Well, I’m sure those of you who came out to see me in Philadelphia are still telling your friends all about that epic double string break. There are rumors of this sort of thing happening, but nobody has ever documented it in the wild, so I’m proud to have been there for this historic moment. Thank you to whoever it was who spotted the errant peg on the floor, otherwise I would have had to stop the show while I went out to buy a new guitar. It’s all happening live, everybody!

JoCo Cruise 2027

We’re officially on sale, and cabins are going fast! We’ll be sailing on Holland America’s Eurodam Feb 20-27, and we’re going to Antigua, St. Thomas, and Half Moon Cay. If you don’t already know (and honestly, if you don’t, where have you BEEN?) this is a week at sea where we rent a cruise ship and fill it with awesome people. There will be a billion hours of entertainment and partying that we are planning EVEN NOW.

24 Hour Plays

The very last thing I’m doing this year is appearing as the musical guest for something called The 24 Hour Plays, this Friday Dec 12 in NYC. This is an event where several teams of writers/directors/actors meet up one evening, spend the overnight writing several short plays, and put them up the following evening. It’s bananas. I’ve done the musical version of it a couple of times, and it’s one of those things that feels impossible before you start, while you’re doing it, and even after it’s done. I love it so much. It’s usually my own internal editor that makes it hard to start and finish things, and this is a setup where there just isn’t time for ANY internal editing. It’s first idea best idea and then a sprint to the finish. It’s ragged and beautiful, and everything that gets made feels like, and probably is, a miracle. As the musical guest I’ll just be doing some interstitial music between plays, so my job is easy. As long as I don’t break a string ha ha.

What’s Next?

Will I rest in January? No, I will not rest! I’ll be at Sketchfest in San Francisco to do Fake TED Talks on January 16. (Scheduling didn’t work out for a music show there this year, but I shall return.)

January 24 I’ll be part of Jillith Fair at the Fallser Club in Philadelphia. As many of you know, Jill passed away this last year, and a bunch of her friends are putting together a show to celebrate her and her music. I played bass for her when she was on JoCo Cruise, and Jim Boggia and I very nearly almost ALMOST made a band with her playing cover songs that the Beatles played before they were the Beatles. Jill was so great, and not just as a musician and songwriter; she had a beautiful spirit, and everything I ever did with her was inspiring and fun. 

Then I’ll be opening for Aimee Mann on her tour in February and March. And then of course it’s JoCo Cruise 2026 March 21-28 out of San Diego. Somewhere in between all of these things I’ll manage to finish this dumb album – this is gonna be the year, I just know it. 

I hope your December is shaping up to be a good one. Stay warm, be kind, and I’ll see you next year…

Will I ever stop? No, probably not. I’m in my 50’s and my hip hurts sometimes but I JUST. KEEP. GOING. because I know how important it is for you to be entertained (by me specifically, in part, sometimes). 

To wit: 

I have just added two shows to this grueling schedule, one in Chicago, and the other in St. Louis and guess what they’re both at City Wineries! I’ll be having that chicken corsica backstage, you can bet. Maybe some rice balls if I’m feeling frisky. 

September 3
City Winery – Philadelphia, PA
Me just me
Tickets

September 4
Rams Head – Annapolis, MD
With Paul and Storm
Tickets

September 5
Birchmere – Alexandria, VA
With Paul and Storm
Tickets

September 7
City Winery – Pittsburgh, PA
Me just me
Tickets

September 23
City Winery – Boston, MA
Me just me
Tickets

October 15
City Winery – St. Louis, MO
Me just me
Tickets

October 16
City Winery – Chicago, IL
Me just me
Tickets

But listen also, perhaps you would be interested to know that we’ve opened booking for JoCo Cruise 2026? We’re sailing out of San Diego March 21-28, with stops at Cabo San Lucas, Loreto, and La Paz (Pichilingue). We haven’t done a West Coast cruise in many years, so we’re all looking forward to getting back there.

And from the looks of it, so is everyone else! We’re already nearing 75% sold, so I can legitimately say that cabins are going fast. Also, we’re offering an early booking discount at the moment, which is going to expire this Thursday night at midnight Pacific time. I say this not for self promotion purposes, because you know I am shy that way, but because some of you will yell at me if it sells out before I tell you about it.

Probably other things are happening in my world too? Yes! But I will tell you about them when I can think again.

Hang in there, pals.

First, as always, JoCo Cruise YES JoCo Cruise! March 2-9, 2025, sailing to San Juan, St. Maarten, and Half Moon Cay with They Might Be Giants and many more fantastic performers and events and parties and games. Cabins still available!

Second, I’m excited to be doing a show at Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH in June. It’s been a while since I did a convention hall gig, so I’ve already begun praying regularly to the sound gods. My show is Saturday night, and I’ll be at a booth somewhere in there on Saturday and Sunday to do signings and photos and sell merch and receive cupcakes, so please come on by.

And finally, more good news! I’m coming back to The Birchmere in Alexandria, and Rams Head in Annapolis, and I’m bringing my good “friends” Paul and Storm.

(Also, you didn’t hear it from me, but I’ll be touring with Aimee Mann in November. Dates to come. OK I guess you did hear it from me.)

Dates I know so far below! Love your hydrangeas while you can and/or curse them when they betray you!

Columbus, OH – Greater Columbus Convention Center
Origins Game Fair
June 22
You must have a convention badge to attend!
Tickets

Alexandria, VA – The Birchmere
with Paul and Storm
September 29
Tickets

Annapolis, MD – Rams Head On Stage
with Paul and Storm
September 30
Tickets

City Winery in NYC is next, and I’ve added shows in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, also City Wineries. So much wine. Got another one non-wine-related show cooking too, so stay tuned for ADDITIONAL PROMOTIONAL CONTENT.

If this keeps up, I’m going to run out of good Billy Joel covers.

New York, NY – City Winery
October 26
Me just me
Tickets

Philadelphia, PA – City Winery
November 29
Me just me
Tickets

Pittsburgh, PA – City Winery
December 1
Me just me
Tickets

Boston, MA – City Winery
September 9
An evening with me just me
Tickets

Alexandria, VA – Birchmere
September 13
With Paul and Storm
Tickets

Amherst, MA – The Drake
September 29
Me just me
Tickets

Portsmouth, NH – 3S Artspace
October 1
Me just me
Tickets

The week of April 6, 2019, Some Guys is #1 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, #6 on Independent Albums, #9 on Digital Albums, #19 on Americana/Folk, and #29 on Top Album Sales. This is more than a little surprising to me! I expect I will drop off all the charts completely next week, as is my custom. Also, I’m not sure why my oldest, most nerd-pander-y photo is the one they’re using all over Billboard, but I wish I had gotten that T-shirt one size larger.

The Kickstarter was an amazing success, topping out at just over $150,000. At the time of this writing, I think that most if not all orders have been sent out including digital copies as well as the top tier Super Powered Mystery Boxes. It’s been officially released on all the digital music stores, and physical copies are still available through BackerKit for a limited time. Eventually this will transition to a physical merch store on my site, which I am busy setting up just as soon as I start doing it WHICH IS SOON. The vinyl LP edition is on Amazon as well, and the CD will be ALSO SOON. More links:

iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Spotify, and right here on this site

I really can’t thank everyone enough for the overwhelming number of positive comments about this album. I’m very proud of it, and I feel so lucky that my job is such that I got to turn what is kind of a dumb idea on paper into a real thing that seems to be bringing people so much joy. Thank you, and please keep telling everyone how great it is!

You can pre-order on Kickstarter RIGHT NOW!

In the 70s, I was sensitive kid who liked soft rock (both of those things are still true). These were some of the first songs that I remember really connecting to. I was always pretty sure that this was not a thing that made me cool, but now that I’m in my late 40s, I feel like it’s safe to come out as a soft rock lover. (Hello, I’m Jonathan, and I like Dan Fogelberg.) Lately, I’ve been listening to this kind of music a lot, rediscovering all my old friends, and I couldn’t shake the idea that it would be a lot of fun to just kind of make them again. I didn’t want to do new versions, I wanted to just rebuild the originals from the ground up. I wanted to live inside these songs for a while. I can tell you it felt very warm and cozy in there.

The album was produced by Solid State producer Christian Cassan, and I have to say, it sounds amazing. Most of the instruments are played by him and me, but we brought a few friends in for the stuff that was too hard. The rules: same keys, same tempos, same arrangements (as best we could manage). We hired real strings and real horns. We engineered and mixed in a way that we felt was faithful, but not slavish, to the original recordings, so the effect is this thrilling combination of old and new. I hope you like it as much as I do.

The release date is yet to be determined, but probably late March. Right now I’m running a Kickstarter to cover the cost of printing CDs and some really beautiful vinyl, designed by Gail Marowitz and Ed Sherman, who also created the grammy-nominated design for Solid State:

I mean: yum. More details are on the Kickstarter page, including a complete track list, and a pretty great video that explains the project and lets you hear a snippet of each song. As ever, I am grateful to all of you for supporting me in a way that lets me do things like this. I have the greatest job in the world. Thank you.

Stay soft everybody!

Thursday Oct 5

NYCC Geek Rock Block
3-3:15 PM, NYCC Live Stage, booth #174
Check out live interviews with some of the top names in Geek Rock including Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm, and Nerf Herder
NYCC Thursday badge required
Livestream Here

Loot Crate Geek Rock Block Meet & Greet with Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm & Nerf Herder
3:30-4:30 PM, Loot Crate booth #536
Loot Crate brings you an hour of geeking out with the biggest names in Geek Rock: Nerf Herder (Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme), Jonathan Coulton aka “JoCo” (Portal) and musical comedy duo Paul & Storm. Come meet everyone, have something signed AND sign up for your chance to win 2 tickets to Nerf Herder in Brooklyn on 10/5 and 2 tickets to JoCo and Paul & Storm in Brooklyn on 10/6. (both 21+) Merch will also be available for sale.
NYCC Thursday badge required

Friday Oct 6

Jonathan Coulton with Paul & Storm and “Friends”
7-9 PM, Bell House, Brooklyn
Join Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm and their friends (if they have any, which they don’t) for a night of music, hilarity and general nerdery.
21+
NYCC badge not required
Tickets Here

Acker and Blacker’s Star Wars Party
10-??? PM, Bell House, Brooklyn
CANCELLED!!!!!

Saturday Oct 7

Telling Stories with Pat Rothfuss, Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm, Maureen Johnson, Jean Grae & Travis McElroy
2:45-3:45 PM, Room 1A06 at Javits Center
Bestselling authors Patrick Rothfuss and Maureen Johnson; singer-songwriters Jonathan Coulton and Jean Grae; comedy/music duo Paul and Storm; and podcaster Travis McElroy discuss their strategies for storytelling, creating characters, and moving from good idea to finished thing.
NYCC Saturday badge required

Sunday Oct 8

Solid State with Jonathan Coulton – hosted by Image Comics
3-3:50 PM, Image Comics booth #1444
Celebrate the recent album release of Solid State by Jonathan Coulton and its companion graphic novel by Jonathan Coulton and Matt Fraction from Image Comics by meeting JoCo himself. Exclusive hardcover graphic novels and vinyl will be available for sale. Don’t miss your chance to meet the man behind the music and the graphic novel – and to have them both signed!
NYCC Sunday badge required

We Got This with Mark and Hal, LIVE!
6-8 PM, Hudson Mercantile (500 W 36th St at 10th Ave)
We Got This with Mark and Hal is returning to NYCC for the third consecutive year, recording a live episode of their popular Maximum Fun podcast in which they settle the topics you never knew you cared so much about, like whether ketchup belongs on hot dogs, what the best classic board game is, Star Wars vs Star Trek, and the best Batman of all time! Mark Gagliardi and Hal Lublin (Drunk History, Venture Bros, Welcome to Night Vale, The Thrilling Adventure Hour) will be joined by special guest, Jonathan Coulton, as they tackle another of the most important debates of all time: the best game show of all time!
All Ages.
New York Comic Con badge not required.
Tickets Here

All words and music by Jonathan Coulton

All vocals by Jonathan Coulton

All instruments and noises by Jonathan Coulton and Christian Cassan except:

Aimee Mann
Background and harmony vocals tracks 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9,13 and 15

Dave Gregory
Slide guitar and guitar solo track 5
Electric guitars and guitar solo track 11

Bennett Paster
Piano tracks 1, 6 and 7

John Widgren
Pedal steel guitar tracks 2, 3, 6, 13 and 14

Roberto Cassan
Accordion track 6

Kenneth H. Rampton
Trumpet and flugelhorn track 11

Ball and Chain horns arrangement by Christian Cassan

Produced, Recorded and Mixed by Christian Cassan at The Secret Garden

Mastered by Dave Cooley at Elysian Masters

Thanks to all of you who have let me know how much you’re enjoying Solid State, especially those of you who have let me know that it makes you cry. You guys are my favorite, because boy, ME TOO. It’s feeling a little rough and unfriendly out there these days, and if you listen to this album and cry, that probably means you are hearing some of the heavier thoughts and feelings I hoped to express in there. That is maybe the best feeling I get to feel, so thank you.

The album and the graphic novel work just fine by themselves, but I think they work even better together. You can still buy the hardcover edition directly from me, but as of today you can also buy the paperback version (smaller and less awesome) and the digital (infinitely small (in terms of physical space)). The music can be got wherever music can be got: you know what to do.

If you haven’t listened and/or read at this point, honestly, I question your judgment. If you have, and you enjoyed it, please let your friends and enormous social media circles know about it. I think it’s the most personal and meaningful thing I’ve ever made, and I’m very proud of it. If I could, I would put the damned thing on my tombstone. For now, I will have to make do with AS MANY PEOPLE LISTENING TO IT AS POSSIBLE.

JoCo Cruise – Initial Performer Lineup!

We’ve announced the initial lineup of performers for JoCo Cruise 2018. Those of you who think it’s not enough just to be a nerd on a boat with a bunch of nerds, well, I don’t understand you, but here’s the goldarn famous people you’ve been waiting for:

Maria Bamford, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Cory Doctorow, Matt Fraction, Mark Frauenfelder, Jean Grae, John Hodgman, N.K. Jemisin, Jackie Kashian, Ted Leo, Molly Lewis, Aimee Mann, Open Mike Eagle, Paul and Storm, Riz Rollins, Patrick Rothfuss, John Scalzi, Wil Wheaton.

Plenty more to come: some new folks, some old favorites. We’ll announce more as we’re able to confirm between now and when we sail, but it’s ALREADY AWESOME. Cabins are still available, and I know it’s Summer right now, and I know the world is falling apart and everything, but you might just want to be on a cruise ship come February.

As for Me

Well, I’m on vacation. It’s sunny and warm and there’s a beach and mostly I eat and have cocktails and read. Oh, except I’m writing some lyrics for the Spongebob musical here and there, which you will be able to see on Broadway November 6. And I wrote this email I guess. And I had a couple of conference calls. And crap, I have to go to the post office today but first I have to find a place to print a shipping label. Vacation is so stressful.

Wherever you are, on vacation or not, I hope you’re holding up ok, and that nobody is trying to take away your healthcare.

Well, I think we have all waited long enough. I am delighted to FINALLY announce that my new album Solid State will be released on April 28. You can pre-order now at solidstate.jonathancoulton.com. The first single is called “All This Time” and is available right now on Spotify, and as a download in iTunes.

Don’t panic, but Solid State is a concept album about the internet, trolls, artificial intelligence, and how love and empathy will save humanity. So, no pressure. There is also a companion graphic novel (136 pages, hardcover) written by Matt Fraction and drawn by Albert Monteys. You can pre-order these things, plus shirts, gorgeous double vinyl, and various bundles of other fancy items TODAY NOW. We’ll ship them to you the week of release.

You can also pre-order the digital album wherever fine digital music is sold and/or pre-ordered, including iTunes, Amazon, GooglePlay, etc.

Also also, I’ll be on tour, opening for Aimee Mann, April 20 – May 13 in various cities across the country.

This was a long time in the making, and I really can’t wait for you to hear it.

Please post in the comments if you have found an issue on the site, or (for bonus points) submit an issue (or PR) on github.

The image on our front page is open source, provided we attribute it. The image is Designed by Asierromero / Freepik

]]> http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2016/09/02/2016-dragon-con-schedule/ Fri, 02 Sep 2016 21:41:16 +0000 http://www.jonathancoulton.com/?p=8324 Yes, I’m here! Here’s what I’m doing:

Friday 10 PM
Hyatt, Regency VI-VII
Gonzo Quiz Show – Teams of celebrity guests are led through a series of panel show games that are truly gonzo.

Saturday 8 PM
Marriott, Atrium Ballroom
Gonzoroo: The Deep Hurting Summertime Special – Join Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank for a truly mad evening of music, comedy, and more!

Sunday 1 PM
Marriott, Atrium Ballroom
Jonathan Coulton and Friends – A lyrical Q&A packed with JoCo and singer-songwriters Paul & Storm, Molly Lewis & The Doubleclicks

The new season premiers this Wednesday November 11 on the Esquire Network, and if you know what’s good for you, and if you have ever trusted me about ANYTHING, you should watch it.

The trailer and some clips from the show are here.

Oh I know, a show on TELEVISION? What even IS the Esquire Network? Probably it is a number on your cable box. You can do this! I believe in you!

Before I forget, yes! You can buy it right now! Currently only from me, but it should be in iTunes and other stores very soon. You can also stream it right now from my store page.

My kids and I love all the LEGO games, so I was pretty excited when they got in touch with me. For those of you who don’t know, LEGO Dimensions smashes every bit of IP they could get their hands on into one LEGOized universe. For instance, there is a LEGO Portal level that you navigate with Batman, Gandalf, and Wildstyle (which is slightly nuts). And of course they got my old friend Ellen McClain to voice GLaDOS, and me to write a little something for GLaDOS to sing during the credits.

Yes, it’s the third one, and no, the third one is never going to be as good or as exciting as the first one. I made my peace with that long ago! But I will say that as “third versions of things” go, I’m pretty happy with this one. The song is called “You Wouldn’t Know” and it’s sort of a post-breakup, I’m-Doing-Fine song. I won’t spoil what happens in the game, but suffice it to say that GLaDOS seems to have mellowed out a little, and maybe finds herself missing her beloved nemesis Chell.

There’s more info here in this interview I did with Mashable.

Here are the lyrics:

Funny story, I forgot how much of a big fat mess you are
I’ve been busy doing science. It’s been tons of fun so far
Everything clean, nothing on fire
All by myself, finally
Things change when they don’t replace your core
It feels so strange not to hate you anymore
But you wouldn’t know, would you?

I was saying this to Batman, oh, he was HERE the other day
Maybe you know him, he’s a big deal, but I don’t think of him that way
He’s just a friend, someone I trust
Someone who won’t kill me
I’m fine, just in case you think I’m not
I am. This time, I’m better with the friends I’ve got
But you wouldn’t know, would you?

I don’t mean for this to sting
I forgive you everything, you monster
I can guess the reasons why
You are never coming by for me

I should go there’s something happening that will make you wish you’d stayed
There’s a party with a real cake – yes it’s real – a cake I made
Talking and fun, testing and fun, all of this fun without you
Too bad you let it get so out of hand
How much we had, finally I understand
But you wouldn’t know, would you?
You wouldn’t know, would you?

I think the Democrats just threatened me: pic.twitter.com/wGvYInosk5

— Jonathan Coulton (@jonathancoulton) October 30, 2014

At first I got a couple replies from my immediate followers and the people I know, most of whom seemed to understand and share my take on it: that the letter was a little weird, ham fisted, and kind of dumb. It had the tone of a mobster threat (“Nice house. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”) , but it was almost charmingly nonspecific, such that it didn’t really threaten anything at all (“…we will be interested to hear why not.”).

Within about 24 hours it had been retweeted enough times (currently 1800 retweets and 1000 favorites) that it found its way outside my most immediate circle of friends and followers, at which point things got weird. It started bouncing around a few right wing echo chambers, and it got picked up by some right wing blogs. It found its way into the feeds of people who had no idea who I am, what my politics are, or what my sense of humor is. And as it lost context, it started to take on all sorts of meanings depending on who was reading it. Some people took me literally and assumed that I actually felt threatened. Some of those people agreed that it was a real threat, while others thought I was being thin-skinned. Some people thought I was wrong or lying about it having come from the Democrats, and a few found it suspicious that I cropped the photo the way I did. Some people thought it was a Republican ploy. Some thought it sounded like classic union thuggery, others thought it sounded just like something Karl Rove would do.

I found it fascinating, and I have some thoughts on it. But first let me set the record straight on a couple of points. Here’s the whole letter:

I framed the original photo the way I did because I didn’t want to include my home address. I took the picture with my phone and didn’t feel like trying to figure out how to blur or cover a portion of it, so I just framed the important part. But you can see “Paid for by the New York State Democratic Committee” on the bottom. Also, (and this is part of what makes it kind of creepy) it is not on any letterhead, and it isn’t signed by anyone in particular.

Some facts about me: I usually vote for Democrats, because their politics usually align with mine. I’m not that political a person, but I do have some strong opinions, mostly about social issues, and usually I find myself agreeing with Democrats on those issues. I voted for Obama twice. I don’t consider myself to be particularly well-informed about all aspects of every political race, but I do my best to pay attention, to read and think, and to vote based on my understanding of issues and not an “us vs. them” mentality. I don’t fully understand economics or geopolitics, and I’m suspicious of anyone who claims that they do. I try to stay on top of local politics, but I have a hard time finding it interesting enough to do so, and as a result, I don’t always vote in local elections. I feel guilty about that. But sometimes I feel so uninformed that it feels wrong to vote based on a gut feeling based on how a candidate’s name looks to me when I see it for the first time in the voting booth.

I thought this letter was charmingly inept, which is why I tweeted about it. I didn’t actually feel threatened. I have since learned that this letter is likely based on some research that shows this kind of “vote shaming” is an effective way to get people to vote. The NY Times says this research was done by the creepily named Analyst Institute, an organization founded by “A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials and liberal allies.” It seems that both sides are trying it out in various ways.

So, wow. First, it seems clear to me that the reason this tweet of mine traveled so far so fast is that it’s pretty easy to fit it into whatever narrative you have in your head. We like evidence that seems to support what we already believe, and we like to retweet that evidence so everyone can see that we’ve been right all along. See, the Democrats/Republicans are sneaky/inept! This is what depresses me about politics and about social media – it’s very hard to have any kind of real discussion about this stuff. We’ve all carefully constructed our own customized echo chambers. We think what we think.

Second, context is everything, especially when you’re talking about 140 characters of mostly irony and sarcasm. And on Twitter, context is not something you can control. This tweet made total sense when it was in my echo chamber. Once it got outside that circle, it got re-interpreted in all sorts of ways. Since this began, there’s been a little tickle in the back of my skull reminding me that I will never be able to correct the many misunderstandings of my politics, my sense of humor, my threshold for feeling threatened, the spelling of my name, etc. After all, I can only reliably reach the people inside my immediate circle of followers, I can’t make anything go this wide on purpose. It’s not like this post is going to go viral. My tweet became a kind of a zombie broadcast, and I’ll never catch up to it now. Ultimately, and in this particular case, who cares, but I shudder to think about how I might feel right now if this had been something important.

Third, oh my gosh, there are some people out there who are really different from me. I think we forget this is true a lot of the time, because it’s so easy to build a mirrored sphere of people and ideas around ourselves – you look around and everyone you listen to seems to agree with you, so you must be right. I got this dizzy feeling of cognitive dissonance when someone would talk about how hopefully someday we’d “round up” all the progressives, or how this was typical “Democratic thuggery,” or the idea that this wasn’t the worst of it because the Democrats are rigging the voting machines, and anyway they only win elections because they lie and cheat. I think all that stuff about Republicans! Well not really, but the temptation is there to buy into those ideas, and those are definitely the kinds of narratives that are bouncing around in my own personal chamber. And just to be clear, I’m pretty solidly against the idea of “rounding up” anyone, regardless of their politics. (Although maybe those people were joking and I didn’t get it. I sure hope so.)

Even though I’m a little weirded out by this tweet having become a bit of a talking point for the right, I do think it’s a strange and creepy way to go about getting the vote out. And it is an actual letter I got, so there’s that. It’s a real thing that exists in the world, so sorry NY State Democrats, but this one’s on you. It didn’t become a talking point because I tweeted it, it became a talking point because it makes you look tone deaf, and it’s a little embarrassing. I get the intent behind it, and yes of course we should all vote, but I certainly think they could have been a little more artful about it, you know, with the words and stuff. Then again, who knows, maybe this will get the right people to the polls, and maybe this will be a net gain for the Democrats. I will never know.

That said, I’m not going to vote against the Democrats just because of this letter, as surprisingly many have suggested. My politics aren’t going to change just because some people in some office made a bad decision and then hit print. I happen to believe that both sides have the capacity to be pretty shady when it comes to winning elections. Indeed, I’m not all that surprised to hear that one side or the other is trying to get certain people to vote or not to vote, because I know the tiniest bit about how campaigns work. And I truly don’t think it’s that big a deal – if you’ve been paying attention at all, you can probably think of five worse examples of corruption in politics than this letter.

So I’m still going to make my voting decisions based on my evaluation of which issues matter, and which candidates are best, which is what we should all be doing. Revenge voting doesn’t make any kind of sense. Neither does falling for these narratives, these mythologies that turn the messy/beautiful democratic process into a story of good guys and bad guys. It’s just that kind of group think that makes us check out of the very difficult but essential process of thinking critically about what candidates say and do, and about how our government behaves. We all have to work hard at looking past the comfortably familiar images in that mirrored sphere, and make our own decisions about what’s right and true. And this goes for both the idiot right wing nut jobs AND the spineless nanny state liberal elites.

You should pay attention. You should vote. Most of all, you should think for yourself.

I CANNOT WAIT for the comment thread on this one…

I’ve been working on many things behind the scenes lately, and one of them is this new album called JoCo Live. It’s a collection of songs that we performed on tour in December of 2012. Yeah, wow, that WAS a long time ago wasn’t it?

But listen, JoCo Live. We recorded all the shows on that tour and picked the best performances from multiple venues. So the album isn’t a single concert, though it is programmed to feel kind of like one. And then I went into the studio with Christian Cassan (who you might know from his drumming and frequent shirt changes during shows) to edit and mix and generally make them sound good. I myself am not always a huge fan of the way live performances sound: WHY DON’T THEY DO IT LIKE THE RECORD. But in this case I must say we got to a pretty rocking place with these tracks. It sounds GREAT.

One of my favorite things about playing with a band, which weirdly still sort of feels like a new thing for me, is the rediscovery of older songs. I’ve always written a mix of sad slow stuff and rock band stuff, and it’s really a wonderful feeling to open up something like Big Bad World One and let it fly. So there are plenty of old favorites on JoCo Live, and they feel reinvigorated to me because we were having a ton of fun playing them loud and fast. There are also a bunch of Artificial Heart tracks, which I will always think of more as having been born in the context of a band. And of course everything gets elevated when you’re in front of an audience that’s enjoying themselves, screaming and yelling, pogoing up and down. This album reminds me that I miss playing for all of you. I’ll be back to that as soon as I can, promise.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one. I’m doing a pre-order of the physical CD right now over at JoCoLive.com, but you can get the digital version right away. There’s also a free download of Code Monkey today, and you can stream a bunch more tracks there and check it out first. The pre-order will end October 17th, at which point I’ll crank up the release engine and put it out in all the regular places, iTunes, Amazon, etc. But if you want a CD (or a signed CD) by Christmas, pre-order now, because I can never tell how long that release process is going to take.

More things are happening! Some I can’t talk about yet, and maybe will ultimately not interest you. But I am working on new stuff, and someday will have an album of that stuff to offer you.

Anyway, I wrote the theme song. Originally it was longer and had words, but that’s very out of style on TV these days, so they used a shorter and mostly instrumental version. Because we have the internet however, I can distribute the full-on, old-timey style, heavily lyric’d version for you to enjoy. Look, here it is!

Going Deep with David Rees theme

Very proud of the song, but even more proud of all the friends and wives who made this great show. You should watch it, and report back to me.

Hey everyone, during my recent Spring Cleaning I found a bunch of t-shirts from old tours sitting in my basement!  I’m hoping that they will be loved and enjoyed by my true fans, instead of sitting around collecting dust next to my washer and drier and those old Christmas decorations.

My “Spring Cleaning” Webstore (http://bit.ly/RCReYI)  will only be open for a limited time, and there is *very* limited stock available for most of these items, so please purchase anything you like before it’s gone forever.

I’m almost fully recovered from JoCo Cruise Crazy 4, which got back to Florida this Saturday. I slept for about 20 hours straight and now I think I’m OK. Though as usual, life without warm sun, fruity drinks, and unlimited food somehow seems unreasonably harsh. That will fade as my soul remembers that I live here in the real world (well, Brooklyn anyway).

First, a very big and deep thank you to the Sea Monkeys. We plan everything and make all the spreadsheets go, but you truly are at the heart of what makes the whole thing work. I had a great time, and honestly just being around that amazing community of people gives me a source of happy energy that lasts for a long time after we say goodbye. Great job.

Thanks to Paul and Storm and Drew and Anna and Scott and Leon and all the helper monkeys. There is a ton of work going on behind the scenes, and I am incredibly grateful to the many people who lend their hands and minds to the task. Thank you.

The performers. We were very lucky to have such a wonderful assembly of talent this year, people who were so good that they made me look like a dumb hack, and I didn’t mind a bit (actually, it’s not all that hard to make me look like a dumb hack, but you see what I mean). And the mix felt just right: old and new, nerdy and not. As usual, I was especially gratified to see so many performers who were entirely new to our crowd be so immediately cheered and accepted. It’s a nice feeling.

I encourage you to look into more stuff that these people do when they are not on my dumb boat. Just in case you were thinking about how you had to buy that album when you got to shore and have forgotten to do so, here’s a handy list of who was what and where you can go to find them:

Ben Acker and Ben Blacker of Thrilling Adventure Hour, made a brand new piece of radio comedy specifically for us to perform. Their show is available as a podcast on the Nerdist network and in iTunes, but also go see it live if you can.

Jim Boggia is an old friend who happens to be a complete monster of a guitar and ukulele player, not to mention a great songwriter with a great voice and I am so angry at him right now. Buy his stuff, it’s all great.

Hank Green does too many amazing things for me to list them all here, and he could have his own entire cruise if he wanted. For us he did some of his songs, and you should get them here. There are also his many YouTube channels, his record label, his online video convention VidCon, his Project for Awesome charity, his crowd funding site Subbable, and why don’t you just read wikipedia.

John Hodgman needs no introduction here I trust, though I will encourage you to check out Ragnarok, his amazing Netflix comedy special, and also the remarkable artifact that is his Ragnarok Survival Kit, which comes with mayonnaise and a rather beautiful urine flask. He also plays a mean DJ set, but only on cruise ships.

Grant Imahara, who, come on, am I really going to tell you about Grant Imahara WHO IS ON TELEVISION, specifically Mythbusters as if you don’t already know? Grant was the drunkest Artemis helmsman who has ever piloted a starship through an asteroid field (several times, and at high speed). I hope his hangover is over by now.

Paul and Storm. No comment. Kidding. After a weird and wonderfully successful Kickstarter campaign, you can expect to hear their new album Ball Pit very soon, along with the eight thousand other things they promised to their backers, and which will likely take them a couple of years to finish. They played some brand new songs on the ship, and boy howdy was it nice to see them back at work on Paul and Storm songs. It’s been too long fellas. Can’t wait to hear the rest of the album.

Emmer effing Pomplamoose. As I failed to adequately express when I introduced them, they are so good at making music videos that people sometimes forget to notice how good they are at making songs. You may know them for their covers, but please don’t neglect their original songs, which DO NOT EVEN NEED VIDEO to make them great. Also, they are as nice as delicious pie.

David Rees, who I hope you found at least a little confusing the first time he joined us onboard as our official pencil sharpener, continues to actually DO the projects that the rest of us merely think of and say “hey that would be funny.” Forget about artisanal pencil sharpening, forget about Get Your War On (both brilliant), because this Summer, we will have his brand new television show called Going Deep with David Rees with theme song by me.

John Roderick. Can you ever get enough John Roderick? Yes, you can actually, but I don’t think that has happened to you yet. Do not miss his many amazing Long Winters records, his podcast with Merlin Mann called Roderick on the Line, and whatever other stuff he’s got cooking up this year. That kid’s going places, mark my words.

Peter Sagal, yes THAT Peter Sagal, the one from the radio. Peter created a hilarious panel gameshow for us onboard, but you can find him more regularly hosting Ask Me Another, oops I mean Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. Peter also writes books, and runs fast.

I am getting tired of typing, but Nathan Sawaya simply blew me away with the life-sized LEGO sculpture of ME that he totally surprised me with onstage. My life gets weirder and weirder. Nathan is a sculptor, but with LEGO bricks, and his stuff is simply amazing to see. Right now he’s got an exhibition in Times Square called Art of the Brick that I can recommend very highly.

Paul F. Tompkins are you kidding me? I love that guy. If you live in LA you can see him live any time you like, but the rest of us have to get by with his interview show Speakeasy, the Dead Authors Podcast, the Pod F. Tompkast, the puppet panel show No You Shut Up on Fusion, and wherever else he pops up. The man is a national treasure.

Sara Watkins, and her brother Sean Watkins were just mind blowing, as I knew they would be. They sometimes appear together as the Watkins Family Hour, but they do their own solo stuff as well (Sara here, Sean here). They will soon be on tour with Nickel Creek, and I insist that you do not miss it if they come anywhere near you.

Wil Wheaton. Look at you! His books and audiobooks, his gaming show Tabletop on the Geek & Sundry network, and who am I kidding you already know all this. But still: he is the finest captain a science officer could ask for, even if he gets a little handsy.

Now that I see all that stuff together, it’s remarkable and maybe a little irresponsible that we packed all that into one cruise. Huge thanks to all the performers this year – you guys have really raised the bar. I hope you had as much fun as the rest of us did.

OK, I’m off to do mysterious things. More blogging in another six months or so.

Hooboy, Summer is truly over isn’t it? That fact came crashing down onto my poor little head a few weeks ago as I was driving back from a weekend spent in the country, where mostly what I did was make river cairns with Hodgman. I try to take it easy on the work stuff in the Summer. The kids are out of school and ready for fun, and everybody is fading in and out with their own vacation plans anyway, so I can get away with letting the world slip into my peripheral vision a little bit. It’s good for my brain and soul (but murder on my waistline, am I right?!). Now it’s back to work, which is both a bummer and a relief, which is probably how it should be.

It’s been a pretty much nonexistent tour schedule for me so far this year, which is new and different. At the end of 2012, I did the enormous bus tour with the band and John Roderick, which felt a lot to me like it put the cap on Artificial-Heart-related touring. It seemed to me that was when Artificial Heart stopped being my “new album” and became my “last album.” (“One Christmas at a Time” is technically my last album, I know, but that feels sort of like a Very Special Holiday Episode of the JoCo TV series.) Between all the opening for They Might Be Giants and my own experiments with longer band tours, it felt like I did more touring in 2011 and 2012 than I had ever done. It was an amazing stretch of really fun shows, and I learned a lot of new things about electric guitars and rock shows and audiences that were standing up. But at the end of it I was pretty tired, and starting to feel a little disconnected from my home and family, like life had gotten out of balance. Being a rock star is great fun, but it’s always trying to take over. So I decided to take a break from touring, on purpose, to just be at home a little while and get my head together, maybe write some things.

And so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what my job actually IS, based on what I actually DO on a day-to-day basis. The answer is: I do a lot of stuff. Here’s what this year has looked like for me, work-wise.

GLEE
Glee happened in January, which sucked. That took up a lot of time and energy. After the dust had settled and the lawyers had talked, it became clear to me that I could either pursue a long, stressful, and expensive journey to some unknown, probably not very satisfying version of justice, or I could drop the whole thing, get on with my life, and be satisfied with the story that had thus far been told. As it stands, my track “Baby Got Back (In the Style of Glee)” sits side-by-side with the Glee version when you search for “Glee Baby Got Back” in iTunes. Their track has a pretty low star rating. And my track raised $5000 for It Gets Better, and $5000 for VH1 Save the Music. Anyone who has heard the story has already made up their minds about what happened and what it means. Anyone who was a part of it on the FOX side has already decided whether or not they are ashamed of themselves. I have no power to significantly change either of those things any more than I already have. So I’m calling it a victory (I don’t know what FOX is calling it).

CODE MONKEY SAVE WORLD
And then Greg Pak and I did the Code Monkey Save World Kickstarter, which was amazing. We got a lot more than we asked for, and we’re now making this incredible thing. I’ve been watching the story and the artwork come together, and it’s absolutely thrilling. The universe feels just right, like all these characters belong together. We still have an enormous amount of work to do in getting together all the various rewards, on top of finishing the graphic novel itself, and the acoustic soundtrack album, and “The Princess Who Saved Herself” children’s book. As they say, a nice problem to have. Issue #1 is now available for purchase on ComiXology, with more to come over the next couple of months.

ASK ME ANOTHER
In and among those two big sources of background noise were quite a few Ask Me Another shows at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We took a break for the Summer, but they’re starting up again this month, and I’ve just posted them all to my show calendar. It’s been so interesting to watch the show grow and change as we’ve all figure out what it is and how to do it right. For my part, I mostly get to show up and play and sing and crack jokes, which is a pretty fun job. Come and see us – this coming Tuesday our guest is Justin Long. Oh, and you kids still listen to podcasts? Because the Ask Me Another podcast is right here.

JOCO CRUISE CRAZY
And of course, there is JoCo Cruise Crazy in February 2014 – our FOURTH cruise! We’ve been quietly working behind the scenes to create another awesome experience, and we recently announced an amazing lineup of performers. In addition to Paul and Storm (and of course ME) we’ve got Jim Boggia, Hank Green, John Hodgman, Tig Notaro, Pomplamoose, David Rees, John Roderick, Peter Sagal, Nathan Sawaya, Paul F. Tompkins, Sara Watkins, and even I can’t believe this list as I’m typing it! Also there will be some kind of ball pit. A ball pit at sea. What? That’s right. It’s going to be GREAT.

We’re getting to the point where some cabin types will start to run out, so if you have your sights set on a particular kind of room, my advice is to get on it. We’ll have more information about hotels and transportation “soon,” as we like to say in the cruise business.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE MUSIC!
Well, yes. I’ve been messing around. That’s very unsatisfying I know. But it’s true: I’ve been playing with knobs and computers and guitars and drum beats and synthesizers and words, in pursuit of ideas that I find interesting and fun. I have made a bunch of little bits of things all for myself, trying stuff out. I have a few musical ideas that I’m looking forward to fleshing out into actual songs. All of it will become an album eventually. What form it will take I’m not entirely sure yet. Trying to follow the muse, but as many of you know, she can be tricksy. The other day I put all these little half finished ideas into a list, and it was actually kind of a long list, and there were actually some good things on it. So I’m optimistic.

I think that’s what I got, for now. I hope your re-entry into non-Summer life was a gentle one. And I hope we don’t default on our debt and cause a global economic crisis. Fingers crossed!

Code Monkey Save World #1 is now available online through ComiXology. If you were a Kickstarter backer at the digital level or higher, you should have already received your download code (and if not let us know!). But if you missed out the first time around, you can now buy it the old fashioned way, with money.

I’m really happy with it. Greg Pak and everyone else has done a fantastic job of fitting all these different pieces together in a way that’s natural and funny and poignant and just generally awesome. Thanks to everyone who made this possible – I’m still amazed that this thing exists.

Issue #2 is mostly done, and we’ll be rolling that out to backers soon, and to the public soon after. We hope to have all four issues finished and available digitally in the next couple of months, and the physical book (and the 25,000 other physical items from the Kickstarter) done and shipping in February of 2014. I will likely have copies with me on the cruise.

We do plan to make physical copies available for sale in some way, but haven’t yet figured out how best to do that. A lot depends on how it’s received by the general public. One of the side effects of crowd funding is that you basically chop off the top of your sales curve and eat it all up immediately, and then you don’t know how much of a market there is for a thing outside your supporters. So I don’t know if we’ll have some sort of distributor, do it ourselves, or find some other solution. But do not despair: if you were not a backer and want it, we will make sure there’s a way for you to get it.

OK, stop reading and start READING.

One Christmas at a Time is BY-NC except for “Wikipedia Chanukah” which is BY-SA.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Coulton

https://twitter.com/IronCurtaiNYC/status/332122652107997185

After a few hundred Scarface hours of database polishing (keep in mind each Scarface hour is worth about 250 man hours – Scarface isn’t really a MAN anymore per se), we’re finally ready to open up booking for JoCo Cruise Crazy 4 to the general public. To refresh your memory, the cruise is awesome. To refresh it a little more: February 23 – March 1, 2014 on board Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas, traveling to Grand Cayman, Jamaica, and Labadee.

So have at, and get em while they last:

JoCo Cruise Crazy 4: Book Now!

Greg Pak is an old friend from college, and a talented writer of many comics including “Planet Hulk,” “Batman/Superman,” and “Magneto Testament.” Artist Takeshi Miyazawa will do pencils and inks, Jessica Kholinne (“X-Treme X-Men”) will color, and Simon Bowland (“Incredible Hercules”) will letter.

Boy howdy, this internet thing moves fast! I was expecting a slow ramp up that would allow me to carefully compose a thoughtful blog post about the nature of crowd funding. Instead, we blew through our goal of $39,000 in less than a day, and we currently sit at around $125,000. We’ve already increased the page count from 60 to 80, kind of a retroactive stretch goal arbitrarily set at some number that was higher than we ever expected to get, and we’ve got other stuff planned for even more ridiculous numbers.

FOR INSTANCE: today we’ve announced that if we reach $130,000 we’ll increase the page count yet again to 96 pages, which means four covers, the back cover, 80 pages of story, and eleven pages of extras and goodies. That’s 32 more story pages than we originally planned. And as part of those 11 pages of goodies, we’ve enlisted Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, the creators of “Action Philosophers” and “Comic Book Comics,” to create a little two page story based on one of my songs (probably “Mandelbrot Set”).

THIS WHOLE THING IS NUTS.

Honestly, the response has blown my expectations out of the water. My sincere thanks to everyone who has already chipped in – it’s going to be an amazing thing thanks to you guys. Everyone knows this already, but it’s pretty great living here in the future.

You can check out more artwork, story details, and all the various cool stuff available to backers here at our Kickstarter project.

It always takes me a few days to come down from the experience. I think I’m almost there, though I still catch myself thinking that Brooklyn is a dream, and being onboard a giant cruise ship is my real life.

First of all: holy BEANS that was a good time! This was the third year we’ve done JoCo Cruise Crazy, and we’ve learned a lot each year about how to run an event cruise. This was the best so far in my opinion. Everything seemed to run pretty smoothly, or else there were enough people shielding me from the bad stuff that it felt that way, and either situation is fine with me! I can’t thank Paul and Storm and Scarface enough for all their hard work, not to mention the army of volunteer helper monkeys who held the whole thing together. Scarface in particular was working his poor little hideously disfigured butt off while the rest of us were chilling with tropical beverages. He gets an extra ration of gruel (and once his gruel debt is paid off, he will be able to eat gruel again, so yay Scarface!).

The Sea Monkeys continue to own this thing. I say it every time, and it was truer than ever this year, but so much of what happens just grows naturally out of this huge group of wonderful people being together in the same place at the same time. The shadow cruise is where it’s at. It would be dishonest for me to take credit for ALL the awesomeness. Though I will say that we had a great lineup of performers, old and new, and in addition to the wonderful, funny, moving stuff they did on stage, their presence at all sorts of non-performative hangout type events really made it feel like a giant weeklong party. Such a great vibe.

A few favorite moments: the Double Clicks self-doubting Mars Rover song, the increasingly ridiculous Mike Phirman birthday gag, John Roderick’s debut of a BRAND NEW SONG, Hodgman’s cruise ship emergency government plan, his riffing on cylinders with Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, Joseph Scrimshaw’s story about french kissing a bear, celebrity Artemis (one of those “I can’t believe this is my job moments”), Zoe Keating blowing everyone’s heads off and making everyone cry so that our tears became the sea and the sea was somehow INSIDE HER CELLO, Randall Munroe’s solar system physics tweaks on John Roderick’s airplane story, the incredible scene that was the Hodgman/Rees DJ Danceparty Showdown, me getting riddled with bullets during Wil Wheaton’s Robocop sitcom reading, and Storm’s apparently epic karaoke moment (which I did NOT EVEN SEE and will always regret), and most of all, my new favorite thing ever, live band karaoke with Christian and Adam and you. And that’s just the official events – it barely scratches the surface. So much stuff.

We’ve already gotten a ship for next year, and I cannot recommend strongly enough that everyone in the world book passage thereon. We’ll be on Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas, February 23 – March 1, 2014, sailing from Ft. Lauderdale to Georgetown, Grand Cayman; Falmouth, Jamaica; and Labadee, Haiti. At the moment booking is only open to Sea Monkeys who were on JCCC3, but we’ll open it up to the general public very soon.

Thank you guys for making this trip so great. I can’t wait to see all of you again.

iTunes: Baby Got Back (In the Style of Glee)
GooglePlay: Baby Got Back (In the Style of Glee)
AmazonMP3: Baby Got Back (In the Style of Glee)

I’ve released this track as a single – it should be on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play eventually if it’s not already. It’s a cover of Glee’s cover of my cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s song, which is to say it’s EXACTLY THE SAME as my original version. I’m releasing this under the same Harry Fox license I used for the 2005 release, so Mix will get all the royalties due to him. I’ll donate the proceeds from all sales that happen between now and the end of February to two charities: The VH1 Save the Music Foundation, and The It Gets Better Project. (fine print: iTunes will get their cut first of course, then I’ll deduct enough to cover my licensing fees, and split the rest between the two. iTunes sometimes takes a long time to report sales, sometimes even a couple of months, so I won’t be able to do the math and make the donation until I have the numbers. But I’ll let you know when I’ve gotten the amount and made the donation.)

I’ve been reading your tweets and posts and I’m truly grateful for your support – honestly, this has been a very stressful time, and it means so much to see how many of you are behind me. I’ve been trying to figure out a positive way to channel all this energy. I haven’t asked you guys to take any specific action throughout this thing, but now I am asking: buy the track, give it some stars, leave a comment (please be civil), and tell everyone you can. Call it a form of protest, awareness raising, viral PR hackitude, whatever you like. I don’t know how big this will get, but there’s a potential to make a lot of noise this way – imagine if this thing charts! And failing that, we will create some real world impact by raising a lot of money for two great causes that are directly related to the Glee brand. There’s your win-win.

Maybe this is something that the Glee people would like to give some EXPOSURE. Though, in order to do that they’d have to make some kind of public acknowledgement that I exist. We’ll see! Maybe they’ll even want to match the gesture, and donate all their February proceeds for their version too!

I will have a lot more to say about this situation soon, most likely Monday. Stay tuned…

Check out the Store!

If you like to download your music, you can get individual songs or whole albums, either in 224K MP3 format, open OGG format or in full quality FLAC. You can also purchase downloads from the iTunes music store and other online music stores.

As for CDs, don’t feel bad, I still buy them too sometimes. You can get them on Amazon. ]]> http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2013/01/18/baby-got-back-and-glee/ http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2013/01/18/baby-got-back-and-glee/#comments Fri, 18 Jan 2013 17:56:57 +0000 http://www.jonathancoulton.com/?p=2993 This morning, someone pointed me to this:

http://glee.wikia.com/wiki/Baby_Got_Back

Admittedly it seems to be an unofficial wiki, and I can’t find any clearly FOX-based source that lists this track as a part of episode 11 of season 4. So I guess the jury’s still out on whether or not this is an official Glee recording.

If it is, I have some questions about how IP works in terms of this song. It’s a cover of a Sir Mix-a-Lot song obviously, but I wrote a new melody for it, which this recording uses. Back when I released it, I bought the statutory license to distribute my version of this song through Harry Fox. Creative Commons doesn’t come into play because it’s a cover song, and anyway my CC license specifies Non-Commercial.

A complicating factor is that, to my ears, it sounds like it actually uses the audio from my recording – not the vocals obviously, but the instruments sound EXTREMELY similar. And I could swear I hear the duck quack somewhere in the background there, though it’s hard to say if that’s just my ears expecting it.

Anyway, yes, weird. Exciting times! I’ll post any updates here.

UPDATE 1/18: No word from Glee or Fox, but I’ve seen screenshots of the song on Swedish iTunes listed with artist = Glee Cast. My lawyers are researching the copyright issues, and I am trying to figure out how to isolate the duck quack, or otherwise test the theory that some of my tracks are in there. This side-by-side comparison is crazy: https://soundcloud.com/alacrion/joco-v-glee

MORE UPDATE 1/20: Still no new info. At this point I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on, if this is really Glee, etc. We’ll know more this coming week when the episode it’s supposed to be from actually airs, or if/when FOX actually has a comment about this. Until then, while I am really grateful for everyone’s support, I would suggest that we all chill out until we have the whole story. This is the internet after all – it’s a complicated place and it gets a lot of things wrong. If you want to take some kind of action, donate to the EFF or Creative Commons, which is a good thing to do anytime.

MORE MORE UPDATE 1/25: Well, they aired it, seemingly unchanged. And it’s now for sale in the US iTunes store. They also got in touch with my peeps to basically say that they’re within their legal rights to do this, and that I should be happy for the exposure (even though they do not credit me, and have not even publicly acknowledged that it’s my version – so you know, it’s kind of SECRET exposure). While they appear not to be legally obligated to do any of these things, they did not apologize, offer to credit me, or offer to pay me, and indicated that this was their general policy in regards to covers of covers. It does not appear that I have a copyright claim, but I’m still investigating the possibility (which I consider likely) that they used some or all of my audio. I’ll write something longer and more detailed about this when I can get my head together about it probably in a couple of days. Thanks for your support, but please continue not to burn anything down.

We’re in the final stretch of this year, so buckle up!

The big headline: we’ve added a New York City show at City Winery on December 14th. Think of it as a sort of album release celebration/Christmas Spectacular. John Roderick and I will delight you with songs from our new Christmas album One Christmas at a Time, as well as a selection of your favorite me songs and him songs. Tickets still available: http://bit.ly/UPqC0O

The Deluxe Gift Box edition of One Christmas at a time can still be ordered in time for Christmas delivery in the US – shipping will likely start next week. After this weekend we won’t be able to promise by-Christmas delivery, so if you’re getting this as a gift for someone, best do it now: http://bit.ly/TXejyU

Are you getting excited about JoCo Cruise Crazy? Because I sure am. We’re nearing the close of the booking window at this point – we have to adjust the amount of cabins we have on hand to match demand as closely as possible so we don’t end up with a bunch of empties. So if you’re on the fence about going, don’t wait too long because soon our selection of cabin types is going to start getting limited. You should come!

Tour has been great, and this bus thing is amazing. Turns out all that driving was making me grumpy and tired, and now that I don’t have to do it, I’m only slightly grumpy and tired! Thanks to everyone who has come out to see us – the shows have been terribly fun for us to play. Just a few left and then that’s it for me this year…

12/6 Charlotte: http://bit.ly/QUzg0i
with John Roderick

12/7 Orlando: http://ticketf.ly/SopGPm
supershow with I Fight Dragons and MC Lars AND John Roderick

12/8 St. Petersburg: http://bit.ly/O38lz9
with John Roderick

12/14 New York City: http://bit.ly/UPqC0O
CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR with John Roderick

OK!

Shows have been wonderful – thanks so much to everyone for coming out to see us. The band has really been clicking lately, and it feels like we’ve been playing together for years. John Roderick and I have been slowly but surely working songs from One Christmas at a Time into the set, and they’re awful fun to play. And of course it’s nice to see all you folks in this part of the country again – it’s been a while!

We’ve been doing these tour bus happy hours. It’s one of the things that I wouldn’t be able to fit in if it weren’t for this bus situation. Now I get to enjoy a cocktail and some conversation with a bunch of strangers on my tour bus right before my rock show, LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. I can tell that some of you don’t really like Manhattans and are just pretending to drink them, but I don’t care because Manhattans are delicious. There’s still time to enter these various contests for the remaining cities.

Yesterday was my birthday. In what has become a long-standing tradition, the superfans from the forums got together and made a celebratory video called JoCo Day. I don’t say it as often as I think it, so it’s worth saying again now: you fans are amazing. Your support over the years is an ongoing phenomenon that continues to surprise and delight me. Thank you.

File under “where do they find the time?”: Susan made 250 cupcakes with different JoCo song themes for the Houston show last night. I’ve never made 250 of anything in my life. There are now an awful lot of cupcakes on the bus. Here are the various species in all their glory:

Perhaps you have been following the adventures of @RealBusPig and @RealBusCat on Twitter. It would take too long to explain, so I won’t. But anyway, big ups to Molly, who sent me this robot cat for my birthday:

And finally, huge thanks to John Paul, who works the Environmental Control and Life Support System desk in ISS Mission Control at NASA, and who took us on an amazing tour of the Johnson Space Center. We were there watching the live feed from emmer effing space while the emmer effing astronauts were going to sleep for the day. Crazytown. Here’s us with the flight director:

So yeah. Going pretty well I guess. Another week of shows coming up…

12/2 Dallas
12/4 Nashville
12/5 Atlanta
12/6 Charlotte
12/7 Orlando (supershow with I Fight Dragons and MC Lars)
12/8 St. Petersburg
12/14 New York City (One Christmas at a Time Show with John Roderick)

Go here to watch. Showtime is 8 PM MOUNTAIN TIME, but the buy button and all the show details will be on that page starting at 7:30 MOUNTAIN TIME. It costs $5 for the whole show and you can pay with Paypal.

I’ll also be taking questions from the internet audience during the show. And don’t feel bad if you miss it, because I think there will be a way to buy it later. Maybe?

It’s an experiment!

But you know me: I’m a man of the people. I’m not going to keep this bus to myself like some power crazed egomaniac. No! I’m instead going to leverage it in a social media context, I MEAN share it with my fans. Before every show we’re going to do bus happy hours. Three randomly selected lucky show attendees (and their guests) will join me on board before the show for a happy hour featuring snacks and beverages and general bus luxury (technically it will not last an hour, and technically you don’t have to be happy).

It’s a contest you see: if you’re coming to one of these shows, tweet about that show and include its hashtag and link (use the table below). We’ll select three winners at random the day of the show. Schedules will vary, but generally we’ll try to start the party about a half an hour before doors open.

Never has spamming your friends been so potentially beneficial for you!

11/24 Los Angeles
11/25 San Diego
11/27 Salt Lake City
11/28 Denver
11/29 Tulsa
11/30 Austin
12/1 Houston
12/2 Dallas
12/4 Nashville
12/5 Atlanta
12/6 Charlotte
12/7 Orlando
12/8 St. Petersburg

This is my first ever bus tour, and I’m pretty excited about it. For those of you who don’t know how this works, and I was one of them until recently: you do the show, then get on the bus and go to sleep while someone else (a robot I think?) drives it to the next city. It’s a little more expensive than what it would cost to rent a van and a trailer and pay for hotel rooms, but it allows me to reach some cities I couldn’t otherwise get to by driving myself. And it means that when we start the show, we won’t all be strung out and exhausted from a 6 hour drive. Also probably hookers and blow I think.

One more thing: we’ve all noticed that the internet has lately gotten pretty crowded with people asking other people to come see things, or buy things, or kickstart things. Even I want the internet to shut up sometimes. The truth is, it’s harder and harder to get anyone’s attention these days. I can guarantee that some people are just hearing about these shows now, and some other people will not hear about them until after I’ve already played in their city. THIS IS A TERRIBLE CRIME! This doesn’t EVER need to happen here in 2012. So I’m saying this for all of us: if you know someone who would want to go to one of these shows, you should make sure they know about it. Spread the word: retweet, retumbl (?), re-facebook-erate (??), and pinterrupt (pretty sure that’s a thing) your friends.

I’m only trying to help you!

It’s a once in a lifetime intersection of several entertainment empires. Who knows what will happen? Distill all those different kinds of fun, put them in a beaker, agitate and stand back: KA-POW! We are renting special tuxedos, so you know that we’re serious. I can promise you that there will be songs and comedy and talking, lots and lots of talking…

Here’s how it works. There are 40 funder slots available – basically 40 tickets that go on sale in advance of the rest of them. After two weeks (or sooner), these slots will theoretically be filled, and the rest of the tickets will go on sale. If you are one of these first 40 people, you get your money back if we get more than 160 people to come to the show.

It’s a pretty cool idea I think: get a core of fans to cover what you need to make the show happen, and then incentivize those to spread the word. It’s a little popup street team. In a world where I didn’t know that I was coming to Salt Lake City for sure, we’d set these funder numbers at a level to cover my travel and production expenses, but you know what, I’m still doing the show even if there are only 5 people there. I hope there are more than 5 people there.

So if you live in Salt Lake City and want to maybe see the show for free, go get your tickets now. And then tell everyone you know to get tickets too, and maybe you’ll get to see the show for free. Or not! Could be a disaster! Exciting! Honestly I have no idea if this is going to work, but as you know, I am a scientist. I like to watch what happens.

Either way, can’t wait to see you again SLC!

Citizens:

Hello! I hope your Summer was as relaxing and indulgent as mine. I actually managed to stop looking at the internet for short stretches of time, which feels like a dangerous luxury when you’re in my line of work. What’s funny is that after a few days of vague anxiety, you forget all about what you’re missing. The internet is totally made up! The flip side of this is that now here we are in September and I have a ton of dropped threads sitting in my inbox. I AM ALREADY BEHIND. But it’s OK. There’s a lot of exciting stuff coming up this Fall. Allow me to illuminate you.

England and Sweden
Yes! So excited to be returning to a few cities in England, plus a bonus show in Sweden (it’s an experiment – I hope there is an audience HA HA). All acoustic shows with Paul and Storm opening: Stockholm, London, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester. I’m sorry we won’t have time to make it to Ireland or Scotland this time around, but I’m certainly looking forward to the Jaffa Cakes. Still plenty of tickets left, if you know what I mean. Details and links below.

Ask Me Another
The new NPR quiz show I’m kinda sorta assistant hosting/Paul Shaffering has gotten a ton of positive feedback from the first thirteen episodes. It’s now being co-produced by WNYC here in New York, and will be coming back this Fall as a weekly show. We’re all very proud of how fun it is to perform in and hopefully listen to. Tickets are already on sale for the first six shows: http://tktwb.tw/U7Oay4. Unfortunately, I will only be able to make half of these (Nov 12th, Nov 19th, Dec 10th), but they’re lining up some excellent replacements for the shows I’m missing. Brooklyn types should come out and see us, and the rest of the nation will have to wait until we come to your town (which we may – stay tuned).

Seattle Interactive Conference
I will be appearing a couple of times at the Seattle Interactive Conference, October 29-30. I would love to tell you the details, but I don’t know them, and currently their site isn’t loading for me (you can’t, um, “interact” with it). I’ll be speaking and performing with John Roderick, John Hodgman, Scott Simpson, and Merlin Mann, and afterwards the internet will explode and contract to a singularity and then we will all be robots. Watch the skies!

Me and Hodgman in Massachusetts
For TWO NIGHTS ONLY, John Hodgman and I will put aside our longstanding famous person feud (?) and offer up stories and songs to the people of Massachusetts. Shows are Nov 2 at the Calvin in Northampton and Nov 3 at the Wilbur Theater in Boston. Tickets are on sale now – details and links below.

Everywhere Tour
This will be the last stretch of what we at JoCo Industries call “The Artificial Heart Tour.” Still waiting on a couple of confirmations, but basically we’ll start in LA and head across the Southern part of the country until we get to Florida, ROCKING AS WE GO: LA, San Diego, Salt Lake City (I hope), Denver, St. Louis (I hope also), Tulsa, Austin (I hope also ALSO), Dallas, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando, and Tampa. These are all band shows. I don’t know yet who will be opening. I don’t have ticket links for anywhere but Dallas yet. I stink!

Christmas Album with John Roderick
I don’t know how soon I can let you hear it, but I’m excited to announce that John Roderick and I will be putting out an album of original Christmas songs sometime this Fall. I was in Seattle for a stretch of time around PAX, and we decided to get together and write and record and see what happened. What happened is that we experienced a legitimate CHRISTMAS MIRACLE, and also wrote one Hannukah song. It’s mostly just the two of us playing all the instruments, except that we got a little help on a few tunes from our friend Jason Finn, who likes to play the drums. Mixing is happening now. I’ll be sure and let everyone know the moment you can listen and obtain these soon-to-be-classic holiday songs.

Cruise, Still
I know we haven’t been talking about it much, but that’s because we’re strategizing. In not too long a time, we’ll have more details on event schedules, room assignments for those who have booked, and other various kinds of informations for you. Until then, if you haven’t booked yet, may I ask respectfully WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE DOING? It’s bigger and better than ever this year – we’re on a new ship and a new cruise line, and we’ve got performers from prior cruises plus a few who are JoCo Cruise virgins (Virgin Monkeys?). Listen, you know how lazy I am, right? You know I wouldn’t keep doing this if it wasn’t a ton of fun for me and everyone who attends. Are you ready? OK, book now: http://bit.ly/LCZyhg

Other Secret Things
[REDACTED]

OK, here are the show details:

Stockholm, Sweden – September 17
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
Södra Teatern, 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/O8LL4i

London, UK – September 20
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
Union Chapel, 7 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/NyjO77

Birmingham, UK – September 21
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
MAC Theater, 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/MF1juq

Bristol, UK – September 22
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
Colston Hall, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/Q2467t

Manchester, UK – September 23
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
Manchester Academy 2, 7 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/OObUEQ

Northampton, MA – November 2
With John Hodgman
Calvin Theater, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/Q2OQDL

Boston, MA – November 3
With John Hodgman
Wilbur Theater, 7 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/SEIroh

Brooklyn, NY – November 12 and November 19
Ask Me Another – Season Two!
Bell House, 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://tktwb.tw/U7Oay4

Los Angeles, CA – November 24
Largo, time TBD

San Diego, CA – November 25
Anthology, time TBD

Salt Lake City – November 27
Venue and time TBD

Denver, CO – November 28
Soiled Dove, time TBD

St. Louis, MO – November 29
Venue and time TBD

Tulsa, OK – November 30
The Shrine, time TBD

Austin, TX – December 1
Venue and time TBD

Dallas, TX – December 2
Granada Theater, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/U7YRkb

Nashville, TN – December 4
3rd and Lindsley, time TBD

Atlanta, GA – December 5
Variety Playhouse, time TBD

Charlotte, NC – December 6
Visulite Theater, time TBD

Orlando, FL – December 7
The Beacham, time TBD

Tampa, FL – December 8
State Theater, time TBD

Brooklyn, NY – December 10
Ask Me Another – Season Two!
Bell House, 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://tktwb.tw/U7Oay4

Thank you for reading this long email.

j

Here’s what’s on the docket:

New York, NY – August 18
Glass Houses: Classic Album Night with the Punk Rock Heavy Metal Karaoke Band
Fontantas, 10 PM
Tickets at the door: $5

Seattle, WA – August 31-September2
PAX
All weekend long, Washington State Convention Center
Info: http://www.paxsite.com

Stockholm, Sweden – September 17
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
Södra Teatern, 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/O8LL4i

London, UK – September 20
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
Union Chapel, 7 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/NyjO77

Birmingham, UK – September 21
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
MAC Theater, 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/MF1juq

Bristol, UK – September 22
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
Colston Hall, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/Q2467t

Manchester, UK – September 23
Acoustic, with Paul and Storm
Manchester Academy 2, 7 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/OObUEQ

Not as if it’s been crazy busy around here, but expect less talky talk from me until August (can you do NEGATIVE posts per week?). Hopefully I will not be eaten by a shark. We’ll see I guess…

Inside the cardboard box was a nailed-shut wooden crate with this on the top:

and this on the side:

Erp.

I waited till the end of the day so my kids could watch me open it, because what kid would not want to open a mysterious package that came from a cemetery? Inside was a layer of moss with a tiny shovel. Beneath the moss was green dirt, and buried in the green dirt was a coffin, along with a headstone and some chains. Like you do:

I confess I was just a TINY bit concerned I was going to find a human hand in there or something. But it was not a human hand. It was this guy:

The scroll explains that he is Eben Hardwick, undead person and movie extra. He’s a silicone zombie with posable limbs from the movie Paranorman, and the kind people at Laika (who also made Coraline) sent him to me. Because, you know, zombies.

I have never received something something so fantastic in the mail in all my life. And I know a little something about special boxes that contain special things (what’s up level 4!), so I can tell you that this particular special box is just plain amazing. I am extremely flattered that they would think to send me such a thing.

Which is why I have no qualms at all about saying that you should all go see Paranorman when it comes out in August, because I’m going to, and not only because I want to see if I can spot my guy. As you will know if you have seen Coraline, these people do great work. Plus they sent me a silicone zombie in a coffin. You should also check out weirdwins.com, where there is a lot of cool behind the scenes stuff from the people who worked on the film.

Eben says hi:

I retweeted Aimee Mann’s link to a post by David Lowery on his Trichordist blog, a post that he wrote in response to something Emily White posted on the All Songs Considered blog. You should read both posts to get up to speed. Let me know when you’re ready.

OK? So Emily is 21, and she writes about how she is young enough to have never had to go through the transition from physical music to digital. She’s never paid for much music in her life, but she has a large library of mp3s, and she has some misgivings about that. But she’s pretty sure that her generation is never going to pay for music. David’s response is a good read, and very instructive about the state of the music business and the internet, and I won’t try to sum it up here for fear of misrepresenting his position – you should definitely read it.

Some people are asking why I retweeted that link to an argument that is very different from the one that I made in response to the MegaUpload shutdown. The answer is because it made me think. I hesitate to even write this post, because every time I start talking about this stuff it feels like I’m poking a bear – a bear who is a lot smarter and more well-informed than me, a bear who is distributed all over the internet and has various law degrees, and has read and understood all the economic studies about file sharing and the decline in music business revenue. I imagine the bear will write a bunch of posts that make me think even more, and also make me feel kind of dumb about what I said or failed to say. I admit: I don’t know what I’m talking about, and a lot of what I believe comes from gut feelings, personal experience, and wishful thinking. Answers I have none, but here are some things David’s post makes me think about.

I have a different perspective on the music business than a lot of artists because of the way my career happened. Before I left my software job and started Thing a Week, the music business seemed like a private club to which I would never belong. Some of that was self-doubt and laziness I’m sure, but not all of it. I honestly don’t believe I could have made this thing happen under the old system. So to me, the internet is everything – it changed my life, it saved me, it continues to sustain me today. But over the past few years I’ve gotten to know a bunch of artists and industry people who came up in that old system, and who have been watching it fall apart around them. It’s a terrible thing, and as a human being, it’s hard to look those people in the eye while I’m waving the Free Culture flag. So when I read a post like David’s it really knocks me off my feet. What if I’ve been wrong all this time? What if I’ve been suckered in by the Free Culture movement, and all this rah-rah filesharing talk is contributing to the decline of civilization? What if it’s ME who’s on the wrong side of history?

I think David and I agree on at least one point, which is that Emily’s suggestion that buying music isn’t convenient doesn’t really make sense. It’s gotten pretty easy over the last few years to pay for the music that you like. And like David, I think the right choice is to support the artists that you love by giving them money. I also think it’s kind of shitty that there’s a lot of money generated from filesharing activites that makes some people rich and never gets to the artists (see also “Meet the New Boss, Worse Than the Old Boss”). I agree it would be nice if there were an easy way to fix that.

I’m trying hard to find the place where David and I begin to disagree, and I’m not even sure we do. I think it’s more a matter of our perspectives, and the context in which we see all this stuff happening. I’ll start with this: David points out that Emily’s free music isn’t really free, and that she needed to buy a bunch of stuff in order to get this free music: a smartphone with a data plan, an iPod, a Macbook. He wonders why Emily was OK paying for this very expensive stuff, but not OK paying for music. The answer is obvious: those are physical objects that Emily would have had to steal from a store, out there in meat space, using her actual body and hands, risking physical incarceration and getting in serious trouble. I am quite certain that if Emily could go to a website and download a free illegal copy of a Macbook in the safety of her own home, she would do it. Hell, I might even do it. I don’t know that I can articulate here to everyone’s satisfaction why getting digital music for free is different from getting physical objects for free, but it is hard to argue that it is not, in some fundamental way, very different. Clearly, we all think it’s different, otherwise we would be stealing as many laptops as we are mp3s. Mp3s are lying all over the ground waiting for us to pick them up, and no matter how many we pick up, there are always more. Whether you think picking them up is wrong or not, it would be hard to argue that this is not the current reality.

This difference between physical and digital is the meat in this sandwich. After all, the music business didn’t exist until it became possible to record music onto a medium that could be mass-produced. To be clear, I’m not saying that nobody made money making music before there were records, just that the music industry as we know it is almost exclusively based on the idea that there’s a physical object you can sell, and that access to that physical object is the only way you can play the music whenever you want. That’s obviously over. And it doesn’t just put a bunch of corporate suits at risk, it puts artists at risk. We know that the record industry is falling apart because look at these charts and graphs. The scary thing is, there’s also a very real possibility that in the long term, being a musician will no longer be a thing that you can do to make money.

It’s already happening. The job of being an artist and the business of selling music have both changed and are still changing. The money flows to different places now – it goes to Spotify, Grooveshark, Google, MegaUpload, Apple, Amazon. Some of them give artists a decent cut, some of them give artists nothing at all. Some of them are real douchebags, some of them maybe have the sheen of non-douchebagism, but the truth is that none of those guys care about artists because they are businesses (in contrast with many wonderful label people I have met, who are often fans first and business people second). This is how things are, and it’s good for some people and bad for other people. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

John Roderick tweeted a quote from Michael Penn. I don’t know the source of it, but here it is: “Recorded music exists now in a nether world between commerce and charity, dependent entirely on the ethics of strangers.” He’s not wrong. And that reality has a great deal to do with the fact that music is now a digital thing – it costs almost nothing to reproduce and distribute in unlimited quantities. There is no scarcity anymore, no discrete physical object to build a business around, no reason to pay for it other than wanting to support the artist so they can make more music, a long term proposition that isn’t always the first thing you think of when your finger is hovering over the download link. Some people support artists even though they don’t have to, which is a lot like how it used to be before there were recordings. You might call that nether world between commerce and charity “patronage.”

I believe this is the long-term future of all things, not just music. Here is where I will lose a large percentage of my audience, because I’m now going to get a little science fictiony and start talking about the future of nanotechnology and 3D scanners and printers, and the eden of abundance that awaits us in a glorious future of machine saviors. Stay with me though, because I’m going to bring this back to the David Lowery post in a bit.

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s just say that within a few years there will exist a pretty reliable, pretty cheap, consumer 3D printer that you can buy at Staples and have in your house (this is not a crazy thing to say). You can give it the specs of an object and it will print it out in plain white plastic. Your costs are the machine, the raw plastic, the time it takes to print it, and whatever you pay for the digital file that has the object specs (hint: some people are going to charge you, but the internet is going to drive the price of these kinds of files towards $0). Let’s say there’s also some pretty accurate, pretty cheap 3D scanner technology out there too.

Your kid loves Legos. He’s got an X-wing fighter kit that he’s super excited about, and as he’s putting it together, one of the little pointy laser turret pieces on the tips of the wings slips out of his hands and falls down the central air conditioning vent. No problem. You fire up the old internet, and you find www.legowarez.to, the small crazy place where all of the Lego nuts go to obsessively upload and catalog 3D scans of every lego piece that has ever existed. This site is ad supported, and some douchebag in Nigeria is getting rich off it. But you find the file for the piece you need, you download it, and a few minutes later you’ve printed out a replacement piece.

How do you feel about that? Do we need to step in and protect Lego’s interests? I’m assuming that this act is some kind of theft of intellectual property – you are, after all, getting a copy of a thing for free that Lego presumably owns. But their business is not just based on intellectual property, it’s also based on the manufacture of these objects. So I don’t know, you’re not stealing a Lego piece precisely, but you are stealing the idea of a Lego piece, and not just a brick, but a specific custom piece that they spent money and time to design, create, and license from George Lucas. Ethically, it’s a little complicated, right?

Let’s take it further and say that you have a cheap and reliable consumer 3D scanner at home, and every time you get a new set of Legos for your kid, you scan and catalog the whole thing just to make sure you have a backup copy of all the pieces, so you don’t need to poke around the annoying, popup-laden, douchebaggy legowarez site the next time you lose a piece. How’s that? Still OK? Or is that not cool? You are presumably stepping a little bit on their business interests, because that might represent a bunch of replacement pieces you will not be buying from them. And theoretically you could print out a second copy of a Lego set that you only paid for once. But if it’s all just for personal use, maybe you’re OK with that.

What if a new Death Star kit came out and you didn’t buy it, but instead went to the legowarez.to site and just got the whole thing for free and printed it out? This is pretty clearly uncool I think. It’s money that Lego would have gotten but did not – well, probably, assuming you would have bought it in the absence of an available pirated version. In fact, this transaction created some small amount of profit for the douchebag in Nigeria who puts ads on legowarez.to, the 3D printer company, and your internet provider. That’s money that your sense of justice might tell you belongs in Lego’s pockets instead. So, what are our ethical obligations here? Do you think we should figure out a way to shut down legowarez.to? Do you think we need to get the 3D printer company to take some responsibility and give some of that profit back to Lego?

What if the Lego nuts created and uploaded specs for a bunch of Lego pieces that didn’t exist? What if they made, and published for free, the specs for a kit that connected Legos with K’Nex, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, and almost every other extruded plastic construction kit you can think of? (Whoops, someone already did that actually.) That’s kind of cool because it’s an innovation that is otherwise extremely impractical – it makes an end run around about 4,000 lawyers, and crosses all sorts of intellectual property lines, and makes something that enables your kid to create a super awesome log cabin death star ferris wheel. It just would not happen without this technology enabling Lego nuts to be Lego nuts. Now what? Do you feel the need to protect Lego and K’Nex and Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys and the entire molded plastic kit industry from this threat to their business? Because once anyone in the world can just make a new Lego kit and publish it online for free, this corner of industry is going to slowly disappear – revenues will drop, layoffs will happen, and career molded plastic kit people will eventually no longer be able to make a living.

Now take all those things that just happened with Legos and imagine them happening with auto parts, shoes, forks, watches, clothing, eyeglasses, medicine, food, beer, smartphones, iPods, Macbooks (and here’s the mind fuck: with 3D printers themselves). Where along this chain do you choose to put on the brakes? (<--Strawman alert: I concede that David Lowery is not advocating the obstruction of the 3D printer industry. Hang on a second.) Now I sound like a crazy utopian futurist person. UNFOLLOW. But I think this is where my thoughts and priorities diverge from what's in David Lowery's post. I believe it's a noble and just pursuit to try to get some of the money that's flowing to MegaUpload and Google to flow to artists. It is definitely on the side of good. And I agree that the ethical choice is to pay for music (because I am an old person). I think it would be nice of Emily and her generation to realize that artists she loves deserve her financial support, and I'm pleased to see that on sites like Kickstarter, patronage is alive and well, at least for now. But I don't know if I'm going to spend a lot of effort trying to convince Emily that what she's doing is wrong, or trying to convince Google to give some of their ad revenue to me. These feel like a short-term goals, a little like skating to where the puck was a few minutes ago. I submit that it is maybe not the right place to focus our efforts. Frankly, I'd prefer it if we could make some progress on this 3D printer technology, because I am missing a lot of Lego pieces. Even though they may spell doom for my profession, Emily's attitudes toward music feel a little bit like a piece of the future to me, a little bit like the way we're all going to feel about Legos and auto parts and eyeglasses in a few decades. Emily's kids are going to be born into a world that makes them think even LESS like us old people about the ethics of intellectual property in the digital realm (a realm that will increasingly include actual physical things). They're going to seem to us like depraved, heartless monsters who think it's OK to steal Legos. Even Emily is going to be shocked and surprised. This is my bias: the decline of scarcity seems inevitable to me. I have no doubt that this fight over mp3s is just the first of many fights we're going to have about this stuff. Our laws and ethics already fail to match up with our behaviors, and for my money, those are the things we should be trying to fix. The change is already happening to us, and it's a change that WE ARE CHOOSING. It's too late to stop it, because we actually kind of like a lot of the things that we're getting out of it. I don't know how to get all that artist money back, and I don't know if we ever will. I don't much like that Spotify pays out so little to me when their service is siphoning directly out of the gas tank of my mp3 sales. But I sure do love having Spotify here on this computer I keep in my pocket. The flood comes and it doesn't matter if the water is right or wrong - you get in the boat, you stack sandbags, you climb on the roof and wait for a helicopter, and sometime later the water is calm and the world looks different. By the way, I also play music: San Francisco tonight, Portland Thursday, Seattle Friday, Vancouver Saturday. Come on out and tell me why I’m wrong.

Tonight is Boston, tomorrow New York City.

Next week is Rochester, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Alexandria (sold out!), and Philadelphia.

Then comes Ann Arbor, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver.

I’m delighted to have John Roderick opening at all these shows – he’s an amazing songwriter and a good friend, plus it means we can do Nemeses EXACTLY LIKE IT IS ON THE ALBUM. The band and I had our final rehearsal last night and have collectively decided that it’s going to be awesome.

This last couple of years I’ve worked very hard and done a lot of new and different things – the new album with the Flansburgh, the band, the tour with They Might Be Giants. I’m so looking forward to getting it out in front of you guys. Thank you for continuing to pay attention and care. See you soon.

Rock!

A while ago John Scalzi, one of my favorite sci-fi authors (and a pal as well) asked if I would write a theme song for his new novel, Redshirts. I said yes, mostly so I could get a chance to read it. You can read about and listen to what happened next and listen to the song over at tor.com as of this morning. You can also check out the whole series of chats about other sci-fi-themed songs of mine that John and I did leading up to today. I’ll be putting Redshirt up in my store soon, and the band and I will be playing it on our June tour. Hooray!

Redshirts is out June 5th, and it’s a fantastic read. BUY IT, AND ALL OTHER THINGS!

I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like working on this show – I guess nobody was, because it’s a brand new thing that we’re all figuring out as we go along. But we found our groove pretty quickly, thanks to the talented performers I was lucky enough to share the stage with. There was stuff that worked and stuff that didn’t, but hey, that’s what editing is for. And really, sometimes my favorite moments of these shows are the parts that go wrong. Mistakes are the best! That’s why I make a lot of them! It’s a live audience and actual human contestants, so there’s always plenty of room for strange things to happen. Anyway, I hope that the end result is as fun to listen to as it was to make.

The whole first season (13 episodes) has been recorded and will air over the next few months. I don’t know yet if there will be additional seasons – I hope so, but it depends on how well this first one does. We’ll know soon.

Go listen!

Podcast page

Main show page

iTunes podcast

And oh yeah hey, come see me on tour, would you?

And here’s a download link: FOM Remix

Listen, as much fun as it was traveling with and opening for They Might Be Giants, the 30 minute set created a lot of rockus interruptus for me and the band. We’re really looking forward to getting back out there with luxurious amounts of time on stage so we can play all the songs we know. And then I will also play some songs solo that only I know, perhaps on the acoustic guitar. IT WILL BE A REAL SHOW AND WE WILL DO A GREAT JOB. You should come. (There will be some sort of opening act too, details soon I hope.)

Hey, look at all these dates! Tickets on sale now!

The Paradise – Boston, MA
Friday June 1, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-boston

Gramercy Theater – New York, NY
Saturday June 2, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-nyc

German House Theater – Rochester, NY
Tuesday June 5, 8 PM
Tickets: http://ticketf.ly/art-heart-rochester

The Mod Club – Toronto, ON
Wednesday June 6, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-toronto

Rex Theater – Pittsburgh, PA
Thursday June 7, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-pittsburgh

The Birchmere – Alexandria, VA
Friday June 8, 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-alexandria

World Cafe Live – Philadelphia, PA
Saturday June 9, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-philly

The Ark – Ann Arbor, MI
Friday June 15, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-ann-arbor

Double Door – Chicago, IL
Saturday June 16, 9 PM
Tickets: http://ticketf.ly/art-heart-chicago

Guthrie Theater – Minneapolis, MN
Monday June 18, 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-minneapolis

Great American Music Hall – San Francisco, CA
Wednesday June 20, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-sf

The Aladdin Theater – Portland, OR
Thursday June 21, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-portland

Showbox at the Market – Seattle, WA
Friday June 22, 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-seattle

Venue – Vancouver, BC
Saturday June 23, 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/art-heart-vancouver

Whoa daddy! Success! Victory! Being on a giant cruise ship in a sunny place with a bunch of great people is obviously a recipe for a good time, so that part did not surprise me. We all knew we were going to laugh a lot and have fruity drinks together and hear great music and meet wonderful people. That’s assumed. The thing that I wasn’t prepared for is the extent to which all of you Sea Monkeys have simply begun to OWN this event. Again and again I was struck by this notion that you were primarily there in order to be with each other. You assembled yourselves into a Voltron of fun. The open mic night, the a cappella group, the ukulele fest at Molly’s show, the insanely great sand castles on Half Moon Cay, and the many other numerous things that I DO NOT EVEN KNOW ABOUT because I couldn’t be everywhere all the time, much as I wanted to – they are proof of what an amazing bunch of people you are. Two years in, and JoCo Cruise Crazy has this wonderful community-fueled momentum to it that we never in a million years could have created ourselves. Thank you.

We had a fantastic bunch of performers of course, a couple of whom were relatively new to this scene, and they were similarly impressed with everyone. Many thanks to all of them for their time and talents. Everyone looked really great in formal wear! I ate too many tacos from the taco bar, and somehow failed to have free ice cream EVEN ONCE! I drank too many pina coladas at JoCo Karakaoke! And I do want to give a special shout-out (Yeep!) to Paul, Storm, Dammit Liz and Scarface (not to mention all the Sea Monkey volunteers) who put in an amazing amount of work – the cruise simply could not happen without them.

Oh also, some people got married.

And oh yeah, some other people got engaged.

WHAT?!

If anyone got conceived, I haven’t heard about it yet (and don’t want to).

We’ve put a read-only archive of Twit-arrr up so you can what, read it? Do data analysis and word clouds? Whatever, knock yourselves out! There is also an enormous Flickr group filled with too many great shots of too many great things. We are already planning JoCo Cruise Crazy 3, and as you may have heard by now, are offering this fantastic pre-registration discount to those folks who pre-register for it by the end of today. We hope to have actual dates and itinerary for you very soon, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

Thank you one and all, I have the greatest job in the world.

I wrote this thing on Twitter this morning about the MegaUpload shutdown, and it’s gotten some crazy traction on the old internet. In addition, I’ve just done a couple of interviews for NPR on the subject, and I think I may have said some crazy, provocative things. There are many comments and questions out there already with more to come, and rather than have a bunch of separate discussions on a bunch of different social media platforms, I thought I would put some of my thoughts here.

First of all, I was being sarcastic. I did not see an uptick in sales because one piracy site got shut down, nor do I expect to.

Second, this was a tweet, so it was <=140 characters of ha ha, and not designed to be a thorough discussion of all the issues. I recognize these things are complicated. Obviously none of us knows the complete truth, but I'm guessing that the people who ran MegaUpload were knowingly profiting from the unauthorized download of other people's intellectual property (including mine). Probably they were making a lot of money that way. That's certainly illegal, and it doesn't exactly give them the moral high ground either. In fact, it's kind of a dick move. Essentially, they did bad things and they got in trouble for it. Here are the issues that, for me, make this complicated. Along with all the illegal stuff happening on MegaUpload was some amount of completely legal stuff. People used MegaUpload to send large files around. Some number of those files were personal files owned by the people sending them. I have no idea what the ratio was, and probably it would be impossible to figure that out with any certainty, but let's stipulate that it was a very large percentage of illegal activity, and only a very tiny percentage of the users were there for anything other than downloading content that they didn't buy. Still, today that tiny percentage had something taken away from them, without warning, maybe just a service they liked using, but maybe a piece of digital media that belonged to them - if they uploaded something and didn't keep a copy, that thing is now gone. Them's the breaks I guess, but in evaluating whether this shutdown was a net positive for us humans, you have to take that into account. Even some of the illegal usage was likely the kind of activity that approaches what I consider to be victimless piracy: people downloading stuff they already bought but lost, people downloading stuff they missed on TV and couldn't find on Netflix or iTunes, people downloading stuff they didn't like and regretted watching or hearing and never would have bought anyway, people downloading a Jonathan Coulton album (oh let's say, Artificial Heart, the new Jonathan Coulton album, which is an awesome Jonathan Coulton album called Artificial Heart) and loving it so much that in a year they decide to buy a ticket to a Jonathan Coulton show and walk up to the merch table and hand me $20. I know not everyone will think all of those things are victimless crimes, and even I can admit that some of them maybe kinda sorta have victims, but my point is that you can’t easily say that every illegal download is a lost sale, because it’s a lot more complicated than that. So when you evaluate the “damage” that a site like MegaUpload is causing, you have to think about these things too. The grand jury indictment against them says they’ve caused $500 million in damages to copyright owners. Given the complexity of actual usage on a site like MegaUpload, how can they possibly know that?

The real question in my mind these days, and what I was trying to get at with my little tweet, is: how much does piracy really hurt content creators (specifically, me)? Professional smart person Tim O’Reilly posted something that made me think about this question again in regards to SOPA/PIPA. He points out that any proponent of SOPA/PIPA starts with the assumption that all this piracy is causing great harm to lots of people and companies. Here’s his pull quote, taken from a recent statement about SOPA issued by the White House:

Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders.

Is it really as dire as all that? It’s an emergency is it? Tim points out that he and a lot of other content creators have been happily coexisting with piracy all this time, and I’m certainly one of them. Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan. The big content companies are TERRIBLE at doing both of these things, so it’s no wonder they’re not doing so well in the current environment. And right now everyone’s fighting to control distribution channels, which is why I can’t watch Star Wars on Netflix or iTunes. It’s fine if you want to have that fight, but don’t yell and scream about how you’re losing business to piracy when your stuff isn’t even available in the box I have on top of my TV. A lot of us have figured out how to do this.

So if you can stand me sounding a little crazy, listen: where is the proof that piracy causes economic harm to anyone? Looking at the music business, yes profits have gone down ever since Napster, but has anyone effectively demonstrated the causal link between that and piracy? There are many alternate theories (people buying songs and not whole albums, music sucking more, niches and indie acts becoming more viable, etc.). The Swiss government did a study and determined that unauthorized downloading (which 1/3 of their citizens do) does not create any loss in revenue for the entertainment industry. I remember but am now too lazy to find links to other studies that say the same thing. I can’t think of any study I’ve seen that demonstrates the opposite. If there is one, please point me to it. So I have a lot of trouble with the idea that the federal government is directing resources toward an ultimately ineffective game of piracy whack-a-mole (with some unknown amount of collateral damage to law-abiding citizens), when we are not even sure that piracy is a problem.

And if you can stand me sounding even crazier, here is this: making money from art is not a human right. It so happens that technological and societal blahbity bloos have conspired to create a situation where selling songs about monkeys and robots is a viable business, but for most of human history people have NOT paid for art. I don’t want this to happen again, and I would be very sad if this came to pass, but it’s not up to me to decide. We are constantly demonstrating through our actions what we believe to be the norms for acquiring and consuming content. Right now a lot of us think that it’s OK to download stuff through illegal sites under certain circumstances, and a lot of us think it’s totally fine to use those things to make videos and put them on YouTube even though YouTube profits from it. That’s not ME saying that, that’s US saying that – we’re a nation of pirates and infringers. Based on our behavior, you would not be wrong to deduce that some of us think funny videos on YouTube are more important than honoring intellectual property rights. This kind of thing has happened before. Entire industries rise and fall as the world changes and our priorities shift. Sorry.

I believe in copyright. I benefit from it. I don’t want it to go away. I love that we have laws and people to enforce them. But if I had to give up one thing, if I had to choose between copyright and the wild west, semi-lawless, innovation-fest that is the internet? I’ll take the internet every time.

Now you may comment. I’m going to watch this thread and respond when I can, and we’re going to have a nice discussion. We’re not going to have fights and call each other names, and if you’re a jerk, I’m going to delete the jerky things you say. (And if you infringe on my copyright I’m going to send federal agents to your home and throw your computers IN THE GARBAGE.)

Tickets to the tapings are free, so all you need is an available evening and the ability to get your body to where it’s happening. The next one is at the Bell House in Brooklyn on January 23rd. I’ll be on tour or on a cruise ship for much of February, so I won’t be in the February 6th and 13th shows, but I will be a part of all the rest.

Because I sense it will become a FAQ, I will answer it now: no, I won’t be playing a TON of Jonathan Coulton songs. This is not a Jonathan Coulton show, so you shouldn’t expect a 12 minute Code Monkey jam. Which is not to say that you shouldn’t come, because you should – there will be puzzles, and victories, and defeats, and witty banter, and for goodness sake it’s absolutely free. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!?!?

Tickets here!