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.

Jerkatorium Wins? What? How Did That Happen?

Somehow Jerkatorium won the "Hope You're Having A Nice Time In Jamaica" Song Fight.  Apparently we're doing something right.  Maybe.

Jerkatorium also submitted a song for the current Song Fight title "It's Not Over" and the songs have been posted, give it a listen at SongFight.org if you are so inclined.  Our "It's Not Over" entry is more laid back then your typical Jerkatorium song.  We hadn't intended to submit for the Fight, but Chumpy had a great idea and pulled the song together while I was doing work travel.  I slapped some last-minute backing vocals, electric piano, and bass onto the track (plus that beautiful guitar solo, so beautiful) and we sent it in.

I know the blog has been text-heavy lately.  I promise that some sort of picture will accompany the next post.

"Hope You're Having A Nice Time In Jamaica" song and "Watching the Riot" vote count posted at Song Fight

By some miracle Jerkatorium won 3rd place (out of 11 entries) in the "Watching the Riot" Song Fight, with a total of 8 votes.  Stranger still, we were just one vote short of matching the vote count of the two winners who tied with 9 votes each.  It's a big surprise, considering how last-minute our entry was - after four or more uninspiring drafts, Chumpy came up with the punk version the day prior to the due date with no intention of making it our entry, and it came together within the span of the few hours we had to work on it before the deadline.

"Hope You're Having A Nice Time In Jamaica" is the current fight, please give it a listen and a vote at SongFight.org.  It's a somewhat similar story as the story above for "Watching the Riot":  Chumpy and I were working on various different approaches and we were juggling at least four different drafts before abandoning everything and doing the song that we submitted.  We worked on it literally up to the last minute prior to deadline, so it didn't get the sort of engineering/tweaking that we would have liked to have done.  I also would have preferred to add an accordion track, some more vocal harmonies, and I don't know what all else.  But I think it's a strong entry, with excellent vocal work by Chumpy.

I was too busy working on this month's Commuter Challenge to do cover art for the Jamaica fight.  The next Song Fight title is "It's Not Over", I'll let you know if Jerkatorium submits art and/or music for that one.

"Watching The Riot" song(s) and "Unsubscribe" vote count posted at Song Fight

Jerkatorium's "Unsubscribe" did pretty well for that Song Fight.  After submitting, Chumpy and I decided we'd be happy if we were among the top 50% and we were, coming in at 5th place out of 12 entries.  That's pretty good, especially considering we were only three votes short of matching the vote count for the winning bands; we got 9 votes and the two winning bands tied with 12 votes each.

Not that the vote count matters all that much.  I think the feedback we get in the review threads is more valuable, and from recent comments it looks like I need to spend a little more time mixing and engineering the tracks prior to submission.  I guess that means I should try to learn a little bit about sound mixing and engineering.

Jerkatorium's entry for "Watching the Riot" is posted at Song Fight right now, give it a listen and a vote.

More deserving of a listen and a vote is the entry by Margaret Benson And The Cheese Trio.  Chumpy and I worked on various different ideas for "Watching the Riot" from the time the title was announced through the morning of submission and ended up with several different versions, and none of those versions really thrilled either of us.  The day prior to submission Chumpy emailed me a first draft of the mashup that eventually became Margaret Benson And The Cheese Trio's entry.  I think he was half joking about it, but I liked it much better than any of the individual versions we'd been working on.

In addition to cutting and pasting the previous versions together, Chumpy had recorded some new clips and incorporated them into the mashup.  The new punk clip he'd added was so good that we worked to get that into shape as a separate song, and that became Jerkatorium's entry.  Although it is strongly recommended that bands only submit one song per fight, Chumpy got permission from the Song Fight fightmaster to submit the mashup version too.  The Margaret Benson And The Cheese Trio entry is mostly Chumpy singing, but my voice is unfortunately in there too (from an old, discarded draft), and Dr. Zoom's charming vocals figure prominently throughout.  I hope to work with Dr. Zoom on future songs too.

They used my submission for the "Watching the Riot" cover art.  My submission was just a cropped copy of Brian Raiter's December 2013 Commuter Challenge entry with words added (used with permission of the artist).  His original collage is epic and you should take a look at it by clicking this sentence.  The cropped version I submitted is below:

"Unsubscribe" Song Fight up, and Deep Sub-Reddit vote count posted

The "Deep Sub-Reddit" Song Fight is over and the vote count has been posted.  Jerkatorium did very well with a third-place finish out of eleven entries.  As noted earlier, it is Jerkatorium's best song to date and the vote count clearly reflects that, and it's all thanks to Chumpy.  I still catch myself humming Chumpy's earwormy Deep Sub-Reddit melodies throughout the day.

Jerkatorium also has an entry for the "Unsubscribe" SongFight, and those songs were just recently posted at SongFight.org.  As always, please give it a listen, and please vote if you like it.  We used more actual instruments than usual; the only 'software instruments' are the drums and organ tracks.

Deep Sub-Reddit Song Fight song posted

This post is a little overdue:  the "Deep Sub-Reddit" songs have been posted at Song Fight, including Jerkatorium's entry.  Check it out at SongFight.org, and if you like it then please vote for it.  Again, you don't need to register or anything - I think the only condition is that you have to vote for at least two songs.  It's a good group this time around, and well worth a listen.  If you are a fan of MC Frontalot and know his song "Yellow Lasers", then you might get a real kick out of Abjure's entry this week too.

The next Song Fight title is "Unsubscribe", and Chumpy and I are working on a song for that one too.  The due date is coming up pretty soon and I have conflicting work travel, so I should be on GarageBand right now instead of updating this blog.

CoverFight: Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode

Okay it's been a while, but it's been busy and there are things to show for it.

First off, the Depeche Mode CoverFight songs have been posted at:

http://songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=9623

I think Jerkatorium's entry for "Enjoy the Silence" turned out pretty good.  Other than the guitar and vocal parts, it is entirely composed of computer instruments and loops.  Best of all, I didn't sing on it. Okay I sang the backing vocals, but the lead vocal talent is Chumpy.  

As I understand it, the CoverFight is not really a "fight".  There is no voting or anything, just listening and enjoying, and (for the SongFight participants anyway) harshing each other on the boards.

In other news, this morning Jerkatorium submitted an entry for the "Deep Sub-Reddit" SongFight.  The songs for that Fight won't be posted for at least another few days, and I'll let you know when that happens.  99% of the Deep Sub-Reddit submission was by Chumpy; all I did were a couple syllables of backing vocals, a little bit of computer instrument work, and some level adjustments.  I do not say that to distance myself from the song, but rather to give credit where credit is due.  Deep Sub-Reddit is Jerkatorium's best entry to date, and it's mostly Chumpy.

I submitted art for that Fight.  I'm not sure if they're going to use it or not, but here it is: