I’ve been working with the rest of the IT Business crew on our new podcast project, and I have to confess, it’s fun. It’s been fraught with challenges, of course – refining the sound quality of telephone interviews, tightening up our lines of questioning to keep them to a listenable length, dealing with disparate file formats, that sort of thing.
Our spam podcast this week threw a new one at us, but every crisis is an opportunity, as those who are more accustomed to opportunity than crisis like to say. Shane Schick interviewed the director of a new documentary about spam, titled, um, Spam: The Documentary. The filmmaker sent along the movie’s theme music, an infectious ditty called “I Am Spam”:
If you’ve got mail, then you’ve got me
I wanna give you stuff for free
The file was in MP3 format. We needed an AIF, and didn’t have the appropriate application. (Who uncompresses MP3s, after all?) Our tech department took it as a challenge, and came up with the appropriate solution in the nick of time, despite the fact that our media specialist, J.P. – “the natural enemy of MP3 files,” as a co-conspirator calls him – was vacationing in sunny Ottawa.
We worked the song into the podcast as transition music at a couple of points, and to Shane’s tastes, it elevated the whole affair. “We have to have a song like this for every show,” he said.
The problem, of course, is that there’s a dearth of technology-related jingles out there. (The thought struck me the other day: I’ve never heard a moony-eyed hurtin’ song with the line, “You never e-mail me no more.”)
There is a solution. And we’re turning to you for help.
We’ve occasionally asked readers to apply their creativity to a haiku or poem on a technology-related subject, with mixed results. Why not, thinks I, ask them to write some techie songs?
Just the lyrics, unless you feel ambitious and want to send a full MP3 demo. Tackle a particularly gnawing topic: ARP redirect attacks, compatibility issues (always a natural for a ballad), SQL queries … anything you have strong enough feelings about that it inspires the poet in you.
I’ll pour coffee into my friend, Fishbelly White – an accomplished electro-blues-polka-eastern-European-folk artist – until he agrees to come out of his self-imposed exile at a trailer park in Zephyr, Ont., and set your words to music. Feel welcome to suggest a style, or the melody of another song for reference.
Every time we get one that works, we’ll air it on the podcast.
Don’t delay – send your song today. The band is tuning up.
Dave Webb is editor of Canadian Smart Living and author of the unauthorized Fishbelly White biography, “And Fortunately, No One Was Injured.”
