The Song Fight Bulletin Board

fluffy wrote: (since the whole point to this is reinterpreting someone else's take on a title that you may have already made your own interpretation of)

I thought the whole point was just to do covers of each others' stuff.

I'm thinking back to well before your time, n00b.

Seriously though, take it one step further. What if somebody with no SongFight involvement showed up and wanted to participate? What's the common bond any of us have with that person aside from a hobby and the potential for them to stick around afterward?

A big part of SongFight is writing songs for a title that you didn't choose. Why should a SongFight community thing eschew that basic aspect?


(edited because I noticed a weird mis-autocomplete from my phone)

I think what Jon was trying to say (although I can't speak for him, obviously) is that there's no "proper" way to cover someone's song; if you want to reinterpret it, great! If you want to do a straight-up cover that's hard to distinguish from the original... great! (etc)

[edit] Although, I do agree that it's better to have a selection to choose from. But at the time of the first coverfight I participated in, I only had one or two songs on Songfight. They were fucking good, though

Well, a straight-up cover is fine. But this is songfight coverfight, not "a bunch of people who have written songs"-fest coverfest.

I think I wanna be in this one. We haven't really had a Coverfight Proper in ages, and the last one I entered was back in 2004... I was actually just thinking about that one, and wanted to listen to my favorite song from it, but the link is dead
Hey Roymond- where might I find a copy of your Walrus Gumble cover?

What's a 'dick move'? My English is somewhat crippled as I am dutch. Doesn't sound entirely welcoming or friendly though, but I can be wrong of course.

Seeing that the original entry is songfighters covering songfighters, and as I don't want to burden fluffy with the possibility of having to cover one of my non-songfight songs, I am out of this fight.

(now what to do with the current fight title?)

tuuur wrote:What's a 'dick move'? My English is somewhat crippled as I am dutch. Doesn't sound entirely welcoming or friendly though, but I can be wrong of course.

I am a big fan of Dutch gentlemen's relaxation publications. I am pretty sure I have seen "dick moves" in them. Though I may be thinking of something completely different.

Märk wrote:I think I wanna be in this one. We haven't really had a Coverfight Proper in ages, and the last one I entered was back in 2004... I was actually just thinking about that one, and wanted to listen to my favorite song from it, but the link is dead
Hey Roymond- where might I find a copy of your Walrus Gumble cover?

It lives somewhere: http://roymond.com/albums/covers.html

@tuuur - Fluffy has opinions, but Fluffy is not covermaster this time around. If you have entered one or more fights, you are a songfighter, and there is a history of people covering non-SF-title songs in coverfights. And while Fluffy seems to be interested in covering a song to a title that he did himself, I always try to find something to a title I did not do - I already have a song called "Hello My Old Heart" in my archive, so another song by that title would just (further) confuse me.

For me, the concern with someone who has only entered one fight is that it doesn't give the cover-er much to pick from, and if the cover-er isn't inspired by that one song, they're sorta stuck. So if you do decide to join in, just make sure you've got a few non-SF songs posted somewhere, that the links work, etc. That at least gives the cover-er some options. And, as Fluffy suggested, if you have some songs written to SF titles that you didn't submit, those would be good ones to post, even if they're just in very rough demo form.

Charles (KA)

That is correct, I am not covermaster, and I am just sharing my opinion. I hope that was obvious.

I also wasn't saying that I'd rather cover a title that I did myself, just that the shared title is one of the central concepts of this community, and that a big part of coverfight is continuing that participation in that community. I'm just a traditionalist in that sense.

A "dick move" is an American English idiom that would take a while to explain but it's basically something that's unkind to others. Urban Dictionary is the first Google hit, although it doesn't get into the etymology.

Also, in the early days, the mindset was that if you wanted to participate and only had one or two songs in the archive, now would be a perfect time to enter more. (I wish I could link to these threads but they're long-gone, having been on the Dumbrella forum.)

Berkeley Social Scene would like to participate. Thank you.

Oh and not to belabor the point: how "original flava" is this? Is it Coke Classic with HFCS or is it original Coke with delicious cane sugar?

I don't want to exclude anyone who is a part of this community (not that it's my decision to make to begin with) but I also will only be covering a SongFight song. If I end up assigned to tuuuur out of cosmic irony, so be it.

It is original flava to the degree that it is songfighters covering songfighters. I will speak to the random number generator and try to make sure you get somebody with a decent number of songs to pick from.

I do hope we get some more new players to sign up, though - I think two of the cool things about coverfights are when new players get to hear how one of their songs sounds when done by an experienced musician, and when new players do a cover from an experienced writer and hopefully learn a bit about song structure, chord patterns, lyrics, etc. Not that there's a direct relationship, but almost everybody who has signed up so far has been around since the dumbrella days...

Charles (KA)

Inevitableguy, Tuuur, and Jan Krueger are, to the best of my knowledge, the participants whose pedigrees don't go back to the Dumbrella days. I still kind of think of myself as new because I took something like three years off in the interim, but I know that's not really how it works.

How's about we draft Josh Millard, both Durands, and then someone find out where Paco and BLT have been hiding. Then we've got ourselves a coverfight.

king_arthur wrote:I do hope we get some more new players to sign up, though - I think two of the cool things about coverfights are when new players get to hear how one of their songs sounds when done by an experienced musician, and when new players do a cover from an experienced writer and hopefully learn a bit about song structure, chord patterns, lyrics, etc. Not that there's a direct relationship, but almost everybody who has signed up so far has been around since the dumbrella days...

I definitely agree. CoverFight is what originally turned SongFight from a competition into a community, for me.

I don't agree that people from the Dumbrella days would be what constitutes an "experienced musician" though. I mean, I doubt anyone will learn anything from whatever cover I end up doing. :D

I haven't been around much and just saw this. Most definitely, I would like to be in this little soiree.

Thanks Charles.
I believe I have a few not submitted Songfight entries somewhere, will post them on my website, so there won't be the just one song.

roymond wrote: It lives somewhere: http://roymond.com/albums/covers.html

Thanks, man. Yup, still makes me kinda misty-eyed. I said it before and I'll say it again, you really nailed it on this one.

hey, i'd like to do this.
tho i am also an "old timer" hah
-bill

Yeah, why not? Count me in.

I just updated my info in this handy-dandy thread. If anyone else records under multiple band names or has participated in a metric assload of side fights, it would help a n00b like me out if you could do the same so that I know what you've done if I draw your name out of the random-number generator.