Another short Phone it in Friday: YouTube Roundup for you, dear readers. I’ve largely recovered from my bout of food poisoning, but I’m still struggling with the fatigue that comes with retching violently for hours on end.
Instead, here’s some vocal retching for your aural enjoyment—my brief cover of a classic from Dio-era Black Sabbath:
Murphy is back in the spotlight with this week’s edition of Phone it in Friday/YouTube Roundup. I haven’t been churning out low-quality content as much lately (unless you include my rambling scribblings on this blog), so I’ve just got a couple of Murphtastic vids to share.
On deck: Murphy meets classic rock, and drifts between planes of consciousness:
After taking off during the long summer months, Bandcamp is bringing back Bandcamp Friday today, and continuing it the first Friday of every month through the end of 2021.
For those that have forgotten—or steadfastly ignored my many, many, many, many, many posts about it—Bandcamp Friday is when Bandcamp waives the 15% commission they usually take on sales through the site. So, if you buy, say, Electrock EP: The Four Unicorns of the Apocalypse for $4, I get almost the full $4 (PayPal takes a small cut still), instead of $4 minus $0.60 to Bandcamp.
Another, more dramatic example: if you buy my full discography at $19.98, Bandcamp doesn’t take their $3 cut, so most of that goes directly to me (again, minus the transaction fee PayPal assesses).
Bandcamp began doing Bandcamp Fridays during The Age of The Virus, when most musicians (myself included) witnessed a catastrophic drop in their revenue. Venues closed or stopped live music; parents withdrew students from one-on-one lessons; and private parties were cancelled, meaning fewer of those lucrative gigs. Also, fewer live performances meant fewer royalties for songwriters.
Fortunately, that situation is improving, and people are eager to get out and hear live music again. Still, pitching in a few bucks helps immensely—and you get some good music in the process, too!
So, on with the sales pitch! Here are my seven releases, in chronological order:
An easy (and free) way to support me is to “follow” my Bandcamp page and my Amazon author page. I post updates about new merchandise, new music, and other interesting offers about once a month to the Bandcamp page, and new books will pop up on my Amazon page as they’re published. It’s a good way to keep up with the latest news on my musical adventures.
Another free way to support me is to turn off your ad-blocker. The site delivers several thousand ad impressions monthly, but most of those are blocked, which means they don’t pay out. You can usually find the ad-blocker as a little widget or icon in the upper-right-hand side of your browser; click on it and it will usually give you the option to “pause” or stop the blocker from running on this site. I know ads are annoying, but seeing a few DuckDuckGo ads helps out in an incremental way.
Even if none of that entices you, no worries! I’m just glad to have you here, reading my self-indulgent garbage and my lengthy advertisement posts.
Happy Friday!
—TPP
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This past week I hosted the first of two summer camps I’m putting on in June. Next week is the ubiquitous, ever-popular Minecraft Camp, but this week saw the first inaugural Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp at my little school.
I’m not sure why I didn’t conceive of this idea sooner. It’s not an original one, as rock ‘n’ roll fantasy camps have been around for awhile. I’m not Ted Nugent teaching middle-aged yuppies how to play “Stranglehold” in the woods, but porting that concept to rockin’ out with kids is not difficult to do.
But last summer my headmaster kept forwarding me e-mails from a local country club, which was itself hosting a summer rock camp. He did not include any commentary or suggestions along the lines of “you should do this camp,” but I got the message. So when it came time to put together our summer camp catalogue, I tossed Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp into the mix.
My headmaster’s implied suggestion was a good one: the camp was really wonderful. Indeed, it exceeded my expectations, in large part because of the small but talented group of campers who attended. We only had three kids sign up this year, but I’ve had semester-long ensemble classes with that few students, so I knew we could make some musical magic even with a small group. Indeed, we had the perfect number for a classic garage rock band: four (including myself).
Here’s some of the details about the camp—how long it lasted, a breakdown of our days, and the songs we played. Hopefully it will provide a useful blueprint for other music educators looking to host their own camps.
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I’m out of town for a few days, so I’m resorting to something I rarely do: a week in review post. Some bloggers feature these weekly, such as my blogger buddy Mogadishu Matt. I sort of did one back with “Lazy Sunday LVIII: Spring Break Short Story Recommendations Recap,” but that was more a review of a week-long series of posts, not a review, per se, of the week itself.
Ah, well. That’s just nit-picking. Here’s what I wrote about this past week:
That’s it for this edition of Phone it in Friday. Here’s hoping I wrote some material good enough that you don’t mind reading it (and reading about it) again.
Happy Friday!
—TPP
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