Sunday, November 28, 2004

Uploading With Impunity

Hooray Hooray, Calloo Callay! My pal Allin taught me how metaphorically to fish today (as opposed to giving me a soy fish for one day). Now I know how to upload both with glee and with impunity.

So I thought I'd share just a few things.

Every year, I write little thirty-second songs for the "Big in ..." show we do over there at the Vee. It started with Big in 02, so this is my third year making these puppies. We want each song to remind you of a big song from the year, without actually being a direct parody/ripoff. I write 'em, Irv Johnson from Chameleon Sound Design makes 'em, and different animators create the visual components. So I thought I'd post this year's tracks -- I know that Poppa Viacom owns them, but I FIRMLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT VIACOM OWNS THIS AND ALL MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND I AM POSTING THEM ONLY TO DISSEMINATE THE PROMOTIONAL ABILITY OF THE SONGS AND NOT FOR COMMERCIAL GAINS.
So. This one's called "Hey Big in 04" and it's inspired by the Black Eyed Peas' "Hey Mama."
And this one is called "Pieces of 04" and it's loosely based on Ashlee Simpson's "Pieces of Me."

And finally, for today's piece de resistance and also piece de damn fine cherry pie, I'd like to dig something out of the ol' collegiate treasure trove. When I was senior in college, I wrote and directed this massive theatre piece. I worked extensively with my sound designer, Timmy Jones. on creating this whole soundscape. One night, we were sitting in the Cafe discussing possible directions in which to go. I had a green apple sitting on the table, and we started riffing about how we couldn't think of any songs about apples. So we decided to make some. Timmy, and me, and our friend Greg, went to Timmy's dorm room and we set out some rules:
1) We put the apple on Tim's turntable so we could be inspired by its rotations
2) We set the timer for two minutes -- everyone was to have two minutes to write lyrics about the green apple
2.5) We only had two minutes to write -- no scribbling after the alarm went off
3) Then we'd read the lyrics and make music to go along with 'em.

So, Tim wrote a hiphop-y thing and Greg wrote an indie drum'n'bass song and I wrote something that i thought Laurie Anderson (if dirty) might write. I was thick in my Laurie Anderson phase back then. So we made songs out of everyone's lyrics. And so, I present in public (for the first time since we played it for the entire cast and crew of my show, 'Einstein Dreaming'), "Little Green Apples."

It's dated, fer sure. These lyrics were written in 1999, so they're not necessarily 'fresh' but I think they make a nice period piece of what it was like back then. Both for the world and for me. And keep in mind that the lyrics were written, spontaneously, in a grand total of two minutes. So they're rough. Anyhoo, that's me on lead vocals. Timmy on keyboard and sampling. And Greg on Germanic background vox.

Behold the uber-apple: "Little Green Apples."

And, yes, it's intentionally pretentious. 'Tentionally 'tentious. Written with wannabe-avant-garde tongue lodged firmly in cheek.

Hey, anyone else want to get together and write songs? They don't have to be about apples, but i do like it when they're dirty.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

yay nostalgia!

shameless promotion:

Greg's current stuff is at
http://zxnyc.com/

"My" album is at
http://toneland.net/lovesad.tgz

=Tim=