Girls in Jettas (with cell phones)

Don't adjust your sets! This is kinda loud!

Faux Brothers and Sisters,

In last week’s newsletter, I threatened to release a song a week for the foreseeable future on an evolving Bandcamp-exclusive record titled “From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler.” Here we are a week later and I’m frickin’ cereal¹, I’ve got another jam dropping like an old-school Tuesday scene happening. High fives all around².

This has been a rough week though. My wife got the rona (before we even completely finished unpacking our new place) and I started a new job at night (while also being the de facto exclusive caregiver to two nice kids.³) So there’s been a lot of walking to the library, going to the beach, walking to the grocery store, going to the park, going to the beach again, screen time, masks. Also, the dog was throwing up. What else… oh yeah, there seems to be a sinister force taking over the Supreme Council, er, Supreme Court. That.⁴

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So what am I doing here?

I am releasing a song demo that I digitized from cassette on January 28, 2002⁵, so I can look back with nostalgia on a simpler time; a time when relatively few people had cell phones.⁶

In fact, in those days, it seemed like most people still hated cell phones.

That was partly because if you did have a cell phone, you were probably standing on a street corner using it to belittle an underling loudly while wearing a shiny blue Oxford with a white collar, gold cuff links on white cuffs, hair shiny with pomade.

Breaking out a cell phone in a restaurant and holding a conversation in 1999? Be prepared to face disgust and general disapprobation.⁷

But I kept noticing this one person with a cell phone.

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I lived on the corner of Lake Street and Knox in Uptown Minneapolis from 1992 till 2005 and wrote a lot of songs there.

There was a woman in the neighborhood who drove a Volkswagen Jetta and seemed always to be talking on a cell phone when she would turn the corner from Lagoon and zip up Knox to Lake. I’d see her six times a day out my window as I sat working on songs. Eventually she made it into this song.

Faux Jean’s 4-track recording situation overlooking Knox in Uptown.

I wanna say I recorded this version in the bedroom with a Yamaha RX7 drum machine, a Shure SM57, and a teeny tiny Marshall which I would run directly into the board of the Tascam Portastudio cassette 4-track. I can’t remember which bass and guitar I played.

This is what I was driving at the time, btw.

The ‘81 Civic painted Rustoleum Yellow with a roller to hold it together.

I was not a girl in a Jetta with a cell phone. I was a boy in a Civic with a pager.

In any event, I was not good with PCs at this time.⁸

But my guy Grinder set me up with a setup (as ya do) and suddenly I was able to take my songwriting cassettes and transfer them to CD and share them etc⁹. I had a cable which would do RCA stereo out of the tape machine and plugged directly into the computer on an 1/8th inch jack. This particular version of “Girls in Jettas (with cell phones)” was transferred to digital in this manner. Many of the songs on this evolving Bandcamp album will have been captured in this manner. Most of them will not be this damn loud though.

I’m not sure how this song got so loud and over-driven.

But it sure is.

Somehow, over the last 20 years, this version has grown on me, strangely. Mainly, I’m like, “Huh, I made that? Weird.” And this makes it a perfect addition to the “Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler.”

Okay, it’s 1:30 a.m. and a train is literally crying out my San Diego window. And tomorrow’s bound to be a big day. I’m going to go read Ricky Lee Jones’ autobiography until I fall asleep.

Thanks for listening.

OX&C,

Faux Jean

P.s. Here are the lyrics:

Girls in Jettas (with cell phones)

Girls in Jettas with cell phones
Girls in Jettas with cell phones
Girls in cars, go to bars
meet the boys then drive them home
After work after class
On the phone they talk all day

They're girls in Jettas with Cell phones
Drive all Night and sleep all day
They're girls in Jettas with Cell phones
Where do you put your handy when you go to sleep

Girls and boys
Get their toys
Cause they know it's time to play
Set your ring to "Für Elise"
I'll set mine to just vibrate

Vibrate!

Girls in Jettas with Cell phones
Work all day and drive all night
Girls in Jettas with Cell phones
Sleep all night to drive all day

Off to work
or after work
or after school
she got a job
unless daddy paid
in which case
I think you know who you are
You're Girls in Jettas with Cell phones
Girls in Jettas with Cell phones
Girls and boys
Girls and boys
Girls and boys
Girls and boys
Girls and boys
and boys and girls

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1. When I use this language, I am attempting to appeal to the 11 year old demographic, in case my son somehow googles this and finds it.

2. There was a part of me that wanted to slink into bed and read the Ricky Lee Jones autobiography after a day at the beach, but I got my shit together, created the artwork, took a whack at metadata, uploaded the jamb, wrote this, etc.

3. Who sometimes remind me very forcefully that “They’re just kids!!”

4. As someone who has benefited from the services provided by Planned Parenthood, I am saddened by the headlines and ready to join the fight as a propagandist.

5. One score and four moons ago today, I hooked up my Tascam 4-track cassette recorder to a CD burner that was attached to PC that dear Grinder (drummer extraordinaire of Faux Jean) built for me out of random parts, and I was able to digitize this cassette recording. I truly believed the future had arrived when this tech became available to me.

6. And thus no way to flex emotionally for an audience of old high school buddies or whoever follows you.

7. Eventually, old-timers realized they wouldn’t have to ask for flashlights in dark restaurants if they had iPhones and suddenly, the war was over.

8. And this was long before I sprung the cash to get a Mac.

9. I can’t over-emphasize how huge this was to me at the time.