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New Live Clip! Song about people-watching :-)

Screen cap of Rob on stage playing guitar. YouTube 'play' logo in upper left, vignette around photo, slight horizontal video glitch effect on background

The Tinder Date Song

I’m really happy with this new-ish song and I got great video of it from my recent sets at The Lincoln Lodge in Chicago (boy, those were fun shows!). And now that I’ve decided to post the song on YouTube I’m having that classic comedy songwriter’s dilemma: how do I title this video?

See, the fact that the song is about a Tinder date is the first big joke reveal at the end of the first verse, so calling it “The Tinder Date Song” gives it away. Thankfully that’s not the only joke in the song; my favorite joke is the start of the bridge, or middle eight*.

One of the reasons I really enjoy this song is that the music and lyrics work really well together. The music is upbeat and kind of new wave pop, or at least as close as I can approximate with one acoustic guitar. In my head I’m hearing something along the lines of Elvis Costello or Squeeze. On the lyrics side, I think they cover a lot of ground in 2 minutes, and it’s really fun to have the audience go along for the ride.

I hope you dig it! I’ll eventually work on a studio version where I’ll be able to explore those Costello/Squeeze inspirations to see if they work or if it goes in another direction. If you hear something style-wise in the song let me know! Sometimes a different set of ears helps find the essence of a tune 🙂

 

* song nerdery here: this song is in the classic AABA format (like Over the Rainbow and a million others) and the B section is sometimes called a bridge or “middle eight,” because it’s usually 8 bars in the middle of the song. In this song’s case it would be more like a middle 12 because it’s extended a bit, but it’s my favorite thing about this song because it changes the perspective of the story at the same time the music is departing from the main melody. Then we go back to the A section with a new perspective to close it out. There’s a lot going on in 2 minutes!

Christmas Song Instrumentals (Chord Solos)!

Last winter, while I was mostly skipping holiday stuff and taking care of my mom’s house out of state, I started messing around on my guitar trying to put together an instrumental version of Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time is Here,” that classic mellow jazz piece from A Charlie Brown Christmas. By the time it started sounding good it was mid-January so I’d missed my opportunity to share it during the actual holidays 😜  I set the arrangement aside with a mental note to try to post it in time for the holidays this year.

And I remembered to do it! In fact, I enjoyed working on the arrangement so much I attempted 2 more holiday songs: Mel Tormé’s classic, made famous by Nat King Cole, Merry Christmas To You (aka The Christmas Song, aka Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, the non-jolly Met Me In St. Louis version of which remains my favorite.

And if you’re a guitar player and want tabs of my arrangements, I made some! You can download pdfs of all 3 songs from my store, and if you wouldn’t mind sending me $2 for the effort it would definitely help make my season bright. They’re intermediate level so if you’ve got a little guitar experience and are comfortable reading tabs you should have no problem with them. Heck, you can probably embellish them a little and make them your own! And if you do let me know, I’d love to see what you do with them.

I hope you have a lovely holiday season and if you have a youtube playlist of holiday songs, I think these would fit right in.

And for you gearheads, I’m playing a Gretsch G5622 into Apple Mainstage using the Boutique British Combo amp and the Boutique British 2×12 cabinet miced with a Dynamic 57. There’s a little room reverb using the Space Designer reverb plugin “Diffuse Hall” setting. My audio interface is a MOTU M4 🤓

The New Special is Here!

The new video special is out! It’s available on YouTube right this very second and I’m super excited for you to see it!

It’s just over 2 years to the day since I first performed this set of songs to see if there was anything to this idea of doing a whole show of satirical comedy songs based on U.S. History and culture. The show went well and inspired me to do a fully-arranged studio album of the songs and to create a solo theater show around them.

Taking that show to the Edmonton Fringe last summer allowed me to really tighten and punch up the monologues and to perfect the overall flow of the set. At the end of the fringe run I knew I had to create a version of the show that could live online for everyone to see.

And now, it’s here!

Using the full arrangements of the songs from the album and some fun animation, graphics, and live action, I have what I think is a really solid comedy special. It’s not a live concert video like most standup specials, but being a musician in the comedy world has always led me to do things a little differently. A friend who’s a huge movie and TV buff said it sounds like it’s my Elephant Parts, which was a sketch/music/video comedy film by former Monkee Mike Nesmith, and if you know it, it’s a perfect comparison.

Give it a look, I think you’ll like it! And if you know any comedy and/or music nerds, pass it along! Word of mouth > algorithms!

Driving With Grandpa—Lyric Video!

New lyric video for everyone’s favorite surf-style rock song “Driving With Grandpa”! It’s the second lyric video for my new live comedy concert album Rob P. Rocks A Jazz Club and it’s a song that’s been well-received from Brooklyn to Europe!

And like the first lyric video from RPRaJC it features a retro pic of a 10-ish-year-old Rob P.!

Enjoy!

20-Second Guitar Tutorials

Most guitar tutorials are way too long, especially for pop songs, so here are some tuts that are shorter than the intro graphics to most others!

Above is the first in the series, showing all 3 chords to the song Havana by Camila Cabello. Next up we have:

Shake it Off by Taylor Swift

The Middle by Maren Morris and Zedd and like 5 other people

Shape of You by Ed Sheeran

Bodak Yellow by Cardi B

Girls Like You by Maroon 5

The song of the (or maybe just my) summer

Summer Song Featured Image

Humbly submitted for consideration as your song of the summer: my new song One Plus One.

Many thanks to Steve Rosenthal and Peggy O’Brien who helped me shoot the video at legendary Coney Island here in Brooklyn.

Here are the lyrics:

Songs of the summer share a common trait
The music’s catchy but the lyrics aren’t so great
They sing of simple crushes, partying, and such
Something that’s so easy you don’t have to think too much

One plus one, baby
How do you spell “car”
What day is it, honey
Tell me how old you are
One plus one, One plus One

Driving with the windows down
makes a lot of noise
So you need lyrics that
are easy to enjoy
Nothing that’s too heavy
that could cause a big discussion
Treat the people like they just
suffered a concussion

One plus one, how many
fingers do you see?
Follow the light, baby
Tell me the day of the week

Turn up your radio,
your smartphone or whatever
I’d make a joke but
but it doesn’t pay to be clever

One plus one
One plus one, baby
Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?
Don’t think too much
Just hum along to the tune
One plus one, baby
When’s the Fourth of July?
Tell me Oprah’s first name
What color is the sky?
One plus one, one plus one

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