Despite two of the band members uprooting their lives to move to Dublin, Ireland in a week (me and Tom), we managed to write and record 11 new songs and mail it to “RPM Headquarters“. Over 2000 indie musicians participated this year. Not sure how many managed to finish, but then it’s really not a contest (and it doesn’t matter: it’s an exercise in creativity and motivation).

The album we mailed in is entitled “So Much To Rock About” based on a line in the song, “Hello Guitar (We’ve Got So Much To Rock About”). It seemed fitting, especially since this will become our 21st album when it officially gets released next year.

As with RPM albums we’ve done in years past, we’ll be posting all the songs up at TheSongOfTheDay.com in the next week or so. Also, while we finished the album for RPM purposes, we’ll do our usual and write some more songs and work on the album over the year. We still need to get last year’s album out — “When I Was Your Age” — and the ever-forthcoming “The Best Of TheSongOfTheDay.com” (which is a double album, so, you know, it’s twice the work).

So, there’s a lot more music coming from Beatnik Turtle…even if two of us guys are relocating to Dublin for the time-being.

Last May our video for “Star Wars (A Film Like No Other)” was played on SpikeTV. For months the videotape we had of its airing sat on my shelf above the TV. My brother thankfully recorded it, handed me the videotape, and said something about seeing the video and how it was actually “pretty good” which was the biggest compliment he’s ever given us. Anyway, I went to watch it, but then realized I didn’t have a VCR anymore and so there it sat, on the shelf.

Well, I finally borrowed a VCR and digitized it.

How’d it get on SpikeTV?

Well, it’s a long story but basically Tom and I made a video mashup for the song using the great tools at StarWars.com the year before. It got something like 15,000 views and was one of the top videos at the time. That led to Atom.com asking to post  it at their site where we became a Fan Movie Challenge Finalist. Then, a few months later, SpikeTV called and asked to play it to help celebrate the 32nd anniversary and promote the Fan Movie Challenge.

It’s how things happen nowadays.

Enjoy the video and I’ll pass on my thanks to my brother for you.

In a whirlwind recording session not seen since we did TheSongOfTheDay.com, we managed to record the basic tracks  to 11 songs.  While that may seem impressive, it’s really just drums, bass, and scratch guitars/vocals (which get recorded over). ***

All 11 the songs revolve around music, being in a band, and of course making an album (RPM!).

Working titles to the songs are:

“Earworm” — about that song you can’t get out of your head.

“Dude From Indiana” — about a guy who’s “Rockin’ Real Hard To Carlos Santana”

“Hello Guitar” — about getting back into songwriting and playing after a long time away.

“All The Pretty Girls” — about girls of course — the best type of groupies!

“Yesterday’s New Today (Get Me Movin’)” — we wrote this song kind of as an anthem for musicians. It’s all about how you don’t want to work, you’d rather play all day.

“Never Be The Front Man” –  this one’s pretty obvious, it’s about being second to the front man (think: Oates of Hall & Oates, the poor guy).

“We’re Getting The Band Back Together” – since our album’s about music, there was no way in hell we weren’t going to write a song based on the classic Blues Brothers line!

“11″ — and speaking of famous movie lines, we realized pretty quickly we needed to have a nod to Spinal Tap.

“Jump The Shark” – we decided to tempt fate and write about you know, jumping the shark — the exact moment when you were really good, but now you went downhill.

“Don’t Quit Your Day Job” – now, how could we NOT write this one given what the album’s all about?!?

The eleventh song is a different rendition of “Don’t Quit Your Day Job”. So, that’s all we have so far, but we’ve been known to come up with something at the spur of the moment, so we’ll see what develops and what doesn’t…

Oh and we’re still trying to come up with a name for the album since it’s about music. We were thinking “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” but that’s been done to death.

Other ideas so far include:

“So Much To Rock About”

“Rock and/or Roll”

But, um…that’s all we got. If you have any ideas for an album title that fits the theme, we’re all ears! Leave a comment, tweet us, email us, whatever…it’ll get to us!

***Our record recording session as a band is 14 songs tracked out in one day — one of which was Pizza: The Rock Opera, so it’s actually more than 14, since that song is our 10 minute opus to ordering, waiting, and receiving a pizza. (BTW, you can download Pizza: The Rock Opera here or stream it here at TheSongOfTheDay.com.)

Um, and the record for our drummer — just recording drums to tracks — is 36. Yep. John’s pretty amazing!

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.

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.

“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).

George Hrab — our mega-multi-talented friend, podcaster, author, and musician — was recently interviewed on TV – Channel 69, WFMZ (yep, Channel 69, baby!). The interview can be streamed here and is worth watching.

But the even cooler part for us is George played “When I Was Your Age” live. The link to that performance is in part 2 (they link to it here as well). See if you can spot George’s cool, new lyric changes from the studio version we recorded back in February.

Way to go George. Great interview, great song. Thanks for the shout-out by the way!

By the way, as Randy clearly states, some members of the band are not wimps for not making it to Dragon*Con. However some might be Bedwetters.

Dave wondered if he wrote the lyrics, could we write the music? We of course agreed and so Dave penned the lyrics to the tune and handed it off to us to record as soon as we had the time. We recently grabbed our guitars, cranked our amps, and did a few lyrical touch-ups (adding the moral of the story). So, here it is, one year later, our collaboration in “all its glory.” Enjoy!*

*Remember to drink responsibly (that is, don’t wear a kilt and decide to go commando when you decide to party all day, okay?)

Also this weekend, Jason and Tom are making a big push to get Best of TheSongOfTheDay.com albums ready for this fall. Which of the 365 songs made the cut? Stay tuned to find out.

Stay tuned for more info!

This is a peer-reviewed award. And we were one of over 42,000 albums submitted. Less than 1/3 of 1% get nominated: that’s some kind of crazy fraction I can’t figure out using Verizon Math.

Obviously, we’re pretty floored and appreciative. Thanks to JPF and to all our BT Fans!

If you catch it on the air, keep in mind the song makes a great drinking game — not only because it’s an Irish-take on the original three movies, but it’s a holiday as well.

The STAR WARS (A FILM LIKE NO OTHER) DRINKING GAME

Grab an adult beverage and get ready to DRINK!

Here are the rules:

1. Everyone pick a character or two from the original series. Every time your character’s name pops up or is referenced to, DRINK!
2. All DRINK whenever the phrase “Star Wars” is sung
3. No one drinks if there’s any reference to the crappy prequel movies.

That’s all there is to it. We recommend Colt 45 of course, given that’s Lando’s favorite beer.

If you don’t have cable or don’t want to wait to start drinking, then you can catch the video here – right on our video page.

Happy anniversary Star Wars and thanks SpikeTV!

(Um, why during a CSI marathon? May 25th is Star Wars 32nd anniversary, of course…)

Details are sketchy, but it should air @ 2pm. By sketchy, we mean, we’re not really sure what time zone they meant when the good people of SpikeTV told us 2pm. They’re out of California, so that could be 2pm their time. That would make it 4pm Central Standard Time, 5pm Eastern Standard Time, etc. Then again, they could have meant 2pm Central Time knowing that’s the time zone Beatnik Turtle calls home. Then again, they could have meant – oh boy. This is starting to make my head hurt. Just like this season’s LOST.

Anyway, you can catch the video here – right on our video page.

Happy anniversary Star Wars and thanks SpikeTV!

Be there or kindly be square.

That was today.

And now my sleep cycle is completely off. But, we did it. The new album is entitled “When I Was Your Age” as it’s a look back at ourselves when we were kids. But then, if you’ve been listening to the Songs Under Construction Kasts, you know that.

We were able to get everyone’s handclaps and vocals into the songs! We ended up running out of time to try the clock intro, so that album just starts with the first song. Also, the kid interviews that were submitted we couldn’t get to as well. We were able to sneak 3 kids in the album, however. But it certainly wasn’t what we planned to do. We wanted to weave kid dialog throughout the album. But, once again we ran out of time.

Worse, our trombonist came up with a great song called “I Don’t Need To Try It To Know I Won’t Like It” which we regretted not having time to add to the pile either. So, we’re going to spend the rest of March putting the final touches on the album and the album artwork for it’s “official” release later this year (just as we did with Sham Rock and All In A Day’s Work before this one).

Of course, all 13 songs on the album will all debut at TheSongOfTheDay.com starting next week. So, subscribe to that podcast if you haven’t already!

Thanks again to all those who sent in handclaps, singing, clocks, and interviews for the album!

Ok – enough ramble and on to the song. The album is starting to take shape!

Join us on this album by joining our Facebook collaboration page.

Subscribe to the feed here. We’re now up at “the iTunes”.

Join us on this album by joining our Facebook collaboration page.

Subscribe to the feed here. We’re now up at “the iTunes”.

As before, this isn’t a real mix yet – loud vocals, guitars or other stuff might pop out at any moment so be careful with your volume control!

Join us on this album by joining our Facebook collaboration page.

Subscribe to the feed here. We’re now up at “the iTunes”.

As before, this isn’t a real mix yet – loud vocals, guitars or other stuff might pop out at any moment so be careful with your volume control!

Join us on this album by joining our Facebook collaboration page.

Subscribe to the feed here. We’re now up at “the iTunes”.

As before, this isn’t a real mix yet – loud vocals, guitars or other stuff might pop out at any moment so be careful with your volume control!

Join us on this album by joining our Facebook collaboration page.

Subscribe to the feed here. We’re now up at “the iTunes”.

As before, this isn’t a real mix yet – loud vocals, guitars or other stuff might pop out at any moment so be careful with your volume control!

Join us on this album by joining our Facebook collaboration page.

Subscribe to the feed here. We’re now up at “the iTunes”.