Epic Default Productions

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic recently, which translates into “Settle in guys, here comes a long, semi-coherent rant.” The topic in question is Nerd Music’s place in the current spectrum of popular music, but more importantly, the chances of it, in some shape, becoming the next major cultural shift in mainstream music.

I can already hear some of you screaming at me through the monitors. Trust me, what you are screaming is not something I haven’t heard before when I bring this up. “It’s too niche,” or “Nerds are still outcasts, no one understands them enough to be mainstream,” are all valid points in a normal world, but also, all points brought up about the past musical shifts.

Here’s what the next few articles in this series are going to basically boil down to: I honestly think that with a little help, Nerd Music will be the next British invasion or Grunge-like movement. Take your pick. The fuel has been pooled in a nice little lake and all it needs is that errant spark to explode on the scene.

And I hope to god that I’m right because current music needs it.

The basis of this elongated rant came from a statement I made in Episode 4 of Epic Radio. Essentially the mini rant was just a way of hopefully covering my ass should any of the artists I play on that show ever get on an ego trip and decide to sue anyone and everyone for using their music without permission. Do I actually expect that to happen? Hell no! If it does I will seriously lose my respect for the people I play on that show, but it’s always better to cover all your bases.

In racking my brain over if it was worth those five minutes to get it out there, I realized that there was a bigger reason I was doing this show than I originally thought. Originally it was just something to pass the time, basically creating digital mix tapes for people to listen to on their commutes or while they were working, but I came to realize that that was just a veil I was putting over what I really wanted to do, which is change the world.

I think Nerd Music currently is looked at as a gimmick genre. Maybe even a fad. I’ll admit, I was once in that mindset. But recent events that will be outlined here have convinced me otherwise and I’m taking on a personal mission to prove the rest of the world wrong as well.

This particular installment will hopefully quantify what I’m about to say by letting you in to what my experience on this subject is, so that these words can hopefully be read and absorbed instead of just being skipped over as some other music snob’s ranting of how music has gotten horrible since their younger days. I’m not asking you to take my words to heart, unless you feel the same, but I am asking you to just listen for a moment.

And I’ll start at the reasoning behind the term “music snob.” Looking at my iTunes playlist and song count it becomes horribly apparent that I am not a “hipster.” I am actually a creature lower than that on the music lover caste system. I have no hope of turning my term into something of endearment, as some others have gloriously done. Hell, my best friend and fellow website founder is a self proclaimed “indie hipster,” (EDIT: though not an asshole about it) and his song count destroys mine three fold at least. Granted, most of the bands filling his iPod are ones that you and I have never heard of, but he could say the same about my music collection as well. I’m very set in my ways when it comes to what I like and dislike, where as he has a broader range of tastes to choose from when he sees fit.

I consider myself to be, and have been called many a time, a “New Wave Kid.” The majority of my music collection is over ten to twenty years old and has its roots in Punk, Electro Pop, and just straight up rock. It’s a rare day when anything new graces my screen when I’m purging my list of songs that I just don’t feel anymore. Although with my recent foray into “Nerd Music,” that is quickly becoming a more common occurrence. The reasoning behind this is that, in my opinion (which you will see a lot of in the upcoming articles), it was a time when the majority music was more focused on being fun and/or inspiring, instead of trying to make as much money as you possibly can.

Yes, I’m one of those people.

I can tell you the exact moment when the seeds of this thought were planted into my brain as well. My first and fondest musical memory dates back to my days in elementary school. There was a road in the neighborhood my family was living in that had a hill with a 45 degree incline. My sister would pick me up after school to take me home and I’d beg her to take the scenic route so that we could take that drop doing forty miles an hour. An exciting thrill in itself, and nothing to do with music at the moment, but I’m getting to that.

She rarely agreed simply because she was scared to death what our father would do to her in the event of something going terribly wrong, hurting both us and the new truck he just got for her, but being a easily impressionable teenager at that time, it didn’t take much convincing sometimes. The part where the music comes in is that it seemed every time we did this little stunt, she would have The Police’s Ghost in the Machine tape in the stereo, blasting at ear splitting levels, and we’d always get to the hill right as Sting would start belting “Eeeyoh, Eeeyoh,” during “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.” It became our own Geronimo! like call and to this day, whenever I hear that song, I can’t help but belt along with Sting at that specific section of the song.

Needless to say, that band, that song, and that album are all within the top three of their respective lists of my favorites. However, this also ended up having a Pavlovian-esque effect to my musical tastes. The song has a pure feeling to it, of a man who wants so desperately to tell his love this ever present fact, making it a beautiful song on its own. But when you couple it with the sheer exhilaration of feeling your stomach in your throat so suddenly, it takes it to a completely different level of emotion and excitement that you are doomed forever to desperately search for that feeling once again.

And unfortunately, the search continues.

It started out small, finding bands through her music collection, watching MTV, and listening to the local oldies station as I fell asleep at night. But as I entered high school, I started growing immune to the feelings that those songs temporarily gave me, which was about the same time that a tumor started growing from my hands. You may know it better as a guitar, but I know it as a rare form of cancer that you don’t want to expire from but never want to cure as well.

Part of the reason as to why I left gaming for so long is because I would spend all of my free time investigating the sounds that I could produce from this delightful disease (and the lyricist inside me finally comes out.) There were days where I would wake up, plug in the 6-string abomination, and never leave it until I finally succumbed to exhaustion sixteen hours later. My fingers have yet to forgive me for these little adventures. When my peers were spending their part-time wages on car accessories, the latest fashions, or keeping up to date with technology, I’d spend hours in the local Guitar Center purchasing effects pedals, talking shop with the staff, and jamming with random passerbies.

This satisfied my need of excitement and fun with music, simply because I was controlling it. If I wanted a happy bouncy song, all I needed to do was write it. Same situation if I was feeling particularly moody that day. I started losing track of the latest bands and musical trends because it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. About that time was when the digital revolution was starting, and when record companies were starting to kill the creativity of mainstream music (Something that I will investigate further within this series of articles, so don’t drink your haterade quite yet), so it all started to run together for me, or just down right piss me off.

That was almost a decade ago now, and now even that buzz is beginning to wear off. But not before I made my rounds between five completely different types of bands, and swore off college because I figured I had slaved away at music so much that it was inevitable I was going to make my livelihood using it.

It’s the only thing I regret in my life.

Do I hate the fact that I was being creative all those years? Fuck no! I’m still writing, I still have riffs in my head, and it’s still enjoyable. But it took me this long to realize that I wasn’t going to be the next Paul McCartney or Kurt Cobain. Not to mention that I’m not growing any younger and my window of opportunity to go and get a decent education with any meaning other than a pat on the back and a “You did it!” is closing fast. Hence why I am currently knocking on any college’s door screaming, “Please let me in!!!”

This is where Nerd Music inevitably saved me from potentially being yet another person whose only purpose in life was to wake up, do their daily routine, and go back to sleep until the day they just didn’t wake up again. Once again starting small with a little album that Tony showed me entitled The Protomen by the band of the same name. This was where I was introduced to music that finally “spoke to me,” as cliché as that sounds. It was the first time where I could actually listen to the lyrics of a song and say to myself, “I understand this,” since, well, that little Police song. Having been raised with a Nintendo controller in my hand, I knew immediately the basis of these works. It also helped that the singer is a bad ass vocalist and that their shows are religious experiences to behold. But the biggest part that I found so enjoyable was their subtle use of the lo-fi 8-bit tones in their songs.

It took me back to my childhood, the exact era when I was launching down that hill destroying my vocal chords.

Immediately, this threw my creative mind into a tizzy as I desperately searched for the midi program they used to create those sounds to use in my own band, as well as trying to find the right settings on my effects board, which was then valued in the thousands of dollars, to try and mimic it with my guitar. Even when my desperate search for more of this lovely sound led me to the little know DJ Make Up and Vanity Set (Note: Do not click that link if you are prone to Epileptic Seizures) with his cover album of The Protomen done entirely with circuit bent keyboards and old gaming machines, it never clicked that these same sounds could be produced by the very same Gameboy that was sitting in my dresser drawer. That discovery even survived last year’s PAX where I saw Anamanaguchi take the stage with an NES as part of their full band.

It wasn’t until I walked outside on Saturday just after bad horsing JoCo to grab a smoke, that it finally hit me. Out there, almost waiting for me, was an impromptu jam session that Lo-Tek Resistance was putting on in what I can only hope was an attempt at the same thing I’m trying to do with Epic Radio. To show people the magic of what nerds can do musically.

That group of guys, holding modified Gameboys and just getting lost in their enjoyment of what they were doing, led me to the path that puts me here. If it wasn’t for them, I would have never found 8-bit Collective, 8bitpeoples, and Bit Fellas. But there was one person I can give credit to walking up behind me and kicking my ass through the door to that path, then quickly slamming it shut behind me and locking it, thusly starting this immediate love of nerd music in general and the passion to start my own musical project and to give an outlet to this amazing scene.

It’s also immensely cool that he is only known by one letter, Z.

I know, I know, I’ve metaphorically performed felatio in his name more times than anyone on this website (minus Penny Arcade), but entertain me just once more because he plays a gigantic part in what I’m trying to do here. I discovered him because of a little write up he did of our prank last year on Wired, causing our site to first test its wang proof capabilities, and it led me to his HipTrax podcast over on Geekdad. This in turn led me to his personal blog and podcast, which opened my eyes to even more music that I emotionally connected with. He single handedly got me back into hip hop, a genre 18 months ago I pronounced dead on the table. This led me to Ryhmetorrents and GameMusic4All.

I cannot describe how much I respect this man, but I will try. I think it’s because I see a lot of myself in him. The man has a full time job (to my knowledge) and a family to worry about, and still finds the time to keep a website up to date, produce two podcasts, create amazing compilations, and I see him pop up on Raptr and my XBL friends list from time to time.

Hell, he was one of the only people to hear my very first chiptune creation because I desperately wanted his feedback on it. After hearing it, before it was even finished (even though he called it inorganic and machine like, which I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a compliment or not), he asked me to be on an upcoming compilation that he’s producing.

But the biggest point of respect and inspiration that I get from him is that I see that same sort of joy when it comes to this scene. That love that is so controlling that you will do everything within your power to spread the word to as many people as possible, and he has built a pretty decent following because of it.

So like I said, settle in. This is going to be a short series of moderately long articles. It may end up just being an exercise in talking to myself, but hopefully I’ll be able to convince some people that this “niche” genre, this “gimmick”, is worth watching, if not for anything other than being able to say, “I knew about this before it was cool.”

And seriously, what the hell is wrong with that?

This is obviously spark a huge debate, but that’s what the comments and forums are for!