Out of Picture
you can strut if you want to
Faux Friends,
I told everybody I live in San Diego now, right?
I keep seeing folks from back home posting pictures of frozen lakes and chilly, post-sundown-gray-blue skies and it gets me a little homesick, I must say.
That being said, I went to the beach on Sunday.1
Got in the car with the wife, kids and dog, and off we went to the Coronado Dog Beach to let Teenie run around and watch pelicans do their thing etc.
On the way to the beach, I secretly played this song in the car, which is this week’s addition to ‘The Mixed Up Files Volume 2” record.
You can also listen here on Bandcamp in a non-lossy way:
When the song ended, my daughter said: “I think that song sounds like it should be called ‘Out of Picture.’”
And so it is.
I started this piece in November of 2021 as a companion of sorts to “Am I Normal.” The working title for this song had been “The Normal Way jam foundation” till my daughter had the brilliant and inadvertent insight to rename it.
I was putzing around with the arrangement this week and decided just this afternoon to set it free, especially now that it’s got a decent name.2
This is a good song to step to, whether you’re walking the dog, strutting or just on a treadmill.
When I played the song in the car for the unsuspecting family of listeners, I’d been fumbling with my phone trying to cue it up, and my son said, “Are you going to play WFMU?” to which I slyly replied “Yes.”
So they all thought they were listening to some random instrumental on the greatest radio station in the world, when in reality, bwa-ha-ha, they were being exposed to the diabolical faux jams of their boring old dad.
We did not end up listening to WFMU after “Out of Picture” ended. I lost control of my phone and settled in for some Ariana Grande, if memory serves.
In other news, I did get a nice note from Spotify:
And this:
A lot of people complain about Spotify, and I get it, but it does allow people all over the world to hear these silly songs that we all voluntarily share.
When I first came up, you’d have to physically send a CD or cassette to someone for them to hear your music.3
The system is far from perfect, but it’s what we’ve got presently.
Notes on failure.
I was really hoping to release an album of new material this year.
In an effort to help manifest this, I even created a folder on my computer in April of 2021 called “2022 Long Player hopefuls.”
There are 40 folders within this folder, each containing a song idea.
I did manage to release one live album in 2022, and will have released two “Mixed Up Files” albums by the end of this year, but those are looking backwards in their way, and I must reluctantly change the folder name to “2023 Long Player hopefuls” and plan to release the “new” album (working title: “You’re Magic!”) sometime in the new year.
I will be working on manifesting, as I remain your humble servant,
OX&C,
Faux Jean
If it’s any consolation, the sun goes down before 5 and it can be in the 40s in the morning.
And I have a newsletter to get out.
I do wish Spotify (and Apple Music, etc.) had been around when I was truly ambitious about getting my music out there.