Jonathan Coulton

Went a little off the grid this weekend in Philly, where the only computer I had access to was choked with spyware and used a dialup connection. DIALUP?! That was some slow internet my friends. Being who I am, I couldn’t help but spend all my computer time getting that nasty nail.exe infection off my friend’s machine. Didn’t do a lot of email checking, so I expected to come back to NYC to find my inbox flooded with solos for Shop Vac. Not so. I ask you: what is up? As I have demonstrated time and again, solos don’t have to be “good” or even “played by a competent musician.” So dust off the euphonium and let’s make some rock.

The Hodgman thing went well, thanks for asking. Kind of a confused crowd – there was one couple at a table right in front of us who didn’t crack a smile the whole 20 minutes. Come on, throw me a little something, a courtesy smile just to indicate you understand that what we’re doing is supposed to be funny. I was even wearing a buckskin shirt and a coyote fur hat – still no love from Mr. and Mrs. Stoneypants. But whatev, we did what we came to do, and there were some young hip people sitting on the stairs who seemed to dig us. We’ll next appear at the Little Gray Books lecture on Wednesday 10/19, so get your pity-smiles ready.

And in the meantime, send the old man a solo, wouldja? I promise this will be fun.

This is me doing Fountains of Wayne – you know, funny tragic suburban angst power pop ennui, etc. I started recording this one before it was written, which is something I never do. But I knew I was going to do hand claps in the chorus and I couldn’t wait. I came up with the chorus when I was actually using a shop vac (which is awesome by the way, it sucks up everything).

You may notice that there is no guitar solo after the bridge. I was going to go through the whole process of cutting together snippets of decent playing, beating myself up about not being a better guitarist and cursing my useless sausage fingers, but forget that. I leave it to you, dear minions. Anyone who wants to should record a solo and email it to me or post a link here. I’ll mix them in and post clips and we can all decide together which one works best. The song is in the key of E major and it’s 150 bpm. You’ll want to target the 8 bars right after the bridge, starting at about 2:20 and ending somewhere before the third verse. It can be shreddy or pleasant or noisy or whatever – it doesn’t even need to be that musical as long as it’s interesting, and as long as the recording is just the isolated solo (if you record yourself playing your bongos in front of your speakers I won’t really be able to use that – you will want some kind of multitrack situation so you can hear the song but record only your solo). And any instrument is fine – come on clarinetists, make your voice heard! Once a winner is chosen I’ll change the link to the new mp3 and give the player credit in the notes. Here’s the song:

Shop Vac

Also, if you’re in the Philly area and you’d like to hear John Hodgman read from his book and me play some backup music, we’ll be at the Philadelphia Museum of Art tonight in between sets of the band Beau Django. Details on the Areas of My Expertise site.

It seems to be what the kids are doing these days – so be it. I’ve joined MySpace and set up a page and put up a couple of songs. I hereby invite you to join up and be my friend by clicking this here link:

I want to be JC’s friend

Then I want you to join some appropriate discussion groups and make all kinds of postings in which you suggest that people check out my page (which is here: www.myspace.com/jonathancoulton) , listen to my music, and be my friend. Right now I have only four friends, which is totally lame. One of them is my sister. I need thousands of friends, thousands I tell you. With enough friends I will come to dominate MySpace, and then I will destroy the world with my music. Fly minions, fly!