No Good Can Come of This (the song), & Jerkatorium World Tour date confirmed

Jerkatorium did okay in the previous Song Fight for the title "No Rush", winning 18 votes and sharing third place with two other entries (out of a total of 15 submissions).  I don't mind losing that Fight to Cookie Blue, they did a great song.

Our newest song is currently posted and up for votes at Songfight.org, please go there to listen to our submission for "No Good Can Come of This".  If you like it, please vote for it.  As always, you don't register or pay for anything to listen and vote (there is literally nothing to pay for or buy at the Songfight.org website anyway), you just listen and then vote by clicking the little box next to whichever songs you like.

I am very happy with our submission for "No Good Can Come of This".  It's a good, fun song, and the lyrics to it happen to be related to my next announcement:

It's official, Jerkatorium will be doing our first live show ever at Song Fight Live 2015 on Saturday, August 15 at 9pm at Mississippi Pizza at 3552 N Mississippi Ave in Portland, Oregon.  We'll be the sixth band on the roster that night, and we expect it to be a short set (probably no longer than 15 minutes).  I anticipate a 10 minute set followed by a 10 minute standing ovation.  Ha.

No Rush posted at Song Fight, working on No Good Can Come of This

Jerkatorium's "No Rush" is currently posted at SongFight.org, please listen and vote for it if you like the song.  Chumpy and I tried to channel The Cars.

We are currently working on a submission for the upcoming "No Good Can Come of This" Song Fight, which is due Sunday morning 26JUL2015.  I think it's coming along pretty well.  One of the things that is really helping me with the song is this new (used) piece of equipment:

It is an Evolution eKeys 49 USB controller that I bought used, super-duper cheap.  I plug it directly into my computer and I can use it to control software instruments in GarageBand.  Before this controller I was using "musical typing" for software instruments, which involves using the computer keyboard as the controller.  To give you an idea, the interface window looks like this:

Musical typing is better than nothing, but it is clunky and far from ideal.  It only gives you one and a half octaves, it takes up space on your screen while you're trying to use GarageBand, and of course the feel of the piano/organ keyboard is completely absent.  The eKeys 49 is making things a lot easier and more comfortable for me.

In general, buying used electronic musical equipment is not a good idea, especially the way I did it:  this type of keyboard doesn't have speakers so there was no way to tell if it worked without plugging it in to a computer (which was not available), and the power cord (9-12V adapter) was not included so it was impossible to check to see whether or not it would even power on.  I took a gamble and bought it, found an adapter in the box from my old Fostex 4-track cassette recorder (which I'll never use again anyway), plugged everything in and it worked great.  But I realize that was just dumb luck - I cannot recommend that anyone else try the same sort of thing.

Jerkatorium World Tour 2015

Jerkatorium followed up the "Hope You're Having A Nice Time In Jamaica" victory with a sub-par vote count in the "It's Not Over" Song Fight, garnering a total of only 5 votes and putting us in a four-way tie for 7th place out of 13 entries.  It's probably my fault we were so soundly trounced; Chumpy sent me a nice, laid back song, and I turned it into gimmicky schmaltz with a punchline.

Since then work travel prevented me from doing much of anything, music-wise.  In the meantime Chumpy and Zoom submitted again as Margaret Benson and the Cheese Trio for the "Be What You Want" Song Fight, contributing a one-chord masterpiece that somehow only got three votes despite universally positive reviews on the SFBB.  Chumpy also submitted alone as Chumpy and the Bitfields to the current "Meeting Street" Song Fight, and it's clearly the best of the bunch - you should listen to it and vote for it.  I'm working from my home office this week so Jerkatorium has no excuse for not submitting to the "No Rush" Song Fight, so that will almost certainly happen.

It looks like Jerkatorium is going to be playing a short set live at Song Fight! Live 2015 in Portland, Oregon on either August 14 or August 15, 2015.  The schedule is not quite finalized yet, I'll let you know when it is.  We're hoping we get a slot on Saturday night August 15 so that Chumpy and I have some time to rehearse together Saturday during the day, but we'll take whatever they give us.  The Friday set (again, we're hoping we won't have to perform in that one) will be at Culmination Brewery:

And the Saturday set will be at Mississippi Pizza:

More specific information to come as soon as I get it.