Discussion With The Godfather Of Nerdcore Hiphop - MC Frontalot

Tue, 09/06/2005 - 11:20pm

When: June 28, 2009 at the Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

MC Frontalot is a NYC based hip-hop musician and a proud nerd who takes the stage in glasses, tie, and pocket protector to rap about web comics, computer games, blogs, and picking up girls at Star Wars' conventions.This is a great opportunity to find our more about the MC and his music. Ask him your questions about Nerdcore Hiphop and beyond. This discussion will be immediately followed at 1:30 pm by a screening of Nerdcore Rising, the 2008 documentary film (not rated) following MC Frontalot on his first national tour.MC Frontalot will perform with The OneUps at Videogame Night @Top of the Park on June 29 as part of The Ann Arbor Summer Festival.YOU FOUND A GAME CODE! Visit your player page and enter the code WELOVEYOUFRONT for bonus points!

Transcript

• [00:00:31.99] ELI NEIBURGER: OK. I'm Eli Neiburger I'm the Assoicate Director here at Ann Arbor District Library. Thank you very much for coming today. And it's my pleasure to introduce the world's 579 greatest rapper. [APPLAUSE]
• [00:00:40.84]
• [00:00:41.31] ELI NEIBURGER: MC Frontalot.
• [00:00:41.78] MC FRONTALOT: Hello.
• [00:00:50.21] ELI NEIBURGER: So what we're going to do, I'm just going to ask a couple of basic questions to start off. Then we're going to take questions from you guys, the audience. And when we're done with that, we got a couple of videos we can watch. And then we're going to start Nerdcore Rising, the movie. So, Damian.
• [00:01:03.20] MC FRONTALOT: Yes.
• [00:01:04.40] ELI NEIBURGER: What can you tell us about how you got from where you started, you know, of making whatever it was you were doing, to this point where you are the legendary MC Frontalot?
• [00:01:16.37] MC FRONTALOT: How far back? I guess I started making cell divisions.
• [00:01:22.52] ELI NEIBURGER: So once you were a blastula, how did you really feel?
• [00:01:25.81] MC FRONTALOT: It was a difficult choice at that point. But moved forward. I guess I started rapping with my friends in high school. My buddy Gaby who is still my keyboardist to my band had a funk band at Berkeley High School called Dorothy's Not Home, and they had like a rap, a little mini rap set that they did in the middle of their set. I figured if he's allowed to rap in public I should be allowed to. Although I didn't for many years. I would sort of write raps privately and with shame.
• [00:02:03.49] And then in college I had a rap band and we also didn't perform. Except like once at the end of college. And then I continued to not perform raps for years after that. But I've always been into home recording. And I'd recorded, I'd like learned how to use a 4 track with Gaby's high school band, and through college we would come back to Berkeley in the summers and put on these rock operas and I would record the soundtracks for those. So I was really into home recording. And in 1999 my computer was suddenly fast enough to have like a hi-fi multi tracking environment, like on my desktop. It's really exciting. Because four tracks are very limiting. You have to learn lots of tricks just to, you know, get a song put together at all. And then hear all of a sudden there's like CD quality, audio, and as many tracks as I want. It mixes itself together and, you know, you don't have to bounce tracks around or anything. And I thought, you know, it had digital effects and all that.
• [00:03:08.15] So it was really thrilling. And I discovered this I think in the middle of the night, in my apartment in San Francisco. And it was like too late to play acoustic guitar, which was the only instrument I had in the house. So instead, I started like pulling samples off of stuff from my CD collection, and playing with that in the multi-tracker. And I built the beat to like I guess the first song rap song I've ever made on the computer. For song at all I haven't made on the computer, which was "Speed Queen." And I think I might have done the rapping for that, that same night.
• [00:03:50.54] And the other cool thing about computer recording instead of 4 track recording is that I could, you know, go through and do a phrase at a time, and crosscut between takes, and make it sound like I was a competent rapper, which I was not. So it was just thrilling. Like I had a rap studio and a rapper suddenly, just because my processor speed had improved.
• [00:04:14.00] And also around this time, MP3 was getting popular enough that you could put one on the Internet, and expect people to be able to hear without like a lengthy page of instructions about how to install things. And I had access to web server. And I thinking early 2000, I probably put up the first MC Frontalot page, and I wasn't expecting anyone want to hear it. I thought I would just point my friends at it. And the idea was like here's the rapper, who can embraces fronting. In fact, he's fronting so hard, that he's not even going to show you what he looks like, or give you any accurate biographical information. And, you know, I had a little bio that like changed the facts every time you reloaded the page. I still have that on there actually. I'm always amused when the press quote something out of there. I dare you to find that again.
• [00:05:09.15] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:05:10.39] ELI NEIBURGER: It's got like an acid test for fact checkers.
• [00:05:13.12] MC FRONTALOT: Yeah exactly. And then it had like a little phot gallery of other rappers with their faces blurred out. And like, you know, the four songs that I had finished by early 2000. And maybe later that year in early 2001, I found Song Fight!, and like the night I found out about Song Fight! I like competed the head up deadline that morning. So it was like late at night I wrote and recorded "Yellow Lasers" and put that up. And that was when people who I had never met started looking at the Frontalot tracks. And because Penny Arcade noticed that song, and shared it with their readers, I then like suddenly had this fan base that was kind of growing. And the songs started bouncing on the Internet.
• [00:06:09.45] And it remained a hobby and sort of a side project up until 2005. And at that point the fan base was big enough that I could make a CD and sell it, and start selling t-shirts and stop working. Start being a rock star Wheew.
• [00:06:27.98] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:06:28.95] I've been doing that full-time ever since.
• [00:06:32.22] ELI NEIBURGER: Now, you know, up 'til that, what were you leaving behind? When you said OK, I'm going to be a full-time rock star, you know?
• [00:06:40.39] MC FRONTALOT: I was freelancing before that. Doing web and print design. Which turns out to be a pretty good skill to be an indie musician. Because you noticed most indie musicians have bad graphic design, which I think hurts their product sales. Whereas my graphic design is top notch if I do says so myself.
• [00:07:03.52] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:07:03.64] My site looks great.
• [00:07:06.90] ELI NEIBURGER: So assuming then your web service survived its first wanging when the Penny Arcade armada. You know what was --
• [00:07:14.27] MC FRONTALOT: They actually wanged Song Fight! by mistake. They didn't understand the power that they wielded at that point. And they were like Ouhh here's the song "Yellow Laser" linked to MP3 file on Song Fight!. So that took Song Fight! down for the whole week.
• [00:07:32.40] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:07:32.66] I don't know how you take a web server down for weak. They must have really crashed something that was not automatically rebooting.
• [00:07:41.91] ELI NEIBURGER: So what was it like then to kind of get to the, you know, your first gig at PAX, and like have that moment?
• [00:07:51.36] MC FRONTALOT: I had done very little performing. And I did not have like a regular band put together. I had done stuff with friends and with Song Fight! friends, and we sort of have pick up stuff for the Song Fight! Live things. And that's how I did the first PAX. They said they were having this thing in Seattle and they wanted to find me out. It was very exciting. So I put a box of like CD-Rs under my arm and went to Seattle. And I grabbed three of my Song Fight! Buddies, and we rehearsed that afternoon in a barn. And sort of put together, like cobbled together a set. And played it for -- I think they could fit 400 people in the theater where they had the concert at the first PAX. And it was just packed. It was full. Optimus Rhyme was playing, Minibosses were playing. And I was really excited. And I was like oh my God, I better start taking the live performance aspect of this really seriously, if I'm going to have to perform in front of 400 people on occasion.
• [00:08:52.35] So that 2004 PAX performance I think was probably pretty rough. But I was determined, and so I came back to Brooklyn after that, and got the band together for real. And we gigged all that summer of 2005, so that we could do well at PAX that next year. And that's still kind of our like one of our driving forces. It's like we know at least once a year we're going to be in front of 6,000 kids, and we're going to have like rock all of their faces off or else we 'll have failed.
• [00:09:28.75] ELI NEIBURGER: I mean it's hard to overstate the role of the Penny Arcade audience in terms of the whole, you know, nerd culture, geek culture movement, you know. Why do you think they've been able to hold on to their credibility as they've gotten so enormous and powerful?
• [00:09:46.94] MC FRONTALOT: How did they hold on to their credibility?
• [00:09:48.68] ELI NEIBURGER: And, you know, their impact just keeps growing. And it's this astounding.
• [00:09:53.20] MC FRONTALOT: Right. I think their impact is big, because they're so talented, like their strip is good. Their strip is always funny, and has better art than any other web comic. I mean I think that's the whole secret to their audience.
• [00:10:07.58] The question of how they are going to retain their credibility is kind of interesting, because they, you know, ever since they got Robert Khoo on board, they've intertwine themselves with the game industry really successfully. You know, they take a lot of money out of the game industry from advertising. And I don't know what they pay for those booths at PAX, but it's like that's the gaming show now. Like every game company has to spend this huge amount of money to do this big booth there, and have products ready to launch at PAX and all that stuff. And yet, somehow their, voice as reviewers has like -- I guess it's just because they're constantly talking smack about games. Like if they don't like a game, they talk a bunch of smack about it. I guess that screams integrity to the Internet at large.
• [00:10:53.18] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:10:53.75] ELI NEIBURGER: Yeah. Well it's so much the opposite of the gaming press.
• [00:10:56.30] MC FRONTALOT: Right.
• [00:10:56.58] ELI NEIBURGER: You know, which is still kind of like monolithic.
• [00:10:58.15] MC FRONTALOT: And all just seems to be paid for. Number of stars in your review.
• [00:11:02.09] ELI NEIBURGER: Right.
• [00:11:02.70] MC FRONTALOT: I don't know you guys look at Game Informer or things like that. It's like the pictures are real nice. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:11:09.62]
• [00:11:10.16] But the text is just intolerable. It's obvious who's going to get the good review, because they have a full page ad right next to the game review.
• [00:11:21.81] ELI NEIBURGER: Now as someone who is -- you know where the Internet is really your media . I think there's a lot of interesting angles on the rights issues. And especially, I mean you alluded to a crime spree song, you know, about how much uncleared stuff, you know, is making up all this music, you know. How do you think the sort of future of copyright is kind of displayed by what these sorts of scenes are doing?
• [00:11:51.91] MC FRONTALOT: Well you know the way I would love to see copyright go is have it, to some degree, abolished in terms of private use. Like if you want to photocopy a book at your own expense or, you know, you're going to make a copy of thing or whatever, I don't feel like anybody should throw you in debtors prison, or whatever we're going to have.
• [00:12:13.45] ELI NEIBURGER: Stocks.
• [00:12:14.81] MC FRONTALOT: Yeah throw you in the stocks in the middle of town and have the youngsters throw rotten fruit at your head. Nobody likes that idea except for like big companies that own a lot of content. I do, however, feel like copyright should survive in the capacity that it protects content creators from getting ripped off by those big companies. Who would gladly like, you know, who would gladly see copyright itself go away if they could retain control over distribution channels, and charge everybody for content that they hadn't started out owning. Like they would love that. If they could, you know, if they could all be YouTube, and run their ads on YouTube, and like put whatever they wanted of yours on YouTube and charge everyone else for it, they would be like yay, sure fuck copyright. We'll just cash the checks, Copyright was getting in the way of us doing that somehow. So like yeah I really want to remain protected against, you know, some product I don't like using some snippet of one of G Minor 7 little piano hooks, or like anything that I might actually make that has some value to some company that I don't like. Like I want copyright to be sturdy and strong enough for me to stop them, right.
• [00:13:35.27] And that makes sense to me too. It's like if you're selling something then there should be some issue over who owns what you're selling. If you're listening to a piece of art or like looking at a piece of art or reading something, it just intuitively seems to make less sense the way the protections are structured. I mean because of copyright and because of what happened to the issue of samplinp in hip hop. Like I came into hip hop post like gold age of sampling up until, I don't know what '93, '94, anything goes. And all those old hip hop records are just made out of all the greatest, you know, funk and soul samples of American pop music.
• [00:14:23.61] ELI NEIBURGER: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] guy got.
• [00:14:25.24] ELI NEIBURGER: Right.
• [00:14:26.02] ELI NEIBURGER: Residuals. I mean --
• [00:14:28.47] MC FRONTALOT: He'd have a lot of money.
• [00:14:32.75] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:14:33.16] And all those bands were just getting ripped off basically, people were stealing. But like what a creative explosion came out of that. And now it's amazing. And that's not totally precluded. Like I could put together, if I had the talent and the vision, I could put together "3 Feet High and Rising" right now, and put it out for free on Internet, and everybody could listen to it. And I don't think anybody would sue me. If it got really popular like Grey Album, then they would shut me down, but then I would have a whole career afterwards. Because my thing had gotten popular, every know I've gotten shut down by the record company. It'll be like win, win, win, win, right. So it's still like sort of possible to do that, but commercial hip hop no longer has uncleared samples. And it hasn't since the courts like stomped on that around 1994.
• [00:15:29.91] But when I started out thinking it was just going to be a hobbie, I could do that all I want. So all my old demo stuff is just built on these samples that are so great. But all of my records are just a 100% original stuff. And that's what a copyright issue. And my music would sound very different if, you know, the courts had never sorted out that sampling issue. And if hip hop can still use whatever it wanted really.
• [00:15:52.58] ELI NEIBURGER: Do you miss that aspect of, you know, bringing in all that stuff?
• [00:15:56.54] MC FRONTALOT: I mean there's two things that's awesome about. One it sounds like old hip hop when you're using old samples. It's like, you know, chopping the best moments out of the history of American pop and making rap songs out of them, that's a very sort of distinctive style. It's like immediately recognizable. And also it's like a lot easier. The thing that's so hard about making records is recording drums and mixing them well. It's such a pain in the ass. And drums always sounds great on the '70s funk records, you know it's like sample loop, you're done. So it's harder and I have to, you know, come up with my weird hybrid thing that's like not immediately recognizable you're as hip hop.
• [00:16:48.36] But on the other hand I own all my music. I can license it to G4 or whatever other suckers want to write me a contract. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:16:57.43] MC FRONTALOT:
• [00:16:57.88] So that part's pretty cool.
• [00:16:59.86] ELI NEIBURGER: How has your process change, you know, now that live show is such a big part of your music? You know, are you thinking about how you'll do it live when you're doing your studio track?
• [00:17:12.10] MC FRONTALOT: Still not no. I'm trying to think more about live versions when I'm composing songs. Like I'm trying to follow my buddy Lars' lead and have like call and response parts in the songs. Because crowds seem to enjoy that. It's hard to engage a crowd sometimes when you're the only person doing vocals and stage. So like having like you say this, I'll say that. That works well in hip hop or seems to. And I have hardly any songs like that. So I've been trying to like do more of those on the records, but I don't worry about the arrangements at all. Because I know we're going to have to just sort of rethink whichever songs we end up putting in the set, and rearranging them into the three piece band. And that's fine and I like when I go see a show for live versions of everything to be kind of interesting and new. Especially if I really like the band, because I tend to be pretty familiar with the recordings already. And, you know, if I just wanted to hear those without, you know, the best vocal take that'd been done in the studio, like why would I want that. I want to see something kind of like new and interesting.
• [00:18:24.39] ELI NEIBURGER: What do you really like to listen to both kind of within the scene and beyond the scene?
• [00:18:30.16] MC FRONTALOT: Like the nerdcore scene?
• [00:18:32.22] ELI NEIBURGER: And sort of like nerd fandom, and even if it's not necessarily the nerdcore itself. People who are like, you know.
• [00:18:41.41] MC FRONTALOT: I like a lot of rappers. Like Buster a lot, Brother Ali is really good, Mr. Lif. You know, I like a bunch of popular rappers like Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes, Nas, and Mos Def. I like They Might Be Giants a lot. Big They Might Be Giants fan. I wish they more embraced the idea of being a nerd. Like weirdly they try and sort of avoid that in their promotional efforts. But boy if they didnt, if I could open for They Might Be Giants on their little tour, that would just make my lifetime. I like Tom Waits a lot. Michael [? Blisfair ?] and PJ Harvey. I like the Beatles.
• [00:19:45.52] ELI NEIBURGER: We're about to watch the film, you know, which covers a little bit of that tour.
• [00:19:49.91] MC FRONTALOT: First tour we had yeah.
• [00:19:51.38] ELI NEIBURGER: What is one of the oddest things that's happened on a tour? Or, you know, What's a good tour war story you know?
• [00:20:02.16] MC FRONTALOT: A horrifying van crash on the last tour. Negin who made the film actually was in the van with us just for a few days of this tour that we did last November and December. And she was there for this crash. And so she's got little video blogs about it if you're curious. But oh God it was awful. Like there were interns freezing outside of Minnesota. And we had spun out with the trailer on the freeway. And the trailer like broke off, and tumbled and exploded. And all of our gear had merged and suitcases were all over the freeway with like the semis running over it. And we were all kind of shell shocked. And we had to go rent a new trailer and get the van fixed, and had to miss a show in Lincoln. And then the keyboardist who was filling in for Gminor7 quit that night. He's like I'm not getting back in the van. I cannot do it. I cannot do it. And he fled, like went back to New York. So then I had to like figure out how to hire a new keyboardist and fly him out to the tour.
• [00:21:05.03] It was like the roughest day of touring that we've had. I don't want to say it's like the roughest day of touring imaginable, because then something 100 times worse will happen. That was tough. [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
• [00:21:20.47] ELI NEIBURGER: I think nerdery has come a long way in that I think it's certainly powered by the Internet boom, and the fact that all of a sudden, you know, those of us who would have been painting miniatures now have some very lucrative careers opened to us. Not that painting miniatures can't be lucrative. But, you know, has that changed, you know, sort of the entire, has it changed our people? You know?
• [00:21:51.17] MC FRONTALOT: To be employable?
• [00:21:51.51] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:21:53.91] ELI NEIBURGER: Or to be employable in our passions. You know As Gabe says in the movie, you know, we run shit.
• [00:21:59.96] MC FRONTALOT: Right.
• [00:22:00.33] ELI NEIBURGER: You know, so how's that changed us?
• [00:22:03.30] MC FRONTALOT: Sure. I think whether like the nerd folk were not in line for fancy jobs in my lifetime. So, I think of like the adult nerd people I knew when I was a kid. And they were like, you know, at Stanford programming punch card computers. Like that seemed like really high powered stuff to me then, and it still kind of does. I'm not sure what has changed exactly. I mean I was in San Francisco during the dot com boom, and the thing that was striking then was all these people who had, you know, had our standard issue unpopular personality and looks and fashion sense, were like suddenly getting courted. They were like getting calls from headhunters every day, like listen I can put an extra hundred grand on your salary. And they were all like, well I'll think about it.
• [00:23:01.99] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:23:02.66] MC FRONTALOT: A lot of my friends like, I don't know they reacted to that well, because there was big inversion of their perceived like social worth in the world. You know they've grown up thinking like I got to be tooth and nail just to get people to pay attention to me, and to understand that I'm, like, [? overflow ?] person. And suddenly like the culture at large is like demanding my services. That was a big change. I don't know if it was a totally healthy one. Because yeah, you give something that's been withheld that anybody, and their reactions is not necessarily going to be as measured and wonderful as it ought to be. But luckily the dot com bubble completely bursts, and everyone's reality got aligned again.
• [00:23:51.43] ELI NEIBURGER: [INAUDIBLE]
• [00:23:53.93] MC FRONTALOT: I mean most of those folks remain pretty employable. The real casualties with the dot com bust were all those like communications majors from Florida who had come to town to like be in marketing departments, and had no business in the tech industry anyway. And screw those people.
• [00:24:15.30] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:24:16.40] And of my programmer friends are still doing fine. All my software engineers who still have jobs. But yeah in general the sort of the culture I think to took a little, the American culture, took a little adjustment around like '98 to 2000 to where some nerd stuff that had previously been pretty fringy is sort of big now. I always point to Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi who are these like -- Sam Raimi is from Michigan Right? Yeah. Who were in, you know, in 1995, '96, they were nerd heroes and fringe figures who may zombie movies. And now they're like the two hugest A list directors in Hollywood. They can do whatever they want. And the bizarre thing is that both of them turned into A list directors by popularizing nerd properties, you know, "Lord of the Rings" and "Spider-Man." It's like those are two things that I would not have predicted to be like Academy Award winning super spectacular, you know 10, 15 years ago. I don't know "Star Wars" kind of took a big downhill.
• [00:25:34.24] But it seems in general that like nerd stuff is more just kind of in the culture than it used to be. And I think that's just because everyone has Internet, and everyone has a computer in their homes, not everyone but the middle class went up but everybody's got a computer. And every like kid in American schools is probably getting access to computers and to Internet. And that just flavors the culture. When I was in grade school there were just like, they're super excited about getting a computer in every classroom. They really wanted one. It was a Commodore 64. And I was the one kid in my class for a couple of years running, and knew how to work a Commodore 64. I was also like a little ahead of the curve on some of the class work. So like when they were trying to do math or whatever, I would be like I got this one covered. And I'd go and play Lode Runner. I'm like I'm setting this up.
• [00:26:29.36] ELI NEIBURGER: That's right.
• [00:26:30.73] MC FRONTALOT: Setting this up to teach the dumb kids. You work on math.
• [00:26:35.05] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:26:35.36] I was doing Lode Runner levels.
• [00:26:39.25] ELI NEIBURGER: So what's next? You know where you wanting to go? You know what's next for the MC Frontalot franchise?
• [00:26:48.87] MC FRONTALOT: Oh man. I wish I had like a firm idea of that then maybe I could set goals and attain them.
• [00:26:58.01] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:26:59.02] But I love doing conventions and festivals and stuff. If I could get it down to touring, maybe like four weeks a year and the rest of the time just flying around and doing stuff like this, and PAX and Comic-Con, that would suit me just fine. And eventually I will, I'm already pretty close, but eventually I will be like too old for kids to want to watch me like doing the herky jerky on stage you know. It'll just be like too sad and pathetic for anyone to be able to watch, or they kind of are like covering their eyes.
• [00:27:33.24] ELI NEIBURGER: Well what about the Giants? I mean the Giants are well into their 40s, you know. They've been huge for 20 years, you know. So I think there's hope.
• [00:27:40.30] MC FRONTALOT: They have timeless appeal.
• [00:27:41.80] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:27:45.05] I don't know.
• [00:27:45.56] ELI NEIBURGER: But don't you? You know, I think that there's some you know.
• [00:27:48.31] MC FRONTALOT: I don't know. We'll see. Like so I'll do this until it seems obvious that like I've got to stop. And then I hope to retire into making children's music, because that's like an awesome thing for former pop personalities to retire into. I already did a couple of songs actually for the Sesame Street folks. Hopefully I can maintain my relationship with them, and end up being like the guy who writes all the raps for Sesame Street.
• [00:28:19.74] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:28:20.70] Thanks. That would be a pretty kick ass way. And also it turns out if you work in children's entertainment women want to marry you. So maybe that might help me out.
• [00:28:30.04] ELI NEIBURGER: Well and the guys at Pixar have a saying G rated equal G money.
• [00:28:32.49] [LAUGHTER] That's a pretty powerful thing.
• [00:28:35.49] MC FRONTALOT: Exactly.
• [00:28:36.26] ELI NEIBURGER: Well why don't we open it up to questions from the audience. Who's got a question for the Front? All right. Wait just a minute because we're recording today. So let me bring this over to you so we can get your question.
• [00:28:50.38] AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
• [00:29:06.51] MC FRONTALOT: That's an interesting question. Actually once in a while I do make a song, and I'm like God this is so fluffy. Like why would anyone want to listen to this three times. But then if I think the joke's really good, I'll just put it out anyway. Because you can't argue with like a good joke right. But in general and I grew up on Weird Al and Dr. Demento, and especially love you know Weird Al. But I try as hard as I can to avoid [INAUDIBLE] which is song parody. Even though Weird Al has this amazing of staying power, and it meant a lot to me when I was in the fifth, sixth, grade right. No other parody material that I've ever encountered and there's a lot of song parodies out there, has ever been like of it's been like amusing to me. And then I've been like yeah, and then I showed it to somebody, and then that's it. You know, you know the joke and you don't want to see it again.
• [00:30:08.92] So I try really hard not to make song parodies, but on the other hand, you know, I've like obviously wrote a lot of humor into my stuff. And grew up on Doc [? Smith's ?] Mystery Theater and Monty Python. And like a lot of the things are important to me and that last are humor. And even when I'm making my couple of political songs that I put on every record, I try and have good jokes in them, because people like jokes, jokes are good.
• [00:30:44.36] AUDIENCE: I'm sure you get this question a lot, but I was just wondering if you have any advice for an aspiring nerd rapper?
• [00:30:50.46] MC FRONTALOT: Just a couple things. You should practice rapping a lot, which sounds like common sense, but it was the last thing I figured out. Because I had the computer, and with the computer and comping together and compositing together takes, like you don't have to hone your rapping ahead of time, you can like hone it in post. And so there's a lot of temptation to never get any better at rapping. But the more you practice, likes the easier it is, and the more you're able to do. And like more things will occur to you while you're composing lines. So that's my first advice is practice.
• [00:31:34.50] And my second advice is learn how to use your equipment really well. Because I hear sometimes people whose rapping is interesting, but there's so bad at using the tech that I don't want to hear the recording. It just like hurts my ears. So that's my two pieces of advice.
• [00:31:55.26] Oh, oh my third one is write songs about things that you're actually interested in. A lot of people, especially people who came late in life to hip hop think that rap songs aren't about anything. And that is completely not true. You have to have a song to be about something really specific, and something that's interesting enough to you to last for the length of a several minutes composition.
• [00:32:20.30] ELI NEIBURGER: Other questions? All right.
• [00:32:25.87] AUDIENCE: As far as I know a lot of independent musicians get a lot more of their -- whatever they make they make out of merchandise. Would you rather sell more records and not soak up the merch money, or would you rather have people download your music all day long, and then when they come out to see you, realize that, you know, they can pay $10 for CD or $15 for a shirt? And then they end up buying the shirt.
• [00:32:53.85] MC FRONTALOT: I guess really ideally all the music would be free, because I just really would love to have everybody, you know, take a gander. And that would somehow get made up for by having the t-shirt sales double or triple. But realistically like iTunes pays my rent. Like I need people to buy. Whatever small percentage of the listenership is, you know, being very kind and ponying up for the music. Like I need those people to continue doing that in order to continue doing this full time. And the t-shirts sales. Because many people as want the t-shirts are buying them. So I don't think that number is go to go up enough to make up the difference.
• [00:33:40.35] Being indie though is great. Like my friends who are on labels get, you know, $3 when they sell a CD. And I sell CDs for $15 and I spend a $1.12, you know, making the CD. And I pocket the rest. And that's why - at my like low volume -- I'm able to live off of the music. It's pretty cool being in your own business. Except when you have to do your taxes. That part is ass.
• [00:34:07.95] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:34:14.69] AUDIENCE: I'm just wondering about the back story on "Dude & Catastrophe." If you were a pre-existing Achewood fan, or someone just put this kind of in front of you and said like write something about this. These rats.
• [00:34:26.42] MC FRONTALOT: Did you read the lyrics to this song? And you know Achewood?
• [00:34:28.78] AUDIENCE: Just yeah. I know Achewood just from hearing the lyrics. I've never sat down and read them.
• [00:34:33.40] MC FRONTALOT: I would hope that no non-fan could write such a masterful work--
• [00:34:38.86] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:34:39.70] -- about Achewood.
• [00:34:40.78] AUDIENCE: But you're so slick.
• [00:34:41.53] MC FRONTALOT: On their first exposure to the comic. I was like a longstanding fan. I'd read the whole archive five times. Then I went through again and picked out every Todd strip and stuck them in a folder. And picked all my favorite gems out of there to make sure I could reference them in the song about Todd, and his penchant for reincarnation. It's fuckin awesome.
• [00:35:06.58] ELI NEIBURGER: Another question? Come here please.
• [00:35:08.67] AUDIENCE: Hi I was wondering if you have encountered traditional non-nerdcore rappers, and what kind of reaction you've gotten from them?
• [00:35:18.10] MC FRONTALOT: Very few. Very few. I mean I've met a ton of like little underground indie rappers who've been on bills with us while we're touring in these little clubs that we play. And they've all been really nice for the most. 90% of them, 99% of them are hearing us for the first time like when we do our set with them. And a few of them. You know, knew that they were going to be on the bill with us, and looked us up on Internet the day before or something. But they've all been really nice and supportive, which I was never expecting. I always thought that other rappers would like not pay much attention to what we actually sounded like, and just kind of look at our effect, like the costumes and glasses and stuff, and think that we're like trying to make fun of hip hop or something. And then be mad at us. But we haven't actually gotten that reaction from any other musicians. And I'm really glad.
• [00:36:12.41] I have not met any famous rappers.
• [00:36:15.79] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:36:17.15] I mean other than like shaking hands. So I don't know what they think of our stuff. There's Prince Paul and J-Live are in the movie saying really nice things about it, which is exciting. And Del tha Funky Homosapien did that G4 campaign with us, and I didn't get to meet him, but he was shooting the same day as Lars. And Lars send me text, he's like Del says he's a fan of you, exclamation point, exclamation point, less than three, you know.
• [00:36:41.92] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:36:42.55] And like that made me super happy. But I don't know, maybe I should engage in a letter writing campaign to all my favorite hip hop artists, and ask them what do you think of me.
• [00:36:54.92] [LAUGHTER
• [00:36:59.61] ELI NEIBURGER: Other questions?
• [00:37:08.36] AUDIENCE: With other forms of buying music out there, is there a way that you prefer we buy your music? Like is it buying it directly good or do you prefer getting the tally counts from iTunes or one of those other locations?
• [00:37:22.00] MC FRONTALOT: I'm actually pretty successful in keeping tally counts myself when you buy stuff from me. I guess the way that I make the very most money, if you want to be supportive financially, is just to buy stuff off my site. The CDs or the digital. I do them both off my site. But iTunes is fine, whatever you want to do. Or steal the record, and PayPal me $5 or whatever you think is more like-- [LAUGHTER]
• [00:37:54.08] That's not legal advice. I'm just saying I know it happens.
• [00:37:59.15] ELI NEIBURGER: Other questions?
• [00:38:10.56] AUDIENCE: Have you ever encountered people that have said like oh your music is so terrible why don't you just stop? what do you do when they say that?
• [00:38:20.62] MC FRONTALOT: I have been expecting someone to say that to my face ever since I like first dared to set foot on the stage. And so far I've lucked out. Like nobody's bothered to hassle me with that. I guess just because if they think that about the music they're like ugh. They don't stick around to bother to tell me.
• [00:38:42.03] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:38:42.16] MC FRONTALOT: Maybe I'll go have a beer next door.
• [00:38:43.70] AUDIENCE: Well it's good that you don't have anybody saying that your music is bad.
• [00:38:47.51] MC FRONTALOT: Yeah. I mean it's not like my music is so great. You know but for some reason the people who hate it have not been communicating with me. When I first put out that antiwar song, I got a couple of emails. But they weren't about the music, they were about the content. The best one was all in red italics. It was an email that said, all her enemies will burn. I don't know who she is. I guess the nation. Is the nation feminised when referred to?
• [00:39:15.42] ELI NEIBURGER: Not usually by those people I think.
• [00:39:17.32] MC FRONTALOT: I didn't get that. Maybe with a ship of state. I don't know.
• [00:39:22.34] ELI NEIBURGER: Maybe he's just talking about Condi. All right, Here you go.
• [00:39:26.57] AUDIENCE: Since you're only an hour from Canada, have you had any problems with "Final Boss"? You had a song that referenced Canada. Have you had any issues with that, or how do you feel about only being an hour away from there?
• [00:39:35.15] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:39:37.25] MC FRONTALOT: I live in constant terror that their invasion forces will reach New York before the national defense is able to mobilize.
• [00:39:42.81] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:39:49.73] ELI NEIBURGER: I got another question I meant to ask. You know, we know you're a big Achewood fan. I saw you have a crush all human sticker on your laptop. What other web comics are you really into?
• [00:39:58.94] MC FRONTALOT: I always read Jeffrey Rowland's comics. I always read Penny Arcade. I catch up on White Ninja every other week. I love Dr. McNinja, but the site drives me nuts. Because you can click last page or beginning of this issue, but you can't click the last page that I read. God damn it. Which means you go to the pages you haven't seen, and then you try to cover your eyes and hit the back button. So you get back to where you were. It drives me nuts. So I try and wait for him to finish a whole issue and then read it.
• [00:40:30.75] What else. There's bunch. I should just get my bookmarks out. I have most of them randomized to show up pretty often in a little like links thing on my front page on the left, near the bottom, if you're interested in my favorite web comics check that out.
• [00:40:50.16] ELI NEIBURGER: Any other questions? Yes?
• [00:40:55.96] AUDIENCE: In the area of controversial topics, thank you for writing "I Heart Fags" it's a great song. Thank you.
• [00:41:01.13] MC FRONTALOT: Cheers. You guys know today's the 40th anniversary of Stonewall?
• [00:41:06.39] AUDIENCE: And what reaction have you gotten from that, from any community?
• [00:41:11.08] MC FRONTALOT: I remember I played in New York once, and someone came to yell at me after the show. They're like it's pride week, why didn't you play in Chelsea or something. [LAUGHTER
• [00:00:00.00]
• [00:41:27.00] Why didn't you play "I Heart Fags." I' like oh, we haven't rehearsed it yet. And I was getting that a lot. Why didn't you play "I Heart Fags". It's like there was some special reason why you should've played that today. I was like damn it, you're right. I was busy touring I didn't know. So then we put it in the set, and we play it in any town that we think will enjoy it. And then we also don't play it like in Houston.
• [00:41:48.98] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:41:53.24] Because I feel bad. I like my politics songs, but I feel bad hollering it at people who don't share my politics. Your politics are very bad, yeah. I like putting that on a record, but it feels a little like I'm talking down to people if I do that in person.
• [00:42:10.01] ELI NEIBURGER: So do you chop those out a little bit like when the audience a sure fire hitter? I remember that when you did play the first protest song at PAX, and that was a -- No. That was the audience I think. I don't think there were too many people in the room disagreed.
• [00:42:23.13] MC FRONTALOT: Yeah. I've never seen us getting any dirty looks when we do that. Like either "I Heart Fags" or any of the like protest stuff. And I was always kind of expecting somebody to be like tapping their foot afterwards.
• [00:42:38.13] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:42:40.33] I haven't seen it.
• [00:42:43.17] ELI NEIBURGER: Any other questions? All right we got a few of fronts videos cued up. And then we will roll right on into "Nerdcore Rising." But let's go ahead and give Front a big hand. Thanks very much for coming.
• [00:42:54.25] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:42:59.15] Closing remarks?
• [00:43:00.63] MC FRONTALOT: Can I tell them which videos they're going to look at?
• [00:43:02.87] ELI NEIBURGER: What's that?
• [00:43:02.99] MC FRONTALOT: Can I tell them which videos they're going to look at?
• [00:43:04.59] ELI NEIBURGER: Yes.
• [00:43:04.88] MC FRONTALOT: You guys have probably seen some of these. They're online. Oh and that's the new thing by the way. You don't say the Internet anymore. You just say Internet. I need you to take that with you
• [00:43:14.37] [LAUGHTER] These are four music videos. There's "It Is Pitch Dark" which is directed by Jason Scott who made the BBS documentary, and a documentary about Text of Adventure, which is about to come out. And I did this song for him for that Text Adventure. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Scott Steve, the guy who wrote Planet Fall, is in the video. And there's the "Bizzare Genius Baby" video, which Jason Thomas animated all by himself. It has the whole story story of the song layed out. And then there's the G4 commercial, which is about video games. It's only 30 seconds long. And there's the winner of the fan video contest for Wallflowers, which is the dance song off the new record.
• [00:43:58.76] And you guys can watch those for 15 minutes or go to the bathroom. Thanks again.
• [00:44:05.82] ELI NEIBURGER: Thank you.