Our "Super Creepy" is yet another love song about CHUDs, and I feel confident in saying that it is one of the very best love songs about CHUDs that I have ever heard.
It has been over a month since the last Jerkatorium blog update. Very sorry about that delay, we've been busy making music. Yes, four new songs, one music video, and a super cool poster.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
An excellent Song Fighter from way back who songfought under the band name Raised By Wolves had some pretty bad medical issues recently, so a bunch of Song Fighters came together for a Hxaro (a tribute, or love fest) of Raised By Wolves cover songs. Jerkatorium did a cover version of "It's Invisible" for the Hxaro. You can hear the original at:
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's noticeably different from the original, but still essentially faithful to it. Raised By Wolves has a lot of great, great music, and I highly recommend checking out his back catalog at:
Chumpy and I skipped the last three Song Fights, but now Jerkatorium's entry for the "Change is Coming" Song Fight has been posted at the Song Fight website (http://www.songfight.org). It's a less-frivolous-than-usual effort from us, with excellent lyrics by Breadbox. It is also our first intercontinental effort: Chumpy composed the tune and recorded the lead vocals in Europe while Breadbox wrote lyrics in the Pacific Northwest and I recorded the backing music in southern California.
Lately I've been thinking about how I've been using this blog almost exclusively as an 'announcement' blog lately instead of a 'commentary' blog, when it was originally an outlet for my thoughts on making music. I'm planning on doing more entries (when time permits) about various aspects of songwriting in order to make this blog more bloggy.
I still don't want to bore everyone with a bunch of all-text posts though, so here's a pic of an Ampeg speaker cab that I saw in a Jeff Rosenstock video:
Okay yeah so that's still text, but at least it's somewhat more colorful.
Jerkatorium did not submit a song to the current "Safe Harbor" Song Fight, and it's likely that we won't submit anything to the upcoming "House Red" Fight either. I will be sure to post an announcement here when we have another song.
In the meantime, here's another pic from the Italy trip (it's an odd section of an ancient fresco from Pompeii or Naples):
There were a couple of technical snafus with the collaboration. Originally there was supposed to be a third collaborating band, but the files didn't work so that part had to be scrapped at the last minute. We were using different and incompatible music software, so Chumpy had to give each iteration of the song some extra attention. I left for a vacation in Italy after just a few days into the project, so the chorus vocal harmonies just didn't get done.
Still, I consider it a success. I composed the chord progression and did all of the instrument work except the accordion. Chumpy and Micah each wrote and sang their own verses. Micah wrote the chorus words/melody. Micah's accordion work is fantastic and Chumpy's vocal delivery is wonderfully Pogues-ish - I think those two aspects are the best parts of the song. Upon my return from Italy I added some background vocal harmonies for the chorus and solo sections, but that was long after the deadline date for song submission so those harmonies didn't make it into the Song Fight version. Maybe at some point that version will be posted somewhere else and if so, I'll put the link in this blog.
In the interest of gratuitous visual stimulation, here are some pics I took on my trip to Italy:
