please feel free to send this page on to particular friends / your personal network / RT / etc. - though my friends will receive priority, this invitation is 100% open to strangers.
RB Humbug's highly time-sensitive invitation to one and all:
GIVE ME PRESENTS, MAKE A RECORD
Hi. I'm a musician. I've made bad holiday music every so often for my own personal enjoyment for 20+ years now. This year, I'd like to make a holiday record where my friends and/or eAcquaintances, whether they are musicians or not, have a legitimate personal reason to listen. I'd like them to be a part of the creation process. Most, if not all, of my arguably-better musical / lyrical ideas came in one way or another from a friend. (I won't pursue the potential deeper implications of that statement re: my personal level of talent.)
So what I'm asking is that you consider giving me a gift this week - specifically, The Gift of Inspiration. And you don't need Amazon Prime - you can send it to me directly through the Intarwebz.
Your present to me could take many, many forms. No matter who you are or what you do, trust me: if this prospect interests you at all, you are capable of giving this gift with just a bit of forethought. Here are just a few potential forms of this gift:
- An idea for an original holiday song
- A completed lyric or lyrical fragment for an original holiday song
- A suggestion / set of stylistic-creative directions for a performance of a well-known holiday classic
- An audio recording (ANY quality; a smartphone recording or even a Youtube video is fine) of you singing something holiday-related
- An audio recording (again, ANY quality) of you performing on an instrument, whether or not you actually play that instrument
- A fully-realized instrumental backing track, ready for transformative holidayification
- A Christmas / Hannukah / etc. song you have already recorded in full, with provided license for me to do various things to it
- An audio recording of some object or situation that reminds you of Christmas / Hannukah / etc., however brief (or long)
- A set of performance instructions to be used during a recording session, with no specific song / recording in mind
- A picture or video that you want me to stare at as a Source of Inspiration while I come up with something holiday-related in "studio"
- If you're local: we can just get together and make a holiday song from scratch in a few hours.
See? It really could be anything. There are undoubtedly a few possible forms of this gift I have not considered. You can be as detailed or as vague in your gift-presentation as you like. You don't have to know me very well, or at all, to give me a gift.
However, what counts is that you are personally invested to some degree / really want to see your contribution used in the creation of a probably-irreverent, probably-ridiculous, almost-certainly-horrible holiday song.
I want whatever you send to be something you'll legitimately be interested in hearing (at least once, before the inevitable subsequent disappointment) when I'm done with it. The whole point is collaborating with you; effectively, in the end, we are giving gifts to each other. I don't want the musical result of your gift to be seen as an unwanted, unsexy pair of socks under the tree.
That said, despite the fact that you're sending something to me, of all people, be as serious as you'd like. You can send along specific instructions / limits with your idea, if you'd like to see me treat it more carefully than usual or whatever. I am certainly not against being earnest / attempted sincerity in art... just as long as it's someone else taking responsibility for any painfully personal expressions therein.
Oh, yeah, and speaking of that - your gift / contribution to this project can be 100% anonymous in the final release if you like. I promise I won't tell anyone who was responsible if you don't want it known.
One last thing: NO REQUESTS FOR VIDEO OF ANY KIND WILL BE CONSIDERED. The result of your gift will be, must be audio / music only, mixed into the wacky album-stew for people to enjoy with just their ears while they stare at something else.
...DO IT. SEND ME PREZZIES. QUICK.
The deadline for idea-gift submissions is Sunday, December 8 at midnight CST. If I don't have enough presents to justify starting by then, I simply won't bother with the project.
This really won't be much fun unless I have at least 4-5 diverse ideas to use. (By the way, yes, you CAN send me more than one present - but please number them / otherwise indicate your personal priorities in case I don't have time / ability to use all of them.) There's also the risk that I will receive too many ideas from too many people, but I'm frankly not too worried about that right now based on my past crowdsourcing attempts. I'll cross that bridge, etc. Like I said, if you "mean" your present, send it right now, without worry or shame.
To send me your idea-present, you can use this email address:
GiftMe at lossfoundation dot com
If that special address bugs you for some reason, you can also use any other email address you have on file for me - put "for the holidays" in the subject. However: please don't use social media to send me your gift - I will probably lose it in the firehose of celebrity retweets and Buzzfeed links.
If you are a stranger to me, please tell me how you got a hold of this invitation and/or any other information you may feel relevant in your email.
If you are a local person and want to do something live in the same room for this project, sure, just text me or whatever and we'll work it all out.