Thursday, September 27, 2007

Station ID's for your MP3 Player

I made a few little snippets, in the style of radio station ID messages - only but for your iPod (or mp3 player of your choice). Here's the idea:

  1. Download this zip file.
  2. Unzip and load the mp3's into your player.
  3. Add them to a playlist or two, or perhaps just leave them to be found while you're shuffling everything in your collection.
  4. As your player shuffles through things, once in a while one of these little messages gets played.
  5. You may be amused.
There are seven of 'em in the zip file. Here are a few as individual mp3's, in case you're too lazy to deal with unzipping....

Soda Can Mambo

I just recorded the number one jam of the summer. A bit late, so let's call it the number one jam of late September 2007. It's a dada-esque pop song. That may sound like an oxymoron at first, but have a listen to "Soda Can Mambo" and try to tell me it's not stuck in your head for days.

The number one jam of late September 2007 is missing one thing: Dance Craze.

That's where you come in:

  1. Invent the "Soda Can Mambo" dance
  2. Make a video of yourself doing the dance
  3. We all become internet superstars for a few minutes
The headline of this post is a link to the mp3 file. The blue play button plays it in your browser. If you're curious, download the lyrics (pdf)

Shoot me an email when your video is done. And don't be mad at me when having this song stuck in your head for days and days drives you crazy. Trust me, I've had it worse. Now let's get cracking on that dance craze...

Monday, September 17, 2007

Quarry House wrap-up

DCIC played last night, opening up for Chris Black. It was the first show I put together at the Quarry House Tavern in Silver Spring, MD. It was a unique evening in many ways. In no particular order:

1. Quarry House is a neat little venue. It's a nice bar with great atmosphere. The ceiling is almost high enough for an upright bass. The staff that I've met so far have all be super nice and laid back. And how can you go wrong at a joint where they serve tater tots with Old Bay on them?

2. Cameron and Jen invited many friends, so we had a nice audience. Not huge, but nice. Which is much better than huge.

3. Mike, our sax player, called in sick. I made a few calls to try and get a sub, but it was short notice and that didn't pan out. So we played the show as a duo - guitar and drums. Chris joined us on bass for our last number. Lately, I've been playing without effects and gizmos - just my new guitar and amp (with distortion pedal and volume pedal, but that's it). The thought of doing a set of improvised music with just guitar and drums (and none of the looping and gizmonics that I used to use) was actually kind of terrifying. I think it worked out ok, actually. The music was quite different from what DCIC typically sounds like, but I think it was ok. We didn't record it though, so I only know how it sounded at the time, and while I'm in the midst of it, it's hard to judge.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

On the sixth anniversary of 9-11

I should have been doing other work today, but instead I made this recording. I've been in a bit of a funk lately. Maybe it was the Dance Awards last night (tedious) (and I didn't win... which may have more to do with it than I'd like to admit), or maybe it was listening to the news this morning. Anyway, I couldn't concentrate on my work this morning so I made this.

Don't forget - DCIC and Chris Black coming up on Sunday at the Quarry House. Mmmm tater tots.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

More vocals in my monitor (revised)

A while back, we were at a show and the opening act, a solo singer/songwriter, was being particularly fussy about the stage monitors. It seemed like between almost every song he was asking for something to be fixed in his monitor. I jokingly said to Cameron, "Some day I'm gonna write a song called 'Can I get some more vocals in my monitor?'" A few months later, I did.

I posted a rough sketch of this piece back then... Recently, Cameron and I (aka Eigenvalues) have made some tweaks and here's the new & improved version.

(little blue play button by the headline will play it in your browser; headline is a link to the mp3)