My sister (
red_frog) quoth:
The year before last, I sang with the UC Irvine men's group called Men In Blaque. (I'm not responsible for the spelling of the name; apparently they were worried about trademark infringements and no one told them that the phrase seriously predated the movie. Me, I would have gone with Menne In Blak.) They perform music that, as I put it, runs the gamut from the sublime (Gregorian chants and all that) to the ridiculous (you guessed it). It's actually a very highly skilled and talented group of folks (generally speaking) but the director drives me nuts (much like the steering wheel in my pants), which is one reason I'm not still singing with them. On the plus side, I did get to tour Mexico (Puebla) with them and find out that my Spanish is marginally better when I'm drunk. But I digress...
The director selected me, without bothering to audition anyone, as the soloist for this piece. In this case, that meant that I did the spoken parts (as well as singing the baritone part with the ensemble), and the choreography was centered around me. (It also, for some of our concerts, involved members of the choir creeping around the audience and temporarily kidnapping small children. I am not making this up.) The musical arrangement was fairly conventional (not jazzed up as this one is) but, alas, truncated: it's missing at least one verse, possibly two.
I asked the director later and he told me that in addition to the good fit for the voice, he thought I resembled Jim Carrey. (He assured me that he meant this in a good way.) I conclude that he was basing this mostly on the dark hair, the propensity for wisecracks, the height, and the rubber face (I'm convinced, given their heritage, that my offspring are going to have Eyes As Large As Saucers and the ability to rotate their faces completely around their skulls), rather than on any actual similarity of facial features. I must admit that I enjoyed displaying what I thought was the appropriate expression for having just eaten a sandwich involving arsenic sauce.
I actually thought the rendition above was pretty funny. However, I don't think that I can reliably sing quite as low as that even when I've been up for 5 days (which doesn't necessarily help anyway). Some post-processing might help.
Updates: I'm now hosting that song myself (*paints target on chest labeled 'RIAA: SHOOT ME'*), so it should be (a) less ephemeral and (b) more easily reachable. I've also listened to the song a couple more times, and I suspect that there is actually some processing going on there--not that I haven't met a few people that could sing that low.
I want you to play this for your lovely wife and tell me if this reminds her of what it would sound like if we kept you up for five days straight, fed you doughnuts, and then demanded that you cover the original. (Anyone reading this who knows what his singing voice sounds like is welcome to weigh in as well. Me, I'm thinking it's not a perfect match, but he leapt immediately to mind when I heard it.)
The year before last, I sang with the UC Irvine men's group called Men In Blaque. (I'm not responsible for the spelling of the name; apparently they were worried about trademark infringements and no one told them that the phrase seriously predated the movie. Me, I would have gone with Menne In Blak.) They perform music that, as I put it, runs the gamut from the sublime (Gregorian chants and all that) to the ridiculous (you guessed it). It's actually a very highly skilled and talented group of folks (generally speaking) but the director drives me nuts (much like the steering wheel in my pants), which is one reason I'm not still singing with them. On the plus side, I did get to tour Mexico (Puebla) with them and find out that my Spanish is marginally better when I'm drunk. But I digress...
The director selected me, without bothering to audition anyone, as the soloist for this piece. In this case, that meant that I did the spoken parts (as well as singing the baritone part with the ensemble), and the choreography was centered around me. (It also, for some of our concerts, involved members of the choir creeping around the audience and temporarily kidnapping small children. I am not making this up.) The musical arrangement was fairly conventional (not jazzed up as this one is) but, alas, truncated: it's missing at least one verse, possibly two.
I asked the director later and he told me that in addition to the good fit for the voice, he thought I resembled Jim Carrey. (He assured me that he meant this in a good way.) I conclude that he was basing this mostly on the dark hair, the propensity for wisecracks, the height, and the rubber face (I'm convinced, given their heritage, that my offspring are going to have Eyes As Large As Saucers and the ability to rotate their faces completely around their skulls), rather than on any actual similarity of facial features. I must admit that I enjoyed displaying what I thought was the appropriate expression for having just eaten a sandwich involving arsenic sauce.
I actually thought the rendition above was pretty funny. However, I don't think that I can reliably sing quite as low as that even when I've been up for 5 days (which doesn't necessarily help anyway). Some post-processing might help.
Updates: I'm now hosting that song myself (*paints target on chest labeled 'RIAA: SHOOT ME'*), so it should be (a) less ephemeral and (b) more easily reachable. I've also listened to the song a couple more times, and I suspect that there is actually some processing going on there--not that I haven't met a few people that could sing that low.
(no subject)
Date: 2 December 2004 17:42 (UTC)