The Way of the Editor:

Code Monkey/RE: Your Brains

The Way of the Editor tackles Jonathan Coulton, internet bard, and “songs about vengeful nerds, ennui-afflicted clowns, self-loathing giant squids, and devotees of a certain Swedish prefab furniture store.”

The Internet, I’m sure someone has argued, is the most pervasive form of public expression we’ve ever created. Over the years, the World Wide Web has made possible such celebrities as Star Wars kid, whose dramatic stick flourishing went on to inspire Steven Colbert’s Green Screen Challenge on the Colbert Report as well as made the phrase “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” recognizable on a global basis. Heck, it even brought instant infamy to senator Ted Stevens when he made the statement that, “the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.”

So, it’s really not much of a stretch to go from internet surprise celebrity to a truly genuine bid for “independent musicianship and internet superstardom,” and a few weeks ago, a friend of mine pointed out to me the particular musical stylings of internet musician neé software programmer Jonathan Coulton, which tries to do just that.

I was instantly won over by the charm of songs such as “Code Monkey” as well as the truly inspired “Re: Your Brains” which features the catchiest zombie chorus I’ve ever heard:

All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable,
I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here,
maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains!

Now, I usually find myself reasonably clued-in when it comes to Internet culture and pop-phenomenon, but how could something this good have escaped my radar for so long? I had to introduce the sound to the rest of the office, of course, and naturally, the office gestalt has been awash in geek-lyrical content ever since.

But who is Jonathan Coulton, you say? In brief, Coulton is a former programmer-turned-songwriter and musical producer who is currently embarking on an experimental career creating internet-marketed, free songs (you can download them from his website) all produced under the Creative Commons license.*

From his own biography, Coulton says:

In 2005 I left my day job writing software to pursue music full time. To keep myself busy I released a new song on this web site every week for a year in a project called Thing a Week. A few of those songs became big internet hits (my folky cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back“, a funny video called “Flickr“, a song called “Code Monkey“), and I am now fortunate enough to make my living as a musician.

You might also know Coulton better as the man playing the background guitar on John Hodgman’s reading of the “700 Hobo Names” from Hodgman’s book, The Areas of My Expertise. (And John Hodgman you may be familiar with as the man who plays PC in the recent Mac vs. PC Apple commercials— incidentally, Coulton is also musical director of Hodgman’s Little Gray Book Lectures.)

Since he started, more than a few of Coulton’s songs have achieved “full-fledged internet smashes” status (his words, not mine), from his hilarious folk cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” to the programmer anthem “Code Monkey,” to the office zombie song “Re: Your Brains” which made it to the dr. Demento Funny 25 countdown in 2006. (All of which are clever and funny and which I highly recommend.) The song “Flickr,” which Coulton calls “a visual ode to Creative Commons,” was also accompanied by a music video featuring free photo-work publicly distributed under the Creative Commons licensing on the Yahoo photo web site Flickr.

Coultion’s success is one example of how the Internet is challenging the old model of the establish music industry, and how ssmall, independent artist/producers can create noteworthy music that people will enjoy and want to contribute to. Combined with his geekdom-seeped sensibilities plus clever lyrics and catchy music, Coulton has emerged as something of a bard and spokeman for music in the Internet era:

“I write about a lot of geeky stuff because I am a geek. Some of it’s funny, but a lot of it’s not so funny, and even more of it is somewhere in between. I’ve been compared to They Might Be Giants, Barenaked Ladies, Loudon Wainwright III, and other musicians you REALLY LOVE.”

“I think there are times when free music and file sharing can greatly benefit an artist. Believe me, I spent many years making music and not sharing it with anyone, and that didn’t get me anywhere.”

 

External Links:

++ Jonathon Coulton biography cited from www.jonathancoulton.com and Songbirds

++ Download songs at jonathancoulton.com

++ Search YouTube for Mac vs. PC commercials

 

* The Creative Commons is a movement seeking to expand the range of creative work available for public use by specifying that the content is legally: 1) open to copy, distribute and transmit the work and 2) become adapted, provided the work is: 1) properly attributed; 2) not used for commercial purposes; and 3) shared alike, meaning that a similar license applies if a user alters or adapts the work any way.