I saw The Overworked Animals‘ show at the 2025 Purple Clouds event and thought they were great!
I had a vision of doing a playalong of their entire set as a way of strengthening my “predict what comes next” muscles, but decided to do just one song decently instead of many songs badly. And here it is.
Posted with their permission.
This came out nicely.
I’ll be focusing on more-rhythmic stuff soon. Watch the skies.
Original by Passenger Princess is here. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Well, it happened: I was fed an AI-generated song on YouTube and didn’t immediately clock it as AI-generated. The thumbnail was clearly not of human origin, overly detailed bits transmitting that familiar uncanny feel.
Waiting for the video to load, I noticed the “artist” had only seven subscribers. Then the music started, a zydeco beat. Outside of its native southwest Louisiana, it’s a pretty obscure genre. (I only know of it because a Zydeco band visited Oberlin College the one year I was a student there. It’s amazing stuff.)
But Mr. Zydeco was not alone. A rugged voice started us off, smelling of the whiskey of country music. Soon a country-rock drumset established the beat, a pedal-steel guitar twanging out bends and cries.
Here I must return to that overly busy thumbnail. It, too, crammed symbols together with the abandon of a being that’s unaware of cultural history. (As it is.) Aliens, treehuggers and weed were paired with wooden signs of affirmation typically only displayed by women over 60. Each element contradicted the one next to it. It was incongruous with itself and certainly incongruous with the music.
Honestly? It was an entertaining song. I wouldn’t say it was good: The lyrics were disjointed and dull, the singer was fuzzy, and it went on much too long.
But its mad cultural transgression really stood out. The way it ignorantly mixed genres and cultures… at first it struck me as disrespectful. But then I remembered: It’s an AI. It can’t show respect or disrespect. So perhaps it’s useful to see it instead as a truly culture-blind approach, the kind those who believe in equality (as I do) have yearned for.
Not that it’s either of these things. We’re looking for colour, but what colour is the number 11001101? We crave judgment and meaning, but there’s no there there.
However! People growing up in this environment are influenced by art around them, just as my generation was, and every before that. The AI piece I ran across was context-blind; all art depends on context. Will we find a new basis for artistic meaning?
If you don’t know Tom Lehrer, you should! He was an amazing musical parodist/comic — perhaps the finest who ever lived, although (IMHO) some of the modern crop (Bo Burnham, Bill Bailey, Tim Minchin) give him a run for the money. A good starting point is his famous 1967 concert in Copenhagen, available in full on YouTube.
Anyway, he released all his music — recordings, sheet music, everything — into the public domain in 2022, at tomlehrersongs.com. “Mike Z.” made it easy to mirror this site on their github page, so I did just that. My mirror is at https://tomlehrer.tgeller.com. Enjoy!
(My family has some connection to Mr. Lehrer, by the way: My parents were students in the Boston area when he was first making a splash. I believe they got to see him perform during this time, and I grew up with his albums playing during dinner.)
Excerpts from a set at a private camping event.
Setup:
I was honoured to be part of the second Purple Clouds, a furry music festival at a swinger campground in Hude, Germany. In a very real way this was my debut; I want to talk about what it meant to me.
First, the details. My main gig there was accompanying DJ WORLDWIDEWOLF on trombone and voice as he spun liquid drum ‘n’ bass. We’d done this fairly spontaneously at Aural Alliance in 2024; this time, I was on the bill. He even came all the way from Braunschweig (DE) to my place in Rotterdam (NL) to rehearse!
I’ve always been something of a musical loner. Honestly, I hoped I’d become one of those solo artists known for forging their own path. But in truth all those maverick types collaborated. Those I admire most — Björk and Bobby McFerrin, for example — are actually the most collaborative. I also realised that I love spontaneously playing along with recordings — or, better, live musicians. (My theory background really helps here: Once I pick up the chord changes it’s just a matter of listening and playing idiomatically.)
But to find those collaborators, you first need to pique their interest by showing what you can do. I’d quietly tried a few streams on my Twitch channel but didn’t feel any of those performances held together; I didn’t want to be judged by them, so I hid them all. But playing live… that’s the stuff.
At Purple Clouds I played three times. First, an unannounced, off-the-cuff solo ambient set at the end of Friday’s program, at 3am. This was on trombone and my little Akai MPK Mini Play MK3, with lots of reverb throughout. This really caught everybody’s attention. Although nobody was in the stage/dance area, it could be heard throughout the 400-person camp, and some even came from their tents to see what was happening. I got lots of positive comments. (My favourite was from someone who said it sounded like they were in VRChat.) As far as I know there’s no recording of the whole thing, but here’s a snippet.
The second gig was at 1400 on Saturday, with WORLDWIDEWOLF. We make a good team! I have criticisms of my own performance but you know what? You can come to your own conclusions. Here’s the set. I’d love to hear what you thought of it in my Telegram chat.
Finally was an impromptu party at Howlheim, a group of Germans with their own little tent community in the corner of the campground. I’d had my ear open for music I could play along with and when I heard traditional German “oom-pah” music (as it’s called in America), I knew I had to be a part of it. So I asked them if it would be O.K., got my trombone, and came back to play for an hour with their DJ. It was fun!
I could write quite a lot more about it and maybe I will later. (In short: well run, leaky tent, pretty sober crowd, lots of nudity and sex.) It was the right place for me, and I’m glad I went. Thanks to Keenora and ALL the Purple Clouds staff & volunteers for making it happen!
I already am an animal.
Hey, gang. It’s strange that I don’t know who you are, reading this. But you’re here, so you seem to know who I am. Anyway…
I’ve been making music for as long as I can remember. I took the classical path. We had a piano near the TV, so I’d play during commercials. My school district had a pretty good music program; I went to music camp in the summer and eventually to music college (“conservatory”) in Ohio.
Lately I’ve realised how much I benefitted from the musical platforms this upbringing gave me. There was always an orchestra, jazz band, choir to perform in. Then there weren’t; I swam into adulthood and did other things. I played for myself in spurts a few times a year. I gigged a little with bands — New Orleans, Balkan, jazz standards, etc.. Played in the orchestra for musicals, that kind of thing. It’s been fine.
But I never put together an “act”. I don’t know why. Maybe growing up with all those great platforms left me without the skills to build my own. Around 2024 I decided to start developing those skills. I bought a looper; I studied DAWs and such. The process made me recognise which parts I liked doing and was good at, and which I didn’t and wasn’t. As I learned more about modern styles and techniques, the more I wanted to get back on stage.
I got to play with DJ WORLDWIDEWOLF at the Aural Alliance Festival and thought it would be great to play with more DJs. Then I bought a DJ controller at an auction for €35, Arkifel suggested I learn Mixxx… and here we are.
I’d like to shout out to some of the other DJs and musicians who have gotten me to this point. First, all the DJs who showed how it’s done at Otterdance:
With special shouts to:
…and many, many furs along the way.
