Witty lyrics sharpen minds! (Jonathan Coulton)

Welcome back to Additive Noise. As we head into our last real month of the semester, it’s about time to start hitting those books.

Go ahead and start figuring out what exactly you missed that one day you were sick, or when you overslept and your friend forgot to take notes. It’s time to get sharp again, so we’re bringing you some “mind-sharpening” tunes to help you out. But don’t worry, because these are actually pretty funny.

Jonathan Coulton is a Yale graduate and former computer programmer who uses his witty mind to write comedy music for the smart masses. Using an acoustic guitar and a zendrum for nearly all of his work, Coulton relies on his clever lyrics more than anything. His songs are generally in-character, written from the perspective of any number of amusing fictious personalities.

A couple of the most entertaining ones include “Skullcrusher Mountain,” where Coulton portrays an evil mad scientist as he sings a love songs to the woman he has just captured, and “RE: Your Brains,” which is a musical reading of a professional email sent from a zombie horde leader to a living coworker.

Among his most well-known works are “Code Monkey,” the tale of an unlucky-in-love computer programmer, and the wildly successful pair “Still Alive” and “Want You Gone,” written specifically for the Portal video games. Coulton also writes more subdued “smart” songs about math and science such as “Mandelbrot Set.”

A man of infinite snark, Coulton feeds his sarcastic image in his choices for tour partners. He has a working partnership with comical team Paul and Storm, and they tour together fairly regularly. Coulton has also taken the stage opening for They Might Be Giants. In September 2011, Coulton released his first album featuring a full band, which included They Might Be Giants’ Marty Beller.

Perhaps Coulton’s most impressive feature is his success. His music is all released online under Creative Commons licensing, providing permission for his works to be used in noncommercial works. In fact, the internet is arguably Coulton’s path to fame. It provides more direct access to his niche audience, while also leaving plenty of room for new people to find him.

Folks who wouldn’t pay 99 cents for a song on iTunes can download “JoCo” for free on his website, www.jonathancoulton.com. He doesn’t have a record label, and you probably won’t ever hear him on America’s Top 40.

What most musicians might see as a path directly to failure, Jonathan Coulton thrives on. He doesn’t mind doing silly things like freestyling with the zendrum mid-concert or releasing albums of songs that he wrote and produced in a single week per track. Coulton is the kind of artist you can listen to for fun and still come out feeling a bit smarter.

Get ready, VSU. Turn on some JoCo and break out the books!

Think Swing: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

                Welcome back to Additive Noise, where music goes for rediscovery. Today we have a blast from the past in the genre section. Ladies, put on your butterfly sleeves and rayon stockings, because we are going back to the 1930s and 40s-- also known as the Swing Era.

                Swing music really made its debut around 1935. American jazz music had taken hold and was becoming so popular that it had its own spin-off genres. Swing blended wonderfully with jazz, picking up tempos and populating dance halls across the country. Popular artists like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday experimented with swing, and helped blend jazz and swing into what we know today as “big band.” Big Band music encompasses the upbeat tempo and style of swing music with the heavy emphasis on horns and piano seen in jazz. Over the years it has lost much of its popularity, but big band is certainly not gone yet.

                Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is a swing/big band revival group from California that has been bringing the swing back to America since the 1980s. They got their name from a nickname signed on a poster to frontman Scotty Morris from blues guitarist Albert Collins, calling him ‘the big bad voodoo daddy.’ Morris and his friend Kurt Sodergren took the name and ran with it, adding five more members and hitting the road.

                One of the band’s most popular songs is “Mr. Pinstripe Suit” released on their 1998 album, “Americana Deluxe.” It’s a high-speed dancing song, designed to get people moving. Morris sings about a man he has dubbed “Mr. Pinstripe Suit” in reference to his obviously expensive lifestyle. He’s “a smooth talker with an export cigarette,” who always has “a kitten on his hand.” The song doesn’t have a whole lot of meaningful lyrical content, but it doesn’t really need it. The rhythm of the song makes you want to get dressed up and dance like Mr. Pinstripe Suit.

“Mr. Pinstripe Suit” is not only one of the band’s greatest hit singles, it also happens to be an excellent example of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s style. True to big band form, the many members of the band are each treated to their own solo moments, many of which are announced or teased by the frontman. The saxophones and trumpets work together to form some fabulous improvised bridges between verses, and they have so much fun doing it that the stage is always in a state of motion. This is one band that does not stand still. In fact, neither does the audience! A couple of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s live performances have featured audience members swing dancing in the aisles while the band plays.

Big band music is one of the crowning accomplishments of the American musical scene, and it is amazing to find bands such as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy keeping that alive. They are currently on tour. 

To see "Mr. Pinstripe Suit", fastforward to 47:50 in the video below.