Geeky SKAturday: There's a McDonald's in the Pentagon

Well, this actually might be the most influential ska song to come out so far this year.  If you haven't already fallen victim to this earworm, here's your chance to be infected...

I may not have discovered this masterpiece if it weren't for r/Ska, but apparently it's achieved a healthy level of virality on TikTok.  There's even a Know Your Meme page for it, if you'd like to check out the details, but...briefly: In February, musician Silly Stu put the original acoustic version online.  Here it is...or, a copy of it at least...I still don't completely get TikTok...

I guess it's worth saying here: The lyrics in this little tune are clever as hell.  And clearly it's super catchy.  So, thankfully, Spencer Vann decided to expand upon it, and 10 days later, we got the ska gem in that first video above.  Vann even goes over his process of making the backing track in a video here:

And it seems this song is already a bit of a phenomenon.  I'm sure there will be more, but here's the first cover I heard, by Philly ska band Goofy at Night:

(I'm not sure why they left out the last bit of lyrics...maybe they didn't love the idea of exclaiming, Bitch you hit the Pentagon!  But who knows...)

At any rate, I am very happy to bring this song into the canon of the Agents of SKA.  Surely there are times that this super-secret organization (the Sentinel Khrononaut All-Stars) has to have extra-secret meetings with a double-secret committee from the American military.  Now we know exactly where those meetings take place.  I'm guessing in the crew room...

Actually from a Reddit post here

Hope you all have a great SKAturday and a wonderful rest of your weekend...!

So, Sea Shanty TikTok is a thing

One of my most-viewed posts in the history of this blog came last year, when I decided to post about a catchy tune I kept hearing my wife come across on the bite-sized video social media app TikTok.  Not that this blog maintains much of a focus, but that post was fairly off-topic pretty much no matter what you might consider my core subject matter.  I guess the post did what I intended it to, though, as it immediately jumped up to top-viewed status, and I could see that search traffic was bringing in people who were looking for the story of the song just like I was.  It has dropped back down below a few other posts in the past few months...although I'm not convinced that some of my rambling that generates a lot of hits (by my standards) isn't actually just a bot magnet for one reason or another.

At any rate, something interesting has happened on TikTok lately.  You may have seen that sea shanties have become popular.  Singing, singing along, remixing...folks are loving #ShantyTok.  Honestly, if you pay attention to pop culture news, there's a good chance you're already aware of this trend.  And if you're not, just search sea shanty tiktok, and you'll see that just about every news service, reputable and otherwise, has had something to say about the craze.

Why am I posting about it?  Not sure...I guess I just think it's cool.  Here's a sampler:

And a background video:

Note #1:  It has been pointed out HERE and probably elsewhere that at least the most popular of the TikTok shanties, the whaling song "Soon May the Wellerman Come", isn't actually a proper sea shanty by a strict definition of the term.  So, any shanty purists out there, we hear you.

Note #2:  Yes, it's a whaling song.  I've seen no indication that anyone involved lately is actually pro-whaling, though.  Whaling is pretty effed up.  Just thought it should be noted.  (I'll also note that I don't discount the argument that the banning of ecologically sound whaling, if it is possible, may very well indicate a cultural double standard imposed by the West.)  I shall go no further down this line of thought.

Note #3:  There are some definite gaming bits to be found in this!  According to this encyclopedia entry, the shantyman, or leader of the work song, was very influential in the success of the crew:

"A good shantyman was worth four extra hands on the rope."

Seems like a great way to work a bard into a nautical/piratical campaign, doesn't it?

And because why not...here's one of literature's more famous whalers statted up for LightBox* gaming.  Call him...

Ishmael

Level 2 Sailor (check out David Baymiller's "OSR Pirate/Renaissance and Colonial Classes. Fighting Men" HERE!)

AC 9[10]    HD 2d6 (9 HP)

Saving throw: 15

Move 12 ft.

STR 11    DEX 12    CON 13    INT 12    WIS 15(+1)    CHA 10

Attacks:  By weapon (BHB +1, additional +1 melee or unarmed)

Sailing +1, Gambling +1, Swimming +2, Climb Walls 55%

Special:  Move silently and Backstab as level 2 Thief.

* As in conforming to the style of either Swords & Wizardry Light or White Box...I see little need to differentiate much more on the blog here...

I'll make a cup of coffee for your head

As is probably obvious from some of the stuff I've posted on this blog, I'm old and don't always understand new and interesting things.  For example...TikTok.

As you may know because you're more capable of absorbing the nuances of an ever-changing world than I am, TikTok is a new social media platform built on videos of 15 seconds or less.  My wife loves it.  My coworkers love it.  It's hilarious.  You can spend hours scrolling through it.

I just don't get it.  Maybe I just haven't seen the right stuff yet.  The percentage of of videos that are interesting seems far too low to make it worth the effort.  But...again, I suppose I just don't get it.

Okay, so...there is this one song that I kept hearing my wife come across on the app, and it kept sticking with me.  Quite an earworm, really, especially for what is essentially just the melodic hook for a lofi hip hop song.  All I had to use in searching for it were the lyrics "I'll make a cup of coffee for your head" and the fact that it's used a lot on TikTok.  This was more than enough, and there's a nice little history to the song, but I didn't find it gathered all in one place for easy access.  So, that's what this page is for...the person like me who wants to know what's behind the tune but doesn't know where to start.

First off, here's the song that's being used, "death bed" by Canadian rapper Powfu, sampling the song "Coffee" by Filipino-British singer-songwriter Beeabadoobee:

Here's a selection of TikTok videos (I guess they're called TikToks...? maybe...?) that use it.  FAIR WARNING:  I don't necessarily recommend watching this entire video as a good use of your time.  However, to reiterate, I just don't get it...but oh man I just found myself watching one after the other and maybe I'm starting to get it...

Powfu first released the song in 2019, putting it on SoundCloud.  In 2020, it started getting used a ton on TikTok and was finally released commercially (I guess in that order).  Powfu apparently waited because he didn't think he could legally use the Beabadoobee sample in the beat, which he had found on SoundCloud from producer Otterpop.  Here's that beat:

This backing track, entitled "Don't Go to Bed/One Day I'll Be Fine," is also used in rapper Kalvonix's song "One Day I'll Be Fine," which seems to have already been released in 2018...so I guess it predates "death bed?"

Now, that hook.  It's a slightly sped up (and higher pitched) clip from Beeabadoobee's 2017 song "Coffee," which is beautiful:

Here's a fun live version:

Finally, if you'd like to hear more from Powfu about his thoughts on the song...here you go...