BETALEVEL

Piracy – Karaoke – Conviviality

There’s a world going on underground…
Saturday, August 30
10pm until late
Free

According to Electronic Arts, “a recent development with song licenses” forced the removal of some karaoke files in The Sims. Just throwing that out there.

On a somewhat related topic, have you ever tried singing “A Horse with No Name” in the style of Tom Waits? You should try it! It’s incredibly revealing. Also our friends at Esotouric are having a Tom Waits bus tour this Saturday. So with that conjunction in mind, we were thinking maybe this could be a Tom Waits themed Swap Meet.

What exactly does that mean? Honestly, we’re not quite sure. Maybe you could wear a quirky hat? Or maybe you could bring your copy of Raindogs to fill a mysterious hole in our library. Or maybe you bring your friends the stripper and the midget down to our special basement. Or maybe you just want to singing various songs in an overly sincere whiskey-gravel yodel. You know, for a change.

This whole “Tom Waits” theme is wide open for interpretation, so we’re not gunna judge. Unless you want to try to singing “Rocky Mountain High” in the style of Tom Waits. If that’s the case, be warned that you will face some fierce competition prior to the judging.

About Swap Meet

Swap Meet is a monthly gathering where you can come with your favorite music files and trade them with other physical human people. Then, holler along with the dulcet tones of handcrafted MIDI karaoke. It’s like the Internet, but with people and beer.

Here’s the (nearly complete) house karaoke list, so you can prepare yourself. If something you’d like to sing is not on the list, you are welcome — nay, encouraged! — to bring your own hand-crafted .KAR files. They’re MIDI-tastic!

What to Bring

• bring: drinks, or a kindly donation (optional)
• bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
• bring: some storage media and/or a Swap Pack (optional)
• bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)

Swap Pack? What’s a Swap Pack?

• 1. Take note of the one or two themes chosen for a given month’s Swap Packs
• 2. Pick out 128 Mb of music (roughly 25-40 MP3s) which interprets, tangents, or ignores one of said themes
• 3. Put the music into a folder
• 4. Put the folder onto portable media (flash drives are handy)
• 5. Take your portable media to Swap Meet
• 6. Swap
• 7. And then we sing!
• (For more details, see the Swap Pack FAQ.)
• 8. We haven’t really been picking themes for the last few months. But it’s possible we will start doing that again.

Some questions you might have and some answers we might have

Do I need to have an iPod to come?
No. Many people come with hard drives, flash drives, or other alternate file storage devices/media.

Must I swap files at all?
No. You don’t have to swap to sing.

Wait — must I sing?
No. You don’t have to sing to swap. Indeed, you don’t have to sing or swap and you can still be powerfully entertained by the singing and the whatnot. (But beware the power of MIDI karaoke. Maybe you didn’t intend to sing Steve Miller…)

Swap Meet is presented by Superbunker and The Royal Academy of Nuts + Bolts.
For more information and helpful links, please see the Superbunker Swap Meet project page.

Please note:
According to recent legal decisions, inducing anyone to use physical space for the purpose of sharing music may render the space-time continuum illegal. Use the space-time continuum at your own risk.

Make Swap Meet your friend.

The piano has been drinking, my necktie is asleep
And the combo went back to New York, the jukebox has to take a leak
And the carpet needs a haircut, and the spotlight looks like a prison break
And the telephone’s out of cigarettes, and the balcony is on the make
And the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking…

And the menus are all freezing, and the light man’s blind in one eye
And he can’t see out of the other
And the piano-tuner’s got a hearing aid, and he showed up with his mother
And the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking
As the bouncer is a Sumo wrestler cream-puff Casper Milktoast
And the owner is a mental midget with the I.Q. of a fence post
‘Cause the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking…

And you can’t find your waitress with a Geiger counter
And she hates you and your friends and you just can’t get served without her
And the box-office is drooling, and the bar stools are on fire
And the newspapers were fooling, and the ash-trays have retired
‘Cause the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking
The piano has been drinking, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me