Jennifer from The Code by Sundogs

Jennifer
by Jed Moffitt

Jed and Stan were both influenced by a great and underrated movie back in 1980. One of our favorite artists, Paul Simon, produced the excellent biopic, “One Trick Pony”. The movie was terrific, certainly autobiographical for Simon, and it presaged the profound changes happening in the music business that we are still feeling the effects of today. Simon’s band for that album was legendary: The amazing Steve Gadd on drums, Eric Gale on guitar, Tony Levin on bass, and Richard Tee on keys. After I had written Jennifer we recorded the basic tracks and realized later that we could take this song in the production style of the One Trick Pony album. Stan gets a big call out for channeling the late great Eric Gale, starting with the first note of the tune and singing throughout. Jazmin Candia, our backing singer on this track, deserves mention for really bringing some richness to the hooky backgrounds of the chorus. Our friend, Tom Burley, suggested that this might be the first time the word “furtive” has been used in a pop/R&B tune. Jennifer is real. But I do not know how to reach her. After studying for a career in business and statistics, she had a couple of kids and went off to raise them. Good on you Jen. As the last line of the last verse says: “I will likely not see Jennifer again”. Everything is changing, all the time, even all the beautiful people in our lives.

Tracklist

8.	Jennifer	4:03

Lyrics

I remember when she came to work that day
Young, with soft eyes, and sandy hair that blew my mind away
The kind of hair where you could see a thousand strands
It blows and lands in scattered patterns on her shoulders like a lei

A soft and an impressionable girl
Taking notes and watching furtively the goofy office dance
Advised to go to school she went to the University
And returned all full of rules about prediction and forbearing
Against randomness and chance

Jennifer would never call that data
When your heart bends like a tree in a hurricane
Unmeasured, unpredicted evidence would be evicted
Cause the proof is in the pudding
I should have seen the writing on the wall
It didn't seem like Jennifer at all

Jennifer retired the other day
I’ve seen her come and go, what does that say?
She was not the doe-eyed girl that I remembered
Whose hair blew wild and free with possibility unfettered
Babies at her knee, she’d had enough, and now she’s flown upon the wind
I will likely not see Jennifer again

Jennifer would never call that data
The sadness in my heart now she’s disappeared for good
The future just a fog of probabilities and odds
Predictive informatics, smart machines, and other gods
We worship at the altars of the day
And Jennifer has up and gone away

Credits

from The Code, released May 28, 2020
Jed Moffitt: songwriter, co-producer, vocals, keyboards
Stan Snow: producer, backing vocals, guitars, bass
Ben Smith: drums
Jazmin Candia: backing vocals
Don Gunn: engineering, mixing, mastering

Copyright 2020 Jed Moffitt BMI, All rights reserved.

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