Soterios
My man, So-Jo. Here’s an article about the king himself (um, in which he talks about my song about him! Awesome!): Soterios Johnson in Columbia College Today
Week Off
Much as I hate to break the perfect record, I need to face facts. It’s Thanksgiving this week and I’m hosting a bunch of family. The house is going to be full and I will spend much of the week boiling and mashing various root vegetables, so I just don’t think I’m going to have the time (or the quiet) to put anything together. I feel bad doing this (how weird is that?), but I remind myself that I quit the day job in order to be my own boss. As my boss, I insist that I take the week off. Consider me officially on vacation.
But as a follow up to my mashup attempt last week, I present to you something that I found in the delicious mp3 links list. This is what they call a “good” mashup (The Eagles: One of These Nights and Kelly Clarkson: Since You’ve Been Gone) from a now sadly defunct site called Mashuptown. It’s called Spending One of These Nights with Kelly.
Thing a Week 10 – When I’m 25 or 64
This is my first ever mashup. I’m on the road so my recording capabilities are limited, plus I’m so angry about this whole Sony rootkit thing that I felt like a little illegality was called for. I’m too old to smash things, so this copyright violation will have to do. I did actually purchase these songs from the iTunes music store, but then in order to get them into a workable form I had to circumvent the DRM by recording the audio out from my iPod. Hear that?! I circumvented the DRM in a blatant violation of federal laws! And I’d do it again!
Like many mashups, this really starts and ends with the title – a blend of Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4” and the Beatles song “When I’m 64.” I’m all about the numbers you see. It’s not quite as successful as I’d hoped (turns out it’s pretty hard to do this well). There are times when they work well together, but I can’t escape the feeling that I’m just listening to two songs at once, not a new coherent musical thing. If you don’t understand what makes McCartney melodies so great, you should try taking one out of its original musical context – they have deep roots.
Here is the song: When I’m 25 or 64
Coffeetown
I don’t know when I got so addicted to internet access, but I was without it for a couple of days and it felt like I had one eye closed. But I’m back. The ethernet cable in the room no workie, but there’s free wifi in the lobby of my Seattle hotel and I am living it up. Sorry if I’ve been a little unresponsive to your emails and comments, but I had an important meeting with my spirit animal in the desert (special shout out to Pete and Shawn for putting me up on such short notice). I also was very busy sitting by the pool and working on this week’s thing, which I’m afraid is a mashup. Pretty sure it sucks. Maybe it’ll make itself better in the next 24 hours.
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