As I did for Comikaze, I put together some video and stills that I took at Emerald City Comic Con into a little music video collage.
The song that accompanies the video is “Please Come Home” from my record IRL.
Here’s a music video I put together for Oh Babs from the footage I shot at Comikaze.
Go download the song! And grab the whole record it’s on!
“Oh Babs” is about being the cop who dates Batgirl. He doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing at night, her dad is his boss (police commish Jim Gordon), she’s kinda critical of his weight, she thinks she’s as good as the Batman. There’s a lot of issues there.
Making the video: When I got home from Comikaze with a ton of footage on a RED EPIC, I knew I wanted to make a video with it. I was just shooting for stills but I love all the moments when people are getting into their pose or right when they break the pose. It’s also cool how cosplayers stay totally still while everyone around them is moving. So I tried to put together all those moments and not have a video of cosplayers in motion. You can see my stills from the expo here.
Shot at Comikaze Expo.
Featuring:
501st.com/
facebook.com/KitnSilver
facebook.com/IvyDoomkittyIvy
facebook.com/VegasPG
bernadettebentleyactor.com/
youtube.com/misshannahminx
I really had a lot of fun at this show. My parents were in town. Allen and David were also on the bill. It was great.
I often feel like I’m awkward and could possibly be seen as a little unfriendly onstage. I feel like one of those nervous kids who gets up to perform at an assembly and just says his lines and gets off stage. So I enjoyed watching this performance and realizing I’m not like that. I’m pretty friendly. I’ve always admired the easy charm some performers have where you feel like they’re just being friendly and not “putting on a show.” That’s what I’ve always aspired to. I hope I’m getting there.
Here’s the set: Never Cared For You, Bella, I’ll Fake It Just For You, It’s Too Hot To Larp, You Can Drink and I’ll Drive, I Wanna Stay With You, Goodnight Maddie, I Remember Girls, Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
David Dewese came to the gig yesterday and took some pictures and shot this video. It was such a cool location.
A guy named Pierre who runs a site called LODJ.org had seen my “Couch Concerts” on YouTube and contacted me to ask me to play a live show via webcam. So I did that last Saturday morning. I heard from Boris afterwards that the sound was pretty choppy on his end. I had recorded the whole thing. I tried my best to sync the audio recorded on my computer with actual microphones with the video I recorded from an outboard camera. So here’s the show:
The Set: Every Little Thing, We Used to Hang, You Keep Writing the Same Songs, Paige Don’t Panic, This Job Is Killing You, Frankly Mr Turner, High School Isn’t That Hard, You Have The Worst Taste in Men, Selina I’m A Wreck
My show was an experiment for them so there were bound to be challenges. I heard from my friend Boris that the sound on his end was really choppy. I assume the video was too. I ran my webcam through the app on lodj.org which is presumably based in France with Pierre. That signal was then broadcast through an app on Facebook. That’s already two points of connection issues. I’m on wifi to begin with. And I was recording on my computer so that slowed me down.
Pierre and the friend who works with him, Rachel, invited me to play a regular live couch concert every month. So we’ll be able to smooth out some of the troubles.
My feelings on the show are mixed. Performance-wise, it’s weird to play for an audience you know is there but that you can’t see. Even though I think the audience was closer to 4 people than 40, I knew that at least Pierre and Rachel were there. When I record videos myself for YouTube or Vimeo, I’ll re-record if I screw something up. There was no doing that. And one weird thing I’ve noticed is that I screw up more when I’m not getting an audience reaction. Or at least it means more.
There was a chat function on the Facebook app. At one point, Pierre told me via Skype to check the chat messages because people were talking to me. What followed was a couple of thrilling moments of video of me reading and typing. And I couldn’t even see the Facebook chat. That’s something that’ll get ironed out. I edited it out of the video above because I screwed up the next two songs I played. I got knocked out of my performing zone and the music suffered. We’ll get something fixed. I don’t think it would be that odd to play and chat if I could see the messages coming in between songs.
Then there’s my feelings on the whole endeavor of playing a show on the internet… This reminded me of a time 13 years ago when I started building websites and there was such a wild west feeling to music on the internet. You could try anything. It was not insignificant that the last time I played a “webcast” was at a place with the ridiculous name “Indienet” in Nashville in 1999. Their gimmick was that they streamed the shows online. We (The Carter Administration) were playing with a band from Indiana I believe and there was literally no one there. I think our girlfriends were running late or skipping entirely. We did our best to convince the other band that this was a waste of time and effort to load in and play a show to no one. But they were “on tour” and they had people who were going to watch this over the internet. So on we went. I don’t think the webcast actually worked.
But that was the wilds of the internet before everything became so shiny and developed. It probably doesn’t help lodj.org looks like it comes from 1999. My immediate reaction as a guy who builds websites was not to trust it. I’m still not convinced it didn’t dump a sack of spyware onto my computer. But I did the show because that’s what I’m supposed to do as me, as the kind of musician I am. I don’t make nice, slick videos like this. I make unpolished videos like this. I try to do things out on the fringe. I’d rather have 100s of free mp3s on my site than 1 puny album on iTunes. I’d rather experiment with a couch concert than spend days editing a video of one song.
And I think continuing to move like that is what helps me keep making stuff. That’s why this year I’ve released a shiny indie rock record and a less polished “country” record and last year I released a record of demos, a live record with a band, and a polished single.
But I recognize that marginalizes me. I guess that’s where I belong, on the margins. I liked the wild west internet.
I finally put together this video of the recording of Red Headed Stranger. This is the actual footage of the recording of the song. The audio is the mixed version from the record. We did vocals and guitar live which is not the way either of us likes to work but this project was supposed to be loose and spontaneous.