Jonathan Coulton

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Jonathan Coulton (2009)

Jonathan Coulton (born December 1, 1970 in New Haven, Connecticut ) is an American singer-songwriter who is known for his songs about geek culture . His best-known songs include Code Monkey , Re: Your Brains , Still Alive and Want You Gone .

Life

The former programmer at Cluen, a New York software company, calls himself a geek. He writes funny, sometimes bizarre texts about science fiction and technology. In it he covers topics like monkeys, (crazy) science and bacteria. Sometimes he also uses current topics like 2005 in W's Duty on George W. Bush or 2006 in Tom Cruise Crazy . Most of Coulton's recordings consist of his vocals plus guitar, bass and drums; some use various other instruments that Coulton plays, including the accordion , harmonica , mandolin , banjo , ukulele, and glockenspiel .

Coulton graduated from Yale University in 1993 , where he was a member of The Whiffenpoofs and The Spizzwinks (?) . Today he is a contributing troubadour to the magazine “ Popular Science ”, whose September 2005 issue was accompanied by a set of five of his songs under the title “Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms”. He was also musical director for The Little Gray Book Lectures .

Career

His best-known works include his cover of the song Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-Lot and his own songs like Code Monkey , which was presented on April 23, 2006 on Slashdot and linked by the webcomic Penny Arcade . It was also the theme song for the animated series Code Monkeys American US the television channel G4 .

Songs by him were on the show All Things Considered the National Public Radio played (NPR) and the Mission of Good Morning Silicon Valley a video to Coulton's title was Re: Your Brains link.

Coulton accompanied John Hodgman as guitarist on his promotional tour 700 Hobo Names for the book The Areas of My Expertise , where he was performed as "John William Coulton, the Colchester Kid". Coulton also worked on the audiobook version of this book, where he plays the theme song and interlude and jokes with Hodgman, who is reading the audio version of his book. Hodgman also mentioned Coulton on The Daily Show , where he selected a Jonathan Coulton from Colchester, Connecticut to win an essay contest on the overwhelming Iraqi resistance to the American invasion. Coulton wrote and played The Winning Entry , a song about dropping snakes from airplanes. Coulton also worked on Hodgman's second book, More Information Than You Require .

He also composed the theme music for the show Mystery Diagnosis and contributed other songs to The Little Gray Book Lectures , a series of audio publications by John Hodgman.

In the early days he was discovered by podcasters . In particular, Adam Curry from Daily Source Code and The Wizards of Technology used Coulton's music regularly. In April 2006 he lent his voice to such a podcast, The Spoilers , in which he recorded a two-hour fan commentary on Raiders of the Lost Ark with Rick Yaeger and Bill Douthett .

In 2006 Coulton began touring with comedy duo Paul and Storm . Initially as a supporting act, but when he quickly became better known as a headliner.

He wrote the title Still Alive for the credits of the 2007 published computer game Portal by Valve , which was sung by Ellen McLain . On April 1, 2008 Harmonix made the title for the game Rock Band available as a free download. A version with Coulton singing himself has been added to the Orange Box soundtrack in addition to the version at the end of the game . Still Alive is also included in Left 4 Dead 2 as an Easter Egg . The song has been called "Most Influential Computer Game Music". The song at the end of Portal 2 2011 is again from Jonathan Coulton and is called Want You Gone .

In 2009 he released a CD and DVD of his concert on February 22, 2008 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco under the title Best. Concert. Ever. At this concert he played Still Alive in the rock band version, together with guest musicians and Leo Laporte , Merlin Mann and Veronica Belmont .

Coulton played a couple of They Might Be Giants concerts on their tour in March 2010. He toured with them again in February 2012.

He had been working on his follow-up album to the Thing a Week albums under the tentative title The Aftermath . It has since been said that the title is more of a generic term to classify the titles after Thing a Week .

On May 25, 2010, Coulton wrote on his official website that he was working on a new album to be produced by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, and for the first time with a full band, including TMBG's Marty Beller, in a professional Recording studio. The resulting album Artificial Heart was released on September 2, 2011.

In May 2011, Coulton was interviewed by the NPR on the popular economics program Planet Money . He said he makes about $ 500,000 every year even though he doesn't have a label. He expressed his gratitude to his fans for this surprise success because he found this extent "absurd". In another discussion about whether or not the internet was good for musicians, Coulton replied it would be good, while journalist Frannie Kelley called him a "godsend" like a snuggie. Coulton wrote an ironic reply on his blog with "to which I say: snarkity snark snark!".

In May 2012, Coulton was named "House Musician" for the NPR's live show Ask Me Another .

Licensing

Coulton publishes his songs under the Creative Commons license with attribution and without commercial re-use (CC-BY-NC), which allows others to re-use them in their own, non-commercial works. As a result, several music videos were made using his songs, including machinima like ILL Clan's video for Code Monkey and a kinetic typography video for Shop Vac .

Thing a Week

From September 16, 2005 to September 30, 2006, Coulton published Thing a Week , where he recorded 52 tracks on a "forced-march approach to writing and recording" to prove to himself that he could produce creative output by a deadline can and to see if a professional artist can use the internet and creative commons to fund themselves. The first signs already showed that the experiment was successful, due to the creation of a large number of high-quality songs with increasing download numbers, which in turn increased its public presence and fan base. Financial success is more difficult to gauge, but Coulton was quoted in an interview in September 2006 as saying that he "led a decent life in some parts of the country". In an interview on February 25, 2008, he said that he had more income in 2007 than he had in his senior year as a programmer, 40% of it from downloads and 40% from merchandising and gigs.

Discography

Studio albums

  • 2003: Smoking Monkey
  • 2004: Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow
  • 2005: Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms
  • 2006: Thing a Week One
  • 2006: Thing a Week Two
  • 2006: Thing a Week Three
  • 2006: Thing a Week Four
  • 2011: Artificial Heart
  • 2017: Solid State

Compilations

  • 2008: JoCo Looks Back
  • 2009: Best Concert. Ever. (Live album)
  • 2012: Jonathan Coulton's Greatest Hit (Plus 13 Other Songs)

Other publications

  • 2005: Other Experiments (Rarities Collection)
  • 2006: Unplugged (Live on Second Life)
  • 2007: The Orange Box Original Soundtrack
    • 1. "Still Alive" (sung by Ellen McLain)
    • 19. "Still Alive" (sung by Jonathan Coulton)
  • 2009: The Aftermath
  • 2011: Portal 2 Soundtrack: Songs to Test By - Volume 3
    • 13. "Want You Gone" (sung by Ellen McLain)

Other versions and covers

The NES rock band I Fight Dragons covered The Future Soon on their EP IFD Super Secret Exclusives (2009).
Pianist Lous Durra recorded an instrumental trio version of Code Monkey , which he released on Mad World EP and Arrogant Doormats (2011).

Web links

Commons : Jonathan Coulton  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ JoCopedia, the Jonathan Coulton wiki . Retrieved October 7, 2012
  2. ^ Perfect Tone, in a Minor Key. New York Times, March 23, 2008. Retrieved October 7, 2012
  3. ↑ "The Future of The Body: The Soundtrack" , Popular Science . Retrieved October 7, 2012
  4. ↑ "Witty Tunes Are Jonathan Coulton's 'Thing'" , NPR 's All Things Considered . Retrieved October 7, 2012
  5. ↑ Code Monkey Like Fritos. April 23, 2006. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  6. ↑ Prinny Please. September 3, 2006. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  7. ^ The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Essay Contest. Comedy Central, April 25, 2006. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  8. ↑ Jonathan Coulton: How I Did It. May 18, 2007. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  9. ^ The House of Commentaries: Raiders of the Lost Ark by Spoilers Podcast. ( Memento of January 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) February 18, 2008. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  10. ↑ Jonathan Coulton: "I Ruined Raiders" April 30, 2006. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  11. ↑ Chris Kohler: Rock Band Gets 'Still Alive' Tomorrow, Free. March 31, 2008. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  12. ↑ The Orange Box - Original Soundtrack. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  13. ↑ Easter Eggs (Still Alive).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 31, 2012@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / ah.roosterteeth.com  
  14. ↑ Most Influential Game Music. ( Memento of February 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) February 20, 2011. Accessed October 31, 2012
  15. ↑ Concert Info San Francisco, 2008-02-22. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  16. ↑ Jonathan Coulton to open shows for TMBG! ( Memento of February 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved October 31, 2012
  17. ↑ Michael Harrison: Jonathan Coulton and TMBG's John Flansburgh to Collaborate on New Record. Retrieved October 31, 2012
  18. ↑ Michael Harrison: Jonathan Coulton and TMBG's John Flansburgh to Collaborate on New Record. Retrieved November 1, 2012
  19. ↑ Band Shows, New Songs. July 16, 2010. Retrieved November 1, 2012
  20. ↑ Alex Blumberg: An Internet Rock Star Tells All. May 13, 2011. Retrieved November 1, 2012
  21. ↑ On Snuggies and Business Models. May 23, 2011. Retrieved November 1, 2012
  22. ↑ NPR: Ask Me Another. Retrieved November 1, 2012
  23. ^ Jarrett Heather: "Shop Vac (kinetic typography animation)". ( September 12, 2012 memento on WebCite ) Retrieved November 1, 2012
  24. ↑ Interview by Ken Plume with Jonathan Coulton. Retrieved November 1, 2012
  25. ↑ Jonathan Coulton - Functional And Elegant. Accessed November 1, 2012 (mp3)
personal data
SURNAME Coulton, Jonathan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES JoCo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer-songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH 1st December 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH New Haven, Connecticut