Vienna Calling

I found myself in Vienna. Not the land of one Wolfgang Amadeus, but the land of shopping malls and Virginia surburbia.

How did I get there, you might ask? (Crickets chirp).

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a song called Code Monkey. I believe Jaime had sent the link to me. It had, I'm sure, made it to Slashdot. The song was about a coder who falls for a lovely woman (one presumes). He's a bit of a coward, a bit simple, not full of social graces.

The song was written by Jonathan Coulton, who was a software guy once upon a time, before he gave that career up for music. I went to his website to listen to the abundance of free music (he'd like you to contribute some money, of course, but is willing to let you listen to it for free).

Coulton even has a video at his website called Flickr, which starts off as one of those sickly sweet songs that seems like anyone could write, and yet, as it goes on, it seems like Coulton is trying to put words to whatever random pictures he's found at Flickr.

To continue with the story, I need to back up some. At the beginning of March, which is now nearly three full months ago, I was in San Diego attending ETECH, the Emerging Technology conference hosted by O'Reilly. This lasts four days. Day 1 is tutorial day, with opening keynotes that first evening. The next two days has keynotes in the morning and breakout sessions in the afternoon. The final day is sessions the whole day.

During one of the keynotes, a local software company, called evdb.com is promoting itself. One of the big themes of the conference is social networking, how people can collaborate with one another on the web. The founder(s) of this company figured that their website could not only be used to list events that people could go to, but they could encourage fans to "demand" performers to perform at their city. To do so, a person could add a tag that allows you to "demand" a performer.

When you click on the demand, you register your email at the Eventful database. If the person should happen to come to your neck of the woods, then it sends you an alert, saying your demand has been satisfied.

I thought it was a bit of a weird idea and wondered if it would even work.

Flash forward to a few weeks ago, and I'm checking out Coulton's website, who looks somewhat like Barry Gibb or Eric Clapton (it's the beard, I know) and notice there is the "demand it" ad on his website. I figure, what the heck, I'll put my name in and see what happens.

For a little while, nothing happened, although I had read that he was planning to be in the area, I didn't remember it. Then, I received email earlier this week saying Coulton was planning to perform in, yes, Vienna, Virginia.

He was going to be at Jammin Java. To be honest, I had no idea what kind of place this was. I thought maybe it's a coffee place. Maybe it's a club. Heck, maybe it's a place where Java coders go meet up. It's closer to the first two. It's a coffee house that hosts bands.

I wasn't sure how traffic was going to be, so I left work right around 6 PM. I figured, under normal circumstances, I would make it to Vienna in half an hour. In bad traffic, I'd just make it in an hour. I was only hoping, this being suburbia, that I would be able to park.

Turns out traffic was just fine. I was there in half an hour, and went to park, which was a little problematic, but not too bad. I went inside, got a largish cofee from people that seemed a bit goth. I would expect the people attending to be on the geek side given the kind of songs that Coulton performs.

Indeed what kind of music does Coulton play? Would he have been successful if he had been a straight-up musician. Indeed, his songs are catchy, his voice is pleasant to listen to, but it's just the kind of music that's probably rather difficult to be successful. He sounds a bit like James Taylor, and the market isn't exactly clamoring for that kind of music.

I used to think that music could only support one Weird Al. But to be fair, Coulton's music isn't like Weird Al. Weird Al spoofs music by coming up with new lyrics. He came along at the right time. When he was making fun of music, the music video was being born. Two of his most famous hits make fun of Michael Jackson's hits: Eat It and Fat.

Coulton, on the other hand, writes original music. One of his songs is a spoof of Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-lot, sung as a kind of ballad. But he also writes original lyrics.

Coulton's the kind of guy which would attract the crowd that, say, They Might Be Giants attracts, which is to say, the geek crowd. And that's an interesting crowd to go after. He's not writing angry music. He's not writing love songs. It's humorous, but there's something more at work.

One of Coulton's songs is about a squid. In the middle of the song, he talks about dolphins. Although the song is about a giant squid's ability to crush everything in site, the bit about the dolphins relates how big lugs still want affection, and really touches on themes very similar to his Code Monkey song. He revisits this theme in another song about a megalomaniac who is about to kill a female, and yet, it works a bit as a love song, and makes you think that even people who want to take over the world have basic feelings too.

His song about zombies (what is it about zombies that makes geeks squeal so? there's something genetic, I feel, about geeks and zombies) is written as a manager trying to talk to an employee, as if they're having a polite discussion about how his job is going, oh, and by the way, could he eat your brain? It's an oddly clever song which makes references to George Romero's zombie movies, which themselves were more than simply about zombies (unlike 28 Days Later, which appears to simply be about zombies). For Romero, zombies are symbolic. Coulton mines the idea for comedy, perhaps relating working in an office to being a zombie, and he takes the view of the zombie.

Comedy musicians usually rely on involving their audience, and so Coulton asked the audience to sing along the refrain "all we want to do is to eat your brains". The audience I was with was "eating this up", so to speak.

Coulton's set was relatively short. He went on about 6-7 songs. He would laugh when he forgot his lyrics, but I think the audience didn't really mind.

Coulton's warm-up act came on after him. This was the duo Paul and Storm. Yeah, it sounds like some kind of weird X-Men spin off.

Indeed, Paul and Storm were serving as backup singers for Coulton in several of his songs, including his lead, Baby Got Back.

Paul and Storm started off their set singing "We are the opening band", which was a rather energetic start, even though they were really a closing band. They reminded me of The Proclaimers. The Proclaimers are a Scottish band that had a one-hit wonder called 500 miles. You can see the video to hear them. OK, Paul and Storm aren't nearly as baritone, as blond, nor as Scottish as The Proclaimers, but something reminds me of them.

They're a high energy duo. Their songs are a bit more sophomoric, but at least expressive. For example, one song is about a Sudanese man who got it on with a goat. Another is about a pirate captain with a bunch of seamen at his house. You get the idea. Again, they're heavy on the audience participation.

While the audience really liked Coulton, Paul and Storm fared quite well, given audience participation.

Anyway, it goes to show you how people find entertainment these days. A guy I had not heard of a few weeks ago ends up getting Slashdotted, which leads me to his website, where I recognize the Eventful tag, which informs me earlier this week that he's going to be in Virginia, which leads me on a Friday night to a trip.

I did briefly say hi to Jonathan Coulton, but I didn't really know what to say. I mentioned Eventful, but he seemed only vaguely aware of it. It seemed like various people near him knew who he was from before. I bought his CD, though he seems to favor a new way of producing music where you pay online and download the MP3s and listen IPod-wise, rather than have physical CDs. I'm still old school when it comes to that, but I figure that's one way to give him money.

And off to NYC for the long weekend.