Girlfriend Again
Kismet says I need a wife
Today’s song addition to the “Mixed Up Files” album series was recorded to cassette tape in 1998. I think I was trying to save money and bought the lesser Maxell UR tapes, as pictured below. Great for everyday recording.
The song is called “Girlfiend Again” and it goes like this:
I tried to make several versions of this song within the month of February/March 1998, as the track listing of this cassette would indicate:
Today’s version I recorded alone in the rehearsal space I shared with my bandmates from the Spring Collection.
My work ethic at this time was very solid.
I was trying to solve puzzles and getting lost in the sounds I was creating.
It was warm and cozy in the rehearsal space compared to the February winter outside in Minneapolis.
Here are some of the lyrics:
Don't you see I've got it all in my head
I'm never going to get a girlfriend again
I'm going to live like a hermit instead
With no one to blame when I am sad.
Eventually, I added a lyric to this song which says: “Kismet says I need a wife.” I’ve not managed to record a decent version yet with that lyric added, but I want to believe there is time.
In other news…
A friend of mine from Duluth, where I grew up, has been doing this cool podcast on Spotify, where he does band histories and suchlike, and he intends to do one on little old me, Faux Jean, in the coming months.
Here is an example episode:
This friend, Alan Thomas, is planning on doing an episode about Faux Jean, about which, naturally, I am quite flattered.
He asked me to give him a little background on how I started out etc and I typed a bunch of stuff out, which I’m sharing below:
OK here’s some backstory stuff. I think I first asked for a guitar when I was four years old but I thought it was called a tea-Gar and my parents didn’t completely understand what I was trying to say. Eventually, they figured it out, and I did get a plastic guitar probably when I was four or some thing on my eighth birthday I got a classical nylon string guitar and a book of chords and songs by Mel Bay.It had songs like “skip to my Lou” and “little brown jug in it.”
I didn’t really learn then. Couple of the strings broke, never took lessons, and it sat in the attic for a long time. I started obsessing on Rickenbacker electric guitars because of my love of REM in high school. My friend John Klun had gotten a guitar and took lessons and his dad convinced a friend to come over and show us how whipping through chords went. Eventually, I figured out I could play Louie Louie, a song that I loved, and if I could move the cords around from there, I could learn other songs.
Barry Pirkola lent me an acoustic guitar that we could use and then John Klun and Kevin Taylor and I used to take our acoustic guitars down to Leif Erikson park and play down there.
I got a Rickenbacker guitar for my graduation present. Black and white 330 12-string John Klun and I played like a Rolling Stone song at the talent show that you’re in 1987. That was the first time play electric guitar on stage that was pretty exciting.
I went down to Madison for school, brought my Rickenbacker. I auditioned for a band and did not get in, but I sat in my dorm room and continued to play and write. I had a little folk duo that I played with in Madison. It’s me on acoustic and a guy named Dave Fox played violin. We did songs like Irish jigs and some originals. That’s when I first started recording myself using a little tape player. It was actually Neal Dawson’s cassette recorder that he purchased to record university lectures.
When I graduated I moved to Minneapolis.
I moved into my apartment on Lake Street and 93 maybe? A dude moved in downstairs named Shawn, he had a drum kit in the basement. We started playing together. Danny Dawson, Neal’s older brother, started playing bass with us. We played for about a year in the basement, just jamming out surf rock kind of, none of us really knew how to arrange a song so we never had a gig. Because we didn’t have any songs. We had lots of songs or song ideas, but no arrangements. I wanted to play gigs, but none of us knew how to take the reins and hash out the songs and frame them, etc. etc. arrangements.
A friend named Peter Van Dyke, who had a band called The Wonsers, introduced me and Shawn to a fellow named Will Eastman, who was looking to start a band. He played bass very well, but he was also a songwriter and we made the compromise that we would each be songwriters and play bass on half the songs and guitar on half the songs and the band was called Whippoorwill. There was a lot of handing instruments back and fourth.
We recorded a four song demo with Tom Herbers at the then new Third Ear recording studio. It was an 8 track, 1 inch tape machine in a factory that had a spice dealer in it, so it always smelled like cumin there. I really liked the tape we made.
Will was very organized, he knew how to arrange songs, he’d been in bands, and he helped me learn how to do that kind of stuff. We gigged about a year and then broke up. There’s still some demos that we recorded with Willie Wisely on cassette four track that never saw release. Perhaps for the better.
Having learned how to arrange songs and book some gigs, I started the band Steel Shank. Shawn Grider, aka Grinder, was on drums again, and my brother-in-law, Chris Pavlich, aka PAV, was on bass, and I played guitar and wrote the songs. I actually booked our first gig before we had any of the songs learned and that forced us to put the show together quickly. We played a couple songs left over from Whippoorwill, like “La Crosse” and “Take Back the Night,” but it was mainly new stuff.
PAV had a cassette four-track which he let me use and that was the beginning of an addiction that lasts to this day.
XYZ was my high school band— we were a decent band, really. We played mainly covers, though I did write a song called “Drama Club” that we may have played. Or was that in Steel Shank? I wanted to cover the Stones in XYZ and was out-voted in favor of Duran Duran and Pet Shop Boys covers, which were also brilliant songs. I also wanted to play guitar on stage, and was vigorously dissuaded from doing so, as I really was just starting to learn.
I can’t remember the exact timing, but I think the first time I got on stage and sang with a rock band was when Danny Dawson and his band (the Lobsters?) played at Bull Pub at UMD, University of Minnesota, Duluth, and they didn’t have a singer, think I was in tenth grade and I got up and sang “Louie Louie” and “Diane” by Hüsker Dü. I was kind of hooked after that.
At East High I was in the choir. I auditioned to be in the high school musical by singing “Everyday” by Buddy Holly and I got lead part in “The Robber Bridegroom.” I’m pretty sure I had a horrible southern accent, but still can’t believe I managed to keep all those words in my head. That was a great experience. Shoutout to the cast and crew.
In high school, I worked a lot. And I didn’t really drink or smoke or do anything like that. I had kind of the same group of friends that I had in fifth or fourth grade. Klun and I connected musically, and we got Perry to sing a little bit, Quack not so much.
I was a homeroom rep in student govt in tenth and 11th grade and then got on the Executive Board (was it really called that?) in 12th, which got me up in front of a lot of people talking and doing skits and sometimes music as one of the dudes in charge of putting on school assemblies. That was also a great experience. I liked high school.
That’s right, I liked school. And I was a crossing guard.
I remain your humble servant,
OX&C,
Faux Jean
Loved reading about your musical background! Is the Dave Fox you played with at Madison your age or older?