Jonathan Coulton appearing in Portland tonight

[Radien]

Poking around on the site of one of my favorite internet musicians, I've discovered that Jonathan Coulton is appearing at the White Eagle Saloon and Hotel tonight at 9pm.

http://eventful.com/events/E0-001-002575354-8

It's $12, and I'm pretty sure there'll be plenty of spots.

In case you don't know who Jonathan Coulton is, he's a folk-rock singer who is notable for his strangely humorous song lyrics, his use of internet-related song subjects, and the fact that all his songs are published under the Creative Commons license (some people will have no idea what this means, others will think it's awesome).

Some of his most popular songs are Code Monkey (a rock song about professional programmers), Skullcrusher Mountain (a country-ish love song from the voice of an evil criminal mastermind), and probably most well known, Re: Your Brains -- a song sung by a zombie negotiator trying to convince his former coworker to let the zombies come in and eat him. That last one was also released by a fan as a well-done music video with World of Warcraft footage.

I'm in Salem right now, and I'm considering driving up to see him tonight. If anybody else would like to join me, leave a reply here or PM me soon! I'll have to decide whether I'm going by 6pm or so.

[pieisexactlythree]

Is he the guy who sings the sensitive folk-song cover of Baby Got Back?  That rocks!

[Radien]

*checks*

Ha! I hadn't heard that one yet. Yes, that's him.

Heh. Interested in going?

In any case, his songs page was down earlier, but it's back up again. Apparently you can now listen to just about everything he's made for free; the only catch is that it's in Flash:
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songs

[kylite]

*cries* damn I missed it!

[Radien]

Aww... Sorry I didn't know sooner, kylite.

I actually went, in fact. I invited a friend up in Portland who hadn't heard any Jonathan Coulton. It was a blast. The audience was packed inside that narrow building, and there was lots of audience participation ("BRAAAAAINS") and a 3-song encore. It was also great to hear his hilarious background explanations of various songs.

Coulton said it was a great audience and a surprisingly big turnout. Hopefully this means he will come back.

[kylite]

we should invite him to the con as a guest!!!

[Radien]

we should invite him to the con as a guest!!!

Uh... while that would be cool, I don't think it would fly. I'm going to assume you were joking, though. Jonathan Coulton would mostly appeal to the older con-goers, as far as I can tell. Particularly programmers and math majors. But he doesn't have much to do with anime, unless you count songs about robots and cybernetic technology...

[Vondan]

get him to write a song about anime

[Radien]

get him to write a song about anime

Or, alternately, I could write an anime filk to one of his songs.

I kinda see that possibility going better. Coulton is a cross between computer geek and "indie" musician, rather than anime geek. It wouldn't take much work to anime-ify some of his songs, though, especially the ones with robots...