Fun Music

So there are a few fun bands that have championed the term Nerdcore.

These are bands that sing or play songs that are based on nerdy things like science fiction, video games, and such.

Weird Al touches on this a bit with some of his songs. “The Saga Begins” is one of his best, and tells that tale of “The Phantom Menace” to the tune of “American Pie”.

Jonathan Coulton is kind of another one, but he’s become popular because he actually wrote the final songs to the games “Portal” and “Portal 2”. He even challenged himself a few years ago with what he called Thing-A-Week where he wrote a song every week for a year.

Then there’s a scattering of others. Richard Cheese wrote “Star Wars Cantina” to the tune of “Copacabana”. And every now and then you come across songs on an album that are hidden references to a band’s favorite thing. Apparently Iron Maiden loves the original Dune series by Frank Herbert, and lots of their songs have reference to the series. Even Fatboy Slim likes Dune; just listen to “Weapon of Choice”. And watch it for Christopher Walken.

Then there’s full-on Nerdcore.

The band Powerglove does (mostly) all instrumental rock versions of video game and cartoon theme songs. I got to see them in concert a year or two ago, and their musicality is pretty amazing. especially their drummer. And the whole time they were dressed up as World of Warcraft style armor. The drummer even had campaign flags on his back.

And the latest I’ve come across is Kirby Krackle. I don’t even remember how I came across them last week. I enjoyed the music you could stream from their website, liked them on Facebook, and then I came across the song “Ring Capacity”. It struck home with me. And apparently it’s struck home with a lot of other people because there is a campaign to have it be on the soundtrack to the new Green Lantern movie. And then today, they posted an official video for the song. One that I heard about through DC Comics itself, so they seem to be getting some approval.