The Future Soon

[filkertom]

I had heard a rumor that JoCo did a song at The Adventurer's Club in Walt Disney World.

I don't know if this is actually the case... but one of their continuing characters, Emil Bleehall, did in fact sing one of his songs:

How frickin' much squeeeeeee would that have got with our group?

What other songs would be appropriate for the adventurous age of Nineteen Thirty-Seven?

Comments

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Well. "ROCKET RIDE" comes to mind.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

You're a good man, Charlie Brown. :)

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

Emotionally, I'm right there with you. That song picks me up like few others do.

Intellectually, not so much. Pining for a golden age of science fiction that probably hasn't yet had a chance to fade away in 1937?

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

MAN.. oh MAN!

That.. just makes me well up with tears of JOY!

[solarbird]

"Skullcrusher Mountain" totally would.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

The previously mentioned SKULLCRUSHER MOUNTAIN.

How about I WANT TO BE PETER LORRE with an appropriately retooled introductory verse about the heroes? You tinker with that every so often anyway, to keep it contemporary, why not the reverse?

John Wayne is just so cocky I could punch him in the snoot!

[bosswriter.livejournal.com]

I believe if you go to his website, it shows that he is actually performing as Emil Bleehall and doing the song in this clip.

It appears he knows some people at Disney.

[pandoradeloeste.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything on the blog/homepage or his events schedule. Got a link?

(edited to include to JoCo icon I keep around for such comments)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Can't find that anywhere. Link?

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/The%20Future%20Soon

If that doesn't take you straight to the "Videos" tab (and I doubt it will), click there. It's the very first one, and it has a link to the guy's website.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

... but when I get to the Videos tab, all I'm getting is MySQL errors....

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Which ID's the guy playing Bleeker as Jay T. Becker.

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

...which explains the lack of JoCoBeard. :D

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

... And the fact that he doesn't look or sing like JoCo, which I wasn't going to bring up, because who knows?

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

*chuckle* Well, as for the rearrangement and performance, I would guess that Coulton's a more than fair actor. However, Jay doesn't look a thing like JoCo, though it's hard to tell with the new Emil Bleehall costume.

Interestingly, the last time I was there, the Emil du jour was still wearing the Boy Scout outfit, and had dropped "Sandusky" from the "...from Sandusky, Ohio" that he said every time he introduced himself.

Is this a performer-by-performer thing? Or were they catching heat from Cedar Fair?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Dunno. Likely not -- maybe just script tightening, although I always thought the Sandusky reference really worked. I was delighted the first time I went there two nights in a row and realized the cast members rotated characters. Being an Adventurer's Club face cast member seems to me to be one of the coolest possible jobs.

[bosswriter.livejournal.com]

If anyone is following this thread I humbly submit I screwed up. When I first saw this video the accompanying text appeared to have indicated that JoCo was performing, but finding more than one clip of this performance (Possibly even more than one) submitted by different people it is clear that it was a regular Disney castmember performing.

The one poster said he talked to the cast afterward about the song and they all said they were big fans of JoCo and that's why they used the song.

My apologies for the bad 411.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

No problemo. I have the feeling that, as long as it was a one-off, the Creative Commons license would let them do that with no problem. And, as I said in the initial post, if we'd been there when they did it, we'd be still squeeing about it now.

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

Joe the Georgian by Al Stewart from Between The Wars.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

That is like, the best thing of ever.

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

I don't know about other songs, but if I were Mr. Coulton I'd ask for ASCAP fees and a license to use his song. It went over well with the crowd, that's clear. And he deserves some of that Disney loot. Real cash. He shouldn't be offered an annual Disney park pass in exchange for the rights; that's only about $350. Stick to your guns and get the gelt, Mr. Coulton.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

And what makes you think he wasn't paid?

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

I think he wasn't paid because I know how Disney people are paid. Or not.

Also, you may have heard how Peter David proposed to his wife on the floor of the Adventurer's Club, with a little speech he wrote that was read by Col. Crichenton Suchbench. Disney now does those proposal ceremonies for PAY, using a slightly-rewritten version of the script.

I asked Mr. David, "Aren't you upset that you thought this up and Disney's making money on it now?" He replied, "No, 'cause I got the first one for free." That's a lot more tolerant position than I would have accepted. And that's the kind of situation you get when you produce creative material for the Mouse.

Sometime I'll tell you how one of my favorite improv actors at Disney's Comedy Warehouse was laid off, and escorted off property by Disney Security like he was an enemy agent captured by Homeland Security. This happens all the time, and I worry that Coulton might experience the dark side of Disney Magic.

That being said, it is a song that displays the broken heart inside every geek, and while funny, it also brought a few tears to my eyes.

[fredhuggins.livejournal.com]

It's not the same story at all. Legally Peter David didn't have a leg to stand on - unless, of course, he filled out the proper online form and mailed it, check enclosed, into the Library of Congress before he proposed. Copyright law is a horrible thing to abuse for greed's sake if you're a big corporation, but if you're a struggling artist it's a valuable resource, and THE ONLY THING keeping your stuff from getting stolen like that. If you don't copyright your work, then ANYONE can steal it and not give you a dime, and you can't say boo.

Jonathan Coulton, I have to assume, got all his songs copyrighted before he even released them to the public. That means if Disney IS using his song without paying him, he'd have an open-and-shut case against The Mouse, and given their history with open-and-shut cases, The Mouse would probably give him a nice settlement. Disney gets a bad rep for being overly litigious, largely because of that "Mickey's image in a pre-school" fiasco twenty years ago, but the fact is, that thing gave them so much bad publicity that they've been avoiding it like the PLAGUE ever since.

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

Thing is, after reading his site, I discovered that Mr. Coulton published his song under "creative commons" license - and as I understand, depending on the various versions of that which exist, Disney might be able to do anything at all with the song without oweing him a dime. I believe they could even put it into a porn movie sex scene without him having any recourse.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Well, it's kinda tricky: The specific CC license JoCo uses (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) says you may not use the work for commercial purposes. Technically, using it in one of their shows, Disney did just that. On the other hand, it wasn't something they advertised -- "Come hear our cast sing the songs of Jonathan Coulton!" -- so it might be a gray area legally. Or not. (That's part of the reason I use the ShareAlike extension of the same license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/), which makes people who do something with a work release their modification under the same license.)

[fredhuggins.livejournal.com]

I can't wait to see how they use "Brand New Sucker."