The traditional JibJab year-end round up for your visual and aural enjoyment…
And remember, soon this blog will be closing down. I think the next post will be the one that confirms that. Most likely. Prorably.
And the video below does play. You just might need to refresh the page before it works. For some reason. Do I look like I know why? Wait. You can’t see me…
As if the last one wasn’t enough…more people, more accents, more weirdness.
After several of Laura Anne’s twitter friends “coerced” her into a Scottish rendition of “The Night Before Christmas”, she also requested some of the coercees take part.
So…I thus coerced Diane to help me out to make it multi-national. And everyone knows she has the bestest accent on the planet anyway.
Without further adieu … here it is : our long overdue return to the world of vlogging
Let me fill you in on the past year, creatively speaking…
Remember Our Creative Community? And my own personal goal to post 12 recorded masterpieces (humour me…) this year?
No? Well, seems I didn’t either.
Actually, I did…I was just ignoring it…
It all went so smoothly for about 5 minutes. Then I decided to go and produce our church’s first worship album, and it all went a little haywire. Great excuse huh!
The last song I posted here was back in May. MAY?!? Where did the last 6 months go? Wait, I know exactly where they went. Lots and lots and LOTS of hours in a recording studio with the awesome worship team from Awesome Church. It’s a sacrifice I’ve been glad to make, though Diane and I have definitely felt the strain too. The album is very nearly done though, and this is a good good good thing.
Anyway…
About a month ago, I did a post over at my good friend Jenni Clayville’s blog telling a bit of my story, because like everyone … I have one. Or two. Maybe more.
In the comments, Jenni’s amazing husband Brian requested a song for his birthday. Now, he may have been joking (I really don’t know – I never asked – it’s not like I haven’t embarked on this personalised song thing before), but it was the impetus I needed to write something of my own again and see if I could remember how to do this. I’ve been writing and recording congregational music all year, which involves a very very different process to how I approach my non-church music, which mainly comprises mini electronic pop epics (poptronica).
So I wrote this. You now have your own song, Brian.
And Jenni, I still want to re-do yours properly as a thank-you for sending me the audio file of Brian’s snoring that inspired this. I’m just looking for a big band… who’ll work for free…
Gotta say though…my snoring is WAY worse than Brian’s. Though the only time it’s been recorded I had sinus and a completely blocked nose, so…
Back to the song…
Lyrics: as usual for me, it took a long time to get the lyrics to happen. Music = easy peasy, but lyrics…no. Except when I’m writing church music, when the lyrics often come first and suggest the melody, etc. In this case, as for all my commissioned “song-for-a-friend” works, I try to dig up plenty of dirt from significant others, but usually most of the good stuff comes from Twitter and Facebook stalking anyway. Add in some inspiration from a great post on Brian’s blog, and we have a song that combines Biblical truth, snoring, fishing for sharks, gas and twittering…amongst other things.
Music: again, as usual for me, it’s crammed too full of ideas because that’s pretty much how I roll all the time; always lots going on. I love the production side of making music, even though this isn’t produced as well as I’d like it to be, purely due to time constraints. It also has a few of my now trademark twists, which are therefore not twists because it would be a twist to do something straight. I may be the M.Night Shyamalan of poptronica.
Love Endures (Snoring) by dg4G
Waking everybody with a sound
That’s been likened to sawing
Some call it snoring
All the best husbands do it
So our wives have something to tweet aboutAs if the bobbleheaded conversation
sprinkled with some speculation
covering the sanitation habits of the generation
that we’re raising all across the nation
…wasn’t enough(some choral wailing)
Kids are upside down in nearly
Every single family picture
It’s probably better that way
Definitely better than attempts
to fish for sharks from the carI wonder whose genes he got?
Should this be rhymed with bergamot?
Maybe, but probably not
Though citrus-scented gas
Might be a winner(some more choral wailing)
(Love)
Love never gives up, never looks back
Never gives up, never looks back, never gives up…
(endures)(Love endures)…
Waking everybody with a sound
That’s been likened to sawing
Often called snoring
And if I’m not sleeping through life, you’re not going to either.
**Could I have possibly written a more tongue twisting bridge? Why yes, I could have. This abridged tongue twister (ha!) was the compromised version… 
It was also much harder to sing at 12.30am than it is now at 10.00am. Hmmmm… Did you hear the stumbles in there? I might as well have sung “dup nebber dip dup”…
Maebh decided making the bed looked like a lot of fun and decided to ‘help’
Came to bed and noticed that Maebh wasn’t in her usual spot sleeping…because she was fascinated by this rather large spider (and even though this is the land of all things poisonous, this one is fine…except fir the potential nasty bite)
So a few snapshots later, said spider is now outside…still on the vase because no amount of banging the vase on the lawn would convince it to loosen it’s grip
Poor spider, so tiny and defenseless… 
…don’t say ’splendid’ huh?
Perhaps I need this book?
Yes, that would be a fabulous idea.
…if you want to walk from Sydney to Portland.
OK, so it's not quite as catchy as "…if you want to rock 'n' roll", or the school playground favourite rewrite of the AC/DC classic : "it's a long way to the shop when you want a sausage roll" But as usual, I digress… After an email discussion about living closer to our North American friends, I thought it might be fun to find out just how much closer to or further from Portland we would be living once we've relocated to Northern Ireland next year. As expected, we'll be just over 3,000 miles closer (approx 4,600 miles, rather than 7,600 miles). However, I've not really used Google Maps to look at international distances much before, so the result it gave for Sydney to Portland was somewhat unexpected. If I start walking now I'll be there in time for Easter! I just need to find me a sturdy kayak for all of that Pacific Ocean time…
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