Reply To: How did you discover JoCo?
Oh yeah! I had read this thread back when I was a lurker and hadn’t signed up on the forums yet. Forgot about it though. Here’s my post from the other thread, so it’s in the proper place:
“I definitely came across JoCo before Penny Arcade sang his praises, and at first glance he did not hold my interest. It wasn’t until the ‘thousands of screaming zombies’ Youtube video that I thought ‘hey, maybe I should pay a little attention, this might be good. So I started looking for more YouTube videos of his work.”
And here’s some more information…get ready for a super-sized post!
I’d mentioned this in ‘Favorite Songs’ thread, but when I first saw ‘The Movies’ machinima for ‘My Monkey’ I assumed JoCo was singing about his penis and was somewhat turned off. I wasn’t a WoW fan and Spiff’s Re Your Brains, Chiron Beta Prime, Skullcrusher Mountain were kind of boring for me(honestly, I’m sorry Spiff, but they were slow paced and taken out of context, maybe I wasn’t associating myself with the character models and going “Oh yeah! when watching them).
But I kept watching because I did like the songs! And I really enjoyed Spiff’s Betty & Me video despite not liking the others. Another video of yours that I really like is the more recent Flickr, probably because unlike the others, I have a context I can relate it to, that being the original Flickr vid.
But the video that really got my attention at the time was blackcatbonifide’s the live action ‘I Feel Fantastic’ video. It was such a fun song and fun video, I even posted it as a Facebook item and created some new fans.
Then I stole some songs (later bought the whole $70 set to make up for it and get the songs I didn’t have). Before paying for the actual tracks, I had also bought 10 or so karaoke tracks which I perform fairly regularly when I go to karaoke.
I find that First of May and Re Your Brains get the best reactions, probably because for a first time listener they are less subtle and quirky in their meaning and more straightforward to take in (everybody likes zombies!). Stuff like Skullcrusher Mountain/The Future Soon are too geeky to get a positive reaction from most non-geeks.
Since then I’ve driven 5 hours to his Pittsburgh show, which I filmed (and scored a short after-show ‘press conference’ on my camera), will be catching his Toronto show in 10 days which I also plan to film if all goes well, and tonight I will be uploading to Youtube my version of Over There (singing about Americans from a Canadian’s perspective), which I just realized will be just in time for Canada day!
So I’ve become a pretty huge fan, thanks to various sources but initially thanks to Penny Arcade!
And now, back to work *grumbles*.