PAX 2007: Jonathan Coulton: Looming Large at PAX
Some things have to be seen or heard to be believed. One of those things is a folksy acoustic guitar rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lots' Baby Got Back as performed by Jonathan Coulton. I've been a fan of his ever since stumbling across this gem of a cover at jonathancoulton.com, and even more so after learning that his abilities as a songwriter equaled his vocal talents and the subject matter of his songs (Humans singing christmas tidings from outer space while working as slaves to robots, zombie office workers, and life as a programmer) were right up my alley. Jonathan was the first act of the Saturday night concert at PAX, and this gave us a long awaited opportunity to sit down with him.
Gaming Nexus: So, Jonathan can you give our readers a quick introduction of who you are and what you do?
Jonathan Coulton: Who I am and what I do.... My name is Jonathan Coulton, I'm a musician, a singer/songerwriter, and a professional internet superstar. I used to write software for a living, but a couple of years ago I quit to do music full-time. I did a project called Thing-a-Week where I recorded a new song every week for a year, releasing them all as a podcast. And now I am a semi-semi-famous person.
GN: What is the biggest perk of being a semi-semi-famous person?
JC: You know, I have to say it's the ego boost of having fans. Honestly, it's a wonderful thing. People say to me "I'm sure you get this all the time, but I love your music". And it's like I don't get tired of that. (Jonathan laughs) It's really wonderful meeting all these people and having them say nice things to me. Who wouldn't love that?
GN: While we were walking to our interview site, a very attractive woman warned Jonathan she might acost him, and another fan said "Hey, that's Jonathan Coulton".
JC: As you can see, it's a very rough life for me.
GN: Obviously, making this particular career switch had to be a drastic change in your life. How did your wife take the news that you wanted to be a musician?
JC: It wasn't the easiest conversation to have. "By the way, honey, I'm going to quit my lucrative software job and become an internet musician. And I don't have any idea how I'm going to do that". I'm not sure she was thrilled about the idea, in fact I'm sure she wasn't thrilled. But she did, for lack of a better phrase, allow me to do it. She continued to work, and continued to remain married to me while I did this. Luckily for me, it's worked out pretty well so far.
GN: And the perk for her is that she's now married to a semi-semi-famous person.
JC: (laughs) That's right. And I'm sure that's a great position to be in.
GN: So, Tell me about how you became involved with the G4TV show Code Monkeys.
JC: One of the songs I wrote during Thing-a-Week was a song called Code Monkey. It was sort of about my experiences as a software designer, although I should be very clear that it is not strictly autobiographical, it's just in general terms of how it feels to write software, sometimes. I actually loved my job and the people I worked with. I wasn't quite as depressed as the character in the song.
So, that was a song that got picked up for whatever reason by the internet and forwarded around. Sometime later, these guys were doing a show for G4TV called Code Monkies, an animated funny show about game designers. I guess they thought it was obvious that it should be the theme song. It does seem like it makes a certain kind of sense. So, they contacted me and asked me if they could license the song for the show.
GN: As someone who lived that life for 10 years, I think it's fair to say there isn't a single programmer in the world who hasn't had a crush on the office secretary at one point in their life.
JC: (laughs) I guess that's probably true. And it's even more universal than that, because you don't have to write software to feel like a monkey in your job. It's sort of about office culture in general, in that way. I've had people who hang drywall for a living say to me "that exactly describes my life".
GN: Obviously, here at PAX, everyones focus is on gaming. In the time since Guitar Hero came out, music games have really started to take off. One of the things I really wanted to ask you is what do you see in that space as the market progresses?
JC: I think in a lot of ways it parallels gamings relationship with moviemaking and storytelling, in general. The way games more and more have become these cinematic experiences. You are moving through a story, you are changing the story. It blurs the boundaries between a pre-packaged piece of entertainment, and something you are creating yourself. I'd like to think that trend is going to continue on the music side as well. It's really great to see how culture is changing, that more and more entertainment is about creating things. So many kids are growing up now and are making mash-ups at home or remixing their favorite songs. For someone like me, growing up before there was an Internet, it's sort of mind blowing to think there's a whole generation growing up with these amazing tools that allow them to be not just an audience and consumer, but an artist and creator as well. I think we're going to see more and more of the blurring of those boundaries between consumption and creation.
GN: When you talk about creativity, it reminds me of Thing-a-Week. You sort of put yourself on a forced march through the creative hell of having to come up with new content, new creations every week. Have there been any unforeseen benefits of that, aside from some of the songs becoming commercially viable entities?
JC: Absolutely. Hell is a good term for it. In many ways it was very difficult and very painful a lot of the time. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to songwriting and recording. Having to put out a song a week was sometimes a question of me deciding that something I thought was not very good was finished. Which is in many ways, the hardest part of the creative process: saying I'm done, here it is, and giving it to your audience. Even if that audience is even just your friend or your mom. To actually stop working on something is a hard thing to do sometimes. So one of the benefits I think is that I really did discover that bad ideas can become good songs, and even bad songs can become a favorite for somebody. Even my least favorite song, people will write me and say thats my favorite song of yours.
GN: Since you brought it up, I'm going to put you on the spot: What is your least favorite Thing-a-Week song? The one you thought "That's crap, no one is going to listen to it"?
JC: (laughs) I think Drive is my least favorite.
GN: (sounding disappointed) Really?
JC: (laughing) See? It's not really what I was hearing in my head. I think my kitchen was being remodeled that week. That's the hard part about recording songs in a Brooklyn apartment, sometimes you don't have the apartment. At some point in the middle of Thing-a-Week we decided I shouldn't have my equipment in my one year old daughters room, but that we should put a wall in the kitchen to create an office for me. So I recorded that song on equipment that I don't normally use after carrying it in a duffel bag to my sister-in-laws apartment in the middle of the day. I remember thinking afterword "Yech."
GN: So do you have a particular favorite song from the project?
JC: There a few that really came together pretty easily. Shop Vac was one of those. Maybe because it was early on, and I hadn't been beaten down yet by the Thing-a-Week process. And for whatever reason, the voice of the character was very clear to me, and the arc of the song was pretty clear from the beginning.
GN: One of things you're known for is that the premise behind your songs are very diverse, like being held as slave mining labor by robot masters. Where do those ideas come from?
JC: I don't know. I need that kind of ... craziness to make the creative juices flow. I don't need a challenge, exactly, but how do you write a song about a guy who is sad? But take a giant squid who is sad, now we're getting somewhere. Because for me, I start thinking, "what would a squid be sad about?", and "What's so bad about being a squid?". Those are things that bring it to life, and there's a reason for the song to exist. So, I guess where they come from is I make them up. (laughs) I start with the guy, what he's feeling, add a line I like, and start building from there.
GN: To get back to gaming for just a second, obviously you live a pretty hectic life these days, do you get any time to play much at all?
JC: Not a lot, really, no. When the end of the workday comes, and it's time for me to be a dad again, anyone who has a 2 year old can tell you there's no way to get away with giving that child anything less than full attention. My daughter says "No daddy, put the phone away, and play playmobile with me." I don't get a huge amount of time. I just last weekend played the Wii for the first time.
GN: Did you enjoy it?
JC: I really did. It was the classic Wii story. I was playing Wii Sports Boxing, and the next morning I couldn't unbend my arms. I was podcasting for Popular Science from E3 2005, the year of all the new consoles, and at their press conference the Nintendo people sounded like crazy people. I was like, they're backing off, they can't take it. But it really was a brilliant move. I was talking to Joel Johnson, and he said my favorite soundbite from that weekend, "Nintendo has proven once again why they are the console maker for Nintendo fans". It's totally true, but it's totally fun. It's smart for so many reasons.
GN: Though you're not gaming a lot now, you've got a young child who is only a few years from being the age where the Wii is for her.
JC: That's true. And I'm looking forward to that day. While I think playing Playmobile is great, it's not as challenging to me as it once was to play Playmobile. So, if I can spend time with my daughter by fragging her, so much the better.
GN: Guitar Hero somewhat dumbs down the idea of the guitar for ease of play. As a guitar player, what do you think about Guitar Hero?
JC: I think playing Guitar Hero is harder than the way I play guitar. I don't think of myself as a great guitar player and I'm in awe of so many other people who are so much better. I've never had the patience to "practice" the guitar. Even though it's just a rough aproximation of what's going on, there are certain times when you are playing the game that you make connections in your head where it does sort of feel like what it is to play the guitar. It is a pretty decent simulation without being so accurate as to be not fun.
GN: Do you think as the genre continues to expand, do you think evolving the controller closer to a real guitar would be plausible?
JC: I definately think it could go further in that direction. You could even make it more of a simulation, and less of a game and still take some people with you. I don't think you want to lead with something that complicated, but I think there's certainly room to do something like that.
GN: Do you think music games can lead to greater music appreciation, perhaps even to someone wanting to learn how to play instruments?
JC: I think there's plenty of room for that as well. For some reason, I'm suddenly remembering Parappa the Rappa, and how awesome of a game that was. "Kick, Punch, It's all in the Mind".
GN: (laughing) Well, that's clearly the quote of the interview. As a final question, it's been a while since you've put out a song. Can we expect new content anytime soon?
JC: Yes. I don't want to say there's going to be a huge blitz of new content. I'm slowly making my way back to new content. Since Thing-a-Week ended, which was a year ago now, I haven't done a lot of writing. One cover and one new song. I have another song in my right now that I haven't recorded yet.
GN: Can you give us the premise of this new song?
JC: The song is called Lady Aberlines' Moo-Moo.
GN: That's definately a Jonthan Coulton song.
