The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Happy Golfers Day. Go out there and play with your putters...

Earlier today, I was doing some work towards my wedding. I'm still working on getting a DJ. One of the prospective DJ's called me up and we started the usual banter on pricing and how I don't want a DJ that sounds like the announcer on The Price is Right or one who will scratch that song that Grandma wants to dance to into oblivion. The DJ was a good guy and a fellow musician. This somehow led to a talk about Songfight. Next thing I know, he's on the website checking it out. I must say our website can be a little daunting to the uninitiated. Hell, there's not even something on the front page explaining what this is (beyond traveling into the faq). Then he wanted to go check out my work in the archive. Criminy. I came to a great realization that I need to compete more and put in more songs that I'm happy with. He ended up checking out the avant-garde wonder that is x-tokyo-river-god. And of course the first song he opens is "Snow Fort", the one with the backwards sounds and creepy girl robot voice. He must've thought I was a psycho killer, which was kinda the point of the song when I made it but that's besides the point.

It's always very interesting how i get into these conversations about Songfight. Usually they start with "Why is that guy with the guitar beating up the trumpet guy?". I had one of those just the other day when my fiance and I met the wedding photographer for the first time and I happened to be wearing my Songfight t-shirt.

QotD: What kind of experiences have you had when it comes to telling people about Songfight?

People are usually really interested in SF and mostly amazed that we write and record a new song each and every week. I'm pretty good about explaining the concept. Something like:

Each week a title is posted and people have that week to write and record a song based on that title. They send an Mp3 of the song to the site and they post them all. People spend the next week listening to the songs and voting for their favorites. Then a winner is chosen and the whole thing starts over again.

People seem to get it. I also usually talk about how there are people from all over the world participating and how I've collaborated with people I've never met. People usually think that is pretty cool.

Ken

I'll have to think about that question a little more, because when I try to answer it, I can only really think of two anecdotes about conversations I had with people who already knew about Song Fight.

One.

I was hanging out with some friends of mine a few years back when one of them made some kind of offhanded comment about "Happy Machine Ankle." I wish I could remember the context that came up in. But anyway, of course that made me double-take, because that's a phrase you don't hear very often.

I said, "Did you say 'Happy Machine Ankle?'"
He said, "Yeah..." laughed awkwardly. "It's from this song a friend of ours wrote..."

Turns out that they're friends with Seth, aka Brother Machine. I mentioned that I knew that song and had been an active Song Fighter during the period when Brother Machine submitted like four song a week. They were active listeners to the site during that time, and said they had probably heard some of my music already!

Then I blushed, because I remembered how much I sucked back then.

Two.

A couple of jobs ago, we had systems that were locked behind a tight firewall. When I got promoted high enough, they gave us VNC access to some machines that didn't have their access blocked. There were only about a third as many of these systems as there were people who wanted access, so they were supposed to be for diagnostics only, but of course, if you found a system that no one seemed to be using, it was really common to start surfing the web with it.

I was using one of those machines to check out Song Fight one day, but someone took over the mouse and minimized the browser, indicating that he needed to do actual work on it. I logged out.

Later on, the guy came up to me and said "Wow, I haven't seen the Song Fight forums in forever! How's everyone doing?" He used to post here under the name MC_Hammerpants, and he still follows Nerdcore music avidly. He too was active back when I was still posting songs every week or so.

Small world sometimes.

Often I will want to mention some experience that I had or person that I know because of Song Fight! So to provide context I'll try to briefly explain the whole thing. I usually say "I do this online songwriting competition thing, it's pretty cool. They post a random song title and you write and send in a song and people vote on their favorites. There's no prize, it's just for fun. There's a nice big community of people involved." Sometimes I'll also describe Song Fight! Live: "We have an annual meetup where we get together somewhere and hang out and play music for a couple days." Generally nobody's heard of it, though a few times people will say "I think I've heard of that". I tell everybody to go check it out and I tell every musician I meet to participate, but I don't think anybody I talk to really does those things, sadly. Usually the most interesting SF! related anecdote for me is how Erin and I met through Song Fight!

It doesn't come up. Song Fight is my own private Idaho. I live a double life.

Lunkhead wrote:Often I will want to mention some experience that I had or person that I know because of Song Fight! So to provide context I'll try to briefly explain the whole thing. I usually say "I do this online songwriting competition thing, it's pretty cool. They post a random song title and you write and send in a song and people vote on their favorites. There's no prize, it's just for fun. There's a nice big community of people involved." Sometimes I'll also describe Song Fight! Live: "We have an annual meetup where we get together somewhere and hang out and play music for a couple days." Generally nobody's heard of it, though a few times people will say "I think I've heard of that". I tell everybody to go check it out and I tell every musician I meet to participate, but I don't think anybody I talk to really does those things, sadly.

That's been my experience as well. Years ago when I started doing karaoke regularly in Seattle I mentioned Song Fight and one of the people in my group said how one of her friends claimed to be some big important dude in Song Fight, have I heard of such-and-such, and I said no, he's probably full of crap, and her response was, yeah, he's DEFINITELY full of crap.

Anyway, it was in that group that I met inevitableguy, although he didn't start Song Fighting until well after I'd left Seattle. (He has told the rest of the story a few times on his own, I think, so I won't repeat it.)

Usually when Song Fight! comes up it's because of SFL, because they want to know what I'm doing on my vacation or whatever. Then for some reason they get the idea that it's just an annual songwriting competition and you have to write a whole bunch of songs for a single concert or something. I need to figure out a better way of explaining it, although usually I explain the site first and then add, "And once a year we all get together to perform our songs in a concert" and I'm not sure how that can really be improved upon.

I mention Song Fight at my shows often. It's a good preface for, well, most of my original material. Listeners definitely take interest in the site and the story, but I don't know how many follow it up with action. I'm a tireless advocate for SF to my local musician friends, too. I think Jeremy Dean is the only one who has actually taken up the invitation.

The only person I've really explained SF to is my best friend RIch who collab'd with me a few times as Country Martyrs. He was excited from the beginning. It's a shame he moved away.

I've mentioned SF! to dozens of people. Some checked it out, others not. Nobody I know has joined although it would serve some of them good. A friend of mine checks it out often although I think he's awaiting the return of Kid Cruiser!

Hey! I had a conversation about SF last night. We were watching American Dad after a movie. The episode where Stan clones Steve so Stan and Francine can each raise Steve their own way to see who knows best how to raise him.
Anyway a song came on, "He's got circular joy, he's a peculiar boy" and I was all, holy shit, that's Paco! They say, huh? I say the other guitar player in our BatP project. So while my son is looking up that song by the lyrics, I click on the webz on the tv and play a couple Paco songs. They say, damn that is him! Then my son says, nope, it's Iggy Pop, the song is called He's Frank. lol.

Anyway, listen to this and tell me you wouldn't think it's Paco......if you were intoxicated with a bunch of equally intoxicated buffalo wing eating weirdos. It even sounds like the Chucksters writing style.