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The American Songbook: Redacted

The Ballad of Lou Pearlman–Lyric Video

The latest video from The American Songbook: Redacted is up!

The song is inspired by my fascination with fraudsters–from Ponzi to Theranos and everything in between. Our culture’s idolization of financial success mixed with our belief that you can always reinvent yourself and “fake it ‘til you make it” (a phrase that originated in a multi-level marketing scheme) makes the U.S. fertile ground for schemers, charlatans, and con artists.

But when it came time to choose which con-artist to sing about in my show, the deciding factor was that Lou Pearlman did something with the money that he stole that no one else did: he gave us boy bands.

Friends, I give you  “The Ballad of Lou Pearlman!”

Corporations Are People Too!

Corporations Are People Too!

Here’s my new lyric video for Corporations Are People Too! is out! It’s the peppiest, grooviest, upliftingest track from my latest album The American Songbook: Redacted, and the video is a collaboration with Dan Pavelich, a multi-talented artist and good friend.

What on Earth does Corporations Are People Too! even mean?

Remember when Mitt Romney said, “corporations are people, my friend”? He was referring to the concept of corporate personhood, which can make sense when needing an entity to sign a contract, but gets weird when the Supreme Court says their personhood entitles them to religious beliefs.

So I decided to make fun of this concept the best way I know how: a comedy song!

Inspired by the sunshine pop of the 60s and 70s, I’m really happy with the way this arrangement came together. And sticking with that era as inspiration, I asked Dan to create illustrations in the style of Hanna Barbara, Schoolhouse Rock, and a lot of the other stuff we Gen-Xers grew up with. He totally nailed the style and I couldn’t be happier with this video.

I hope you like it, and check out the other tunes on the album!

The Great Disappointment of 1844 Lyric Video

“The People Who Were Already Here” Lyric Video

Satanic Panic Lyric Video

Catching Rays (on the Fire Escape) Quarantine Music Video!

Driving With Grandpa—Live Album Lyric Video

Armenians in Media—Live Album Lyric Video

Live in Lausanne!

The Invisible Hand — Lyric Video!

The Invisible Hand! Lyric video released!

I don’t know if Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith meant for his metaphor of “The Invisible Hand” to sound as creepy as it does, but to me it sounds like a criminal organization in a James Bond movie. So when I wanted to satirize the concept of the invisible hand in my show and album The American Songbook: Redacted, I figured the best way to do it would be in the style of a James Bond title sequence!

Musically I’m really proud of the arrangement on the album, I did my best to capture the campy swagger of classic 60s/70s James Bond movies and those iconic John Barry soundtracks. My good friends Peggy O’Brien & Steven Rosenthal, both funny and talented filmmakers, offered to put together a title sequence style video for my live show, and when I saw how amazing the video turned out I knew I had to make it into a lyric video.

It’s the 4th lyric video from The American Songbook: Redacted, after Satanic Panic, The People Who Were Already Here, and The Great Disappointment of 1844. I have more coming, including some other collaborations that I’m really excited about.

Until then, enjoy The Invisible Hand!

The Invisible Hand! Lyric Video debuts Jan 26!

The Invisible Hand: New Lyric Video debuts Jan 26!

One of my favorite tracks on The American Songbook: Redacted studio album is The Invisible Hand, a 60s-era James Bond style theme song about Adam Smith’s famous metaphor for laissez faire capitalism. The joke being that “invisible hand” sounds like some kind of underworld organization that you’d find in a James Bond movie (fwiw I wrote and performed the song before a secretive organization named The Invisible Hand appeared on the animated spy comedy Archer).

When it came time to record a studio version of the song I wanted an arrangement that sounded as much like a classic James Bond theme as possible and I’m really proud of the orchestration and performance I put together.

When I did the song live in the debut performance of the The American Songbook: Redacted, I had a very simple slideshow animation projected on the screen behind me. My good friends Peggy O’Brien and Steven Rosenthal, amazingly talented filmmakers, asked if I had thought about doing a video montage in the style of a James Bond title sequence. I said I had but added that my video and after effects skills probably weren’t good enough to do something worthy of the arrangement I hoped to put together.

Lo and behold, they offered to put together something, and what they delivered was so unbelievably cool that I wanted to do more with it than project it behind me in the live show. With their permission I put lyrics over their great visuals to create a lyric video for the song. It’s the 4th lyric video from AS:R after Satanic Panic, The Great Disappointment, and The People Who Were Already Here, and it will be released on Thursday, January 26 at 9pm NYC time, 0100 Friday, 27 of January GMT.

There may be a live stream on premiere night, I’m still figuring out what to do (and I need to reconfigure the laptop I used to stream all those Cover Tuesday shows after an operating system upgrade) so stay tuned, I’ll update here and post on the various social medias that I still can tolerate (post, mastodon and instagram).

Update! (Jan 26, 2023, 2pm EST)
The premiere is tonight at 9pm NYC time and I’ll be doing a 30-minute pre-premiere live stream to talk about the video, James Bond Themes, and maybe even laissez faire capitalism if people are into it! Here’s the lyric video will be here, and will go live at 9PM, and the pre-premiere live stream will be on YouTube and Twitch! Come through if you can!

It such a cool video, I can’t wait for you to see it! Until then, check out the cool arrangement in one of the embedded players below 🙂

Great Disappointment Lyric Video!

Watch The Great Disappointment Lyric Video

The Great Disappointment is a thing that actually happened, when a Bible scholar convinced thousands of people that the 2nd Coming was going to happen in 1843 or 1844. Dates came and went, and the final, for sure, no-doubt-about-it date of October 22, 1844 passed with nothing happening.

Some people lost faith, some people redoubled their faith, and some people said that something did happen that day but no one saw it. Either way, “The Great Disappointment” makes a good title for an emo rock song, so that’s what I set out to make. Another band uses the name for a song that’s not ostensibly about the historical event so I added “of 1844” to be specific and differentiate.

From The American Songbook: Redacted! Available on bandcamp, spotify, Apple Music, and limited CDs available here at our online store!

It’s heeeeere! New album out today!!

The American Songbook: Redacted is out!

It’s a little after midnight here on the East Coast of the U.S. and the new album is now officially available through just about every streaming service! There’s Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and the most artist-friendly of them all: Bandcamp!

It’s even Bandcamp Friday today, which means bandcamp waives the artist’s transaction fees so pick it up today if you can. And, little insider information: I upload higher quality masters to bandcamp than I do to the other streaming services. All the major services ask for things to be 16-bit, 44.1 kHz digital audio but I upload 24-bit, 48 kHz masters to bandcamp and then they convert it to all the digital formats you can download, including some lossless formats like FLAC, ALAC, Ogg Vorbis, and more!

OK, that got nerdy and technical, but that’s sort of on brand for me, is it not?

The important thing is that the album is now out in the world! I’m super excited for you all to hear it, I’m really happy with what it says and the way it says it. Musically it was a blast to play with so many different genres, and it was a rewarding challenge to dig into some tougher topics in order to try to say something about the world today.

I even pressed 100 copies on CD, they’re hand numbered and available at the online shop. It’s a great addition to any record collection!

The big record release show is Wednesday, Oct. 12 here in NYC and it’s streaming live so you can watch from anywhere! Join me at Caveat, a beautiful nightclub on the Lower East Side, 9:30 pm. It’s gonna be fun.

OK, I’m gonna go to bed now. No wait, after I embed some music players below!

Pre-orders live for The American Songbook: Redacted CD!

American Songbook:Redacted front cover

Order today, ships Friday!

My online store is now accepting pre-orders for the CD version of The American Songbook: Redacted! And it’s even on sale for only $12 for the rest of the month! Shipping is $5 flat rate for everything in your order so if you wanted to pick up The Green L.E.D.s debut album or maybe the Rob P. Digital Box Set, it’s still only $5 to ship it all!

The album officially comes out this Friday, October 7, and if you order by Thursday morning, Oct 6, I may just send it out a day early! There are only 100 pressed, hand numbered, so don’t wait too long! And I’ll also include a bandcamp download code so you can grab a digital copy of the album without having to dust off your old CD player 🙂

I’m really excited about this album, it’s very me, in that I like a lot of different styles of music, like weird stories from American history, and love making fun of the stupider parts of American culture. Be the first (and most likely only person ever) on your block to own it!

See the CD packaging in action! 👇

@robprocks The record showed up in time for the record release party! #musician #music #cd ♬ original sound – Rob P.

Pre-Sales for The American Songbook: Redacted are live!

It’s (almost) here!

Screen cap of album on Apple MusicThe American Songbook: Redacted is now available for purchase! On Apple Music at least. Pre-sales have begun on the platform from Cupertino and if you buy in advance not only will the album download the instant it’s available on October 7, you’ll get to download the preview track “Corporations Are People Too!” right away!

I am really excited for you all to hear this new album. The songs are inspired by oddities of U.S. history and American culture and I got to play with a bunch of different styles of music. The preview track is Sunshine Pop, like Up With People or The Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away!” There’s heavy metal, disco, emo, 90s boyband pop, jazz, western music and more.

The album will be available on all platforms on October 7, and there will be a limited number of physical CDs for sale right here through my online store. In fact, the only way to get the original cover is on the physical CD. Check out the 2 versions below:

ASR-Cover-1400pxASR-Cover-1400px-V4-CDBabyEdit

See what’s missing?

“Original Cast Recording” will only appear on the physical CD cover because the streaming services are really picky about what kind of text you put on the cover. The album is comprised of songs from my solo show, solo meaning the entire original cast is me! Get it?

They did not.

I even had a chat conversation with customer service where they asked and I explained, but they said the rules were that the artist name had to be more prominent than any other text on the cover aside form the title. So my cute little joke didn’t make it to the streaming services.

But the music did! And you can get a track before anyone else if you pre-order on Apple music! If you’re more of a Spotify person make sure you follow me there and you’ll be notified as soon as the album is available. And bandcamp is always a good place to get the album digitally, it’s one of the more artist-friendly sites out there so give it a look.

And check back here (or on socials) on October 7th, I have some lyric videos ready to debut on release day!

© Paravonian