“Jack, don’t play tonight because there’s one sniper left.”

Hat tip to @mattreyes

The Kneeling Female Faun, by Auguste Rodin

My musical side has been suppressed for far too long. I’ve been really inspired by my oldest stepson, Je.c, who’s finishing up his first album. We’ve collaborated on a couple of tracks, and I’ve been helping with the production. I’ve also been inspired to start doing some music of my own. I don’t know exactly where I’m going with it yet – just playing around and having fun.

So here’s my first finished track – a little sexy house music. Think it could be a dance club hit? Feedback welcome.

Bring Me to My Knees (Radio edit)

For the image, I wanted something that’s as sexy as the song is, without being pornographic. The Rodin sculpture was perfect.

Image credit: joel.parham

Just for fun, I’m working on some theme music for Tech Karaoke for my friends over at Pinqued, hopefully for them to use in the official videos which they’re editing now. I have the basic theme music down (sample below), but I need a bunch of clips of different people saying “tech karaoke” – especially female people!

Here’s a short proof-of-concept clip of the music:

Tech.Karaoke.30s.mp3

It doesn’t have to be “studio quality” – just whatever you can record on your computer, with as little background noise as possible. Just say “tech karaoke” – don’t sing it, and don’t worry about the tempo – just say it at a natural speed.

You can post it somewhere online and link to it here or email it to me at scott AT nfn8 DOT com. For just a couple of minutes of your time, you can be a recording artist!

March 15, 2010, will go down as one of the great moments of my life – the time we rocked so hard we blew a fuse.

It was Tech Karaoke at Six Lounge, with LC Rocks (awesome band!), and I was following Chris Bailey on stage, who had just rocked the house with a rousing rendition of Judas Priest’s “Living After Midnight”. I’m doing Led Zeppelin, “Rock and Roll”.

One thing I’ve learned about karaoke…whatever you lack in talent, you can often make up for with enthusiasm. And while I actually can sing, a weekend of SXSW partying and a couple (or a couple of couple) of drinks were taking their toll.

So once I grabbed the mike, before we started the song, I got the crowd going with Rock Concert Movement #23:

“Are you readaaaaaaa…y? Are you redaaaaaaaaaa…y? Are you ready to rock and rooooooll?”

Crowd goes nuts, drummer hammers out the opening beat, guitar kicks in with the intro riff, and the adrenaline hits me like I mainlined it. So we’re rockin’ out, coming out of the guitar solo, and I kick in with the wail going into the last verse that’s up an octave, and…

POP, then nothing. Silence (well, relatively speaking – the crowd was still pretty loud).

Yup, we rocked it so hard we blew the breaker!

Fortunately, they got it back on within a couple of minutes, and we finished it out. Crowd went nuts, and I had my rock star moment.

Most of it was caught on tape (the edit at about 1:50 is when the breaker blew). The archived reality may not be nearly as spectacular as my own memory of it, but I’m still glad to have it on video to share:

Much credit and thanks to:

• The band: LC Rocks
• Video: Sue Rostvold
• Photo: Jennifer Jones (more Tech Karaoke pics here)
• Austin Tech Karaoke organizers: Kate Buck, Jen Wojcik (check out their new venture, Pinqued)
• Tech Karaoke creator: Brett Petersel
• Led Zeppelin

My mother was a piano bar musician. I grew up in a constant environment of music. On road trips, we actually song show tunes. We played word games…with song lyrics. My mother and I would go back and forth thinking of all the songs we could with, say, the word “flower” in it.

For better or worse, she marked me for life. I have an amazing, but I’m sure occasionally annoying, habit of being able to come up with an appropriate song lyric for just about any occasion.

Of course, the internet has just fed my fascination with song lyrics. Twitter, in particular, seems to be the perfect venue for occasionally using song lyrics to communicate.

But what if I pushed it to an extreme? I’ve been wondering if I could go a whole day communicating on Twitter via nothing but song lyrics. And talking last night with @jeremya, who’s trying to get his blip.fm Marathon badge (blipping at least once an hour for 24 hours), I decided I’d go ahead and give it a try. Today.

Here’s how the conversation started last night:

ScottAllen: It’s 2am…fear is gone. ? beta.blip.fm/~kthma

ScottAllen: @jeremya I’ve been toying w/the idea of tweeting all in song lyrics one day.

ScottAllen: @jeremya Participate in conversation, talk about what’s actually going on in my life, but all w/ song lyrics.

Jeremya: @ScottAllen That would be cool!

ScottAllen: @jeremya I’m cool like that. ? beta.blip.fm/~kti9d

Jeremya: @ScottAllen lol Started already.

ScottAllen: @jeremya Something got me started. You’ve got to help me… ?beta.blip.fm/~ktixl

Jeremya: @ScottAllen lol. It would be cool if you could search by badges… lol.

ScottAllen: @jeremya Badges? We don’t need any badges. We don’t need no stinking badges. ? blip.fm/~ktjo8

ScottAllen: It’s 3 o’clock in the morning. Can’t even close my eyes. ?blip.fm/~ktk1a

<Jeremy only made it to hour 4 of his marathon last night>

ScottAllen: @jeremya And how goes the medium tempo? ?blip.fm/~ku8nt

Jeremya: @ScottAllen Unfortunately I slept through the night.. when I meant to only take a nap so I am trying again today. lol.

ScottAllen: @jeremya It’s a test of ultimate will, the heartbreak climb uphill. Got to pick up the pace if you want to stay… ? blip.fm/~ku90n

I feel like such a geek, but I feel compelled to finish what I started.

Now if I could just find a lyric for “I’m headed to Walgreen’s ‘cuz we’re out of milk.”

OK, I admit it, I’m signed up with PayPerPost. I would never blog about a topic just to get a few bucks, but if I find the topic interesting enough to post about, I have no problem with a company tossing me a few bucks for the extra attention. If you haven’t read the Forrester report on Sponsored Conversations, you should.

Now as it turns out, I haven’t actually run any PayPerPost posts yet – there hasn’t been an opportunity for any of my blogs that I thought was a good match. But this morning I had an opportunity to post about a new Music Videos site, which also promises lyrics on demand. Being the karaoke junkie that I am, this seemed right up my alley, so I thought, “Hey,this could actually be a fit.” Only a couple of bucks, but all they wanted was a link.

So I went to check out the site, MuVids.com. The site looks great – all the hit songs:

So I thought, “Cool – sure, I’ll write a quick blog about this.”

And then…BAM!

Huh?

I refreshed the screen just to be sure I hadn’t accidentally clicked on an ad or something. Nope. Sure enough, this thing pops up after a few seconds.

OK, a bit user-hostile, but the content is worth it to me to do this…once. Or even once per visit. Fine.

And then…BAM!

WTF??? You gotta be kidding me! You want my cell phone number to view a web site???

Now maybe it’s all on the up-and-up. I could NOT find any fine print anywhere saying that they were going to automatically start charging you a subscription for ringtones, wallpaper, etc., like they do with those IQ and personality quizzes:

That said, though, given how prevalent those things are, and apparently how easy it is to rip people off once you give them your mobile phone number, there’s no way in hell I’m giving out my cell phone number to watch music videos, even with lyrics, or anything else for that matter. I’m not accusing MuVids of dishonesty, just stupidity.

Maybe this is a new site, and maybe they’ll get their head out of their ass and realize that they’re driving hordes of people away with this user-hostile interface, and if so, maybe I’ll go back and visit it, and maybe even post an update about it (for free).

In the meantime, I won’t be back. And this will be a test of just how transparent PayPerPost really is. The requirements for the post are:

Related content with a link to www.muvids.com with anchortext "Music Videos".

I did that. We’ll see if they pay me.

UPDATE: Yup, they did.

I saw this on Twitter today and it really moved me. I would have retweeted it, but it was too long to, and it would have suffered severely from editing – it’s perfect exactly like it is.

Turns out it’s a lyric from a Jack Johnson song, “Better Together”. Enjoy!

I spent a while last Tuesday visiting in the Blogger’s Lounge at SXSW with Brian Wallace of Nowsourcing. Afterwards we stepped out in the hall (ironically for some quiet) and he interviewed me about my latest project, a joint venture with American Guitar Academy:

More info about free guitar lessons here, or just call 503-430-1484 to schedule yours. You can see more of Brian’s SXSW coverage here and here.

Prompted by my last post, Ben Mack Is an Extremist Idealist, I was just Googling the words “idealist” and “extremist” and came across Joe Satriani’s “The Extremist”. Enjoy!

Also check out the original music video for the studio version of “The Extremist” (embedding is disabled on it or I would have included it here).

Like I said in my last post, “Greatness isn’t achieved through mediocrity. Innovation doesn’t flourish in the middle of the road.”

Saturday night, March 14th, I’ll be at Red Eyed Fly for the StandardAnswer launch party. danah boyd will be there too, along with the fun folks from Aquarium Drunkard.

If you want to attend, you have to register at StandardAnswer (click on the RSVP Here button). You even get to help pick what songs the bands will play. Be sure to also check out the SXSW category for some fun and informative Q&A.

In case you’re wondering why the world needs another social networking service, check out my Standard Answer open beta announcement on The Virtual Handshake Blog.