Geeky Music Doesn't Always Mean Funny Music

By Jonah Knight 

 

I wonder sometimes why I decided to specialize in creepy music. I mean, being a geek musician is weird enough. Being a creepy geek musician who works the most around Halloween sometimes feels poorly thought through.

When I think about other geek musicians, most of them self identify as comedy musicians somewhere in their bio. Take a look at the guys and gals over on The Funny Music Project, for example. There are tons of musicians making tons of fun, witty, jokey songs there implying the people in the geek community at large really want funny. But I’m not sure that’s necessarily true.

Tell that to these guys though. (Image via The FuMP)

When you dig a little deeper into geek comedy music, you start to discover that most of it isn’t, well, funny. It’s referential. Talking about Star Wars, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, or Game of Thrones in your song, doesn’t make it funny; it makes it geeky. And many geeks misinterpret referential as funny. When you look back at early songs that talked about pop culture, much of it was parody or some kind of send up. Remember Star Trekkin’? We had so little musical material that spoke to our desires outside of comedy, I think there is some residue from that now.

There are guys who focus on writing songs about video games and much of it isn’t funny. It’s just music about video games. Same with comics and movies and stuff. Just mentioning Green Lantern in a song will get Guy Gardner fans (you know you are) prepped for a punch line when what they should really want Green Lantern Corps concept album with emotional depth. We want our comic book movies to be dark, why not our comic book music?

You can check out some of Jonah's creepy music here. Also! He has weekly podcast about music, conventions, and stuff with Mikey Mason called Pros & Cons, available here.