Well, I had my last day of regular class today, an Ethics lecture with the legendary, highly knowledgeable, and ever-so-sweet Thomas Nagel, who is sans hyperbole perhaps the greatest living philosopher. I’m still a little star-struck in his class. This being the last lecture, wrapping things up as neatly as possible for an undergrad philosophy course, it ran a little long and his last words to the class were, simply, “Well, looks like there’s no time for discussion. So long.”

The class applauded thunderously.

I’m not sure why but as I was leaving NYU’s Silver Center this song from Pal Joey started boppin’ around my brain, and I began humming it, then singing it outright to myself, and felt compelled to find a piano and hammer out the tune as best as I could remember.

And so begins, with the last scheduled lecture of the semester as two weeks of finals loom ahead, the second installment of my impromptu-iPhone-piano-covers-to-avoid-work series, Procrasti-Covers.

I feel like I need a name as an umbrella for the drips and drabs of solo material I release that isn’t part of The Medicine or some other band project, or the serious yet-to-be-announced-and-finalized new band project I have on the horizon.

I used to go by “That Guy,” which I think it still says on my SoundCloud. I submitted with that name to SongFight.org now and then. I also submitted there with the pseudonym Duderonymus Bosch, which is where my blog title came from. I also use T. G. Bartoni for some things… it’s a childhood nickname. Short for “The Great Bartoni.” After seeing Matt Pond in person I kinda wanna be barton lewis NY but that wouldn’t really work.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

As long as I’m vainly scrubbing through my SoundCloud as we approach New Year’s Eve Day (that’s where that year-and-a-half old embarrassing voice Swell Season cover came from) why not also throw up this time I mashed up LCD Soundsystem and Billy Joel one day when I should have been doing something else in a piano room at Fox Studios?

Here’s my entry from the Bag of Bones week on SongFight. (see my previous post for more info about that.)

Thank god my voice has changed in the past two years. Also keep in mind this was made (from writing to finished product) in about 3 hours total. or don’t, i can take ur harsh harsh criticism. 

Great song from Nick Krill of the Spinto Band and Jonathan Mann that I just came across by looking at old SongFights I was involved in. I’ll post my submission from this week and maybe some others soon. 

ALSO, what vaguely spanish-y or something song does the riff and melody of “bag of bones” remind me of?? Driving me nuts.

If you don’t know SongFight, it’s this great, free, non-profit website where every week a title is given and people around the world write and record songs based on that title, incorporating it into the lyrics or not, interpreting it thematically however they wish. The results are then posted to the site and voted on by the community. If you haven’t ever seen it, do take a look: http://songfight.org/

The names I’ve used on there for my music are That Guy and Duderonymus Bosch. The most famous person to originate on the site is probably MC Frontalot. One of my favorite submitters is Carol Cleveland Sings, who is Thomas Hughes from The Spinto Band. Berkeley Social Scene is also great, as are many others. 

You can easily browse the back-catalog of submissions dating to a decade ago and before here: http://sfjukebox.org/

Ridiculous amounts of horase. Probably shouldn’t have done this Procrasti-Cover. But, what was I gonna do, my work? HAH!

One of the best things to come out of Scranton since Pogash Pizza, Mike Quinn is a real great songwriter with a catchy charismatic delivery who in no way deserved this being done to his song. Oh, well.

As this is the first recorded on my new iPhone 5, this Procrasti-Cover contains 50% less MSG. How does it sound to you?

The album this comes from is all folkjangletwangawesome: http://mikequinn.bandcamp.com/ BUY IT!!

Here’s a new song you might have feelings about. Some of the lyrics were notes I made the day of aChoir show last December. I found them today and reread them as well as a bunch of other nonsense (possibly not nonsense) that I had written in the most hip of all hipster writing mediums: A black Moleskine notebook. Regardless, I found the words, and made them fit quickly with a minimum of polish, so here you are. 

When I was putting the music part together with the wordy part, you know how that goes, the turntable in my brain was playing Jesse Winchester.