Ready. Set. Go make music.
Jen and Eric were up to the challenge last year.
The RPM Challenge started up this past Sunday. RPM stands for "Record Production Month" and the challenge is intended to get people motivated to produce new albums.
A couple of great local albums -- Matthew Loiacono's Kentucky and We Are Jeneric's In the Parlor With the Moon -- came out of last year's challenge. And this year's go-around includes another bunch of local projects.
Here are a few that caught our eye when we were scanning the list...
00shoe Troupe
Includes Jon Schubin, Wendy Cullings and Rev Records founder Harith Abdullah. Writes the group on its profile page, "This month we will be combing our living rooms for tchotchkes that produce sounds."
Turboprop
From the profile page: "Turboprop brings together members of Albany, NY bands Sea of Trees and El Duke for the sole purpose of writing and recording this February for the RPM Challenge. We have set ourselves some ground rules for how the songs should sound...which will be considerably different from our respective full-time bands. Hopefully they will come out cohesive and dancy."
Scharling
From the profile: "Stop depriving yourself; Scharling has arrived. A three-piece thundering rock-gasm of glory: you will see, you will hear, you will enjoy. Hailing from the backwoods of Cobleskill, New York, Scharling draws upon such diverse influences as Beck, the MC5, and Frank Zappa. Quite frankly, dear reader, Scharling is hotter than two orangutans humping in a pup tent." Well, when you put that way, what choice do we have.
Pingüinos
Peter Mollica "with a ukulele, a cuatro, accordion and whatever else I get my hands on."
Scientific Maps
The popular local group figures it will be "most likely sticking to the maps format, but who knows what might take over."
All told, it looks like there are about 15 local RPM projects and we've probably missed a few. Any look interesting to you? Share, por favor.
Say Something!
We'd really like you to take part in the conversation here at All Over Albany. But we do have a few rules here. Don't worry, they're easy. The first: be kind. The second: treat everyone else with the same respect you'd like to see in return. Cool? Great, post away. Comments are moderated so it might take a little while for your comment to show up. Thanks for being patient.
Comments
I don't know if we made the list of 15 because RPM seems to be down right now. We were purposefully vague and listed our zipcode as 12345 (General Electric, Schenectady), and our town as Anytown, USA.
While we do live in the area, as one of the conditions of our enrollment in the witness protection program, we had to obscure as much as we could. Even posting this much information may JEOPARDIZE OUR LIVES.
Ha ha. No. That's bullshit. Basically anything we say about maintaining anonymity will come off as half-baked pretension. It probably is.
Anyhow, ----- is making a go of RPM. The primary limiting factor is a sleeping 3 month old in the room next door. Like cold fusion, the results will be largely irreproducible.
... said ----- on Feb 3, 2009 at 7:41 AM | link
Wow! This is quite a find. You can get lost in this site. The jukebox is fun: http://www.rpmchallenge.com/jukebox/
It generates a playlist of 100 random songs from a database of over 16000. I could listen all day!
... said kmg on Feb 3, 2009 at 9:24 AM | link