NO TOURING. That is the rule for the next couple of months. I really do enjoy playing for all of you, much more than I ever thought I would. But the airplanes and hotels and suitcases are a real drag, and it’s the closest thing to actual “work” I ever get in this ridiculous career. And it chops up my personal and professional life; I’m always either on a trip, getting ready for one, or recovering from one. So I’m going to defrag a little, recharge, waste some time, play guitar for no reason at all, mess around with various bits of hardware and software that I’ve purchased but never used, see what happens.

Merlin Mann gave a great talk at MaxFunCon about creativity, specifically about that pesky “getting started” part of it. It’s the thing I was trying to defeat when I started Thing a Week, and while I had it on the ropes for a while, it was just a temporary victory. I still struggle with it, and I suspect I always will. I can use the traveling as an excuse, but if it wasn’t traveling it would be groceries, or Xbox or whatever (Marble Blast Ultra, seriously, I am getting my ass kicked by a bunch of 13-year-olds, but I dig it). I can always find distractions that seem like higher priorities than making stuff. So part of my goal for this Summer is to take as much pressure off as I can and pry apart some space for doing just that. I’m not promising to write you a bunch of songs exactly, in fact I kind of have to keep my goals a little fuzzier than that in order to not frighten the muse away. I don’t know exactly where I’m going or what I’m working towards, and I forgive myself in advance for that because that’s sort of the point. I’m just hoping to have some fun making music in the privacy of my own head for a while. Maybe you can hear it when I’m done (whatever it turns out to be).

In the meantime, I am JoCo4Realz on Xbox Live and I will see you in Sprawl emmer effers!

Now you can purchase this item! I am serious! This banner proves it (when you click on it)!

BEST. CONCERT. EVER.

A live DVD/CD super combo package, now available to you, the general public. It’s currently in pre-sales but discs will ship May 15th, and if you buy now you can download the mp3s immediately.

So I asked again on the Twitter: for reals? Great apes can’t swim? A lot of people responded “yes they can” or “no they can’t” which wasn’t helpful. And a lot of links came in, a lot of conflicting information. This site says they have too little animal fat and so they sink. This person says they can outswim an olympic swimmer (human, presumably) and tantalizingly links to a video called “seemychimpswim” that no longer exists. According to The Big Zoo they can only swim “if extremely excited” (?). And here’s a story about a swimming orangutan. From what I can tell, it’s kind of “some chimps can swim but mostly they hate it and are not good at it.”

Or worse, it’s still an open question, which is a terrible thought. What the hell scientists? What are we doing here? Can we please start throwing some monkeys into pools and taking notes? IT IS 2009, SERIOUSLY!

Also, giraffes.

This song is free even when it is not this day of the year, but it is especially free today (if you know what I mean):

First of May (<–Not At All Safe For Work)

So now he’s put me in his book, which is also very nice of him. I mention it not just because I’m in it, but because Scott is a very smart and well-spoken fellow who ran an excellent panel with me and some other folks at SXSWi, and this book looks kind of awesome. It’s about this new kwazy internet thing we’re all trying to figure out, where suddenly everyone has the tools to create and publish, and so reaching your audience is simultaneously very easy and very hard. He interviews a bunch of artists of various types about how they deal with this paradox, how they launched and built their creative enterprises. If you’re wondering how you might turn your creative thing into a money-pooping cow, it’s really helpful to read about how lots of other people did it. Like I always say: 1) find the good ideas and then 2) steal them.

It’s called Friends, Fans and Followers, and you can preview it here, and buy it here.

1. Millionaire Matchmaker – you were not imagining it, the bachelor named Alex sang “Soft Rocked By Me” on the Bravo show Millionaire Matchmaker. They did get permission from me before doing this, and the last time I was in Vegas Alex even took me out to a delicious Thai lunch to thank me. It was my first lunch date with a millionaire. Hopefully not my last – AM I RIGHT?!

2. Ernie Wade – April Fools! You all know that by now, and most of you knew it pretty early on. I meant to juice up a little more doubt and controversy, but when it came down to it I couldn’t keep a straight face. Also there were enough people in on the joke tweeting and blogging about it that I enjoyed watching it all unfold. In case you missed it, the idea took shape in Vegas (erm, I guess there are a lot of things that do NOT stay in Vegas) when I was at the New Media Expo playing the Coverville 500 concert. At the table were me, Len, Patrick and Tom, and I hope nobody else that I’m forgetting because I’m an insensitive jerk. We thought it would be funny to manufacture a scandal in which it is discovered that all my songs are stolen. Because he is crazy, Tom actually followed through and created a site and recorded a couple of songs: Code Monkey and Warrior Robot Revenge. Say want you want about these kinds of April Fools Day pranks, but there are some really nice touches on the site, in the photos, the cassette labels, and especially in the songs. My favorite is the photo on this page captioned “Here is a picture I had of Ernie driving his truck…” And the songs have a perfect bizarro-world-JoCo quality to them – poor Ernie really loved Jan.

3. Where the hell is Jonathan Coulton? Last week we closed on the sale of my old home and the purchase of my new home, and on Monday we moved. I’ve been too preoccupied to blog or twitter – sorry if you’re waiting for me to get back to you, or even just let you know that I’m alive. I’m still in Brooklyn, not too far away from where I was, but kind of on the fringe of Stroller Town itself. The new place has some leaks and broken things, and of course my entire life is packed into lots of poorly labeled boxes. I can’t find anything, all is chaos. I had no internet until yesterday afternoon, which was painful. And my studio does not really exist at this point – it will only when I muster up the strength to find everything and plug it in again. The photo up top is my old studio room, now empty and sad.

Moving is weird. A lot happened in that old apartment – I entered as a childless writer of software, I leave as a twice bekidded musician, with Thing a Week and all the rest of it trailing out behind me. The new place has quite a bit to live up to. I’m hoping that soon it will actually feel more like home, and less like a showroom for a cardboard box company.

Sorry to have been so quiet. I will start making noise again soon.

Yes, that is the Hungry March Band, and they are the nicest group of anarchist marching band hipster types you will ever meet.

And if you missed me at University of Arkansas last night, you missed a sound check (which the audience was lucky enough to see), and a set done WITHOUT A SET LIST. Very dangerous, but I think it worked out OK. Thank you Arkansonians.

In other news, some attorney friends of mine say it’s probably a good idea for me not to say anything about this.

Plus a special benefit show at the Birchmere on May 21 to benefit the Lung Transplant Foundation – a cause near and dear to my heart because my booking agent recently had both lungs replaced (you can go back and read that again if you want) and is doing really well. I don’t know what my booking agent would have done without these new lungs, and I don’t know what I would have done without my booking agent.

But enough about lungs, here are the details:

Friday March 27 at 8PM
Symphony Space (New York, NY) with Paul and Storm
tinyurl.com/dkzjoe

Tuesday March 31 at 7PM
Arkansas Union Theater (Fayetteville, AR)
FREE and open to the public!
(sorry for the late notice on this one, I thought it was students only)

Thursday April 23 at 8 PM
Lula Lounge (Toronto, ON) with Paul and Storm
tinyurl.com/czz9sn

Friday April 24 at 7:30 PM
Lula Lounge (Toronto, ON) with Paul and Storm
tinyurl.com/bxr6lb

Wednesday May 13 at 8PM
Granada Theater (Dallas, TX) with Paul and Storm
tinyurl.com/d9fslw

Thursday May 14 at 8PM
Belly Up Tavern (Solana Beach, CA) with Paul and Storm
tinyurl.com/ckyfjj

Sunday May 17 at 8:30PM
Largo (Los Angeles, CA) with Paul and Storm
For tix call (310) 855-0350
This one will sell out I think, so don’t wait too long.

Thursday May 21 at 7:30PM
The Birchmere (Alexandria, VA) with Chelsea Lee
Lung Transplant Foundation Benefit
tinyurl.com/ch8r3r

But because it’s interesting, since I posted Blue Sunny Day here is what happened (according to Google Analytics):

I posted it to the blog on 3/16, and twittered about it with a link to the blog post on 3/17. I have about 5,000 blog subscribers and about 23,000 Twitter followers.

On 3/16 the blog post received 740 unique views, on 3/17 it received 1,942.

As of today, the original blog post has received 4,313 unique views: 2,518 direct, 1,721 from twitter, 788 from google, 209 from facebook, and then some more smaller sources.

The link to the free mp3 has received 1,544 unique views. The way things are set up I have no way of knowing how many of these were downloads and how many of them were just people clicking on the link to listen in their browser. Though I can tell you for certain that none of those views come from people clicking on the blue playtagger play button, because Google Analytics doesn’t track those clicks.

The mp3 has been sold 179 times and earned $196. Some people bought it several times, not sure whether that was a shopping cart mistake or just people deciding to pay me more than a dollar for the song (if you made a mistake and would like your $$$ back, let me know).

The FLAC version has been sold 11 times for $11. Yay FLAC!

Worst case scenario (every unique view = one free download), the ratio of paying customers to freeloaders comes to about 13.4% if you count dollars instead of purchases. That’s actually pretty good in my opinion. And maybe I just have my rosy glasses on this morning, but I’d guess that some of the people who bought Blue Sunny Day were tipped over into buying other stuff.

So how does this work? I put out a new song and make $200? Obviously it’s a lot more complicated than that, because I’m making a pretty good living considering my recent output is about 2 songs per year. Even not considering that – I’m not getting rich exactly, but I make more money now than I did when I wrote software.

So here are some of the questions I can’t easily answer:

How many free downloads were actually “lost sales?”
How many people downloaded/listened and then donated instead of purchasing? (Full disclosure, probably not many – donations are generally a teeny tiny fraction of my income.)
How many free downloads happened in other places (P2P networks, emails, etc.)?
How much increased buying of tickets, CDs, Tshirts, mp3s happened as a result of this song and news of its release bouncing around the internet?
Who is currently making a movie about a suicidal vampire and is planning on paying me a million dollars to use this song for the final tragic scene? (Seriously, who is it? Call me…)

The eight-day period since the song was first posted boasts a 40% uptick in digital sales in my store compared with the eight days prior to that, though I just did a show and a bunch of press at SXSWi last week, so that could account for the uptick as well. And of course there are ancillary benefits of all kinds that come from the simple fact that for once there was some new content on my site – more traffic is always good.

So then extrapolate what happened with this song across my entire catalog, across all the things sold that make up my income, across the past and present and future, across all the internet radio stations and file sharing networks and Facebook pages and Twitter posts and the whole wild and wooly internet – you will never know HOW it works, but I can tell you that for me it does. The state of the industry makes a lot more sense when you think of it this way, all these new business models rising and falling, internet radio choking on insanely high performance royalties, Radiohead and NIN giving stuff away and making a killing. This is the thing about the new landscape that drives everyone crazy: you can’t see inside the cow; you can only build one, feed it music, and wait for it to poop.

I’ve had this chord progression and melody running around in my brain for a long time, so it’s nice to get it out. This was one of those songs where the arrangement started to build itself in my head before I had really finished writing, I could hear all those vocals from the very beginning. I’m stealing from all sorts of places of course, there’s more than a little Tally Hall influence, some Queen in there, maybe a little Jeff Lynne, and the bridge makes me think of XTC so much that I fear I may discover it’s a direct lift of something and I just haven’t realized yet (in which case, sorry Andy!).

Other cool things: Dave has already posted a video guitar lesson for this song here, as well as put the chords into the wiki.

As always, you have a choice: stream it, download it free, or buy it.

Blue Sunny Day
Buy It

By the way, I have messed up the store link to the flac version somehow – sorry to everyone who’s trying to buy it, I will fix it as soon as I can, and then offer you some kind of lavish compensation for your trouble. UPDATE: Fixed. Let me know if you bought and ran out of downloads. This is very embarrassing.

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I did any shows here – both Houston and Austin were really fun, despite the breaking of strings and the throwing of monkeys. Thanks to everyone who came out, especially here in Austin where doing so meant that you were unable to enjoy unlimited free Sierra Mist cocktails at some kick-ass web company party. Not that you don’t have better things to do in Houston. I mean, you know, Houston is nice too. I love all cities equally!

There are a lot of nerds here in Austin, there must be some kind of nerd convention going on or something.

-j

The Indie Band Survival Guide is one of those “how to work the music business” books that is actually helpful. These guys did a really great job of dealing with all the new stuff that’s happening in this space. And I say this not only because they interviewed me a lot. Anyone who has questions about how I have been able to turn an interest in robots and monkeys into a career as a musician (it still makes me laugh to say that) while barely ever having to leave my house or even put on pants – chances are the answers are in this book.

And currently, there’s a free eBook version being offered in connection with Eventful, you can get it simply by signing up with your email address at IndieGuide.com. Of course, the book can also be “purchased” if you’re into that sort of thing.

Friday March 13 at 8PM
House of Blues (Houston, TX) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/cxdf8s

Sunday March 15 at 7PM
Antone’s (Austin, TX) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/ama6l7
(This is not an official part of SXSW, you must buy tickets to attend. Technically that’s true for all these shows I guess.)

Friday March 27 at 8PM
Symphony Space (New York, NY) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/dkzjoe

Thursday April 23 at 8 PM
Lula Lounge (Toronto, ON) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/czz9sn

Friday April 24 at 7:30 PM
Lula Lounge (Toronto, ON) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/bxr6lb

This is the work of Kutiman (via Open Up), an Israeli musician who creates really great music using bits and pieces of lots of YouTube videos. He’s got a whole album’s worth of material online at thru-you.com. He has also broken my skull open with the ball-peen hammer of his awesomeness. Here’s the opening track, “The Mother of All Funk Chords.” So amazing, so illegal. What are we going to do with you, future?

The trick: I signed up for a free account at Textmarks.com, which lets you choose a unique keyword (I chose JoCo, for obvious reasons). You can then set it up so that when someone texts a message to the Textmarks number (41411) that starts with your keyword, stuff happens. In my case, I set it up so that Textmarks parses the message, grabbing everything after the JoCo, which I assume is the email address. It then composes and posts to my “add this email to my mailing list” URL, passing that text as a parameter. The URL happens to be from the email list tools that are built into Hostbaby (my web host), but it would be pretty easy to do just about anything you want once you get the email into a page on your site – database access or some other further processing. Or if you’ve got some other mailing list management solution, as long as you can add with a URL you can use this method.

There is my secret. Go forth and SPAM.

As you may know I’ve been assembling set lists from Twitter requests, and I have to say the results have been really interesting. There are requests for songs I would never dare to force on an audience, songs I don’t play well, songs that haven’t seen the light of day in years. It feels nice to be taking some risks again, even when I fall on my face. The most surprising thing to me is how mellow and sad the requests seem to trend – I don’t think there’s been a single show where someone hasn’t asked for Famous Blue Raincoat. I usually try to include as much up tempo funny stuff as I can, but I do love a sad song, and it’s nice to have permission to play a few of them. You asked for it!

Also, my life has become a parade of famous person cameos – Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett and Neil Gaiman were all at the St. Paul show (on stage with us for goodness sake), and last night we had sushi with Adam Savage. It’s like a weird dream. I am a big fan of all of these people, so it’s bizarre and wonderful to get to hang out with them and their large, white, affable dogs.

And on top of it all, audiences keep showing up and being nice to me. You rule, audience. Thanks everyone for another great trip.

Speaking of which, Spiff has sent me a link to something that broke my brain a little. Apparently his video for “Betty and Me” inspired another person to make some WoW machinima, specifically this one using characters from Spiff’s work. Note, my music is not in there anymore, this is a thing that somebody made based on Spiff’s stuff, which was something that he made based on my stuff. Also, apparently Guitar Hero is involved in some way? I’m not at all sure what’s going on to be honest, but it sure is awesome!

www.mclars.com

SOLD OUT
Friday February 20 at 7:30 PM
The Birchmere (Alexandria, VA) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/9xn4ue

SOLD OUT
Saturday February 21 at 8 PM
Rams Head Tavern (Annapolis, MD) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/86qvbu

Thursday February 26 at 7:30 PM
Barrymore Theater (Madison, WI) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/86lw3z

Friday February 27 at 8 PM
History Theater (St. Paul, MN) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/bk753u

Saturday February 28 at 8 PM
Park West (Chicago, IL) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/8n3glh

Friday March 6 at 8 PM
The Ark (Ann Arbor, MI) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/asm2h9

Friday March 13 at 8PM
House of Blues (Houston, TX) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/cxdf8s

Sunday March 15 at 7PM
Antone’s (Austin, TX) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/ama6l7
(This is not an official part of SXSW, but it is happening at the same time as SXSWi, which I’ll also be attending. Panels, don’t you know.)

Friday March 27 at 8PM
Symphony Space (New York, NY) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/dkzjoe

Thursday April 23 at 8 PM
Lula Lounge (Toronto, ON) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/czz9sn

Friday April 24 at 7:30 PM
Lula Lounge (Toronto, ON) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/bxr6lb

1) This will be a DVD/Audio CD combo for $20. The audio is from the same show that’s on the DVD, but with most of the blah blah blah edited out. It will be available for purchase at shows as soon as I have the finished copies, by ordering online in a few places, and hopefully in some actual retail stores. I’m guessing we’re looking at a month or so at this point.

2) The DVD will be region free.

3) The Audio CD will come with highly restrictive DRM software that secretly installs a rootkit, which creates a security risk and may crash your computer (just kidding!).

4) The audio will be available for sale digitally, most likely on iTunes and other such outlets. The video, maybe, I’m not quite sure how that’s going to work yet, but I hope so.

5) The DVD will have the full San Francisco show from February of last year (ack!), with only a few bits here and there edited out for pacing and maximum awesomeness. There’s plenty of fan cam footage in there from cameras that were in the audience. There’s a bit of documentary/interview type stuff with me, backstage business, etc. There’s also an audio commentary track featuring me, Paul and Storm, and Kristen Shirts, which was recorded poorly in my living room over pizza. Plus extra extras.

All in all I’m very happy with the way this turned out, though it has taken a lot of time and money and effort to make. It’s been a very different experience from the method I am used to – make it cheaply and quickly, publish it immediately – but in the end it’s a thing I am very glad to have in the world. The live show has come a long way since that first concert at the Jewelbox Theater in Seattle, and the songs have evolved as I’ve learned how to play them, and then learned how to play them well, and then learned how to deal with it when I don’t play them well. And of course it’s just fun to watch an audience at a live show. Zombies! Rock Band! Kristen Shirts!

Thanks for your continued patience, I will of course overwhelm you with SPAM the moment this thing is buyable.

All this is to say that when there are crowds and shows like these last two, it goes a long way toward making up for the bad parts. Molly was awesome, Paul and Storm always make me laugh, and of course you guys in the audience continue to amaze me by showing up at all, let alone in massive numbers, ready to scream for brains. I’m pretty sure that if you account for everything, I’m still coming out way ahead. So thank you.

Also. a first class upgrade does not hurt. Have fun in coach, suckers!

Portland tonight, still plenty of tickets. Buy some why don’t you?

$20/General, $5/Yale students

Purchase tickets at www.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=167246 or reserve them by emailing whiffenpoofs@yale.edu Tickets can also be purchased at the door. Visit www.whiffenpoofs.com for more information.

I will not be wearing tails!

Friday January 23 at 8 PM
Moore Theatre (Seattle, WA) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/8cqfjw

Saturday January 24 at 8 PM
The Aladdin Theater (Portland, OR) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/6upo6l

Friday February 20 at 7:30 PM
The Birchmere (Alexandria, VA) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/9xn4ue

Saturday February 21 at 8 PM
Rams Head Tavern (Annapolis, MD) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/86qvbu

Thursday February 26 at 7:30 PM
Barrymore Theater (Madison, WI) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/86lw3z

Friday February 27 at 8 PM
History Theater (St. Paul, MN) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/c9rt56

Saturday February 28 at 8 PM
Park West (Chicago, IL) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/8n3glh

Friday March 6 at 8 PM
The Ark (Ann Arbor, MI) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: theark.org/1948.html

Paul is good at many things, but sometimes I think what he is best at is stalking the famous people he wants to be friends with. He used twitter to invite Adam Savage (from Mythbusters) to our show, and it actually worked. Adam came back stage afterwards, claimed to enjoy the show, and then spent a while hanging out and chatting with us. He’s a swell guy, I’m a big fan, and it was fun to meet him. I guess you get to do these sorts of things when you’re famous.

I’m home for a couple of days and then out again to Seattle on Friday and Portland on Saturday – still still plenty of tickets left for both, so don’t be shy.

Thank you Denver and SF!

SF again tonight, some tickets still available last I checked. I promise I’ll make some big mistakes tonight too.

This was the first gig in a couple of months, so I was a bit rusty. Also I have that perpetual parental head cold so my voice started out a little ragged. But I took requests during the day on Twitter, and that gave me a set list with some challenging choices, kept it interesting for me. I’ve fallen into a rut lately with set lists, so I’m trying to shake it up and bring in some newer stuff, maybe some of the Thing a Week songs that haven’t been done live yet.

Also I met Craig Robinson (Darryl from The Office) when he and I were both guests on the channel 7 morning news. After I did Code Monkey (on this NEWS SHOW) he claimed during his interview to have written a song called Pin Number Orangutan, which doesn’t even make any sense, but is still funny.

And now I’m headed to SF for tonight. Still tickets for Sunday I think, but Saturday is sold out.

Note: I wrote this on my phone and forgot to post it until right now…

I’m back in NYC and already behind for the year, which is no longer surprising to me. The good news is, I’m hitting the road again for a few shows in January and February. Paul and Storm and I could use some merch help for some of these too (Seattle, Portland and the Birchmere are all covered, the rest I need peeps). Just email Scarface if you’re interested.

Friday January 16 at 9 PM
The Soiled Dove Underground (Denver, CO) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/967oq8

Saturday January 17 at 9 PM
Great American Music Hall (San Francisco, CA) with Paul and Storm
SOLD OUT!

Sunday January 18 at 8 PM
Great American Music Hall (San Francisco, CA) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/4r25ns

Friday January 23 at 8 PM
Moore Theatre (Seattle, WA) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/8cqfjw

Saturday January 24 at 8 PM
The Aladdin Theater (Portland, OR) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/6upo6l

Friday February 20 at 7:30 PM
The Birchmere (Alexandria, VA) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/9xn4ue

Saturday February 21 at 8 PM
Rams Head Tavern (Annapolis, MD) with Paul and Storm
Tickets: tinyurl.com/86qvbu

It’s been another great year here at Coulton industries, thanks in no small part to all of you who read, listen, record, send monkeys in the mail, etc. I’ve got a few songs in the pipeline and a few new toys itching for the studio, a trip to the west coast in January with more touring to follow, and this FREAKING concert DVD which is still very nearly finished and targetted for February release (I hope). And probably other exciting things that I haven’t even thought of yet will happen.

Thank you all, and here’s hoping the years continue to get better and better until everything is awesome everywhere all the time.

2009 here we come…

Buy it here!

Thanks crazy forum people!

And speaking of crazy forum people, I recently was made aware of a couple of foreign language (to me) Jonathan Coulton areas. Here is this forum for speakers of French: joco.forumactif.fr and this fan page for the burgeoning fanbase in Hungary: koponyaroppanto.wordpress.com/

There is also this Camp Bachelor cover: www.myspace.com/sparechangequartet

There is also this piano medley: spaceparanoids.net/2008/11/joco-medley/

Don’t you people have work to do?

Buy it here!

The jump drive with this album and the source tracks is still available too with a $50 donation to Creative Commons, and will be there through the end of the year.

(I should mention – it may periodically say that it’s sold out over the next couple of days, it’s just the way CDBaby does the initial stocking of a new title. Rest assured, I am pushing them out to them quickly so as to keep them from running out, and even now am heading out to the post office to send a bunch more.)

And second, it’s a JoCo advent calendar filled with Ultrastar Deluxe karaoke files! What? Right. I am barely hanging on myself here, but I gather that one of the elves in the forums has used the open source karaoke game Ultrastar Deluxe and the CC licensing of my karaoke versions to create 25 playable JoCo “levels.” Do you kids still call them levels? A new song will be released every day between now and Festivus. Sing along and win (points I think?)! And no, I cannot help you with installing anything or learning how to sing. Thanks Spektugalo and SKillMaster and Silverbeam and Blindguard for making it happen. (By the way, those are the names of my reindeer.)

Anyway, they found some footage:

Thank you llyse.

I’m still trying to process everything, but it certainly seems like JoCo fans know how to show a monkey a good time (does anyone know how to disinfect a stuffed monkey?).

You people are crazy, and I love you for it. Thank you.

You may have heard about my new greatest hits CD “JoCo Looks Back.” 20 of your favorites! Technically it’s 20 songs chosen via a complicated algorithm involving popularity, best guess, and my own selfish desires and whims. But who’s counting! If you’ve been to a live show recently you may already own one, but it’s not available for purchase online yet because:

Right now I’m doing a special thing with the Creative Commons 2008 fundraising campaign that’s kind of exciting. Between now and the end of the year a $50 donation gets you a 1 Gb USB thumb drive with all 20 songs and the artwork, plus all the source tracks for all the songs. All the source tracks? Yes. It took me about a million hours, thank you very much. So if you’ve ever wanted to do some kind of kooky remix or mashup, or if you’ve ever just wanted to take these songs apart and see how they work, this would be just the thing for you.

This is an exclusive special super secret bonus package – donating 50 bucks to CC is the only way to get it so don’t even ask, you freeloaders. I’ve benefited immensely from Creative Commons licensing, so I’m very pleased to be able to support it in this way (with your money). Get it here.

The songs are (you may begin criticizing my selections now):

Code Monkey
Ikea
I Feel Fantastic
Mandelbrot Set
Tom Cruise Crazy
Shop Vac
Chiron Beta Prime
I’m Your Moon
My Monkey
Skullcrusher Mountain
I Crush Everything
When You Go
A Talk With George
You Ruined Everything
Creepy Doll
Mr. Fancy Pants
Baby Got Back
First of May
Re: Your Brains
The Future Soon

The sandwiches are very good. Also, all of them have mayonnaise, which is correct.

Planes, Trains, Hodgman, originally uploaded by jcoulton.

It’s day 563 of the west coast leg of the Hodgman book tour and this
photo will give you some idea of the kind of luxurious pampering we
are enjoying. That’s a train, suckers.

Thanks to all the Seattle residents who came out to see us at Town
Hall, and special thanks to our pals John Roderick and Sean Nelson who
were so fun that I stopped caring whether or not the audience was
having a good time (though I think they were). John and Eric from the
Long Winters were with us again last night in Portland at the very fun
recording of the Live Wire radio show. Fun fun, all fun!

Today I bid a sad farewell to the gentle, gray northwest and fly to
beautiful San Francisco. Also, I should not have eaten that sausage I
just ate.

I can’t figure out how to put a proper link in this iPhone Wordpress app, so I’m afraid you’ll have to cut and paste (which I also cannot do from here, ha ha). Regardless, buy your tickets here:

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/47299

Also: yes we can.

I’m sitting here in the hotel room enjoying my last opportunity for a little tea and biscuits, a lovely tradition that I wish was in my life always. I still can’t believe I just did six shows here on this side of the Atlantic. I’ve been thinking a lot on this trip about, guess what, the internet. All these crowds here in all these new places. It’s yet another example of this increasingly important global internet culture that’s happening – it no longer matters much where you live, you can still find your way to LOLCats or Numa Numa or Skullcrusher Mountain, or any of a thousand million trillion other dumb, funny, important ideas. There’s a group of people who are literally spread out all over the planet, and they’re all talking and thinking about the same stuff, and that has never ever happened before. And that group of people is just going to keep growing until it’s all of us, and what happens then?

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: the internet is going to be big. You may want to buy some stocks or something.

Thank you, accented strangers. I’ll be back soon…

And then of course we played the GameCity Halloween party that night – the standard semi-crappy sound of a large hotel conference room, made even more crappy by my then even larger throat frog. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get through the set. But an audience of zombies doesn’t care about this sort of thing, really all they want is brains. And of course Paul and Storm kicked ass as usual, so I figure even if I was terrible there was still some decent entertainment on stage.

I can only hope that they’re as forgiving here in Birmingham, because the frog is still with me (I have named him Bernie).

What can I possibly say about London? There were over 500 people in the audience, and though the beautiful Shepherds Bush Empire holds many more, it felt nice and full and fun. The sound and the lighting were both exceptional and seemingly effortless, and the incredibly warm crowd was just what I needed to re-energize me in the middle of this long trip. We did “Always the Moon” for the second time (the first was in Manchester, and a little rough for it) and it actually sounded pretty good I think. Got a few compliments about it afterwards, which means I’ll probably keep putting it into the show when I can.

The one drawback was the very beginning of a little frogginess in my throat, which I think went mostly unnoticed by everyone but me, but returned the next morning with a vengeance. The Nottingham attendees will agree with me…

And yes, for some reason I have been unable or unwilling to post this for several days – blogging ends up last on the list of stuff I gotta do when I’m on the road, which is kind of dumb because that’s when all the awesome stuff happens. It is now Saturday, and I have some breathing room in the hotel in Birmingham and am trying to catch up. Stay tuned…

Both shows have been amazing – the crowd in Dublin sang everything all the way through very loudly, which was great. I played Danny Boy, which is such a beautiful song I couldn’t resist even though I knew it was going to make the audience groan. And groan they did, but they sang anyway. I wish I could have spent more time in Dublin – I was staying with friends of friends who are actual Irish people, and they were very nice and fun.

Today I had a frenetic day of traveling and a second great show here in Glasgow. The crowd was less sing-y to be sure, but no less kind and enthusiastic. Also there was steak pie and Irn Bru and Tablet. I had no set list because the only pen I had in the green room was broken (I wish I made this excuse up but it’s true), so I kind of made it up as I went along, took a few requests, played some songs I probably should have practiced before playing in public.

Manchester on Wednesday!

READ THIS: If you’re interested, please email my horribly disfigured assistant Scarface at scarface@jonathancoulton.com.

Paul and Storm are also looking to leverage the power of the JoCo overseas forces. And I quote:

Paul would like to (humbly) ask if there’s anyone coming to the Manchester and/or London shows that might have access to a decent keyboard/digital piano. We could rent one, but the fees are excessive, so we thought we’d check with the Coulton Army. It does not need to be fancy–in fact, an 88-key weighted-key piano with just a good piano sound is far preferable to, say, a 61-key synthesizer with 963,842 different samples. That said, beggars can’t, and won’t, be choosers. We will be happy to reward any generous soul(s) with 2 comps to the particular show; or, if you’re already attending, a full Paul and Storm Merchandise Super-Duper Prize Pack. Or, barring that, the eternal gratitude of a struggling musician wandering a strange land.

If you might be interested in helping a poor Yank out, please contact Paul at “info at paulandstorm dot com” and we can discuss specifics. And thank you. A lot.

Thank you in advance, foreign people.

Well guess what? Code Monkey is in mono. I just noticed that the track I delivered to the CD production place way back when is about half as big as it should be BECAUSE IT IS IN MONO.

Nevermind that I didn’t notice at the time, nevermind that I didn’t even bother to check when people told me over these last couple of years. What’s amazing to me is that it hasn’t really mattered in any significant way. I’m sure I sweated like crazy over the stereo placement of this or that element during the mixing process, and then I just plastered over all those details with stucco, and turns out nobody really cares. Not even me, apparently. This is a lesson that I learned (or rather, failed to learn) many times over the course of Thing a Week: that thing you’ve been working on forever, buffing and polishing to get to that last 2% of excellence? It’s done. Finish it and move on. Hey, at least it’s not in mono, right? Because that would be a huge disaster with serious consequences.

And so you know, this error will be corrected in the forthcoming greatest hits CD “JoCo Looks Back” that’s being manufactured even as we speak.