trying to live it, grab hold of it and cling to it...
...it deteriorates into madness, and/or maybe suicide, i don't know... maybe he kills himself right before they rescue him... like he expires right as they open the hatch... like romeo dying from self-inflicted wounds right as juliet wakes up from her potion-induced sleep... ...maybe he gets picked up by aliens, or crash lands on an earth-like, but uninhabited, world... or, maybe there's some real sharp twist, like he's just plain mad, and he's not an astronaut at all, but he's on like an acid trip, hiding in an abandoned refrigerator in a junk yard....

song title / lyrics

'waiter on providence'

waste the precious hours
sleep like a doormouse
eat the bread of idleness
grass grows under your feet

fool away time, burn the daylight
waiter on providence

drag a lengthening chain
to the fair antichambre
rest your oars and vanish
in the chinks of time

in the arms of morpheus
in fabian's chair
in the castle of indolence
under an easy sail

fool away time, burn the daylight
waiter on Providence

song title / lyrics

"why should i lie (there are rainbows in my eyes)"

a flash of my teeth
my tears in the lake
its misty again
our childhoods awake

the sun is half-up
the rays all spry
but why should i lie
there are rainbows in my eyes

song titles

'wheel of frost' - (the thief of the wheel of frost)
'ashamed of you'
'zeuss guanno'
'hunting in the nassau mint haze'
'melon drama'
'neonatal serfdom'
'damsel afternoon'
'freon delta'
'dream afoot'
'tonal demon'
'a toast to selena'
'stage agony'
'blood from a stone'

song title / lyrics

"dennis and edna sinned" - by c2677

god, a red nugget, a fat egg under a dog,
go hang a salami; i'm a lasagna hog.
cigar? toss it in a can. it is so tragic.
are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to a new era?

no pet so tragic as a cigar to step on,
no! mel gibson is a casino's big lemon!
No! it is open on one position!
satan! oscillate my metallic sonatas!

i madam, i made radio! so i dared- am I mad? am I?
Live not on evil, madam, live not on evil.
marge lets norah see sharon's telegram:
'murder for a jar of red rum'.

no pet so tragic as a cigar to step on,
no! mel gibson is a casino's big lemon!
No! it is open on one position!
satan! oscillate my metallic sonatas!

album / song titles

"a gymnast and an angel in their alabaster chambers"

1. the space elevator
2. behind closed doors
3. keep the wound green
4. coxcomb at hell creek
5. the odor of the night
6. his workshop on the moon
7. three pound universe

8. signs that were known to her
9. bank of elegance
10. give up the ghost
11. waiting on providence
12. just answer the question
13. curl of false hair
14. love scene

song title / lyrics

"Water of Oblivion" by the IOD

Oh, what a terrible scene
Face-first at the ghost autopsy
Surgeons smoking Camels in the hallway
Nurses serving melons on an ice tray

Atlases of blood on my smock
Compasses in drag posing as rocks
Morticians playing hooky by the docks
Where the water of oblivion talks

Chorus:
Take off your shoes
When you enter grandma's house
Where the chandeliers burn sound,
Misunderstood on the ground
Take off your mask
When you prance upon the beach
Where the water of oblivion
Crashes just out of reach

My, see the lust in his eyes
Seeing through the vicar's disguise
Spouting homilies on the bad reef
Doling out hosts to the thief

When will they come back again?
On ragged boats shaped like Big Ben?
When shipwrecked bakers shout out 'amen!
We're the water of oblivion!'

song title/ lyrics

"Wolf Gathering in a Bird's Nest"

Hands up high so all can see
The children of the cabbage tree
They come to fill the stockings full of dew

The bashful lily, the absent host
Oh, these the things we yearn for most
Arrange the roots to draw a Chinese screw

The stalks so brave, the wheat forlorn
Strange rabbits hunched in uniforms
Patched with cooper portraits of the Priest

Pedals stacked like cinder blocks
Jelly foams from Genius Boxes
Rise from story orchids and be free

Phantom limbs that steer the kites
Past pigeons, lemons and Northern Lights
Up to where all sleep is clipped in time

We shall reside with eyes shut wide
To talk about past suicides
Huddling over steaming mushroom wine

So please reveal the evil plot
And tie the shy ones in a knot
And stumble though the clouds upon request

The shadows form in puzzled shapes
With windows closing from escape:
A wolf gathering, at once, in a bird's nest!

song title / lyrics

"mirror's edge" - by the IOD

men purport to speak for rivers
skimming rocks, they are constructing diligently
odious birds above swoop low
like hammers breezing past flesh,
past sequences of staggered alarms
coiling around the planet tenfold

stacks of proud arms cross-hatched on the black beach
distant cries bouncing off the water
inching down the shoreline in mercury beads
a parade of riches, a lullaby of clipped claws
the promenade proceeds in sad circles
and the men speak in distortion

hoisting valuable currents with levers made of bones
never to careful to swoon below that priceless coinage --
no one takes refuge in the arms of crumpled up moons,
left to toil and exude smoke on an inclined slope.

let the exhaust proceed, the men note --
no sense in stopping that

where it goes is beyond refute, and no one dares to utter
no one thinks of it anymore, no one is that foolish
in scaled colors squeezing through the cracks in horizontal rain
let it climb to our feet where we will meet them
do not deny us that opportunity, that fleeting sensation

song titles / lyrics

"iron minds" by the IOD


please restrain us
don't defame us
don't pretend to know what's real

clothed in fissures
bathed in mixtures
of arsenic, ink, and corrosive tears

Iron minds are watching you
Iron minds are watching you
Iron minds are watching...

Take us gently
Shame us plenty
Up upon the repellant grid

Over arching cranes
And smokestack veins
Out beyond Contusion Ridge

Iron minds are watching you
Iron minds are watching you
Iron minds are watching...

Iron minds are watching you
Iron minds are watching you
Iron minds are watching...

Iron minds are watching you
Iron minds are watching you
Iron minds are watching...

song titles / lyrics

"Bulldove"

hey bulldove get it together
you've been out all night
but better late then never

hey bulldove get off my foot
you've been drivin' too fast
coverin' my diaphragm with soot

hey bulldove when's it gonna end?
flippin' time over
gonna do it all again

hey bulldove stop curvin' space
you were here before you knew me
so stop cooin' in my face"

song titles / lyrics

"nobody cares" by the IOD

take a walk and don't remark
at all the faces probing you
navigate the brilliant shapes
that pave the highways taking you
to solemn shrines, exploding limes
french mirages, dream collages
talk a stroll and then you'll know
the weather's fair and no one cares

come with me to liquored seas
where all penumbras wilt for you
and don't forget to pack your knees
and don't recoil in pinkish soils
for in the end, we'll see again
the waves of egg-like haloed men
and then you'll breathe and then you'll sleep
on jeweled chairs, but no one cares

soon the night will slip its frown
before your eyes that run from you
and cloaked within its evening gown
the sound will bleed in reds, in blues
so as you exit through the hall
remember who it was who called
to take you past the whispered stares
to perfumed worlds where no one cars

song titles / lyrcis

"a cosmic whisker"
"moustache irony"
"(she's the) coding queen"

"wake up call" - include the lines 'face to face with the doorman, who is really an admiral, he whistles for a battleship, when i ask for a taxi'

"old hickory" - for the 'presidents' concept album, about andrew jackson hosting a new orleans christmas dinner party for british admiral sir alexander cochrane (who was attacking n.o. at the time)

"big game" - the song about teddy roosevelt, while ostensibly about his big game hunting and the bull-moose party, should incorporate the following description of him, attributed to one of his sons: "when he went to a wedding, he wanted to be the bridegroom; and when he went to a funeral, he wanted to be the corpse."

band name / song title

band: "the dirt naps"

song: "flowers departure"

song titles

"debbie's holster"
"mumble pie"

song titles

"my asymptote"
"you will know my name"
"drving through a cloud"
"keep your dissonance"
"i lost your number"

song title

"i can see you from space"

song title

"make it rain", "please make it rain", or "just make it rain"

song titles

"No More Rainbows"
"We Applaud You"
"Make Haste"
"The Tallest Prison Tower"
"Everyday is the Same"
"You Leave Me Wondering"
"Dandelion Chains"
"Whisper it in my Ear"
"How Very Sad"
"Slow Motion Lover"
"The Last Keg Line"

song/album title

name a carlsonics album or song after an anagram of each of the band member's names. for example:

Aaron Carlson = Carnal Sonora

'Carnal Sonora'

Carnal: 1. Relating to the physical and especially
sexual appetites: carnal desire. 2. Of or relating to
the body or flesh; bodily: carnal remains.

Sonora: Western US small ground snake. 'These
secretive snakes are seldom encountered, but can
occasionally be found by turning debris in the
daytime, out in the open near sunset, or on desert
roads at night'

Concept Album

this is an idea i have for a potential carlsonics record. it would be called "the carlsonics go solo"
it would follow a pattern much like the who's "the who sell out," except where the who has mini-commercial's in between the songs, this record would have short snippets of songs from each of the band member's solo careers. each "solo" career would be in some ridiculous genre. here are some potential solo musical genres..

- A barbershop quartet that the one person sings all the parts for
- grindcore/power violence (it really exists, though i've never heard it! i'm sure we could get creative though.)
- really over the top psychedelia about elves and snow queens
- french pop
- vaudeville (davy jones style monkees songs!)
- gospel
- holiday music (like a halloween album)


etc, etc...

the album art would be the most fun of all. pictures of our solo album covers.