MEDIA SELECTIONS | PHOTOS - VIDEOS - MUSIC - DOWNLOADS  Here's all the songs I've released. You can download them by right clicking on the titles and then clicking Save As, Also I wrote some thoughts about each of the songs, Zak's Albums- As Rome Burned  1) Hollywood (This song is about wanting to be famous or about wanting to be with a girl. It’s half joking and half serious. Some of the lyrics are silly, but when you really want to be famous or you really want to be with a girl, to someone on the outside sometimes what you say can sound funny) 2) Under Your Possesion (Girls and pills, mixed up together just like God wanted them.) 3) Choke this Republic Boys (The arrangement is influenced by the Clancy Brothers, the song is for reporters, network news anchors, cable news anchors, and cowards everywhere. You may not know what you are, but I do and here's your song) 4) K (There will never be a prettier girl drinking at a bar in New Jersey on a Wednesday night. That sounds sarcastic but I only half mean it that way.) 5) Have You Looked Outside (Woody Guthrie had “This Machine Kills Fascists” written on his guitar, that’s where I got that line from. 6) Girls Touching Girls I like the hook on this song but St.Augustine said it better 1500 years ago. “As I grew to manhood I was inflamed with desire for a surfeit of hell’s pleasure" 7) Minstrel Show Money changers in the temple, there shall be a reckoning. There’s more sex and violence in 80 year old blues songs than there are in 50 Cent and Lil' Wayne records. It may sound like sex and violence but it’s really what a board meeting of a bunch of white record executive’s sounds like. And there’s nothing more sickening then that. 8) Shots (There’s a cello on this song. When I used to play it live I used to play it heavier, with more guitar distortion. I like how this came out though. I changed the lyrics a lot since I first wrote it. It used to just be about drinking (and used to be called Smoking and Drinking in fact) and now it’s about wanting to be God. And the way I do that in the song is by drinking his ass under the fucking table) 9) A Traitor's Way ("Where does your loyalty lie?" is a question that’s harder to answer then it seems sometimes. I think the answer is best when it's "the human race", but you could also phrase the question as, "where does your loyaty lie. to the human race or the people you love?” and then I legitimately don't have an answer.) 10) The Last Beat (I like this song a lot and I wrote it specifically to end shows with. The woman who played violin on it laid down a couple different tracks of it so it sounds like there’s almost a string section. Also, the word "beat" has a number of different meanings that you could apply to the context of the song. I think that gives the phrase "the last beat" a little more depth then if it had only one way to look at it, "Beat" is used in relation to "heartbeat", in relation to being "beaten" or defeated, in relation to the musical "beats" in a measure, and also in relation to the "beat poets". I usually hate analyzing songs in that kind of detail because it feels pretentious and annoying. Once in a while it's ok, but don't make it a habit. The phrase "rock out with your cock out" is wiser than it can sometimes appear to be. _____________________________________________________________ An Endless Doubt  1) I'm Your Man I live in New Jersey, pretty close to New York City, and I used to go there every weekend to bars with my friends. This song's from back then; at 4 AM it's a fucking ugly feeling when they put the lights back on, even if you do want to leave it's an ugly way back home. So here's to before it all gets ugly, and the unbelievably beautiful face before it succumbs to a fate written in stone. It has my favorite line I ever wrote in it, "I'll be right here swinging hard against an endless doubt". Which means I've got nothing else I'm gonna do but stay here and fight the bad fight, you'll only end up swinging against the wind but then again what human won't. Salud! Take those punches all the way home. 2) I Believe In War (This song is "satirical".) 3) The Bible Is Right (And this one is too. Just to be clear, I'll say that again, I don;t mean the words to this song) 4) The Ones That Got Away Will Bury Me ( The title of this song is a little "cute", but I mean it. A lot of the time things look pretty bleak.) 5) Make Love Easy (I'm not sure how I feel about how this song came out. Originally I pictured the feel to be a little different. If it sounds "goofy" when you listen to it I don't like that sound either.) 6) No Plan BI was in a basement when I came up with this song. I was talking to this kid who was in a band and I asked him if he was planning on going back to school. He said that he wanted to make it in the music buisness and that "there was no plan B". This was a couple years ago, maybe he's given up by now or maybe he's still playing in a band. Either way it was clear that he meant what he said at the time that he said it. A statement of devotion to the love you can't help but choose. The choice is how much you're willing to sacrifice to what it is you are. Somethings you can change and somethings you can't - Alcholholics Anonymous. 7) Alamo ( Tom Petty has a song called Have Love Will Travel and there's a line in it that goes "And the lonely DJ's digging a ditch, trying to keep the flames from the temple". The temple is rock and roll and in the end I guess it's a losing fight. If the DJ ended up burning in the flames or dying in the ditch the message is the same. Here's why I died this way, it meant a lot to me) 8) Rich Girls (I went to a private school, those things that make an impression on you when you're young are the things you tend to go back to. Things like that are hard to get over, but not that hard if you keep trying) 9) Amen Baby (A declaration on Elvis Presley's altar to finish the job he started. And subdue Ed Sullivan to the camera shot he barred) 10) Goodnight Baby ("Never the less tenderness"- G. Stein) _____________________________________________________________ Deep Water  1) Connection (This is a Rolling Stones song from the sixties. I like their original recording because it's so sloppy it's like they don't even care about the song. The song is so fucking stupid that its charming to me.) 2) The Way You Look Tonight (I really love this song, my favorite version is one I heard by Tony Bennett and I think he recorded it not too long ago. (Like within the last ten years). It reminds me of this time I was eating somewhere with a bunch of friends and this song came on. There was this girl I used to hang out with who was with us, and I remember thinking that she looked so amazing right then that I would remember it for the rest of me life.) 3) Hidden Charms (This is a great song that this blues singer Howlin' Wolf sang. I think he was one of the greatest singers ever, and I've seen video of him performing and he had an amazing presence.) 4) Pressure Drop (This is the greatest reggae song of all time, it was originally by Toots and the Maytals. For some reason I remember it being in that Adam Sandler movie 50 First Dates. Which was a horrible fucking movie.) 5) The Traitor (Leonard Cohen at his best is one of the best songwriters of all time. This song, Hallelujah, Tower of Song, Chelsea Hotel, and a couple others, are some of the best songs ever written.) 6) That's Life (Sinatra isn't over rated, he really is one of the greatest. He has a million good songs that he sang from the 50's and 60's. That being said, I don't like his version of this song, it always sounds kind of stiff to me. It's a great song though, someone's contemplating suicide in the song but the music is upbeat. A good way to go out.) 7) Topanga Canyon ( This song is by John Phillips who was the leader and songwriter of the Mama's and the Papa's. This was off his first solo album released in 1970 called "John, The Wolfking of LA". This song has one of the best lines ever written, "Oh Mary I'm in deep water". I don't know specifically what he wrote it about but I always think of it as somebody calling out as addiction, drugs, and a lonely fate unshakably take hold.) 8) Pouring Water On A Drowning Man ( More people have probably covered this but the two main ones I know are by this soul singer named James Carr in the 60's and a version by Elvis Costello in the early 90's. Both versions are really great, Elvis Costello's is just him and guitar and the James Carr version is one of the best R&B singles of all time. One reason James Carr isn't more famous is he had some kind of mental disorder.) 9) The Grand Tour (This is a song that was sung by the country singer George Jones. At his best he's an awesome singer, but he doesn't write his own songs and has been given, or chosen, a lot of shitty songs to sing. This is one of his best though.) 10) We Bid You Goodnight (This is one of my favorite songs ever. The Grateful Dead used to sing it accapella at the end of their shows and that's how I first heard it. It's adapted from a folk song/spiritual that was sung at funerals as someone was lowered into the ground. _____________________________________________________________ See Your Home  I've been recording this album in my house. Some of the tracks are a lot more finished then others and some are more like demos for what the finished album should sound like. As I re-mix or re-work the tracks I'll replace the versions up here now with the newer versions and write the date next to it. You can download them for free by right clicking on them and then clicking Save As. 1) Right Here (To drag a goodbye out for a whole lifetime long) 2) The House You Haunt (Look upon my works ye mighty and despair. A rotting, decrepit, steadfast heart.) 3) Is That Selling Out (France surrenders, Pilate washes his hands. Anne Frank's in the attic, I'll show you where) 4) The Choice “And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side, of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, in her sepulcher there by the sea- In her tomb by the sounding sea”- E.A. Poe) 5) The Only Parts of a Movie That Count (Humans fill their missing parts one of two ways. Drugs, girls, and work are one way, and being an artist's the other way. But in the long run artists always fail, and if their wounds start to close they rip them open again. Read their entrails in their art or the artist isn't there.) 6)Jefferson's Dilemma (Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. With full knowledge and command his road and course he chose. And there's nothing left to do but to damn his soul forever, an eternity of waste ) 7) The Only Port We've Found ( In a Godless, cold universe, girls are still soft) 8) Faith but Waiting (From the bow of a sinking ship. You wait for God or for a girl. If you can get one of them to come you don't need to make the other) 9) Let Your Love Be The End Of Me (It’s just like swimming. “We thank with brief thanksgiving whatever Gods may be, that no life lives forever, that dead men rise up never, that even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea”- Swinburne) 10) See Your Home (Burying your love. Home is far away, and far away forever. At the best its a prayer that you're happy, at the worst it's a prayer to forget. But for always the prayer is, forever, that your light will never go out) _____________________________________________________________ The Ones You Don't Forget 1) Where's Your Head At Cynthia 2) Jaimie, You Don't Have to Close Them All songs copyrighted to Zak Smith, except the entire Deep Water album and unless otherwise noted |