Jerkatorium won the "Adele in the Car" Song Fight by a pretty comfortable margin. I can't help but agree that we were the best song out of the relatively small number of submissions for this fight (only 7 entries; usually there are a dozen or more).
Our newest Song Fight entry "Whiskey Drinker" is currently posted at SongFight.org, you can hear it there (and vote, if you like the song).
If things go as planned,we will have another two songs out in a week or so: one for the next Song Fight (title "Incandescent") and another for a Song Fight coverfight that I will describe later. I will keep you posted.
Sorry about the lack of art and photos, I promise something visual to accompany the next post.
Jerkatorium
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Jerkatorium's "Adele in the Car" posted at SongFight.org
Jerkatorium's entry for the "Adele in the Car" Song Fight is posted at SongFight.org. You can listen to it and/or download it at http://www.songfight.org/index.php. If you enjoy the song please vote for it.
Only seven bands submitted songs for the "Adele in the Car" Song Fight, which is fewer than usual. Apparently it was a tough title for some to get their heads around. It was pretty obvious for the Jerks though; Chumpy records some of his vocal takes in his car, so keeping that in mind made writing the song a lot easier.
Jerkatorium tied for third place (out of 16 entries) in the recent "Seems Like A Little Too Much" fight, which sounds about right. I like the song a lot, but it's not our very best work - maybe top ten but certainly not top three.
We are currently working on two new songs: one for the upcoming "Whiskey Drinker" Song Fight, and one for the Original Flava Cover Fight. For Original Flava, we were assigned a different Song Fighter and we have to cover one song from their list of Song Fight entries. I will put updates and links in this blog when those songs are posted. One interesting thing about the Original Flava fight is that there is another band out there working on a cover version of one of our songs, and I'm very eager to hear a different take on our music.
Only seven bands submitted songs for the "Adele in the Car" Song Fight, which is fewer than usual. Apparently it was a tough title for some to get their heads around. It was pretty obvious for the Jerks though; Chumpy records some of his vocal takes in his car, so keeping that in mind made writing the song a lot easier.
Jerkatorium tied for third place (out of 16 entries) in the recent "Seems Like A Little Too Much" fight, which sounds about right. I like the song a lot, but it's not our very best work - maybe top ten but certainly not top three.
We are currently working on two new songs: one for the upcoming "Whiskey Drinker" Song Fight, and one for the Original Flava Cover Fight. For Original Flava, we were assigned a different Song Fighter and we have to cover one song from their list of Song Fight entries. I will put updates and links in this blog when those songs are posted. One interesting thing about the Original Flava fight is that there is another band out there working on a cover version of one of our songs, and I'm very eager to hear a different take on our music.
Friday, February 19, 2016
Jerkatorium's "Seems Like A Little Too Much" posted at SongFight.org, & "Suffragette City" cover
Jerkatorium has submitted a song for the "Seems Like A Little Too Much" Song Fight, please check it out and vote at SongFight.org (http://www.songfight.org). My cover art was also chosen:
It's an original drawing. I don't have any good graphic design software (just MS Photo and MS Paint), so coloring is a pretty clunky process for me - I draw it on paper, then scan the black and white image into the computer. Coloring in the empty spaces with the 'paint can' doesn't work because that only fills in the whitest sections, and much of what looks white actually scans as off-white (especially the pixels that are adjacent to the black lines), so I usually end up doing it manually. This time I took a different approach and adjusted the tint of the scan for each individual color and then superimposed each section back over the original image. I'm sure the illustrators out there who know what they're doing are cringing (or laughing) at the thought of it.
We also did a cover of David Bowie's "Suffragette City" for the 'Turn And Face The Strange' Song Fight Bowie tribute. You can hear that at the following link:
http://www.muppetlabs.com/~mikeh/turnandfacethestrange/jerkatorium_sc.mp3
It's a pretty faithful cover. I'd wanted to 'Jerkatoriumize' it more, but it's hard to implement changes on any song that is so iconic. When you grow up with a song like that, every little deviation seems like a mistake. So it ended up closer to the original than we'd hoped. It was fun though.
It's an original drawing. I don't have any good graphic design software (just MS Photo and MS Paint), so coloring is a pretty clunky process for me - I draw it on paper, then scan the black and white image into the computer. Coloring in the empty spaces with the 'paint can' doesn't work because that only fills in the whitest sections, and much of what looks white actually scans as off-white (especially the pixels that are adjacent to the black lines), so I usually end up doing it manually. This time I took a different approach and adjusted the tint of the scan for each individual color and then superimposed each section back over the original image. I'm sure the illustrators out there who know what they're doing are cringing (or laughing) at the thought of it.
We also did a cover of David Bowie's "Suffragette City" for the 'Turn And Face The Strange' Song Fight Bowie tribute. You can hear that at the following link:
http://www.muppetlabs.com/~mikeh/turnandfacethestrange/jerkatorium_sc.mp3
It's a pretty faithful cover. I'd wanted to 'Jerkatoriumize' it more, but it's hard to implement changes on any song that is so iconic. When you grow up with a song like that, every little deviation seems like a mistake. So it ended up closer to the original than we'd hoped. It was fun though.
Friday, January 29, 2016
Jerkatorium covers "Hey! Housebrick" by Hot Club De Paris
A couple of posts ago I mentioned a "secret Santa"-type cover song project we'd committed ourselves to, and the songs have finally been posted.
The Gift of Music project is an annual Song Fight "Sidefight" or "Coverfight". Each participating band picks four songs that they would like to hear cover versions of, and those songs were posted on the Song Fight bulletin board. The songs could be anything except other Songfighter songs (there are other Sidefight/Coverfight opportunities to cover Song Fighter songs). Then the Fightmaster randomly assigns those sets of four songs to other bands, and each band picks one song to cover. So it's sort of like a secret Santa combined with a gift registry; you know that one of your four picks will get covered, but you don't know which of the four songs will be chosen and you don't know which band is covering it.
We were assigned to cover one of Glenny's song picks. He gave us a choice between four different young British indie band songs, and out of those four we chose "Hey! Housebrick" by Hot Club De Paris. Here is the link Glenny gave for the original:
There is also a studio version of the song at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN_zY3P5i7M.
The Jerkatorium cover version can be heard at the link below:
http://johnnycashpoint.com/gom1516/jerkatorium_hh.mp3
The cover song that we were gifted was "Sing It Out", a Guided By Voices song that was performed for us by the very talented Sockpuppet. He did a great, soulful version with piano, cello and voice, and that can be heard at http://johnnycashpoint.com/gom1516/sockpuppet-sio.mp3.
There is some other really good stuff covered by and for our fellow SongFighters at http://johnnycashpoint.com/blog/2016/01/30/gom1516/.
I have also continued to submit cover art, some of it has been used, some not:
More interesting is what Breadbox did in creating the SongFight Coverbot, a program that automatically generates and submits Song Fight cover art whenever a new title is posted. It's amazing, and I don't know enough to write about it adequately.
The Gift of Music project is an annual Song Fight "Sidefight" or "Coverfight". Each participating band picks four songs that they would like to hear cover versions of, and those songs were posted on the Song Fight bulletin board. The songs could be anything except other Songfighter songs (there are other Sidefight/Coverfight opportunities to cover Song Fighter songs). Then the Fightmaster randomly assigns those sets of four songs to other bands, and each band picks one song to cover. So it's sort of like a secret Santa combined with a gift registry; you know that one of your four picks will get covered, but you don't know which of the four songs will be chosen and you don't know which band is covering it.
We were assigned to cover one of Glenny's song picks. He gave us a choice between four different young British indie band songs, and out of those four we chose "Hey! Housebrick" by Hot Club De Paris. Here is the link Glenny gave for the original:
There is also a studio version of the song at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN_zY3P5i7M.
The Jerkatorium cover version can be heard at the link below:
http://johnnycashpoint.com/gom1516/jerkatorium_hh.mp3
The cover song that we were gifted was "Sing It Out", a Guided By Voices song that was performed for us by the very talented Sockpuppet. He did a great, soulful version with piano, cello and voice, and that can be heard at http://johnnycashpoint.com/gom1516/sockpuppet-sio.mp3.
There is some other really good stuff covered by and for our fellow SongFighters at http://johnnycashpoint.com/blog/2016/01/30/gom1516/.
I have also continued to submit cover art, some of it has been used, some not:
More interesting is what Breadbox did in creating the SongFight Coverbot, a program that automatically generates and submits Song Fight cover art whenever a new title is posted. It's amazing, and I don't know enough to write about it adequately.
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
New logo, and "Meat Grinder" results are in
Jerkatorium came in 3rd place (out of 11 entries) for our entry to the "Meat Grinder" Song Fight, which sounds about right for the song. Our entry is an eccentric piece, and not a barn-burner by any means. It got mostly "meh" reviews on the SongFight.org bulletin board. The vote margin was very small, with almost all of the songs getting 7 to 11 votes each, which might help to explain why the winning song was essentially an instrumental 'throwaway track'. This is not sour grapes on my part; I don't think Jerkatorium deserved to win the Meat Grinder Song Fight, but I strongly believe that Glenny should have won for his inventive and interesting submission, and I believe that the winning entry should have received a much smaller fraction of the votes.
The default Jerkatorium logo/image up until now (if Jerkatorium could be said to have one) had been my self-portrait from the January 2013 Commuter Challenge:
That image was always a place-holder at best, and it has been outdated since April, when Chumpy became a regular collaborator/member of Jerkatorium. Chumpy has been half of Jerkatorium for the past 8 months already, and having my face as the logo/image is really inadequate. In order to spur myself to take action, I decided to update the logo as part of the "independent project" November/December 2015 Commuter Challenge. I am still tweaking the logo, but this is the current idea:
The other parts of that Commuter Challenge were to continue to submit songs for at least half of the Song Fights (The Rat Brain, Day of the Dead, The War On, and Meat Grinder), and cover art for at least one Song Fight per month (The Rat Brain, The War On, and Fearless Love), and I/we met those goals. So huzzah!
The default Jerkatorium logo/image up until now (if Jerkatorium could be said to have one) had been my self-portrait from the January 2013 Commuter Challenge:
That image was always a place-holder at best, and it has been outdated since April, when Chumpy became a regular collaborator/member of Jerkatorium. Chumpy has been half of Jerkatorium for the past 8 months already, and having my face as the logo/image is really inadequate. In order to spur myself to take action, I decided to update the logo as part of the "independent project" November/December 2015 Commuter Challenge. I am still tweaking the logo, but this is the current idea:
The other parts of that Commuter Challenge were to continue to submit songs for at least half of the Song Fights (The Rat Brain, Day of the Dead, The War On, and Meat Grinder), and cover art for at least one Song Fight per month (The Rat Brain, The War On, and Fearless Love), and I/we met those goals. So huzzah!
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
"Meat Grinder" posted at SongFight.org
Jerkatorium lost the "The War On" Song Fight pretty badly, tying for 6th place out of 9 entries; it is the worst we've scored since my first Song Fight submission (the embarrassing "Grim Reality" fiasco I described in the 27DEC2014 post). I like "The War On." Chumpy attributes the poor vote count to the song being too political and literal. That's a fair assessment, but I thought the vitriol of it would somehow add to its charm. I was wrong.
One of the main references in the song is the Starbucks red coffee cup "controversy". It is a very timely reference, and it should make the song completely outdated by Xmas 2015 (just 9 days from now) and forever after, so I went ahead and slapped together a quick slideshow video and put it up on YouTube in order to share the song on Facebook before its relevance expires (I don't know how to share music on FB without posting it as a video on YouTube). It is not my ideal vision of what a Jerkatorium music video should look like, but I didn't have time for anything more, and the only other viable option was a single static image - this seemed like an okay middle ground:
In other news, we submitted a song to the "Meat Grinder" Song Fight, and the songs are posted at the Song Fight website for your listening pleasure (and for voting, if you like the song).
We also committed ourselves to doing a cover song for a fellow SongFighter. This cover project was organized "secret Santa" style, so I can't blab about what the song is or who we're recording it for. It is due January 11, and I'll post a link to the song after it's finished. With any luck Jerkatorium will have entered another Song Fight or two in the interim. I will keep you posted.
One of the main references in the song is the Starbucks red coffee cup "controversy". It is a very timely reference, and it should make the song completely outdated by Xmas 2015 (just 9 days from now) and forever after, so I went ahead and slapped together a quick slideshow video and put it up on YouTube in order to share the song on Facebook before its relevance expires (I don't know how to share music on FB without posting it as a video on YouTube). It is not my ideal vision of what a Jerkatorium music video should look like, but I didn't have time for anything more, and the only other viable option was a single static image - this seemed like an okay middle ground:
In other news, we submitted a song to the "Meat Grinder" Song Fight, and the songs are posted at the Song Fight website for your listening pleasure (and for voting, if you like the song).
We also committed ourselves to doing a cover song for a fellow SongFighter. This cover project was organized "secret Santa" style, so I can't blab about what the song is or who we're recording it for. It is due January 11, and I'll post a link to the song after it's finished. With any luck Jerkatorium will have entered another Song Fight or two in the interim. I will keep you posted.
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.
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.
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