Category Archives: Song Origins

MISADVENTURES IN SONGWRITING: The One Thing You Can Do To Make Your Song Popular Right Now

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When it comes to performing music, the big question on every band’s plate is: How can my band break out? What is the barrier that keeps some bands stuck in gig-hell, while other bands thrive on the festival circuit?

I’ve come to tell you that there is a sure fire gateway to garnering attention. In fact it can be remarkably easy!

Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent book The Tipping Point discusses the processes that occur when ideas become viral. And Seth Godin’s Purple Cow concludes that in today’s world there is only one path to success: to be remarkable. In terms of going viral there are two roads to take, and it’s important to distinguish the two and realize which path is right for you. Do you want good attention or bad attention? I think as an up and coming band it’s perfectly fine to have the latter if the intent is to end up with the former. In terms of your act, it’s important to be remarkable in anyway possible. Since, musical skill and talent takes time you might want to focus solely on being remarkably offensive, whether in form (“they are the WORST BAND I’ve EVER SEEN”) or by crafting your song content accordingly.

Enter “Stem Cellphones” the 8th track from the superbly rocking Boneslinky!. The story of this song starts a few years back when Cap’n Mediocrity and I made a music video for “Diary of an Unborn Child,” one of the strangest pro-life jams ever created, performed by “Bobby’s World”-biting weirdo Lil’ Marky.

The video features an unmasked Mediocrity drifting around as a grown-up aborted fetus. Much to our surprise the video became a bit of a hit on YouTube, garnering over 40,000 views and recieving comments like:

“do you think this is fucking FUNNY?! ASSHOLE!” (yes)

and

“piece of ass raping shit” (huh?)

but also comments like:

“I just laughed so hard. You win the internet.” (well…yeah)

It took a while for the good comments to actually show up. For a while it was just comment after comment of pro-lifers arguing with each other.

And thus my lesson was learned: If you create something that is flagrantly anti-pro-life (note: anti-pro-life is not the same as pro-choice), fanatics are going to immediately jump all over you. It’s just their nature, they can’t help it. And they’re really just standing by waiting for the opportunity to turn your comments board into an endless political debate. So I decided to write my own song surrounding this turbulent issue in hopes to once again incite some lunatics. Who knows, maybe some of them will download the album in order to burn it to a CD and subsequently toss the burned CD into a raging fire!

“Stem Cellphones” is the story of a slacker whose far-along baby-mama falls into a coma. Instead of saving the baby, he opps to harvest the precious rejuvenating stem cells in order to restore parts of his own body that have degenerated after years of alcohol abuse. The song ends with him realizing that his theories don’t really stand up to how science works.

No I don’t really agree with eating your unborn children in order to restore your own failing body, but you have to admit it’s a fascinating concept. One that should probably get pitched to Hollywood and directed by that Human Centipede dude. Now there’s some fucked up shit right there. If you’re pissed off about this song, you should probably just go bother that guy, ’cause people existing only as a bridge between one person’s ass and anothers mouth is a far more disturbing idea than anything the Flute Squad can come up with. At least our songs have happy endings and boobies.

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If you enjoyed this post, check out:

MISADVENTURES IN SONGWRITING: TV’s Corky Is Our ‘The Beatles’ : The story behind a song that honors retarded people for their courageous sense of style.

MISADVENTURES IN SONGWRITING: Nobody Cares About Your Love-Life, Watch Cartoons For Inspiration Instead: How our fearless frontman, Horsepower, writes songs about beating the shit out of people over cartoons and a tasty breakfast.

 

MISADVENTURES IN SONGWRITING: TV’s Corky Is Our ‘The Beatles’

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When we play “You’re Special” live we usually get some half-hearted applause and a lot of slack-jawed stares from the audience.  I’m pretty sure they don’t know whether they should laugh or boo us off the stage.

On first listen, the song might seem to be a rip on mentally challenged kids, wrapped in a nice sugar-coated package of Tin Pan Alley/Paul McCartney ragtime pop.  So right there is a disconnect that confuses people.  I mean, how often do you hear songs with clarinets and ukuleles where the vocalist is crooning about Down’s Syndrome in his best old-tyme voice?

But I’m here to tell you that it’s okay to smile and sing along to this upbeat ditty, because we’re not making fun of the disabled, we’re *celebrating* them!  WE <3 “SPECIAL” KIDS!!!

When I was in Elementary School my best friend had an older brother, Jay, who had Down’s.  I thought Jay was one of the coolest kids I knew because he wore crazy clothes and could do the Sit-N-Spin faster than anyone.  Plus, he was a genuinely fun guy and I always enjoyed hanging out with him.

Because of my friendship with Jay, I always held a soft spot in my cold, evil heart for kids with mental disabilities.  So when “Life Goes On” premiered in 1989 I religiously watched every episode, and got really pissed when they stopped focusing on Corky and started up with that bullshit Chad Lowe AIDS plotline.  Fuck Chad Lowe.  Anyway, I became a huge Chris Burke fan and continued to follow his career, even when it seemed like most people had forgotten all about him.

I remember back in college I found out that Chris had a band and was recording love songs, and there was a music video for one of the songs where he was running towards a girl on a beach.  I desperately wanted to track down this album and it became somewhat of an obsession.  Granted, this was pre-Al Gore’s Internet, so there was no good way to find info on obscure stuff like Corky and scat porn.  After a while I sort of gave up and figured I’d never have the pleasure of hearing Corky sing a love song.

Years went by and I moved to Baltimore and forgot all about Corky and Jay (life goes on, I suppose.)  But then my job as a roving IT consultant brought me to The ARC.  ARC used to stand for Association for Retarded Citizens, but they cover that up now because apparently “retarded” has become a derogatory word.  Which is totally retarded.  Anyway, I worked at The ARC and met a lot of cool people with a variety of developmental disabilities, and that made me think of Corky again, so I looked him up on the interwebs and HOLY FUCKING SHIT CORKY IS PLAYING WITH HIS BAND NEXT WEEK ONLY 50 MILES AWAY FROM WHERE I LIVE!!!

Turns out that almost every year Friends of Frederick, an organization devoted to helping out mentally challenged kids, invites Chris Burke to perform at their yearly “Buddy Walk”.  So I fucking freaked out and cancelled all of my prior engagements and drove to Frederick one beautiful fall afternoon to watch Corky strut his stuff.  And let me tell you, that man is a consummate entertainer.  Totally pro, very charismatic, and quite talented.  Unfortunately he’s flanked by two creepy twin brothers who probably steal all of his money and beat him with sacks of cauliflower.  Assholes.

But what was really cool about the show was the audience: dozens of kids with Down’s wearing crazy outfits and dancing and singing like they were the only person there.  Total disregard for what anyone thought about the way they looked or acted, just pure joy to be listening to good music from a musician they respected.  Basically the complete opposite of the hipster douchebags who frequent shows in Baltimore.  It was quite refreshing.

The Chris Burke concert brought me back to thinking about Jay, and how he was the same way: carefree, outgoing, and not at all self-conscious.  And so I decided to write a song in tribute to these fine people who I think we can all learn a lot from.  Their free spirit is a living example of how we could have much more fun in life if we simply stopped worrying about what other people think of us.  Because, seriously, there’s no way you’re going to be cooler than this guy, so why bother even trying?


MISADVENTURES IN SONGWRITING: Nobody Cares About Your Love-Life, Watch Cartoons For Inspiration Instead

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From the desk of Horsepower:

All things considered, I, Horsepower, am most likely the least talented member of the Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad.  I can’t play a guitar to save my life.  I can’t kick ass and take names like Captain Mediocrity. I certainly can’t crunch numbers like DrumBot 200X.  So what am I good for?

Us horse-headed folks are most likely good for only one thing, and that’s “sticking out in a good way.”

On Boneslinky!, I wrote a few tunes, one of which is a personal favorite: Big Fist.  My brief description of it is something like “how someone with big hands solves all their problems: smashing whatever’s in their way.”

But where would such an idea come from?  I’m not a violent person, by any means.  I’m more a lover than a fighter (opinions of ex-girlfriends are the exception here).  I can’t remember ever smashing things with my average-sized mitts.  So how did I do it?

I watched Saturday morning cartoons.

I remember the day clearly.  I was sitting at the bar of a vegetarian restaurant at breakfast time.  It was a clear Saturday morning in early Autumn, and I was chowing down on a big-ass plate of tofu scramble.  The weight of Nikc’s offer to contribute to the album was heavy on my shoulders, particularly since my offerings for the new album had all been shuffled off to the side for one reason or another, and I wanted to do something about it.  I looked up at the television whilst taking a sip of my coffee, and there was a hyperactive kid’s cartoon show playing, the sound muted so that all the important conversations that happen in bars at 9am wouldn’t be interrupted.  Seeing all the strange characters jumping around, blowing things up with energy blasts and other craziness, struck a chord in me.  I immediately wrote down the first three ideas that came to my mind regarding the characters in the show I was watching:

  • A song about a kid who has molten lava in his skull in place of a brain, which causes him to be obsessed with geology.
  • Someone with huge fists that crushes buildings or causes earthquakes when punching the ground.
  • A sea shanty-style song about a group of sailors fighting a giant octopus.

Perhaps it was the fact I was watching those cartoons, and I saw plenty of examples where people were smashing things already.  But out of the three, the story about someone with big fists was the most vibrant in my head at the time. So I casually munched on more tofu scramble and put pen to paper, jotting down what eventually came to be “Big Fist.”

Now, the following practice may be standard operating procedure for most bands, but I fall back on my lack of experience for my testimony to the process that undoubtedly unfolds.

I presented my lyrics for “Big Fist” to the rest of the band through e-mail, explaining to them a few things

  • I wrote this song at breakfast, putting down the first words that came to mind (truth be told, it took maybe 10 minutes to write, and that’s probably overestimating)
  • It’s one of three current ideas I wanted to submit for consideration on the album
  • It simply MUST be an old-skool, thrash-punk song…I love singing those in the car, along with my tape deck.

Murmurs of approval were sent around the band in various messages, and I was feeling pretty stoked.  Then the eventual happens: Nikc writes back and says something like “I’ll fuck around with it this weekend.”  I wrote back and said, “Okay, just remember: thrash punk song!”

Two days later, Nikc sends out an e-mail with an MP3 attached labeled “bigfistdemo.”  I download it, turn on my speakers, and start up the song.  And true to form–as this always happens with lyrics I had written and submitted–the song I hear from Nikc surpasses all expectations I had set for it.
Big Fist (demo) by flutesquad

No, it’s not quite thrash punk.  It’s more like this blistering mesh of psychobilly and surf punk from another planet…A planet inhabited by speed-snorting NASCAR fans wearing jetpacks and armed with nail-studded baseball bats and rusty chains.  It fucking rocks, and whenever the breakdown happens, I’m running and jumping all over whatever club it is we’re playing it.  Plus, it ends on me calling out, “Muthafucka yeaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

If that’s not sticking out in a good way, I don’t know what is.  So, it has my vote.

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Help us produce Boneslinky! by pre-ordering it on our Kickstarter account!

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Like this Song Origin? Check out the story behind Innocent Night, our parody of Benny Mardones’ two-time hit “Into The Night!”

CHASING BENNY: Email Strategies To Get Famous People To Notice You, Even If They Ultimately Reject You

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Benny said “Thanks but no thanks.”After spending the last 5 years of sending out cold emails for a business I co-run while doing the same to get shows for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad and Wild Bonerz, I‘ve come up with a some guidelines for writing effective emails when requesting something actionable.

There are 3 rules to know when requesting a stranger to take action:

  1. Assume that they are busy. In fact, assume that they have reached a level of busyness that you can’t even begin to understand.
  2. Assume that they are reading your message amidst hundreds of others. Assume that they read their email on their phone. Make your request as short and direct as possible. Don’t fill your message up with a litany of details.
  3. No response IS a response. Follow-up politely but after about the third time with no response just move on.

With this in mind, posted below is the transcript of emails that led to Benny Mardones listening to Innocent Night. After recording the studio demo, I researched Benny to see what he has been up to. It turns out that he had just released a new album on a label called Warrior Records. I contacted the Jim Ervin, president of Warrior Records to see how we could get Benny on the album.

Subject: Information regarding Benny Mardones

Hi Jim, I am interested in featuring Benny Mardones in a new song by indie rock band The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad. Please let me know if this is at all possible and who to contact to investigate further.

Thanks, Nikc Miller

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Hi Nikc,

You would contact me.  Please feel free to forward any potential details.

Regards, Jimmy

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Jimmy,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Basically, we are a rock band that happens to be huge fans of Mardones and “Into the Night.” We wrote a song and recorded a sort of tribute to that song called “Innocent Night.” There is a bridge to the song that is 6 lines and wanted to get Benny to sing it. Along with that, the song would be listed as “Innocent Night featuring Benny Mardones” on the album.

We own a studio, or can do it remotely which may be easier since we are located in Baltimore, MD.

Please let me know how to proceed.

Thanks again, Nikc

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Hi Nikc,

Yes, Benny’s vocals would most likely happen remotely here in Los Angeles.  Is the song in a ProTools session?  Do you have a recording of “Innocent Night” that he may hear first?  Regardless, I will be happy to take this to Benny, but unless there is up front compensation offered it probably will not happen.

Please advise, Jimmy

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Jim,

The band discussed it and has decided to offer $500 up front for Benny to record vocals for the entire song. Please let me know if this is possible and we can discuss further. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to correspond with us.

Thanks again, Nikc

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Hi Nikc,

Benny has looked at everything, but he does not feel that the song is right for him.  Regardless, he did ask that I pass along his thanks and appreciation in considering him for the project.

All the best, Jimmy

We knew it was a long shot, but had to at least try. Of course when making our offer we forgot The Golden Rule Of Mardones:

“[Mardones] still lives quite well on the royalties received from ["Into The Night]…” (source: Wikipedia)

Obviously $500 isn’t gonna cut it for Benny. The point is that we got Benny to actually listen to and consider performing on this crazy child-molester song that alluded to his own biggest hit. For us, that’s a huge win in and of itself.

By the way, Andrew Warner recently wrote a similar post about email strategies. His site Mixergy is a collection of hundreds of interviews that he conducts with the world’s most powerful CEOs and entrepreneurs. So he is constantly requesting the attention of the unreachable. Check it out!

If you like this post check out:

CHASING BENNY: Listen To Songs You Hate For Song-Writing Inspiration: The story behind “Innocent Night” and about how this song was inspired by Benny Mardones’ hit “Into The Night”

CHASING BENNY: Listen To Songs You Hate For Song-Writing Inspiration

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It’s no secret. When I wrote the lyrics to “Innocent Night” only one person was in my mind, guiding me with beautiful musical inspiration: Benny “The Voice” Mardones.

Benny’s epic “Into The Night”  had recently been brought to my attention by soft-rock afficionado and Flute Squad lead guitarist Father Ryan O’Graham. I later realized this very song that began with the line “She’s just 16 years old, leave her alone, they say…” had tortured me time and time again during the seven years I spent stocking shelves in my neighborhood grocery store. I mean, who was this dude? Why was he singing about a 16 year old chick? Why is he not listening to everyone around him who tells him to leave her alone? How could everyone in America not see through what I saw as a blatant admission of pedophiliac date rape?! I absolutely could not stand it.

Alas, I wanted to write a hit, so I begrudgingly looked to Benny for guidance. He’s the man that should know, right? The album featuring “Into The Night” ironically entitled Never Run, Never Hide is virtually unknown. In fact, Mardones is widely considered to be a one-hit wonder. But his one-hit topped charts TWICE (once in 1980, and again in 1989). Future songs of this chart-topping caliber became known as being “Bennyized” or having “The Mardones Touch”

I wanted that kind of power. I wanted “The Mardones Touch”. Wikipedia (which never ever lies) sums up what I am in interested in quite nicely:

“[Mardones] still lives quite well on the royalties received from this song… ”

So, I grabbed my pen and paper and locked myself in my bedroom with a song I absolutely hated playing on repeat. I swore I wouldn’t come out until the evil elixir of this song had seeped into my subconscious and forced me to write lyrics that could top the charts at least twice. 

But I had to figure out the “it” factor that led to “Into The Night”’s great success. Was it the moody bassline, the infectious groove? Could be. But then again, so many other songs have these elements but never even break through the top 100. In fact, I’m not even sure Benny knows, otherwise he’d write another hit (he’s still making albums you know).

After two long weeks of eating crumbs off the same floor I had been defecating on, I figured that sooner or later I had to let myself out of my bedroom or I was going to die! Then it hit me:

AMERICA LOVES PEDOPHILIA!

How else could you explain the seemingly unsolvable murder case of Jon-Benet Ramsey, the never-ending infatuation with a total freak known as the King of Pop, or the millions of Americans that still go to boring Catholic church every Sunday?

Mardones had tapped the cultural sub-conscious , and I was to copy his success. But what to call it…hmmm… Into The Night…. Int-i-mate Night?? Into The KNIGHT?!?!?! Wait…..I got it… INNOCENT NIGHT!!

I quickly scribbled down a nasty little story. It was about having to confront a friend on his annoying habit of being a child molester. I mailed the song to the Kashgrab Records hit factory, and a new Benny-ized epic was born.


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Up Next: Email strategies to get famous people to recognize you, even if they ultimately reject you. No for real, we actually approached Benny Mardones about singing on Boneslinky!