It's always exponentially faster to consume than to create, so it's inevitable that when you like some creator of some thing, it's always going to feel like they are not creating fast enough no matter how fast they are creating. Even Stephen King doesn't write fast enough for a rabid Stephen King fan. This is true for music, and books, and video games, and fresh flaky biscuits. Especially fresh flaky biscuits.
The best thing I find one can do is make sure one is invested in as large a number of creators as possible. It's when you find yourself in that lonely position of "there's only a couple of musicians/writers that I like any more...why don't they ever make anything new?" that you start to drift into Little Anthony from Twilight Zone territory.
And that's not even getting into the issue of artists changing and evolving. Old fans don't always like new mutations, and that's okay. It has to be okay to let someone go off in the direction their art leads them. Remember and cherish and replay the art they made that you loved, and keep finding more and different artists to consume as mentioned previously. That also lessens the sting of those times when one grows in a direction that doesn't work for you any more.
Which is not to say that JoCo has done that for me, but lets just say if he were to release a full album tribute to soviet space dogs, I will politely not be buying it. I can't take that one. But I wouldn't try to tell him he can't do it.
I would buy that album, especially if he covered Moxy Früvous's 'Laika', and had Ham the Astrochimp as an antagonist in one of the songs. Also maybe have him, John Roderick and Paul and Storm singing The Commander Thinks Aloud as a bonus track.
Actually… there should be a JoCo+P&S collaboration album. For harrrrmonies.
@mikesphar No, Steven King does not write fast enough for a rabid Steven King fan. And, come to think of it, George R. R. Martin doesn't kill off characters fast enough for his rabid fans either. ;-)
@Angelastic It is, indeed, odd that JoCo and P&S have never recorded in the studio together.
Thanks @AmandaDandy for bringing up an interesting topic. I'm sorry if no one agreeing with you made you feel it was unwelcome but I enjoy a lively debate and I wish I had kicked in earlier. Sadly, I will have to come down on the side of the others.
You say, that the artist will benefit from us being more demanding about how and what they create and that we will all benefit from that. That would only work if we all spoke with a single voice and all liked the same things. But, an artist can not please everyone. Any project he works on is bound to leave a certain percentage of his audience nonplussed. That's just the way it goes. In the end an artist has no choice but to do what he feels is right for himself and let the fans follow or fall away as they will. Succeed or fail, it's the only way to be fulfilled.
While I agree that the artist generally creates for him/herself, I can also see that feedback from fans could spark new ideas. On the other hand, it could completely squash whatever creativity was there to begin with. (I'm not even going to get into originality and copyright issues.) There are a couple of TED videos about creativity that address this, but I don't have links handy.
One thing I like about the JoCo community is that there is a wide variety of new (to me) artists to discover. If you like JoCo, maybe you'll like John Roderick, or the Doubleclicks, or John Hodgman, or David Rees. (Obviously not restricting myself to a single medium.) There are enough paths to keep me occupied until the next album (or whatever) is released.
Getting a bit off-topic, I saw the Mercury 2 capusle that carried Ham less than two weeks ago. And I would totally buy an album filled with songs about space animals. If I liked it.
Oboewan, Paul and Storm do perform "Six Guys, Ten Teeth" live once in a while - I think in each of the last two Portland shows! I thanked them for it afterwards.
@AmandaDandy: I understand what you're trying to say. It certainly isn't a new conceit, even in rock. I think back to the "No Commercial Potential" t-shirts "promoting" Frank Zappa, for example. Then there were the discussions over which groups "sold out" and when: The Tubes with "Love Bomb," anyone? And so on.
Here are a few shooting-from-the-hip bullet points.
* I thought this was primarily a Greg Pak Kickstarter. If so, this is a genuinely new "creative" gambit for Mr. Pak. JoCo is along for the ride because JoCo has personally met all the characters that Mr. Pak is faithfully recreating. JoCo is the "advisor" the way a real cop is listed as an "advisor" in any cop show's credits.
* Working as an advisor is a new (and "creative" ?) endeavor for Mr. Co too. Mr. Pak can potentially school Mr. Co in the nitty gritty of story arc, character development, and apocalyptic explosions. Like Richard Wagner before him, JoCo can then take his new-found knowledge and use it to refine Mr. Co's inevitable four-hour operatic meditation on the psychological essence of the disaffected squid.
* Other artists have profited from being dragged (professionally, of course) into activities (and mindsets) they wouldn't have ever explored if left to their own musical devices. For example, I just finished listening to Randy Newman's score for "Monsters University." Although it is hard to say that Randy wasn't "creative" in generating all that orchestral music, MU was ultimately not Randy's show. The Pixar horde gave him pretty specific directions all along the way. But the chops Randy has developed in his scoring activities has made his own "private" ("solo"? "disconnected from outside influence"?) work much better (in the alternating centuries in which it appears).
Of course, I'm joking when I type "disconnected from outside influence." *Nobody* works that way in the modern world. Cross pollination is almost always a good thing. Mr. Pak's able ensemble is now pollinating Mr. Co. I'm sure the process will bear fruit (if you can live with the mental images this whole sordid paragraph conjures).
@jillwebb and @oboewan I KNOW I have heard Six Guys, Ten Teeth live. And since I rarely see them outside of the DC metro area, it must have been played here?
As I mentioned somewhere else in this forum, the Kickstarter wasn't JoCo's. It was Greg Pak's. So, worry no more about the Kickstarter angle.
JoCo has been making music. He has recorded new acoustic versions of a number of tunes. That number might be "ten" or "eleven." This is true because I saw part of it happen.
In fact, I was even promised a platinum record by JoCo himself ... if each of you slackers will please go out and purchase three or four thousand copies when the music is finally released.
Executive summary:
1. JoCo didn't waste time on a Kickstarter because it wasn't his Kickstarter.
2. JoCo has been busy making music. I witnessed the act and even participated (ever so slightly) in the selection of the computer voice.
the brand new JoCo album featuring acoustic covers of the songs that inspired the graphic novel is being mastered even as we chat and will be delivered shortly!
What was this about JoCo putting aside music for the graphic novel?
That is correct. JoCo is creating music, which is what we'd expect him to do. Others are creating graphics. And Greg Pak is head story tweaker and Kickstarting kick-butter.
In the near future, consumers will be able to listen to the music while consuming the graphics. Other consumers will consume only music and eschew graphics. Others still will consume only graphics and ignore the music.
Consumer options 1 & 2 above will be possible because JoCo did not put aside music.
That's my understanding. I think I saw something, maybe one of the Kickstarter updates, that he was going to try to get some guests on some of the tracks. Or something like that.
Oh, there's also the new Code Monkey Save World song.
I pledged money for the "Code Monkey Save World" Kickstarter, and was granted online access to the comic via a site called "Comixology."
Unfortunately, it's been all downhill from there. The site is balky due to excessive use of scripting, which they seem to be trying to use as a form of DRM. And when I first went to the site, they demanded credit card information from me before I could view the comic I'd already paid for. (Leery of possible abuse, I grudgingly gave them the number of a card that I knew would expire soon.)
Well, now that the card has expired, I've gotten an e-mail from the site saying that unless I give them a NEW credit card number they are not going to let me see future installments of the comic... even though, again I already paid for it. I'm certainly not inclined to buy anything else from them -- ever -- and do not feel that I can trust them with my credit card number. (In fact, I would have just asked for the comic on paper if I had known that I would have to go through such an ordeal to read it online.)
Aha! That post reminded me to finally install the Comixology app on my iPad so I could read the comics (my Mac not having high enough resolution for the tiny text to be pleasant to read.) It took me a while to figure out how to get the purchased comics on my iPad (I thought they'd just show up in 'My Books', but you have to go to the store, to the Purchases section, to download them first) but they're there and they look like they'll still be there when I'm not online, which I was worried would not be the case. Yay! I'm going to go to bed and read them now, I think, because it's the only way to convince myself to go to bed.
And yeah, I think the Home Office is for cruise-related things; Greg or Comixology are the ones to talk to about this.
I think the Home Office would probably be cool with stepping in on most JoCo projects, but this isn't by JoCo. It's based on JoCo's work but is by Greg Pak.
@BrettGlass Greg Pak seems to be an incredibly nice guy. I am sure he is not out to jerk folks around. However, to use Comixology's distribution system for CMSW, they had to play by Comixology's rules.
Some of these new accoustic recordings are great. I love Curl, I don't think he's ever done it on his own that way before (he always had Paul and Storm with him, if I recall). Other favorites are Better, Code Monkey, and Mr Fancy Pants.
I like all of them a lot. I appreciate the no-frills essence of the performances.
Of course, my enthusiasm is augmented by the fact that I was there for the recording of about half of them. The four of us huddled around the Mac Pro's monitor as the engineer ran through various distortion algorithms for CBP's "Message Redacted" is a particularly fond memory.
So, now that the Code Monkey comic project is finally over with (whew!) any new projects or songs on the horizon that might hold appeal for folks that enjoy music? Or, should we just stick a fork in this singer-songwriter and call it Mr. Mom?
Well, as mentioned, backers of the project did get the acoustic album a few days ago, so there's that. I'm a person who enjoys music, and that sure held appeal for me. On the horizon is the brand new Code Monkey Save World song; I presume that won't come until after the fourth installment of the comic.
Thanks for mentioning it, @jillwebb; it made me realise I'd filled out the survey with my old address (Kickstarter was nagging me to fill it out, and I didn't have a new address yet) so I sent the new address to Greg and I'm hoping my stuff wasn't shipped yet, since I got more than just the comic.
I don't know about you, but I bought my copy through the Kickstarter, not as an in-app purchase.
Also, my panic above about my mailing address was unfounded; I'd forgotten that CMSW had its own website for changing addresses which didn't send me a confirmation email when I changed my address. I got some swag some time in mid-March, right when I needed a clean mug (it turns out the dishwasher in my new apartment doesn't work very well.) Yay!
Oh, and I talked to JoCo on the boat and he said he probably wouldn't be touring the UK and Europe this year (he didn't come last year either) because he wanted to focus on writing new songs. Hear that, @AmandaDandy? Luckily several other musicians I like have been or will be in Europe, so I can still get my groupie on.
Good news, everyone! I got an email from comiXology this morning (as the other CMSW backers or anyone else who's bought things on comiXology probably did) saying that Code Monkey Save World is now available as a DRM-free backup:
You are receiving this email because we now offer DRM-free backups of one or more of the books you've purchased on comiXology. You can now download and store PDF or CBZ copies of those books. You can find the list of books you own that support DRM-free backup on comixology.com in the My Backups tab of the My Books area.
So that might please some people. You can get them either as pdf or… cbz? Comic Book Zombie?
Thanks for the alert, @Angelastic! Since the Amazon debacle, I delete Comixology messages without reading them.
When I visited Comixology, I see only two of the four episodes are available to me. #3 and #4 have not been added to my account. Is that the case for anyone else?
Why have I been denied DRM-free 3 & 4? Am I not sufficiently Code-ish? or Monkey-ish?!?
I have all four available DRM-free, and my sensors indicate that you are sufficiently codeish (which my Mac wanted to autocorrect to 'codfish') and monkeyish.
Do you, or did you ever have 3 and 4 with DRM on comiiXology? I mean, when you got the codes/links/whatever it was to get them for free through the Kickstarter, did you use them, or did you perhaps ignore them in favour of the paper copy that you might have received by then?
Your pithy analysis was spot on. I had not redeemed 3 & 4, hence their inaccessibility. I had (falsely) come to believe that Redemption was Universal and Automatic. You reminded me that the Ways of Man are complex and cruel. :-)
I shall now go back to waiting for the next magical tidbit that our CMSW investment will spawn.
Comments
@Angelastic It is, indeed, odd that JoCo and P&S have never recorded in the studio together.
Yes, an interesting topic.
While I agree that the artist generally creates for him/herself, I can also see that feedback from fans could spark new ideas. On the other hand, it could completely squash whatever creativity was there to begin with. (I'm not even going to get into originality and copyright issues.) There are a couple of TED videos about creativity that address this, but I don't have links handy.
One thing I like about the JoCo community is that there is a wide variety of new (to me) artists to discover. If you like JoCo, maybe you'll like John Roderick, or the Doubleclicks, or John Hodgman, or David Rees. (Obviously not restricting myself to a single medium.) There are enough paths to keep me occupied until the next album (or whatever) is released.
Getting a bit off-topic, I saw the Mercury 2 capusle that carried Ham less than two weeks ago. And I would totally buy an album filled with songs about space animals. If I liked it.
That's my understanding. I think I saw something, maybe one of the Kickstarter updates, that he was going to try to get some guests on some of the tracks. Or something like that.
Oh, there's also the new Code Monkey Save World song.
Unfortunately, it's been all downhill from there. The site is balky due to excessive use of scripting, which they seem to be trying to use as a form of DRM. And when I first went to the site, they demanded credit card information from me before I could view the comic I'd already paid for. (Leery of possible abuse, I grudgingly gave them the number of a card that I knew would expire soon.)
Well, now that the card has expired, I've gotten an e-mail from the site saying that unless I give them a NEW credit card number they are not going to let me see future installments of the comic... even though, again I already paid for it. I'm certainly not inclined to buy anything else from them -- ever -- and do not feel that I can trust them with my credit card number. (In fact, I would have just asked for the comic on paper if I had known that I would have to go through such an ordeal to read it online.)
Could someone at the Home Office look into this?
And yeah, I think the Home Office is for cruise-related things; Greg or Comixology are the ones to talk to about this.
or songs on the horizon that might hold appeal for folks that enjoy music?
Or, should we just stick a fork in this singer-songwriter and call it Mr. Mom?
Also, my panic above about my mailing address was unfounded; I'd forgotten that CMSW had its own website for changing addresses which didn't send me a confirmation email when I changed my address. I got some swag some time in mid-March, right when I needed a clean mug (it turns out the dishwasher in my new apartment doesn't work very well.) Yay!
Oh, and I talked to JoCo on the boat and he said he probably wouldn't be touring the UK and Europe this year (he didn't come last year either) because he wanted to focus on writing new songs. Hear that, @AmandaDandy?