Contributed by:
John Zwick, YourHub.com
Article Contributed on: 1/7/2009 2:36:39 PM
In late 2005,
Jonathan Coulton did the unthinkable. The New York City software writer and new father won his wife's blessing to set out on an impossible quest; he quit his job and became a full-time musician, writing quirky folk-rock songs about zombies, mad scientists and other geek culture miscellany and began releasing them for free on the Internet.
"It seemed like a vain and stupid thing to do at the time," Coulton, now an icon of the 'net set, said. "I'm still amazed that it works."
Coulton is still struck by the sheer unlikelihood of his success, which has earned him a comfortable living through online music sales and gigs writing music for TV, Web sites and video games. But when many new parents might have stayed with the reliability of a desk job, he knew he had to do something else.
"When my daughter was born, I felt my own mortality very acutely," he said. "You're like 'Oh I get it. My grandfather is dead. My father is now a grandfather. I am now a father. I see where this is going,' you know? I wanted to give her an example of somebody doing what they wanted to do instead of staying in a job that wasn't really what they wanted to do because it was safe. That's the kind of decision I would want her to make when she gets older so it seemed hypocritical to not make that leap myself."
So he set out on a project and exercise in artistic discipline called Thing a Week, in which he would crank out one song, cover, remix -- one thing -- every week for an entire year.
"I thought that would be a stunt that would attract attention and I would make money being asked to write music for television or film," Coulton said. "As time went on, I discovered that people actually were choosing to pay for it and buy CDs. Before I had a chance to get noticed by people who made music for film and television, I was actually making a living as a singer-songwriter."
At the core of his success is his gift for bringing a folk singer's sensitivity to the absurd -- especially his strikingly humane treatments of "tragic monsters."
"I'm sure if I was in therapy that would be the only thing I would be talking about, because obviously some deep-seated part of me believes itself to be a misunderstood monster."
-Jonathan Coulton
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"I'm sure if I was in therapy that would be the only thing I would be talking about," Coulton said, "because obviously some deep-seated part of me believes itself to be a misunderstood monster. I love giant squids who are sad [and] evil geniuses who are lovelorn," he said, referring "I Crush Everything," the lament of a squid doomed to crush the boats he adores, and his tale of a mad scientist's unrequited love,
"Skullcrusher Mountain."
The songs hit a chord with the geeks who would become his fan base and, thanks to Coulton, "JoCo" to his fans, releasing his music for free through a
Creative Commons license, they spread virally across the Web, ever-mutating as one fan after another would cut music videos to his songs or produce and share original art inspired by them. And, incredibly, as free song after free song got passed around through e-mail, instant messaging and online communities, more and more fans began buying the songs anyway -- in a curious paradox, it's the free dissemination of Coulton's music that helps to drive sales. He keeps an entire section of his Web site dedicated to fan creations, remixes and covers -- a total creative output that matches Coulton's own at least fiftyfold.
"It's a very cool thing that people who are entertained by 'Jonathan Coulton Industries' are not only entertained by me," Coulton said. "They're entertained by the whole community of people. Just keeping up with it all makes up a sizable portion of his daily work.
"I don't really allow myself to sit in the standard ivory tower that most rock stars confine themselves to," he said.
Not all of his nerd cred comes down to YouTube videos, zombie jokes and computer games, though. Beneath it all, Coulton, a Yale grad, appreciates math and science with earnestness one wouldn't expect in a comedy songwriter.
"There's a lot of lip service being paid to geek culture in mainstream culture right now," he said. "It's so much about the sheen of geek culture and less about people wanting to do science and math."
It's not just empty talk. Coulton includes plenty of upper math in his paean to fractals,
"Mandelbrot Set."
"I was writing it kind of as a joke," He said. "'Ha ha isn't it funny; it's a song about math.' As I got into it I realized I do care quite a bit about the Mandelbrot Set and I find specifically math and science and physics especially -- it gets to real fundamental questions about existence."
Coulton, who will be performing at the Soiled Dove Underground on Jan. 16, is making a swing through Denver and the West Coast in support of Best. Concert. Ever., an upcoming DVD recording of a show at San Francisco's Great American Music hall.
"It was only recently that I had to learn how to play all these songs on one guitar and how to make them work on a stage and in front of an audience," he said. "This is sort of a culmination of that."
To hear his music for free, go to
jonathancoulton.com.
Jonathan Coulton will be performing live at Soiled Dove Underground,
7401 E. 1st Ave., at 9 p.m. Jan. 16. Tickets are $15. For more information, call 303-336-0007.
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Artistic license
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Much of Jonathan Coulton's success can be attributed to his early decision to release his music for free under a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is a nonprofit group that has established a number of licensing schemes by which artists can release work with fewer restrictions and regulations than under copyright.
Under copyright, which by default applies to all creative work in the United States, the fan videos, covers and remixes that spread Coulton's music to new listeners would have been illegal infringements. Stanford University law professor
Lawrence Lessig, among others, sought an alternative to this all-rights-reserved approach, which they believed inhibited creativity by making ever more and more material off limits.
They formed the Creative Commons Foundation and developed a number of licenses that free creative works to be copied to others and leave the artist the option of controlling other rights released to the public, such as the right to creative derivative works and to profit from them. It was an idea that caught on with Internet trendsetters, but Coulton was hesitant at first.
"It was not something I was fully sold on when it started," he said, "but I kind of figured I didn't have much to lose." Since then, he's become one of the movement's great success stories. In 2008, he released
JoCo Looks Back, a greatest hits collection, free to fans who donated to the Creative Commons Foundation.
It's not just an option for niche musicians, though. Multiplatinum aritst Nine Inch Nails released
Ghosts I-IV under a Creative Commons license in 2008. It became the highest-selling electronic album of the year on the Billboard charts and Amazon.com's top-selling mp3 album of the year as well.
To learn more about Creative Commons, go to
www.creativecommons.org.
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