Everybody Dies
You might be the lucky one
Listen to this week’s song addition to Volume Ten of “From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler”—it’s called “Everybody Dies” and it’s a dandy of a song.
What would compel someone to write a song called “Everybody Dies” and then share it publicly? Watch the video to learn:
Video Transcript:
Hey everybody, how’s it going? It’s Tuesday, October 1, singing cowboy Faux Jean checking in— how are we doing today?
First day of October, that’s always an exciting one, it’s kind of the fall season, that means people are getting excited about putting skeletons in their yards and skeletons and dead bones and dead things and ghosts and goblins and . . .
You know, I think about death, I wrote about that, I’ve been kind of death-obsessed since ’91, I thought I was gonna die. I think I wrote about that in a previous Substack on the mailing list with which this is all part of…
Today I added a song to the newsletter to the Substack and I put it on Bandcamp too, so you can listen to it there.
The song is called “Everybody Dies,” and it’s about how Hollywood makes these movies, these slasher flicks, and everybody dies and kids just go to ‘em and they just love ‘em! And it’s fun to go and watch all these people die.
Now my son is 13, and he’s been kinda into watching these videos where they do the “kill count” on YouTube I guess it is, where it’s like: OK how many people died in this video and it’s fun, it’s entertaining. It’s fun and it’s entertaining.
So now the song today, “Everybody Dies,” it says Hollywood makes these movies and the kids go to ‘em and everybody screams “everybody dies!” And it’s kind of morbid in a certain way, but for October, that’s kind of what’s on peoples’ minds. You know, death, and we should just feel lucky to be alive right now.
I said to my son the other day— now, somebody got on the freeway by our house going the wrong direction and there was a head on collision. Several people died. And you know, there’s a lot of people who are not alive today who were alive yesterday.
And I said to my son every time you leave the house you could almost picture the Grim Reaper’s over your shoulder, cause he seems like he’s ready to take anybody at any time—he does not discriminate. You wake up, now I’m just gonna go to work. Somebody gets on the freeway going the wrong direction or there’s a flood or there’s all these horrible things happening.
One the one hand, you gotta be thankful—grateful that you’re alive. And at the same time, You gotta be kinda thinkin’, Is the Grim Reaper, is he back here? Is he following me today?!
And you know, people talk about death, you can have these kind of holistic views—death is a natural part of the process— and I will go on and talk about that kind of stuff, but it’s still really difficult to accept death at a certain level.
When I was younger—you don’t even conceive it— I remember when I was kid, somebody got hit by a car and died, and I thought…I don’t even understand, it was just the sickest feeling in my gut.
Just thinking about it, I couldn’t conceive of it.
You know when you’re a little kid it’s hard to think about those things.
Sometimes you think literally, like when you’re a kid, somebody will say: “Oh that guys got a green thumb!” And you close your eyes, and you can picture this guy, and his thumb is green. He’s got a green thumb. You don’t understand that means they’re good with gardening and stuff like that.
Or somebody will say “Oh, Louie’s cousin cracked his head open on the sidewalk!” and you picture that skull is actually cracked and you can see the brains oozing out, you think that kind of stuff, when you’re a kid!
Now, when you grow up, suddenly instead of thinking, literally like that, you’re starting to see metaphors for the end.
Like today, when I put this song— this song, I recorded in the Tyler Street warehouse in 2006 my roommate Cornelius at the time, he was like, “Man, you got all these songs about death, I don’t know about that. What’s up with you?”
But at that time, I was just thinking about movies and how people just love these movies where everybody dies. And I came up with this song.
And I’ve made a couple different versions, but today, like when I put—when I took this cassette recording that I made in 2006 and I put it into my computer. I put it into this program called Audition, which lets you go ahead and kind of tweak the waves and that kind of stuff and I exported it and I did one as an “aiff” file—which by the way if you wanna keep your metadata an “aiff” file is better than a “wav” file—the “wav” file was always kind of the gold standard, but apparently, something about Microsoft being jerks or something like that…
Anyway, so I also exported as an MP3, cause I wanted to put on my phone and go out to the car and listen to it—just make sure doesn’t sound like crap.
You be the judge! Listen to today’s song, it’s called “Everybody Dies,” and it’s on the Substack, it’s also kind of on Bandcamp. Volume 10, we started Volume 10 of the album series it’s “From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew Schindler,” and it’s a dandy of a song.
Anywho, when I exported it today, I also did it as an MP3 when you export an MP3, it says: “This is lossy format. Do you wanna do that? Are you sure you wanna do that?”
And so I was thinking “lossy format,” like, “Is humanity a lossy format?”
Is that why God said “Be fruitful and multiply?” So we would not be a lossy format?
Like we gotta keep growing?
Is that why people are always up in arms about this, like we gotta have more kids and stuff, ‘cause otherwise we’re just gonna go away. I don’t know.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know…
I was going to say metaphors for the end. Like sometimes if you’re tuning a guitar and you hit the ding ding, you’re doing the harmonic thing and the harmonics will meet and they start to sing together but sometimes they’ll just be singing together and then they’ll just diverge—and it just kind of dies, the vibration dies. And I’ll think, “Is humanity, are we on a vibrating schedule? Is there something coming?”
People talk about the apocalypse, and you know, if you look at pictures from the olden days, all those people died, and that’s just part of the deal. Now if we all died together at the same time, that’s just what’s gonna happen, I guess, but for now we gotta try living, and having a positive attitude, and going to scary movies and watching movies about kill counts and putting skeletons in our yards and you gotta keep on living— that’s what I’m planning on doing today, ‘cause it’s beautiful world out there.
Thanks for listening. Thanks for checking out this song. I hope it doesn’t creep out too much.
Like Cornelius, my roommate said “I don’t know about these death songs!”
He was younger than me. He said “Maybe when I’m older I’ll understand.”
So maybe, Cornelius, if you’re watching this, let me know if you get this one.
“Everybody Dies,” from Volume Ten of “From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler.”
Thank you for watching as I always say your attention is so valuable, and if you made it this far in the video, you are my new favorite person.
Have a good day and we’ll see ya next week.
I remain your humble servant,
OX&C,
Faux Jean
Here are the lyrics for the song:
Hollywood scary movies
everybody dies
kids at the scary movies
no one ever cries,
they scream
Everybody cries!
Everybody dies!
Everybody dies!
Everybody dies!
Except for the lucky one
You know who you are
Except for the lucky one
You know who you are
Everybody dies!
Everybody dies!
Everybody dies!
Everybody dies!
Except for the lucky one
You know who you are
Come to the scary movie
You will be surprised
Everybody dies!
Everybody dies!
Everybody dies!
Everybody dies!
Except for the lucky one
You know who you are
You might be the lucky
Be the lucky one