We did okay in the "Good Luck Charm" Song Fight (mentioned in the previous post), getting third place out of 13 bands. I'm a big fan of that song, and I'm a little surprised we didn't win that fight. You can hear our "Good Luck Charm" here:
http://www.songfight.org/music/good_luck_charm/jerkatorium_glc.mp3
Shortly afterwards, Chumpy submitted the Jerkatorium song "Trash Panda" to the July 2016 Commuter Challenge as a part of the "art, writing, and music" challenge. That can be heard here:
http://commuter.muppetlabs.com/c/201607/hamrick.mp3
And here is his epic poster for the same project:
For the record, Jerkatorium did not play live at the "Student Union Hall" on Friday, July 13. Unless there's something Chumpy isn't telling me...
Then we submitted a song for the "Turn Off Your TV" Song Fight. Reviews were not kind on the Song Fight Bulletin Board: my choice of guitar tone was bad (I insisted we use that guitar tone despite Chumpy's better judgment and his relentless calls for me change it), and there were some problems with the mix that I still don't understand. The song didn't do so poorly in the competition though, tying for fourth place out of ten bands. You can hear the song here:
http://www.songfight.org/music/turn_off_your_tv/jerkatorium_toyt.mp3
Then on August 31, 2016 at midnight the Commuter Challenge came to an end after ten years of poetry, prose, jokes, cartoons, drawings, paintings, photography, calligraphy, games, puzzles, music, recipes, and several other creative exploits that defy easy categorization. The final Commuter Challenge was to re-visit and re-do any Challenge (or Challenges) from the past. I decided to go back and do submissions the 5 Commuter Challenges between 2007 and 2010 that I'd completely flaked out on.
One of the Challenges that I'd never submitted anything for was the October 2008 Commuter Challenge to submit one to three minutes of spooky music, so last month I recorded the Jerkatorium song "Bedsheet Ghosts". I didn't do it alone: Chumpy provided vital help with the mixing and mastering. The song can be heard here:
http://commuter.muppetlabs.com/c/201608/finholm1.mp3
Lastly, for the final Commuter Challenge I also needed to do the July 2007 Commuter Challenge to generate an original accompaniment to a something in the public domain. I had recently discovered the joys of the archive.org website, and I was planning on doing some sort of Bad Lip Reading-type project, but then I found a section of the movie "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (now in the public domain) that had these two guys silently listening to a reel-to-reel tape player for 99 seconds. So I wrote a 98-second song about a reel-to-reel tape player and popped it into the clip using iMovie. You can see the video here:
Sure it's pretty random, and the song is a little manic, and the video is uneventful, but I like it. Chumpy's lead vocal work is great, especially considering how the pace just doesn't let up. Anyway, enjoy.
