Beatnik Turtle's Backstage Blog

It’s that time of the year again.

Our band is gearing up for our 4th RPMChallenge. That’s where we make up and record an entire new album of original material in 28 days.

This is our 4th one, so we’re excited as ever. But the pre-challenge to the challenge for us is coming up with a theme for the album. Something that can guide all the individual songwriters in the band and help us focus on a coherent whole.

As many of you know, our 3 prior RPM albums have been based on:

- Writing an album looking back to when we were kids which produced songs like My Cereal (which features friends, fans, and many other RPMers on the “Coco Chorus” )!

- Updating traditional Irish pub songs and cranking them to “11″ which produced songs like Tell Me Ma which was featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered Second Stage.

- Writing an album about work and technology which produced songs like Mason Rocket (Spy Extraordinaire).

Now the question becomes, what will we end up creating this year?

We’re working on it!

Now, if you’re a musician that follows us because of IndieGuide.com and our books The Indie Band Survival Guide, and/or The DIY Music Manual, then we strongly encourage you to sign up at RPMChallenge and give it a shot.

RPM is not a contest. There’s no prizes. It’s completely a motivational thing. 1000s of musicians worldwide signup. Many make it to the end. But the community is amazing throughout the process as everyone works to complete their album. It’s a great reason to get the creative juices flowing, make an album of new material, and get some helpful feedback along the way by other musicians.

And honestly, what would you be doing in February anyways? It’s a crappy month. The weather blows…at least it does here in Chicago.

From all us Turtles, wishing you a healthy and happy 2010. Party on.

Given the type and style of music we write, our band Beatnik Turtle is often categorized with the label “Geek Rock”. Depending on what song of ours they’re listening to, we’re often compared to “other Geek Rock bands” like They Might Be Giants, Fountains of Wayne, XTC, Weezer, Ben Folds Five, and Barenaked Ladies or solo artists like our contemporary, Jonathan Coulton.*

But just grouping us with other “geeky bands” that we may sound-like, while extremely helpful in setting potential new fan expectations, doesn’t make a good definition of Geek Rock.

To me, Geek Rock is not so much about the music or even the personalities of the artists themselves (though yes, that does spill over into the music), rather it’s about the subject matter that’s tackled. It’s the fascination with focusing on “geeky” things — placing that interest unapologetically front and center to the music.

So, while I can’t come up with a good definition, the way I’ve been describing Geek Rock in person when asked by people is: if Rock equals “Maybe I’m Amazed” (Paul McCartney) then, Geek Rock equals Maybe “I’m Downright Amazed at What I Can Destroy With Just a Hammer” (a very cool tune by Atom and His Package).

ROCK = MAYBE I’M AMAZED

Vs.

GEEK ROCK = (MAYBE) I’M AMAZED AT WHAT I CAN DESTROY WITH JUST A HAMMER

In other words, it’s not so much about the music wrapping, Geek Rock bands can cross all types of music styles — rock, country, folk, jazz, alternative, grunge, etc. — so much as the topic that’s being sung about.

And that’s where our band comes in. We’re obsessed with writing songs about things that haven’t been put to song. We write songs about Google, IT departments, cereal, pizza, warp gates sucking in kids, blogging, secret agents, Star Wars, interns, obsessive compulsive children, and porn on your computer.

And while we sometimes take the subject matter with tongue-firmly-in-cheek, we always take the music part of the songs extremely seriously — from melody, to harmony, to recording, to mastering (just download and listen to Pizza: The Rock Opera if you’ve never heard us before).

Of course, music genres are slippery, amorphous things. Just when you think Beatnik Turtle is completely Geek Rock, we go and record SHAM ROCK, an album of rocked up traditional Irish songs (i.e. Tell Me Ma). Now how does this fit in with Geek Rock?

Uh, I don’t know. We just do what we do. Guess we’ll have to leave it up to others as to how to categorize that one!

*The interesting thing here however is I remember when most of these bands came out, they weren’t labeled “Geek Rock”. This is a retroactive term that’s been applied to try and capture this hard-to-pin-down genre. This is true for our band well. We started over 12 years ago and the word geek and rock were rarely uttered in the same breath when we took the stage. We were labeled “alternative” (or better yet, “weird”) since we had no hope or interest in being mainstream.

Every year around this time our “Un-Holiday” album, SANTA DOESN’T LIKE YOU, respawns, er, gets reborn. (Jesus was the world’s first respawner, no?). And it’s that album as well as all the Un-Holiday songs freely available at TheSongOfTheDay.com that put our entire band in the awkward position of passing on Season’s Greetings.

“How can you say Merry Christmas to me when you have a song called Christmas is a Vulture?” they say.

Um, it’s satire?

“And what’s this about Santa not speaking Spanish? Do you play that to kids?”

Oh, that one. We just thought it would be funny if Santa couldn’t speak Spanish. You know, “Santa” is a Spanish word anyway and –.

“Whatever, jerk.”

So, just in case you’re not that person and won’t hold it against us, “Happy Holidays” anyway — no matter what you celebrate (or don’t).