Gig and Pi
First, I’ll be playing live in public in the actual world this coming Tuesday October 18th, 8:45 PM at the Apocalypse Lounge (189 E 3rd St. between A and B). Last time I played only about 1.5 people showed up and it was very sad. Don’t let me be sad again. I’ll be on at 8:45, and followed by Bryan Dunn with whom I used to work and who is excellent, and Lara Ewen about whom I know next to nothing, but I’m sure she’s great.
More important, once in a while I see or hear something that makes me so jealous I want to smash all my stuff and burn my home to the ground. Here is a link to a video of a song by Hard n Phirm called Pi (link) (via Waxy). It’s about Pi. Some of you may remember them for Rodeohead, their crazy bluegrass mashup of Radiohead songs which is amazing, but also on their album is El Corazon, a description of how the heart works sung in Spanish delivered as if it’s a love song, and also a song about the Carbon Cycle and – Arrrgh! [smash smash SMASH]. This Pi song is pretty great on its own, because something like 200 digits of Pi are sung in harmony, but the video takes it over the top and makes me wish I was someone else, like maybe either one of those guys, or else the guy who makes all these fantastic videos (Keith Schofield) or any of the bands for whom he has made videos.
First Batch
OK, now we’re having a good time using the internet as a tool for big fun. This is Fun 2.0! Thanks to the brave ones who sent solos in – I’ve mixed them in and made some snippet mp3s for you to listen to. We have two guitars, a melodica (with harmony no less) and a cello. In a couple of cases I added some reverb/delay/EQ and such because I thought it sounded cool. I hope that you don’t take offense if I’ve done this to your solo. Here they be:
As for the rest of you, you have until this weekend if you’d like to send something in.
Where’s My Solo?
Went a little off the grid this weekend in Philly, where the only computer I had access to was choked with spyware and used a dialup connection. DIALUP?! That was some slow internet my friends. Being who I am, I couldn’t help but spend all my computer time getting that nasty nail.exe infection off my friend’s machine. Didn’t do a lot of email checking, so I expected to come back to NYC to find my inbox flooded with solos for Shop Vac. Not so. I ask you: what is up? As I have demonstrated time and again, solos don’t have to be “good” or even “played by a competent musician.” So dust off the euphonium and let’s make some rock.
The Hodgman thing went well, thanks for asking. Kind of a confused crowd – there was one couple at a table right in front of us who didn’t crack a smile the whole 20 minutes. Come on, throw me a little something, a courtesy smile just to indicate you understand that what we’re doing is supposed to be funny. I was even wearing a buckskin shirt and a coyote fur hat – still no love from Mr. and Mrs. Stoneypants. But whatev, we did what we came to do, and there were some young hip people sitting on the stairs who seemed to dig us. We’ll next appear at the Little Gray Books lecture on Wednesday 10/19, so get your pity-smiles ready.
And in the meantime, send the old man a solo, wouldja? I promise this will be fun.
Thing a Week 4 – Shop Vac
This is me doing Fountains of Wayne – you know, funny tragic suburban angst power pop ennui, etc. I started recording this one before it was written, which is something I never do. But I knew I was going to do hand claps in the chorus and I couldn’t wait. I came up with the chorus when I was actually using a shop vac (which is awesome by the way, it sucks up everything).
You may notice that there is no guitar solo after the bridge. I was going to go through the whole process of cutting together snippets of decent playing, beating myself up about not being a better guitarist and cursing my useless sausage fingers, but forget that. I leave it to you, dear minions. Anyone who wants to should record a solo and email it to me or post a link here. I’ll mix them in and post clips and we can all decide together which one works best. The song is in the key of E major and it’s 150 bpm. You’ll want to target the 8 bars right after the bridge, starting at about 2:20 and ending somewhere before the third verse. It can be shreddy or pleasant or noisy or whatever – it doesn’t even need to be that musical as long as it’s interesting, and as long as the recording is just the isolated solo (if you record yourself playing your bongos in front of your speakers I won’t really be able to use that – you will want some kind of multitrack situation so you can hear the song but record only your solo). And any instrument is fine – come on clarinetists, make your voice heard! Once a winner is chosen I’ll change the link to the new mp3 and give the player credit in the notes. Here’s the song:
Also, if you’re in the Philly area and you’d like to hear John Hodgman read from his book and me play some backup music, we’ll be at the Philadelphia Museum of Art tonight in between sets of the band Beau Django. Details on the Areas of My Expertise site.
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