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Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:58 am
by Pigfarmer Jr
The more the merrier.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 10:05 am
by Pigfarmer Jr

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2018 9:39 pm
by Lunkhead
Songs posted!

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 7:28 am
by vowlvom
Berkeley Social Scene - the opening riff sounds like it’d fit on the soundtrack to an Italian horror film which is a GOOD start. I have some issues with the vocals (I’m sorry, I feel like I say this too much) but the vintage e-piano stuff sounds great.

Bob and the Boggles - I really love this, it’s so sad and sweet. The instrumental melody veers a little too close to “Blowin’ in the Wind”, especially at the end, but I’m not going to penalise you for that because this is my favourite from this round and the heart wants what it wants.

Dark Side of the Attic - I enjoy the ambience of your stuff but the actual songs don’t always do it for me, and that’s kinda the case here I think. A pleasant listen, though.

Duckman - enjoyed this, “be mediocre with me until the end of time” is my kind of lyric, although the phrasing is a little rhythmically awkward. The guitars chug along nicely and I like the drum sound.

Glennny - pt 1: love the backing vocals and the guitar solo is fierce. On third listen I suddenly heard the first line as “a cold pissing breeze” and smirked, childishly. pt 2: vocal sounds strained at first but it clears up once the extra layers come in. I love these bendy synth sounds that you use. pt 3: this one goes a little too bombastic for me and I’m not really a fan, although the Beach Boys-y harmonies are great. Massive kudos for getting three distinct and well-realised entries into one fight!

Ken’s Super Duper Band ‘n’ Stuff - I like the fuzzy-but-chilled-out vibe of the guitars and drums but the melody feels a little uninspired and the vocal sounds like you’d rather be singing in a slightly higher register.

Paco del Stinko - I didn’t find this one quite as arrestingly strange as the one from the last fight but still really enjoyed it. Really like the scratchy rhythm guitar and detailed-but-not-flashy lead.

silentwall ft. rec - this does nothing for me, sorry. Too minimal without being interesting, and the vocal feels like it’s being made up on the spot.

The Stew Men - this is weirdly compelling in a sort of “I have no idea what is going on here and it’s only 30 seconds long” kinda way.

Third Cat - love the mix of chiming guitars and muffled synth arpeggios. Instrumentally this is one of your best I think, and the vocals are good too.

Lots of good stuff here!

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 9:55 am
by BobandtheBoggles
This is was a fun one. I should do this more often. Just gonna Kerouac these here critiques, so bare with me through my tangential thoughts:

Third Cat: I'm not sure if it's an audio levels thing *It might also just be my headphones* :oops: , or maybe just the particular synth, but there's a crackle on some of the instruments(starting around :50) that I find kind of distracting in an otherwise floaty shoe gaze kinda song. Nice work on the vocals. I enjoyed the harmonies.

Glennny: I like the concept behind the 3 different parts. "Maybe I'll get what I deserve chorus" is really fun. In fact, that's my favorite part from my favorite piece of the whole triptych. The three parts don't really need each other to exist, but they also couldn't stand alone without each other.. A true conundrum. I really dig that violin synth sound at the end of the "just killed a living thing" part. Would love to know what you used(program or whatnot) to make that sound.

Berkely Social Scene: I was loving this song until the chorus. I just feel like the quiet scream doesn't work with that 80s electro vibe you have going on in the rest of the song. I would love to hear you rip on that same part, but sung through a vocoder.

Bob and the Boggles: Hey! That's me and my pup.

Dark Side of the Attic: I like the atmosphere. This is a very roomy song haha. It felt a little disjointed at first, but really pulled together in the last minute of the song. If that was the intended effect.. Well done!

Silentwall: This song definitely makes me feel on edge. Kind of has that "Number 9" Beatles feel to it. Kind of hard to rock out to more than once or twice.

Duckman: The instruments are real ballsy. Real Dog the Bounty Hunter feel to the whole song. Wish that was followed through on the vocals a bit more. Mediocrity is a real killer for this generation. It's so easy for people to post shit online just to get likes from people and instant gratification. I appreciate your critique of this trend.

Ken's Super Duper Band n' Stuff: This is a fun song. Love that slant rhyme: nerve-worst, nerve-first :lol: . Sometimes taking a nap helps take the edge off dealing with people.

Paco Del Stinko: The guitar solo is really nice. I was left craving some impact from the lyrics. Maybe there's a little too much dichotomy between the somber lyrics and the upbeat intrumentals. Pick one or the other---Or just don't listen to me, cuz you seem like a darn good musician haha.

The Stew Men: This could almost be a Primus song if you'd just add like a bunch of instruments really tearing it up!

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:30 pm
by Chumpy
Heya folks!

Several months back Mr. Jerkatorium and I participated in the judging of SpinTunes 14, which is an online songwriting competition similar to Nur Ein. We thought it would be fun to do a podcast inspired by The New Ugly, where Mike and Ben reviewed songs submitted to Nur Ein -- except we'd do it for SpinTunes.

We did indeed have fun creating our podcast, which we titled Two Jerks, One Vote, in fact we had so much fun doing it we decided we'd dust it off and review some SongFight! fights in podcast form. The My Last Nerve fight is our first revival of the podcast.

There are a few ways you can listen to it:
Also, if you'd like to give us an earful of what you liked, or didn't like about this podcast, you can email us at: feedback@twojerksonevote.com.

We won't blame you if you don't want to hear us yammer on about every song. Use the timings below to jump right to the song(s) you're interested in, the entire podcast is nearly an hour.
  • 00:00 Intro song
  • 01:07 Beginning-of-podcast yammering
  • 01:27 Berkeley Social Scene
  • 06:11 Bob and the Boggles
  • 08:11 dark side of the attic
  • 12:23 Duckman
  • 16:31 Glennny
  • 27:37 Ken's Super Duper Band 'n Stuff
  • 33:53 Paco del Stinko
  • 38:12 silentwall
  • 41:35 The Stew Men
  • 44:14 Third Cat
  • 47:26 End-of-podcast yammering
Hope ya enjoy it!

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 2:58 am
by vowlvom
Really enjoyed that! I loved having the New Ugly to listen to during Nur Ein and this was great too, I hope you keep it up.

I liked Duckman's extended outro! But I'm not really sure why! Thank you for reminding me to watch his YouTube video, which was cool.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:52 am
by Lunkhead
I dipped in to the podcast, good stuff. And yes, the bug is still there that the votes are keyed only on the band name. When folks enter multiple songs with the same band name then unfortunately votes for any one of their songs all go to the artist, not the song. If you'd like that changed, please contact Spud. :P I looked into it last time and it seemed like it was going to involve way too much hacking in the ancient PHP code.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 5:59 pm
by Jerkatorium
Lunkhead wrote:I dipped in to the podcast, good stuff. And yes, the bug is still there that the votes are keyed only on the band name. When folks enter multiple songs with the same band name then unfortunately votes for any one of their songs all go to the artist, not the song. If you'd like that changed, please contact Spud. :P I looked into it last time and it seemed like it was going to involve way too much hacking in the ancient PHP code.
For those who didn't and won't tune into the review of Glenny's songs on the Two Jerks One Vote podcast: As I understand it Berkeley Social Scene won the Sept/Oct 2016 "Young Blood" Song Fight by entering two songs under their own band name - the aggregate number of votes for both songs was attributed to each song. So for example if the first BSS Young Blood song got 14 votes and the second BSS Young Blood song got 10 votes, then the vote count showed up as 24 votes for both songs and they scored a double win (when otherwise it would/should have been a tie win between Paco Del Stinko and Pepper Jane who each had 17 votes [but of course we don't know, it's also possible that one BSS song got 18 votes and the other got 6]).

My prediction is that Glenny will win this My Last Nerve Song Fight in a three-way tie with himself due to this bug and, in doing so, pop his stats up from 5 wins to 8 wins in a single Song Fight. I don't mind that, since IMO his songs were the best of this round and he deserves it, and I believe he would win anyway without the benefit of the glitch. But I still think it's a problem.

TL;DR takeaway: If you want to drastically improve your chances of winning a Song Fight, you should submit a dozen songs under the same band name for any given Fight; even if you get just a nominal amount of votes for each song you're certain to win that Fight in a dozen-way tie with yourself, chalking up a dozen wins at once.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 6:57 pm
by Lunkhead
For the record when BSS did this we had no idea about the bug beforehand. As far as I recall, no one had entered multiple songs in the same fight as the same artist since I'd taken over updating songfight.org a few years ago. I knew fluffy had entered three songs using the same artist name in the "So Aggravating" fight. (That blew up an assumption I had made early on when building the SF Jukebox that artist + fight = 1 song.) The votes for that fight were lost though, and fluffy didn't win, so I didn't see the issue from looking at that fight's data. But I knew it was possible for an artist to have multiple songs in a fight, I just had to make sure each mp3 filename was different. (Another option was to use different artist names e.g. "Add 1" as was done in the "39 + 1 = JB" fight but I felt like that cluttered up the archive with junk and split up artists' songs in a way that I didn't like.) I honestly had not paid enough attention to how the votes were recorded and then tallied to see the bug.

If you want to know how the horrible sausage is made, the vote data is stored in three separate line delimited text files. One file contains band names, one file contains IP addresses, one file contains timestamps. Data gets appended to the files when people vote. So the level of granularity of votes currently is just fight + band name. That's why all votes for any songs by a band in a fight wind up getting lumped together. There's no way to tie the votes back to the individual entries.

I could try to extend this horror by adding a fourth file which would have the URL of the song that got voted on, then update the vote tallying code to also parse that file and key the votes on the actual song URL. Or I could try to wipe the slate clean and do something way more reasonable. But neither is really high on my TODO list. Every time I've hacked on the PHP code it's been a bit of a nightmare. We don't really have a non-production environment set up that's readily accessible either, and setting up a local version of songfight.org is also not high on my TODO list.

For me personally Song Fight is a community first and an online competition second. As a fightmaster I don't want somebody to show up and start winning every single fight forever, not letting anybody else have a turn at it, but otherwise I don't personally think of voting or winning as primary facets of the experience. But that being said, I actually had not paid attention before and had not noticed that the two winning songs in one fight were being counted as separate wins. I think that piece of the bug might be easier to address, so I will take a look at that. I think the archive page probably just iterates over the artist's songs and tallies any that is a winner (that's what the Jukebox does at least) and I could probably tweak that to keep a list of unique names of fights that the artist won and have the size of that list be the artist's number of wins.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 7:02 pm
by Lunkhead
Also if BSS were out to rack up maximum wins, we would have entered every fight since then multiple times. We are certainly capable of making more than one song per week every week. :P

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 10:05 pm
by Jerkatorium
I'm glad that you explained that stuff about the text files. I never thought that the duplicate entry bug was being intentionally exploited, but I'd still had a smidgen of residual miffedness about Young Blood (even though Jerkatorium wasn't in that Fight) because I'd made the incorrect assumption that the real vote count could be determined but wasn't, perhaps due to a lack of interest in verifying the more likely winners. I get it now though, and I regret my petty malingering dissatisfaction.

The easiest way to get around this bug is to enforce the FAQ:
Song Fight FAQ 2.png
Song Fight FAQ 2.png (45.66 KiB) Viewed 9214 times
And of course everybody should listen to Juan Carlos de la Cueva Castianeda Oliveros's entry for the Por Favor Song Fight:
http://www.songfight.org/music/por_favo ... rfavor.mp3


On the other hand, on principle I'm against anything that might result in fewer songs being created. In the end it's not my problem. I'm just glad I'm not the Fightmaster.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 11:54 pm
by Lunkhead
Jerkatorium wrote:And of course everybody should listen to Juan Carlos de la Cueva Castianeda Oliveros's entry for the Por Favor Song Fight:
http://www.songfight.org/music/por_favo ... rfavor.mp3
:D :lol: I forgot all about that song. SO good.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 12:55 pm
by thirdcat
arrows & underlines for my votes

alright; I guess I'll start out with the three glennny submissions, a little glennnyfight.

glennny 1 - Kind of reminds me of Guided by Voices. I dig It for the most part but I'm not crazy about the vocals (although I like the backing vocals during the chorus - cool touch.) The highlight of this song for me are the guitars - not just the guitar solo which is pretty great but I like how the rhythm guitars sound throughout.

:arrow: glennny 2 - I like this one more than glennny 1 (and glennny 3 - I guess that makes it winnner of the glennnyfight - (for me anyway)) not sure if that's because it's better or just more my style, cool acoustic guitars and the drums sound really nice here. I think the vocal works better here than it does for glennny 1. Sweet synth solo ~ 2 minutes.

glennny 3 - nice breadth of styles here in these three songs, I think for me this one works less than the first two but there's still some cool stuff going on here.

:arrow: Bob & the Boggles - nice song; I thought this was just going to be a simple guy & guitar (& dog) thing so it took me by surprise when the other bit faded in - nice touch. the whole thing was just really pleasant. I think the warm / dark sound kind of works well for this style/song.

Ken's Super Duper - Sounds good; has a bit of a '90s alternative rock (thinking Weezerish?) thing going on. Guitar solo is cool, I like the sort of roughness of it, reminds me a bit of a Neil Young electric guitar solo (I'm a fan so I mean that as a compliment - I know it's one of those things that could be taken negatively by some)

Duckman - Guitar might be too high in the mix? I think the drums could be higher ... as it is it kind of feels a bit sloppy. I mean that kind of works for the style but not sure.

silentwall - music is a bit quiet - I dig the vocals being loud in the mix for something like this but you may have gone a bit too far? still I kind of like this in a way, it's kind of creepy in a cool way.

:arrow: Paco del Stinko - very impressive from a musicianship/production standpoint and I think the song works pretty well as a weird Weenish sort of thing. maybe the best realized of these songs. that said; I have to admit I kind of appreciate this song more than like it. objectively I think it may be the best song of the batch but I don't think it's my favorite. still definitely deserves a vote imo.

dark side of the attic - I can dig getting a bit experimental but I think this is one of those things where you're waiting for the "song" to start and it does start peaking through a bit about 2 minutes in but not quite in a satisfying way for me. maybe in the context of a bigger thing (an album) this would work alright. some cool atmospherics. gives me a '60s vibe.

The Stew Man - 33 seconds! you are a man who understands the attention spans of 2018. some pretty weird sounds. I like it for what it is, groovy.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2018 8:58 am
by Paco Del Stinko
Hey! Thanks for all the reviews, peoples. I'm pressed for time but will get some up in the next couple of days.

Not being defensive, just want to say that my song this week, for whatever it's worth, was supposed to be a country type song. Just didn't, uh, quite make it.

And also, still never voted for one of my songs. Told myself I only would if I thought it was the best song of the fight, going back to the single vote days. So, yeah. I'm weird.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2018 11:35 am
by thirdcat
Paco Del Stinko wrote:Hey! Thanks for all the reviews, peoples. I'm pressed for time but will get some up in the next couple of days.

Not being defensive, just want to say that my song this week, for whatever it's worth, was supposed to be a country type song. Just didn't, uh, quite make it.

And also, still never voted for one of my songs. Told myself I only would if I thought it was the best song of the fight, going back to the single vote days. So, yeah. I'm weird.
Right on, I don't vote for mine either no matter where I think they rank - I figure if I ever win one of these I want it to be an earned thing. But quite honestly I think your song was the best one of the fight. Just objectively. If there is such a thing when it comes to music. I go back and forth on whether I should just vote for my favorites or the ones with the best skill/production/musicianship showcased? I kind of do a combination I guess.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 1:19 am
by vowlvom
I've never voted for myself either. Politicians do that, and nobody likes politicians. Although I did go back through my entries to check whether it would have ever made a difference (it wouldn't).

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 7:50 pm
by Paco Del Stinko
My Last Nerve - Comments

Late, and these are more like comments than reviews. Is there a difference? Eh. With beer!

Berkeley Social Scene - The Exorcist of Valley High! A little pedestrian this round, great montage music. Chorus isn't killer as mentioned, just demo-y. If this had been run though a Sabbath Bloody Sabbath filter...yikes!

Bob and the Boggles - Yeah, this is great. Feels genuine. Can't help but hear...not Bob...one of the other names. Dig this a lot for mood stuff.

dark side of the attic - The dawn of a moody metal piece. Look past the horizon.

Duckman - Good tank music, chugging. Too sloppy, but it works as is for a cratch-pad or whatever. I like the chunga ending all stonery.

Glennny - Great pop tune with catchy hooks. Wobblage adds to the vibe. Guitaring is great, but I like the bass line a lot.

Glennny - This could be my fave of the three (!) as I dig the Dead meets horror movie goings on. good bridge. Iportant!

Glennny - Disco music in the videao game or something. It's kooky good. Vocals are whacko and fun. All over the place but together.

Ken's Super Duper Band 'n Stuff - Someone needs to take this pleasant tune and make a blistering punk version all snarly. Or not, it's nice this way, too.

Paco del Stinko - Yeah, not what I started out trying to do. the lead is kind of enjoyable. Loopy. Whee!

silentwall - Late night headphone music. This is a good part of your learning process. Not a song, but exercise.

The Stew Men - I like this. It'd be fun to have pop up in a shuffle sometime and then just disappear. Ha!

Third Cat - Oh man, I didn't think it was going to pull together. It did though. Yeah! Very pleasant and colorful. I'd like to hear the beat loosen and the end to open up the headiness. Enjoyable.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 7:52 pm
by Paco Del Stinko
Also: Not saying voting for yourself is bad. I'm not that much of a snob. Just a goony brag-a-rooni.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 11:26 pm
by Lunkhead
Well, not like folks didn't see this coming, but ... glennny's three prong attack bags him the win.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2019 4:50 pm
by Æpplês&vØdkã
I'll come out of the closet and say that the Stew Men was my 4 year old banging on my midi keyboard over a loop I threw together while I jabbered incoherently in an effort to entertain him. All this discussion of "the triple win" from this fight brought me back to this thread...I'm trying harder these days lol.

Re: Might As Well Pile On (My Last Nerve Reviews)

Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2024 11:00 am
by fluffy
Lunkhead wrote:
Tue Sep 04, 2018 6:57 pm
For the record when BSS did this we had no idea about the bug beforehand. As far as I recall, no one had entered multiple songs in the same fight as the same artist since I'd taken over updating songfight.org a few years ago. I knew fluffy had entered three songs using the same artist name in the "So Aggravating" fight. (That blew up an assumption I had made early on when building the SF Jukebox that artist + fight = 1 song.) The votes for that fight were lost though, and fluffy didn't win, so I didn't see the issue from looking at that fight's data. But I knew it was possible for an artist to have multiple songs in a fight, I just had to make sure each mp3 filename was different. (Another option was to use different artist names e.g. "Add 1" as was done in the "39 + 1 = JB" fight but I felt like that cluttered up the archive with junk and split up artists' songs in a way that I didn't like.) I honestly had not paid enough attention to how the votes were recorded and then tallied to see the bug.
I just came across this while noticing the Glennny triple-win thing while doing a thing for fight 1000, and for what it's worth, in "So Aggravating" my three entries were all submitted using different band names (fluffy porcupine 1, fluffy porcupine 2, and fluffy porcupine 3). As a result they were all counted separately. The archive data was then normalized retroactively to give all three entries the same name.