Thing of the Week (ala Jonathan Coulton)
Once upon a time, when I was a code monkey for Electronic Arts, helping to make the Sims games an even more effective waste of perfectly good lives, I wanted to quit my job and make music. At that pivotal moment, I became aware of Jonathan Coulton. My girlfriend at the time was quite enamored with him, and most of his songs I actually heard first sung by her rather than Mister Coulton himself. Anyhow, he comes into this whole story because while I was busy hating my job and my girlfriend was busy singing his songs, he managed to parlay his web dev career into a successful nerd music career including some fairly mainstream press because of his innovative touring and artist management techniques.
Both Jonathan and that girlfriend were personal inspirations for me to quit that job which was strangling my soul, but it took me a while to really gain traction on my music again. A few weeks ago I attended PAX 2010 in Seattle, where one of the musical performers was Jonathan Coulton. Though he was an inspiration to me in my personal development, I had yet to be fully wooed by his musical abilities. Perhaps there is some jealousy in there, as I'm sure there is some overlap in our styles. We share too many influences (TMBG, Weird Al, and The Beatles to name a few... and I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Coulton listened to a handful of Barenaked Ladies in his day) for me to not be a little bit jealous that he's more famous than I.
Anyway, two things happened that weekend which changed my opinion of Jonathan Coulton. The first was that I got to talk to him at a Q&A panel, briefly relay my EA story, lament that I wasn't a rockstar yet, and ask if he had any regrets or advice. He said he had no regrets, and encouraged me on my music. The second thing was that he performed that night, I barely managed to get a seat for the concert, and he rocked the fucking house. I must say, he sings his songs better than my ex.
The point of this whole rambling story, I guess, is to say that I will be shamelessly borrowing Jonathan Coulton's gimmick of posting one song a week. Since he personally encouraged me, I can blame him if things go wrong. And who knows, maybe I'll open for him some day at PAX... one can dream, no? So I'll be posting a song a week, starting this upcoming Monday.
Toxx clause in effect.
