Young Devin Funck

Taking Astro Zombie's ballad and running with it: here's a quick-and-dirty shades-of-Cash musical interpretation of one hell of a story.

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posted by cortex (33 comments total)

See also:
- the words
- AZ's reading
- metatalk
posted by cortex at 10:01 PM on August 23, 2008

Very, very nice, especially with such quick turnaround time.
posted by umbú at 10:20 PM on August 23, 2008

Man, I really wish this kid hears this and AZ's reading. Can you imagine something cooler or weirder than random Internet strangers writing awesome songs about you?
posted by spiderskull at 10:21 PM on August 23, 2008

cortex, you are the master of Meta-MetaFilter songs.
posted by danb at 10:33 PM on August 23, 2008

Oh, lovely.
posted by rtha at 10:41 PM on August 23, 2008

All right. This is totally excellent. Do you mind if I put this recording up on my blog?
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:07 PM on August 23, 2008

oh hell. fuck you cortex! i've barely had time to flow through a rough acoustic version of this and here you go doing it a million times better. In all seriousness, this production strikes me heavily. I don't know what silly midwestern impressions you picked up for this, but man, 400% awesome.
posted by xorry at 11:12 PM on August 23, 2008

Perfect.
posted by longsleeves at 1:36 AM on August 24, 2008

BRILLIANT. This is exactly how I imagined this should be sung when I first read Astro Zombie's post.
posted by louche mustachio at 3:06 AM on August 24, 2008

Yes, it's great.
posted by fixedgear at 3:16 AM on August 24, 2008

louche mustachio: " BRILLIANT. This is exactly how I imagined this should be sung when I first read Astro Zombie's post."

Agreed. When I heard AZ's reading earlier today I was going to comment that I thought adding in some country guitar style music would make it better, but given recent dealings I've had here on MeMu, I decided simply to opt for silence instead. But yes, this is how I imagined it would sound, and my god it sounds great. Thanks cortex!
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:40 AM on August 24, 2008

Do you mind if I put this recording up on my blog?

Hell no, go for it.

i've barely had time to flow through a rough acoustic version of this

Do it! Multiple versions of stuff is awesome.

When I heard AZ's reading earlier today I was going to comment that I thought adding in some country guitar style music would make it better, but given recent dealings I've had here on MeMu, I decided simply to opt for silence instead.

No, no, random constructive criticism on stuff really is a good thing over here. Music is still sort of stretching its wings as far as that goes, but productive commentary is pretty much always going to be okay.

I thought it'd be interesting to try and actually splice in AZ's words, but I knew that'd take me a whole lot longer to do than just recording my own vox. I might see about doing another mix that overlays him instead, but no promises.
posted by cortex at 6:33 AM on August 24, 2008

You know, my "master of Meta-MetaFilter songs" comment was a throwaway, but that's damn near the truth. I just paged through cortex's Music history and found matthewchen is spamming, Please Stop the Asshattery, Doing the Churlish Pule, Mathowie's Community Blog, 88 Lines about 44 Mefites, Sgt. Pepper 2.0, Happy Birthday Metafilter, On The Blue, and Young Devin Funck -- all of which are directly MeFi-inspired. That's about 1/6 of the dude's total output. Craziness.
posted by danb at 6:45 AM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

another masterful cortex production. I agree, this was done in the perfect style for the topic - most excellent!
posted by madamjujujive at 6:59 AM on August 24, 2008

Lucky me! I generally head for MetaMusic to fix sound problems on my computer and see ( hear) what I found!!!
posted by francesca too at 7:47 AM on August 24, 2008

Alligaterrific!
posted by languagehat at 8:29 AM on August 24, 2008

This is fantastic. That is all. I hope Devin gets to hear it.
posted by gemmy at 8:46 AM on August 24, 2008

Also, not to be all tearing-open-the-secrets-of-the-universe or whatever, but that's the Terminator theme being referenced by the organ solo in the break.
posted by cortex at 10:10 AM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is really great.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:17 AM on August 24, 2008

That's brilliant.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:17 AM on August 24, 2008

i love the song "NOT"
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:59 AM on August 24, 2008

Don't sweat it, Alvy. That guy has swam with gators many of time.
posted by cortex at 12:02 PM on August 24, 2008

Ha! I miss the comments on the NOLA site. "NOT!"
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:16 PM on August 24, 2008

I will listen to this many of time. And enjoy in much. I will affix to my iPod.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:22 PM on August 24, 2008

The phrasing is great and reminds me of "The Ballad of Irving" (at 2:50 in the YT video) from the old Dumb Ditties album.
But most half-spoken "ballad" songs remind of that song, because that K-tel album is seared into my brain.
posted by chococat at 10:06 PM on August 24, 2008

Holy hell. I think you probably just hit the nail on the head there, chococat; I can't remember the last time I heard Irving, but by god if that song wasn't etched into my brain when I was a Dr. D kid. God knows how many times I listened to it back then.
posted by cortex at 10:31 PM on August 24, 2008

Irving's a spoof of a specific song, Big Bad John (by Jimmy Dean, yes, the sausage Jimmy Dean.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 12:52 AM on August 25, 2008

Heard back from the journalist who wrote the story: Wow, thanks for sharing these.

I have emailed the fella who is organizing the Devin Funck fundraiser to let him know my poem and Cortex's song version are out there. Haven't heard back yet.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:09 AM on August 25, 2008

My name is Cory Dunn. I started The Devin Funck Fund to raise money for Devin's current and future expenses. I have emailed the link to Devin and his family so he can hear it! This is so Great! The Living Legend Car Show is a HUGE fund raiser to be held on 9-06-08! you can go to www.myspace.com/devin_the_living_legend to find out about the event or to see how to donate to The Devin Funck Fund. Thank you for this great recording! Email is [e-mail] for any other questions! Thank you again!!! Can I post this as a song on the myspace page? Does anyone know how I can doo this?- Cory
posted by devinfunck at 2:17 PM on August 25, 2008

Ha! Hiya, Cory.

It's certainly fine with me if you want to post the song on myspace, assuming (and I'm guessing this is so, since he dropped you a line in the first place I guess) that it's fine with Astro Zombie too—he wrote up the words that I'm singing here.

How to stick a song on myspace, I have no idea, so I'm no help there.

Best of luck with the fundraiser, and give my best to Devin and the folks.
posted by cortex at 2:29 PM on August 25, 2008

Hi Cory. This is Astro Zombie, who wrote the lyrics.

I would be delighted if you put the song up on MySpace. Here's how you do it.

Sign into the Devin Funck Fund MySpace account.

Once you're signed in, go here: http://www.myspace.com/sailormartinmusic

That will take you to my MySpace music page, although I haven't used it in about two years. I've uploaded the song to that page -- it should show up soon, in the music player on the right side of the page.

Under the name of the song ("Young Devin Funck") you'll see:
"download | comment | Lyrics | add"

If you click add, it will add the song to your profile.

Glad you like the song! Please let us know what Devin thinks, and pass our best on to him!
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:01 PM on August 25, 2008

By the way, if you, or Devin, or anybody, wants to have their own version of the MP3 of this song, it can be downloaded from this page. At the very top, between the flash player and "( 4.9 Mb) ", is a blue image of a computer disc. Right click on that and select "save target as" and it will download (or, if you're using a Mac, control+click).
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:09 PM on August 25, 2008

Ah Slidell. Alligators. *sigh*. Really takes me back to my childhood in South Mississippi -- a barefoot childhood of crawdads, catfish, farm stands and yes alligators. And sometimes robot arms.
posted by February28 at 6:05 PM on September 10, 2008 [1 favorite]