Big Awesome Music Festival During SDCC

The Big Awesome Music Festival (BAMF) is on off-site event during San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) featuring nerdy artists, geeky comedians and podcasters at Ruocco Park behind the convention center on Friday July 10th through Sunday July 12th.  They will have performances from nerdy music artists, geeky comedians, live podcasts, dance party, fandom burlesque, and more.  It will be open from 10am to 10:30pm on Friday and Saturday and 10am to 5pm from Sunday.  Music starts Friday and Saturday at 5pm.

The line up for Friday consists of rock band Ki, nerd rockers Kirby Krackle, geek musician Eben Brooks, comedy duo Paul and Storm, nerdy love song writer Allie Goertz, geek mixer DJ Galactic Ray, nerd parody group The Library Bards, and geek rockers Random Gibberish.

Saturday’s line up is nerdcore rapper Mega Ran, sister duo the Doubleclicks, singer-songwriter Molly Lewis, geek punk Nerf Herder, 8-bit mixer DJ DN3, and more by Kirby Krackle and DJ Galactic Ray.

For Sunday they have stand-up comedian Jen Seaman, geek flavored comedian Joseph Scrimshaw, writer Ed Galvez, podcasters Baker Street Babes who will record a live episode, Tim Mattonen, and Josh Chambers.

There will be a bounce house, beers from local breweries, food trucks, and gaming on site each day from 10m to 5pm.  They will have their own artist alley, quidditch matches hosted by U.S. Quidditch on Sunday, a burlesque by the Pixie Stixx Burlesque, and a cosplay contest.

They are using Indiegogo as their ticket system.  Get passes, t-shirt, autographed merch, and more there.

A great place for some music and comedy outside of SDCC in between events.

Logan Awards Nom­i­nees and Kickstarter

In 2010 the FuMP (The Funny Music Project) created the Logan Whitehurst Memorial Award for Excellence in Comedy Music to celebrate the best funny songs of the year and to pay tribute to Logan Whitehurst. Logan was a prolific, talented, and hilarious comedy musician, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 29.  Dr. Demento called Logan’s album “Goodbye My 4-Track” the “Sergeant Peppers” of comedy music albums. The Award celebrates funny songs in three categories – Outstanding Original Comedy Song, Outstanding Parody Song, and Outstanding Comedy Music Video – and the winners receive a statuette of a robot cat, inspired by one of Logan’s most popular songs, “Robot Cat”. In the past they have given awards to OKGo, Neil Patrick Harris, Todrick Hall, and Garfunkel and Oates, among others.

The Nom­i­nees for this year are:

Out­stand­ing Com­edy Music Video

“After Ever After” — Jon Cozart (“Paint” on YouTube)

“DiG DuG” — Insane Ian

“Noth­ing to Prove” — The Doubleclicks

“That Doesn’t Make Sense” — Whit­ney Avalon & Jonathan Hurley

“The Loop­hole” — Gar­funkel & Oates

Out­stand­ing Orig­i­nal Com­edy Song

“Auto­com­plete” — Devo Spice, fea­tur­ing Worm Quartet

“Mwa­haha” — Ookla The Mok

“Shut Up, Ian!” — Insane Ian

“The Guy Who Yelled Free­bird” — The Doubleclicks

“The Loop­hole” — Gar­funkel & Oates

Out­stand­ing Par­ody Song:

“After Ever After” – Jon Cozart (“Paint” on YouTube)

“I’ll Lose Weight” — Max DeGroot

“JoCo Got Jacked” — Devo Spice

“Let­ter From a Cruise Ship (Hello Mud­duh, Hello Fad­dah! 2013)” — Power Salad

“The Devil Came Up To Boston” — Adam Ezra Group

For the first two years of the award, Rob Balder, the award’s creator, paid for production of the statuettes himself.  Last year’s chair was Luke Ski, and he paid for them that year.  The statues cost $400 each to produce, meaning that each year they need to spend $1200 on them to keep the awards going.  Since there is a different chair each year it’s not practical to expect the chair to continue paying for production of the statues, but they need paid for somehow.  That’s where Kickstarter comes in.

They have raised, as of this writing, $3,071.  Meaning they have not only paid for this year’s statues, but also next year and part of the year after that.  It goes till May 14th if you to get in on it.

Help them out, and you can get some cool rewards such as:

– An album of live comedy music performed at my LukeSkiCon last year

– A video presentation of highlights of Live comedy music performances from the first three Logan Awards ceremonies

– A official Logan Awards T-shirt

– An appearance on the FuMP’s weekly chat show ‘The Funny Music Podcast’

– A comedy song created for you by one of the artists of the FuMP

– House concerts performed by one or more of the artists of the FuMP.

This year’s Logan Awards ceremony is taking place at FuMPFeST on June 21st in Wheeling, IL, and Dr. Demento will host.

 

 

Top 10 D&D Music List To roll THAC0 To

Dungeons and Dragons is a staple of nerds and geeks everywhere.  Playing it has been the standard to which nerds measure each other.  In has helped shaped all other RPGs since then, either trying to be like it or trying to not be like it.  So I give you a list of music inspired by this classic game.

1. No More Kings and their song Critical Hit is a funky tune about playing the game and rolling double damage.

2. Uncle Lumpy and the Salmon Moose do a little parody of Frosty called  Dungeons and Dragons, explaining the D&D to his nephew.  I am not sure if this also counts as holiday song.

3. Never Split the Party by Emerald Rose teaches us some important rules about what to do when you are dungeon crawling.

4. Insane Ian takes a break from doing songs about video games to cover table top gaming with  Run This Game assisted by Devo Spice and The Stacey

5. 3d6 gives us Damage.  Nerd punk song that lets you know, if you did not already know, where the band’s name comes from.

6. Natural 20s by Dual Core is chocked full of both references to D&D and other nerdcore rappers.  Great for fans of both.

7. A Band of Orcs is a heavy mithril band, and since I do not care for heavy metal I have not really listen to their music, but everything written about them tells me they belong on here.  The band hails from Hirntodia, till summoned by some teens playing a game, and here they learned to harness the power of metal to lay waste to all.

8. More nerdcore with Dice Roll Your Hearts by Alpha Riff.  A love song for those who love both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeon and Dragons.

9. This Fantasy World by The Doubleclicks is another love song about love over the gaming table.  Though it gets a little offensive.

10. Mikey Mason gives us two great D&D songs Best Game Ever and Summer of 83.  One about player killing and the other about learning the game.

Honorable Mention goes to A Cloak of Elvenkind by alternative rock band Marcy Playground.  I loved this song, the album it comes from, so much in high school.

Well till next time.

Main Stage Acts for PAX This Year

Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) the largest video game focus convention out there.  From the guys who created the Penny Arcade webcomic and Child’s Play charity.   It is August 30 – September 2, Labor Day weekend, in Seattle as always.

Music has been a big part of PAX since the beginning in 2004 when they had the Minibosses and MC Frontalot.  It was at PAX that nerdcore was given a stage to take off.

This year’s music acts are a mix of new faces and regulars.  PAX’s rapper laurate MC Frontalot and nerdcore group Super-Commuter will be back again along with Mega Ran and Adam Warrock.  The rock band with a Mega Man oprea Protomen return for another year.  The comedy duo of the Doubleclicks makes it to the main stage this year.  Acoustic guitar duo Super Guitar Bros appear for the first time on main stage.  Hideo a theatrical concert group who perform music from video games and anime.  Bit Brigade video game cover band/speed run performers around out the main stage.

With the con being four days long they are going to have three straight days of concerts for all the fans.  Schedules have not been released yet, but I do know  Mega Ran will be playing on Friday with K-Murdock and a live band.  Bit Brigade and the Protomen are both on Friday.  On Saturday Frontalot is performing.

Now like previous years PAX has sold out already.  Now do not panic too much just yet.  There are still ways to get in.  Legal ways at that.  Become a volunteer, enforcers, panelist, or something like that.  Personally I do not know to much on the subject, but I am a sure you can find out more with a quick search.

 

Top 10 Star Wars Songs to Use the Force To

Star Wars one of the (if not single ) biggest fanboy inducing nerdy out over franchises ever.  It invokes strong feelings in its fans and some put those feelings into song.  So with May having both May 4th and 25th considered Star Wars Day for different reasons, I honor the month with this list of Star Wars songs.

1. Grease Wars: great Luke Ski took the music from the movie/play Grease and reworked it to be a melody about the first Star Wars movie with the help of Carrie Dahlby.  This was the first thing I ever heard from him or any member of the FuMP and can be credited for helping lead me on the track to creating and running this blog.

2. We all know Han Solo is the coolest guy in the Star Wars universe and Mikey Mason shares with us his desire to be cool like him in Han Solo Cool.

3.  H2Awesone gives us a look into the mind of Luke and his feelings for Uncle Owen and living on the farm.  A rock number that puts Luke in the role of young rebel wanting to break free.

4. Adam Warrock has Star Wars Uncut that expresses fans love for the original movies and about a group of fans making their own fan film to go with it.

5. We get a number of songs from Sci-Fried about Star Wars: Join the Empire, Wanna Be Your Jedi, Star Wars Idiot, and several more to check out.

6. One of the first songs I ever heard from Dual Core was A New Hope (first song on their first album).  It shows off the fun word play of INT80 and the beats of C64.

7. Baby It’s Cold Outside (Hoth Version) with both Kirby Krackle and the Doubleclicks takes a classic and gives it a little Star Wars twist.

8. Tom Smith sings about all Waking Up Jedi or Sith, depends on how you see it.

9. Even the bad guys get some songs about them too.  Marc Gunn strums out a Lusty Young Sith.  Not really about Siths or something children should listen to really.  wink

10. Now I am not that big of a mc Chris fan, but Fett’s Vette is pretty toe tapping and just fun.  Loved it since I first heard it on Sealab.

Honorable Mention: The Star Wars theme done 8bit by Will Gannon.