T h e B L U E T O O T H B L U E S Words and music by JimK and WarrenA, with insanity check by SimonE. More or less as 'performed' at the House of Blues, Los Angeles, 8 Dec 1999. In A, as written. E may be a better singing key for some (JimK?, WA?). The Bluetooth Blues Band (Olli Mäkynen and Roland Berg) recorded and play it in C (!). INTRO: Play a blues turnaround A7 (D7) A7 1. I got the Bluetooth Blues, you know I'm workin' round the clock... D7 A7 I got the Bluetooth Blues, just trying to get these things to talk... E7 D7 A7 (E7) King Harald won't you help me, won't you climb down off that rock?! A7 (D7) A7 2. Well I woke up this mornin', there was Promoters in my bed... D7 A7 Yeah I woke up this mornin', Promoters crawlin' in my bed... E7 D7 A7 (E7) Well there used to be five, now there's nine... man I wish I was dead! A7 (D7) A7 3. I got the Bluetooth Blues, you know it's somethin' 'bout the spec. D7 A7 I got the Bluetooth Blues, it's makin' me a nervous wreck, E7 D7 A7 (E7) They're saying 1.0 ain't enough, we gotta stack more cards in that deck! A7 (D7) A7 4. I have all of these cables now, and none of them do the trick D7 A7 I have tons of cables, baby, and none of them seem to fit E7 D A7 (E7) But with some RF waves, I can forget about all that shit. [What?!] CHORUS 1: to the tune of "Kansas City" A7 Well I might take a train... A7 I might take a plane... A7 But this interoperation thing is drivin' me insane! D7 A7 I got the Bluetooth Blues, just trying to get these things to talk... E7 D7 A7 (E7) King Harald won't you help me, won't you climb down off that rock?! A7 (D7) A7 5. Well we got a new contract, it only took about nine months... D7 A7 Yeah we got a shiny new contract, you only have to sign it once... E7 D7 A7 (E7) But don't forget to sign it, or someone might eat your lunch! [Look out...] A7 (D7) A7 6. We've got Ericsson and Nokia... and Motorola makes three D7 A7 They rule the world of mobile phones, indisputa-bly... E7 D7 A7 (E7) Then there's IBM, and Toshiba, monsters of the mobile PC... A7 (D7) A7 7. They all seem to get along, I'm not sure how that can be... D7 A7 We've got 3Com and Lucent, huge in TCP/IP... E7 D7 A7 (E7) You know they're hip to Ethernet... even 802.11B. CHORUS 2: to the tune of "Kansas City" A7 We've got Intel writing software, A7 Their new field of expertise... A7 They're gonna suck a core into the Pentium III... D7 A7 I got the Bluetooth Blues, just trying to get these things to talk... E7 D7 A7 (E7) King Harald won't you help me, won't you climb down off that rock?! A7 (D7) A7 8. We finally pulled in Microsoft, fresh from the DOJ... D7 A7 We had to start using Windows, to get them to say OK! E7 D7 A7 (E7) But now we can't say "Founders" or Microsoft ain't gonna play! [Just kidding...!?] A7 (D7) A7 9. I got the Bluetooth Blues, you know I'm workin' round the clock... D7 A7 I got the Bluetooth Blues, just trying to get these things to talk... E7 D7 A7 (E7) King Harald won't you help me, won't you climb down off that rock?! EDITOR'S NOTES: Words and music © 1999 Jim Kardach and Warren Allen. Written late Nov - early Dec 1999, for the Los Angeles Bluetooth Developers Conference, 7-9 Dec 1999. Performed, more or less, at the House of Blues, and once again in the Hotel Bonaventure. 22 Mar 2000: First north-of-the-Arctic-Circle performance, in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden - by Olli Mäkynen (keyboard), Roland Berg (vocals, guitar), WA ('blues harp'). LYRICS: Verse 5. line three: "somebody" is a recent replacement for a more legally-sensitive one syllable word, that also starts with "s", or more precisely, hmmm... "S". Verse 8: Apologies to our colleagues from Microsoft for any apparent references to U.S. legal institutions. 'DOJ' was meant to be understood as an acronym for 'Daughters of the Oreo Junkies". CHORDS: It's straight-ahead 12-bar blues, except for the Kansas City -style choruses. Insert your favorite blues 'turnaround', if you like, at the end of each verse, just before the final, optional E7. MELODY: At the request of comrade Päivi, I sketched out the melody (see below), as I hear it, which is hopefully more or less the same as JimK hears it… but no guarantee... I noticed that it was laced with 6ths (I might have expected more 7ths), which reminded me of the add-the-6th 'shuffle' approach to chording. The shape of this melody is no doubt determined by this 6th-on-every-other-beat rhythm. In any case, the melody starts on the a of the open 5th string on the guitar, which I am guessing is a below middle c on the piano. Note that on "workin'" in the first line, it jumps an octave - up to the a on the 2nd fret of string 3. I've used the 'prime' indicator (a') for this and any notes yet further up, to indicate that they are in the next higher octave. ALTERNATE CHORDS: Try these 'shuffle-style' first position shorthand chords - reaching over to replace the 5th with the 6th, and sometimes with the b7th, on every other beat. In the transcription below, 'A6' (for example) is not meant to indicate a full-blown 6th chord, but rather a two-or-three-string A5 with the 6th temporarily banged-on, like this: A5: x022xx A6: x042xx. For D, the corresponding chords are D5: xx023x D6: xx043x D7: xx053x. For E, play: E5: 022xxx E6: 042xxx. This approach doesn't fit the melody for the final "...climb down off that rock." phrase of the verse, so strum once across a first position D7: xx0212 for beat 1, and then pick out the melody starting from g (open 3rd string) down to the final a (open 5th string). Be sure to bend down hard on that penultimate c natural (fret 3 of 5th string). On the last verse, steer the turnaround to a final A or A7, rather than E7. VERSE: official chords: A7 D7 A7 alternate chords: A5 A6 A5 A6 D5 D6 D5 D/f# A5 melody: a c# d e f# e a a a a' b' a' f# e 1. I got the Bluetooth Blues, you know I'm workin' round the clock... D7 A7 D5 D6 D5 D6 D7 D6 D5 D/f# A5 e e e a' b' a' a' b' b' c' b' a' f# e I got the Bluetooth Blues, just trying to get these things to talk... E7 D7 A7 (E7) E5 E6 E5 E6 D7 [pick notes] A7 (E7) e g g g e g e g e a' g e_d c a King Harald won't you help me, won't you climb down off that rock?! CHORUS: to the tune of "Kansas City" A7 e g a' a' g a' Well I might take a train... A7 g a' a' g c' I might take a plane... A7 e g a' a'a'a'a' a' a' a' e' e' e'_d' c' a' But this interoperation thing is drivin' me insane! D7 A7 D5 D6 D5 D6 D7 D6 D5 D/f# A5 e e e a' b' a' a' b' b' c' b' a' f# e I got the Bluetooth Blues, just trying to get these things to talk... E7 D7 A7 (E7) E5 E6 E5 E6 D7 [pick notes] A7 (E7) e g g g e g e g e a' g e_d c a King Harald won't you help me, won't you climb down off that rock?! - WA, Dec 1999. Last edited 6 July 2001