Archive for October 2008

Proof of God

This one started out with the lyrics. The idea took form while I read books by Schleichert, Dawkins etc. I wrote the lyrics during a Saturday morning class in Brussels in March 2008 after three hours sleep. The music took shape much later (when I was back in Germany) and I finally recorded it all in early August that year. There’s drums, guitars (acoustic ones for the refrain, electric ones for the rest), keyboards (organ, synth, bass, piano, and the drums in the refrain), vocals, a shaker, and some noises from my record player.

Download the song: mp3 ogg (more music)

Noah built a mighty ark – therefore God exists
The day is bright, the night is dark – therefore God exists
Politicians never lie – therefore God exists
Life is just and pigs can fly – therefore God exists
Jesus made the blind man see – therefore God exists
They play my song on the MTV – therefore God exists
There is a chip inside my brain – therefore God exists
One day I’ll meet Shania Twain – therefore God exists
If God was one of us I would call him Stephen
If God was one of us I would look her in the eye

The Bible says the earth is flat – therefore God exists
It takes one step to cross a gap – therefore God exists
A madman shot John Lennon dead – therefore God exists
I just want Beck in your head – therefore God exists
If God was one of us I would call him Stephen
If God was one of us I would look her in the eye

3.14159 – therefore God exists
A quota sample will do fine – therefore God exists
My favourite drinks are cherry smoothies – therefore God exists
Michael Bay makes brilliant movies – therefore God exists
Piper Perabo cut her hair – therefore God exists
May I sit into your chair?

(words and music by Johannes Schult)

List, Books, read, unread

From the vaults of the net: these are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

  • Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
  • Anna Karenina
  • Crime and Punishment
  • Catch-22
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude
  • Wuthering Heights
  • The Silmarillion
  • Life of Pi : a novel
  • The Name of the Rose
  • Don Quixote
  • Moby Dick
  • Ulysses
  • Madame Bovary
  • The Odyssey
  • Pride and Prejudice
  • Jane Eyre
  • A Tale of Two Cities
  • The Brothers Karamazov
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
  • War and Peace
  • Vanity Fair
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife
  • The Iliad
  • Emma
  • The Blind Assassin
  • The Kite Runner
  • Mrs. Dalloway
  • Great Expectations
  • American Gods
  • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
  • Atlas Shrugged
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
  • Memoirs of a Geisha
  • Middlesex
  • Quicksilver
  • Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
  • The Canterbury Tales (I think I read all of it)
  • The Historian : a novel
  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  • Love in the Time of Cholera
  • Brave New World
  • The Fountainhead
  • Foucault’s Pendulum
  • Middlemarch
  • Frankenstein
  • The Count of Monte Cristo
  • Dracula
  • A Clockwork Orange
  • Anansi Boys
  • The Once and Future King
  • The Grapes of Wrath
  • The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
  • 1984
  • Angels & Demons
  • The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
  • The Satanic Verses
  • Sense and Sensibility
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • Mansfield Park
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  • To the Lighthouse
  • Tess of the D’Urbervilles
  • Oliver Twist
  • Gulliver’s Travels
  • Les Misérables
  • The Corrections
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
  • Dune
  • The Prince
  • The Sound and the Fury
  • Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
  • The God of Small Things
  • A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
  • Cryptonomicon
  • Neverwhere
  • A Confederacy of Dunces
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything
  • Dubliners
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  • Beloved
  • Slaughterhouse-five
  • The Scarlet Letter
  • Eats, Shoots & Leaves
  • The Mists of Avalon
  • Oryx and Crake : a novel
  • Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
  • Cloud Atlas
  • The Confusion
  • Lolita
  • Persuasion
  • Northanger Abbey
  • The Catcher in the Rye
  • On the Road
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  • Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
  • The Aeneid
  • Watership Down
  • Gravity’s Rainbow
  • The Hobbit
  • In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
  • White Teeth
  • Treasure Island
  • David Copperfield
  • The Three Musketeers

Paul and Storm Watch – The End

They noticed me.

Paul and Storm Watch (week 2)

No reaction from Paul and Storm so far. Of course, I could just write @paulandstorm on Twitter; or send in half a picture of me as a minion. But if it were that easy, it’d be called Felicia Day Watch. So I’ll stay below the radar for some more time.

What a self-referential post so far! Where’s the bashing? Where’s the praise? This week’s 5-10 podcast was quite good: Naturally, they overdid the duel stuff. Still, Albert Einstein with a flame thrower was funny. Note that I do not link to the podcast itself. That would be too obvious in these days of trackbacks and Google Analytics. I have the feeling that the dynamic duo will refrain from acknoledging me, once they stumble upon this page, just to see what I’m going to say about Poochie, eh, Paul and Storm. Next week I’ll start with the story of how I discovered their music even before I heard of Jonathan Coulton.

Heteroscedasticity – out now!

14 wonderful songs about life, love, Michael Owen, God, and statistics

Heteroscedasticity (cover artwork)

NEW ALBUM OUT NOW! Featuring
Graveyard Girl (the ultimate anthem of tombstone tourism),
Judy Mary Jane (makes you inevitably shout out yeehaw!),
I Wish Natalie Portman Was My Neighbour (don’t we all?), and the
Toilet Song (recorded in the bathroom)!

You can download the album for free right here!

FIRST HALF

  1. Judy Mary Jane (2:36) mp3
  2. I Wish Natalie Portman Was My Neighbour (2:09) mp3
  3. You and Me and Your Boy-Friend (2:18) mp3
  4. Graveyard Girl (2:29) mp3
  5. Toilet Song (1:36) mp3
  6. In Love With Michael Owen (2:34) mp3
  7. Proof of God (2:37) mp3

SECOND HALF

  1. What’s the Baby Using? (0:25) mp3
  2. ANOVA (mit gerichteten Kontrasten) (2:17) mp3
  3. Heteroskedastizität (2:14) mp3
  4. If I Could Paint My Feelings (2:20) mp3
  5. Among Thieves (1:25) mp3
  6. Spirit She (4:08) mp3
  7. Wish You Felt the Same (1:46) mp3

LYRICS & ARTWORK

DOWNLOAD FULL ALBUM
(incl. lyrics & artwork)

Produced, written and played by Johannes Schult.

So this is my album. I hope you like it. There a bunch of older, somewhat popular songs, some with electric guitars (7.-9.), two German ones, and a few with a more gloomy atmosphere towards the end. my personal favourite (song, not actress) is “Among Thieves”, an unusual song in several aspects (length, lyrics, brushes). If you consider burning the album on CD, I recommend downloading/using the flac-version, because it’s a lossless format (info) and offers additional entertainment.

All songs are licensed Creative Commons by-nc, meaning you are free to copy it, perform it, and make derivative works, as long as you are not making a profit from your work, and that you properly attribute the original artist (in this case Jutze, Johannes Schult, or www.jutze.com). So feel free to share them with your friends and family, play them in your podcast, and use them for your own personal creative endeavours!

I Wish Natalie Portman Was My Neighbour

Writing a fan song like this without being creepy is somewhat difficult. I think I managed to avoid the worst. I recorded the song on July 23rd, 2003. Building on a rhythm machine track I added acoustic guitars and some other instruments like melodica and glockenspiel, plus the vocals. Although it’s far from perfect, it still conveys a certain atmosphere. I tried re-recording the song in January 2008, but the feeling was gone. So I stuck with the original version, which DAZZA/NataliePortman.com called “highlight of the day/week/month” back in July 2003.

Download the song: mp3 ogg (more music)

I wish Natalie Portman was my neighbour

We could talk about the weather
We could drive to work together
I could feed her dog and maybe
Take it for a walk
I wish Natalie Portman was my neighbour
We could have lunch together
I wish Natalie Portman was my neighbour
I’d live there forever

I could watch her every morning
When I wake tired and yawning
She could take the garbage out
And she could mow the lawn
I wish Natalie Portman was my neighbour
We could have lunch together
I wish Natalie Portman was my neighbour
I’d live there forever

I wish Natalie Portman was my  neighbour
We could have lunch together
I wish Natalie Portman was my  neighbour
I’d live there forever
I wish Natalie Portman was my  neighbour
I would always be with her
I wish Natalie Portman was my  neighbour
I’d live there forever
I wish Natalie Portman was my  neighbour
We could have lunch together
I wish Natalie Portman was my  neighbour

(words and music by Johannes Schult)

Toilet Session 2008 (part 2)

My new solo album Heteroscedasticity will be out on Sunday, 19th October 2008 – only two days from now! I locked myself in the bathroom and played some of my songs to celebrate the album release. The second out of four parts is now online: Toilet Session 2008 (part 2). It shows me playing Not About You and the Toilet Song – and stummering as I introduce the songs.

PS: In case you wondered how I eat Twix…

How I eat my Twix...

Toilet Song

This one started out as a joke. I just wanted to record in a bathroom; great acoustics, you know. September 1st, 2000 saw me visiting a good friend of mine. Armed with my four track machine, guitar and keyboard I installed myself in his bathroom. Writing the song was easy, recording it wasn’t. The vocals took me forever (two hours) and as you can hear they still suck. But people responded to the song. It even helped me seeing Natalie Portman and meeting another great person who shall remain unnamed.

I pulled out the master tape and remixed it for the Heteroscedasticity album. I don’t think I harmed the song’s integrity. It just sounds a little bit cleaner and less distorted, I guess. You see, I still don’t know much about recording technology, and the tape speed kept varying, so I had to mix all four channels on the fly. Who needs hard disc recording, anyway?

Download the song: mp3 ogg (more music)

Now I’m here alone cos you’re not at my side
You know it’s easier to hide
Away than look it in the eye
In my heart I start to cry
Now I’m here and I’m sitting on the toilet
Now I’m here and I’m lonely to the bone
Now I’m here and I’m singing on the toilet
Now I’m here all alone

It’s so hard to tell the truth cos I don’t know
What’s on you mind; what if I show
You what I feel inside my heart?
Will you be mine or torn apart?
Now I’m here and I’m sitting on the toilet
Now I’m here and I’m lonely to the bone
Now I’m here and I’m singing on the toilet
Now I’m here all alone

Show me what you feel
Still I’m here and I’m sitting on the toilet
Now I’m here and I’m lonely to the bone
Still I’m here and I’m singing on the toilet
Still I’m here all alone all on my own

(words and music by Johannes Schult)

Paul and Storm Watch (week 1)

So I sang “I would give 12$ to sing a song with Paul and Storm.” And I mean it. Sure, I don’t expect them to accept this offer. They have to make a living; they have families; they’re busy stalking Joss Whedan, anyway. In other words, I am to them what they are to Paul McCartney. Still, with fervent dedication and an iron will I might at least achieve a little recognition from the dynamic duo itself (themselves?).

Paul and Storm, please notice me; no, acknowledge me.

Until they decide to oblige this humble request I will keep “Paul and Storm Watch” (every Wednesday). When they called for minions I was tempted to join the mob; picture me in front of a pale wall with a hand-written sing in my hand that says “Hostage Minion of Paul and Storm since \today.” But I don’t want them to indulge in pictures of people with too much time on their hands. I want them to work; I want them to sing; I want them to be mischievous. I gladly paid to download their albums, but I see no reason to make podcast-related donation. For the time being, my attention has to suffice as consideration. I mean, I still think they (Paul) should at least have made a clever, witty song when they tried to get Felicia Day‘s attention. They could have even offered to give her 12$ to sing a song with them. But they just talked – and Jonathan Coulton had her sing with him on stage.

Toilet Session 2008 (part 3)

My new solo album “Heteroscedasticity” will be out on Sunday, 19th October 2008 – only four days from now! I locked myself in the bathroom and played some of my songs to celebrate the album release. The third out of four parts is now online: Toilet Session 2008 (part 3). It shows me playing “If I Could Paint My Feelings” (see previous update) and “Cropcutter” (a non-album track). No ukulele, this time; have fun, anyway!