We Used to Kill the Communists
But first we killed the Britons
Faux Warriors,
If you have been reading this newsletter for a while, you realize that each week I release a song on Bandcamp and write about it here.
The album series on Bandcamp has the same title as this newsletter: “From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler.”
Further, I change the Volume number1 of the album over on Bandcamp with the changing of the seasons.
As this Thursday marks the Winter Solstice, today’s song will be the last “mixed up file” to be added to this latest volume of FTMUFOMMTS, which has been Volume 6.
So next week, on the day after Xmas, I will begin Volume VII of this recording experiment.
I’m kind of stoked about that.
Thank you for reading and listening!
My first job out of college was driving a truck in the Black Forest, delivering gourmet food to specialty shops.2
I’d graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991 and bought a plane ticket to Germany3, where I had done a year abroad in 1989-90.
I have fond memories of little old ladies giving me sausages to eat in the truck as I wended my way from Görwihl to Villingen-Schwenningen, the Alps looming in the distance.
Eventually, I saved up a little money driving truck and bought a train ticket to Berlin, a city I hadn’t seen in some time.
The Berlin Wall had come down recently and East-meets-West was getting blurry.
On the long train ride, I struck up a conversation with an American businessman in my cabin who was heading back to the East Bloc to try to make some deals in telecom.
Boris Yeltis was the newly elected President of Russia and there seemed to be a bit of a goldrush going on.
This American businessman was a little addled by what he had heard about the business climate in the old U.S.S.R.
“These new oligarchs want to take 50% of your profits just to let you in the door over there—I know a guy who was held up at gunpoint and forced to sign a contract that stipulated as much. It’s like the mafia is taking over.”
That conversation stuck with me and eventually found its way into a song called “We Used to Kill the Communists.”
And that is today’s song addition to the “Mixed Up Files.” Listen in the player below.
I recorded this song on my iBook G4 before I had purchased a microphone4, so it was tracked using the built-in microphone on the keyboard. That’s why the sound quality is a little dicey, but alas . . .
Eventually, I made my way back to the U.S. and strangely enough wound up living back in Madison around 2014 after a long stint in the Minneapolis music scene.
I started taking classes in video, animation and game design at Madison Area Technical College in 2015 and found a way to use this old demo in a video game, the video of which is below.5
Here are the lyrics:
We used to kill the Communists
We used to try to stop the spread
No use in killing communists anymore
We'll buy their goods instead
We used to kill dictators
And tolerate a few
If it was in your interest
You'd serve a dictator too!
The Domino Effect has worn off
Manifest Destiny subsides
Still, a cold war is better than a bloody one
At least no one dies
Except for spies
But first we killed the Britons
And the Hessians that they hired
Then the Hessians got all nasty as Nazis
Once again we fired
We shot those Fockers down!
We never killed the Russians
They were always on our side
Now the Russians have their mafia
To keep the greedy in line
The greed is in kind
If you're making twenty cents
They only want a dime
Well!
If it's 50% of your revenues man,
It's not that much,
At least your alive!
I shall endeavor in the new year to make a higher quality version of this song and perhaps even getting around to releasing an album of all new material.
Now wouldn’t that be something.
I remain your humble servant,
OX&C,
Faux Jean
And add new art-work etc.
You may recall, I thought I was going to die, so I was like, screw it, going to Deutschland biotches.
I got this gig by hanging around the “Arbeitsamt” (or work office) every day.
I was just learning how to record myself in the digital realm and there were no tutorials on how to do that just yet.
If you want to play this game on your Mac, hit me up.