Jerkatorium

Jerkatorium

Friday, November 27, 2015

Jerkatorium wins "Day of the Dead" Song Fight, and "The War On" songs posted

Jerkatorium is still absolutely crushing it, this time in a super-rare 3-way tie for first place (out of 18 submissions) in the Day of the Dead Song Fight.  I like our submission a lot, but I don't think it's one of our very best efforts, so I was surprised by the win.  We did have one of the only uptempo/happy/fun entries for that fight though, and I think that may have swayed people in our favor.

We have also submitted a song for the "The War On" Song Fight, which is currently up for votes at SongFight.org.  As always, please listen, and please vote for it if you like it.  It is our take on the so-called 'war on Christmas' nonsense.  If you're wondering in advance where we stand on the issue, I'll just point out that we had an alternate verse that didn't make it into the final cut (due to time considerations), but that verse noted that the 'war on Christmas' was manufactured and publicized in the 1920s in a series of anti-Semitic pamphlets, revived in the 1950s and 1960s by the John Birch Society and by Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist Gerald L. K. Smith, and it has regained popularity on the strength of those same xenophobic and intolerant principles.

I also need to remember to post some images in order to gussy up this blog.  My art was chosen as the cover art for the current "The War On" fight.


It is a slapdash Microsoft Paint alteration of the album cover for Rod McKuen's "Listen to the Warm", which is a reference that I imagine few people younger than 50 years old would get.  I'm still less than 50 (for a few more years anyway), and I'm not even sure how I recognize it.

I submitted that art for two reasons:  First off, I made a commitment to submit more cover art as a part of the November/December 2015 Commuter Challenge.  The (arguably) more interesting reason I submitted that cover art was that only one other artist had already submitted cover art for consideration, and that other submission was essentially a cartoon depiction of the Prophet Mohammed.  I strongly believe that SongFight.org should be free to display such images, but I also believe that the Fightmaster (i.e. the guy who runs the Song Fight website and chooses the art) should have alternate options if he doesn't want to display that image for whatever reason.  And if he didn't want to post that cartoon, then I also didn't want the next Song Fight to be delayed while he solicited other cover art submissions.

Weird.  A political song, political cover art (or perhaps anti-political cover art submitted with weird semi-political motives)... That's not really what Jerkatorium is usually about.  I'll try to nudge this ship back towards charming happy love songs.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

"Day of the Dead" Jerkatorium song posted at SongFight.org

A quick note/update:  Jerkatorium came in second place out of 13 entries for the "The Rat Brain" Song Fight, which was a big surprise - I really thought we had no chance against Tuners Union, Here Atticus, Nick Soma, Slickitude, and maybe some of the others that had really strong entries.  I mean I'm happy that we did well, but I really thought some of those other songs were better.  The submission by The John Benjamin Band certainly did deserve to win.

The songs for the "Day of the Dead" are posted at SongFight.org, including Jerkatorium's entry.  Song Fight mainstay Niveous wrote lyrics for a dozen or so of the 18 songs in the fight, including the lyrics for the Jerkatorium song.  We ended up making several changes to the lyrics he sent us, but all of the ideas and much of the content of his lyrics were preserved.  Anyhow, give it a listen and vote for it (and for the other Song Fight songs you enjoy) if you like our effort.