Jason Morris

Well, I entered a “Holiday Edition” of the Master’s of SongFu over at Quickstop Entertainment.
Myself, along with many other folks all submitted a Christmas song in which we had to create a new Christmas character.

I decided to go with “Twangles, The Christmas Squid”, which is, as you might imagine, about a squid named Twangles.
But Twangles is no ordinary squid.
He’s a magic squid who delivered presents to the good little Atlantean boys and girls.
Santa can’t do it because he has no gills.
And besides. Santa doesn’t exist.
There. I said it.
Sorry kids.

This round is NOT a competition by the way, so don’t go looking for a way to vote for me. Or against me. Just think good thoughts when you listen to it, and I will feeeeeeel it. Like a warm glow in my belly.

Yeah. That’s it.

Lyrics are below:

Twangles, The Christmas Squid

Christmas day used to be like any other day
It never snowed and no one came
In a sleigh to the bottom of the ocean
Where the city of Atlantis lay
So quiet, so still
So cheerless until the day you came.

Twangles, The Christmas squid
He’s the Squishiest squid that ever did
Bring presents to the people in the places down below

Twangles, The Christmas squid
He’s the cephelopod bringing toys to kids
In the underwater city where Santa Cannot go.

In the sea, we would celebrate the holidays
With Christmas kelp and seaweed cakes
Used to be that we never had a Christmas play
And never saw a matinee of It’s a wonderful life
But then you swam by and changed everything.

In his super-secret lair
Near the Marianas Trench
His squidlings build such wondrous toys
With just a hammer and a wrench
For sixty cents a day
The squidlings slave away

People say that he’s a magic creature from another world
that brings us joy on
Christmas day full of presents for the children
Who are well behaved and always listen
To their mom’s and Dads. But the kids who are bad
Get inked in the face

I’m sure it has been keeping you up all night.
How will you know when Jason Morris’ web site has been updated?
What if he finally writes his Magnum Opus and I never hear it?
When will he finally spill the beans about this whole “meaning of life” thing?

Well, rest your pretty little heads.
I have put up a mailing list. You can sign up for it, and get an email delivered right to your inbox letting you know I have updated the site, posted a new song, booked a gig, or negotiate peace in the Middle East.

You can sign up (or remove yourself if you already signed up) from the mailing list HERE

Y’all have a fantastic day.

This is not a ‘new’ song, but many of you may not have heard it before.
It’s a song I wrote a while ago, entitled The Martyr

The song was actually completed on the day that Jerry Falwell died.
Coincidence? Or something more?

Coincidence actually.

Lyrics are below

The Martyr

A plastic Halo with paint that’s chipped
and the wings of an angel held on with masking tape
You may look sweet as apple pie
but you couldn’t pay me to take another slice
I’ve had my fill of you
I’ve had my fill of you

Your sermons left us all so jaded
Your piety was overstated
you made it easy to say goodbye

You’re such a martyr, you’d burn yourself at the stake
to get the people around you to see you as some kind of saint
You gave your speech, it sounded so contrived
such a perfect masquerade, it’s such a perfect lie
I have no time for you
I have no time for you

Your sermons left us all so jaded
Your piety was overstated
you made it easy to say goodbye

You’re such a martyr
You’re such a martyr

Your sermons left us all so jaded
Your piety was overstated
you made it easy to say goodbye
goodbye goodbye goodbye

The bitter taste of defeat is mine this day.

The RiffTones unleashed their hoards of followers upon me and alas, I was overwhelmed.

Clearly, I need more minions.

If anyone can suggest a suitably poetic rock formation for me to leap to my death from, please let me know.

Victory may be yours this day, RiffTones, but after my somewhat overly dramatic leap from the Rock Of Poetic Demise.. I will be back.

And when I come back, I will bring the legions of HELL with me!

And then it’s going to be an all-night dance off, baby.

And everyone knows the only dance you guys can do is The Robot.

Victory will be mine. Someday. Oh Yes. Victory will be mine.

The final SongFu Challenge songs are posted and available for your listening pleasure HERE

It has been a long, hard road to the final challenge and I now stand face to face with the three-headed monster that is The Riff Tones.
Other challengers and masters have fallen by the wayside…
Some of them have even been so intimidated by my awesome powers of SongFu that they have came up with clever excuses to DROP OUT of the contest.
Silly things like “Oh, my wife had a baby!” And “Oh, I’m in another country adopting a child!”
Yeah right. we know the real reason they dropped out. FEAR.
And credit to the Riff Tones for sticking it out this long and having the balls to meet me on the field of battle. It can’t be easy staring into the eyes of the man you know will destroy you, and still walking out there to face him.
But that doesn’t mean I am going to go easy on them. I have every intention of hurting them in the worst possible way.
They are going to face utter humiliation before the might of my SongFu powers.

Ok.. enough of that. I was just practicing my shit-talking in case I ever needed to quit my job and fall back on my Ultimate Fighting career.

However I am going to do this….
I am going to say “Vote for me”
Screw that “Vote for me if you think my song is the best” crap.
I am going up against The Rifftones, people! They have an established base of HUNDREDS of fans from their work on MST3k.
I am clearly the underdog here, and everybody loves the underdog.
Just vote for me, because a vote for me is like striking a blow against tyranny.
And I would dearly love to see three grown men cry.
Just a little bit of crying.

Oh also, it would be great to be able to prove my youngest son wrong.
When I told my family I had entered this contest, I said that my newest hero, Jonathan Coulton was one of the masters I would compete against.

He stopped what he was doing and said “Jonathan Coulton is going to win, Dad.”
When his sister started laughing he amended his statement by saying “But maybe you will come in second!”

Well WHERE IS JONATHAN COULTON NOW?!?! Quivering in his portable hole with only one hit point left!

Sorry, slipped back into my UFC/Dungeons and Dragons mode there..

So anyway, I’d like to win this contest so I can mock my son. I’m just a good father like that.

Anyway, the song I wrote is called “Take Me Home (the song from Close Encounters)”.
The premise was I had to write a cheesy 70’s style pop song for an old 70’s film scored by John Williams.

I decided to go a more “serious” route with this song, and actually pretend I had to write a crappy light-rock friendly pop song for a movie.
I wanted the lyrics to reflect what the main character was going through in the movie, but also to be ambiguous enough that they could stand on their own and be about a guy who’s life is falling apart because he so desperately needs to be with someone. It’s all he thinks about and it’s all his life is focused on.
Pretty pathetic.

So here are the lyrics:

Take Me Home (the song from Close Encounters)

I close my eyes and hold my breath
And hope everything will be better somehow
They say that it’s all in my head
But I can hear the song you sing
and I know this means something

Take Me Home
I really dont feel like I belong anymore
I know I’ll never be the man I was before
I tried so hard but there’s just nothing I can do
take me home with you

I need to know that this is real
’cause I’ve lost faith in the world that I can see
and I don’t know what’s happening to me
everyone I loved is gone
but I am still being driven on

Maybe tonight I’ll see you shining
like a silver angel lighting up the sky
and maybe you will see me standing lonely
praying that tonight will be the night
that you will take me home

So, I have entered round three of the SongFu Challenge.
This time around, we were instructed to write a country song entitled “THe Ballad of Rufus Amos Adams”

I dont know squat about country songs, so this what happens when you tell a guy who spent his formative years listening to Rush and King’s X to write a country song.
To be fair though, I have seen men in cowboy hats, but the experience was traumatizing and frankly, it’s not something I care to relive…

So Go vote for your favorite song!

Anyway, Lyrics are below:

The Ballad Of Rufus Amos Adams:

Rufus Amos Adams Was a boy with a troubled soul
HIs mother cried when he left home at ten
And when he came back home at thirty four
his momma didnt want him anymore
‘Cause God only knows just where that boy had been.
she said

Rufus Amos Adams You’ve lived a life of sin
and I know if you could You’d do it all again
You got an empty heart and cold, dead eyes
every word you say is a goddamed lie
You got the devil in you
Rufus Amos Adams

Rufus Amos Adams was a man who fell in love
with a girl he met while robbin’ a circle-K
She had a bright red smock and yellow hair
‘ol rufus knew right then and there that if he wanted the girl
he better put that gun away

Rufus Amos Adams You’ve lived a life of sin
and I know if you could You’d do it all again
You got an empty heart and cold, dead eyes
every word you say is a goddamed lie
You got the devil in you
Rufus Amos Adams

Rufus amos adams was a man of little wit
And there were certain things about his bride he failed to note
Like how she always stood to pee
and how her name was Carl Winslow
And when Rufus finally figured it out he shot poor Carl in the throat

Rufus Amos Adams had his day before the judge
His mother cried as she said a silent prayer
Old rufus plead guilty on all counts
and that judged smacked his big wooden gavel down
and sentenced Rufus Amos Adams to die by the electric chair.

Rufus Amos Adams You’ve lived a life of sin
and I know if you could You’d do it all again
You got an empty heart and cold, dead eyes
every word you say is a goddamed lie
You got the devil in you
Rufus Amos Adams

Well, the next round of Song-FU Voting has begun.
This challenge was to write a “Dance Craze” song inspired by a famous inventor or his/her invention.

As many of you probably know, I hate dance craze songs. Nothing will get me to leave a wedding reception dance floor faster than a DJ putting on ‘The Locomotion’ or ‘The Macarena’.
So I decided to do a sort of anti-dance craze based on the fellow who invented rubber heeled shoes, Mr. Humphy O’Sullivan.
So anyway.. go vote for a song.
Whatever song you think is better.
Although voting for mine is more likely to make Humphry O’sullivan happy.
And it will probably help your complextion
I’m just saying..

Oh, and yf you are one of those lyric following types the are as follows:

Well it was January, the year of our Lord 1899
Humphry O’Sullivans aching back brought ideas to his mind
Rubber pads nailed into the shoes upon his feet
would bring his soles some sweet relief and man it worked a treat!

We do the O’Sullivan stomp and we will raise our glasses high
We’ll toss back a beer and wish he was here to stomp along in time
Don’t give us no Slide or Twist or Glide
Just keep your Doe-See-Doe’s
We’re doin the O’sullivan stomp

Now O’sullivan was a simple man and simple men are we
and doing his dance is simple all ya do is raise your
Now stomp your foot down to the floor and raise your hands up high
and let O’sullivan hear ya shout “The Humphry’s a Helluva Guy!”

We do the O’Sullivan stomp and we will raise our glasses high
We’ll toss back a beer and wish he was here to stomp along in time
Don’t give us no Slide or Twist or Glide
Just keep your Doe-See-Doe’s
We’re doin the O’sullivan stomp

Though O’Sullivan was a man of high regard
all his friends thought that he was a retard
when he nailed those rubber pads to his feet

We do the O’Sullivan stomp and we will raise our glasses high
We’ll toss back a beer and wish he was here to stomp along in time
Don’t give us no Slide or Twist or Glide
Just keep your Doe-See-Doe’s
We’re doin the O’sullivan stomp

My wife is awesome.

I don’t think I could really ask for anyone to be more supportive of my musical ventures.

Her support can even be a teeny bit embarrasing at times.

As some of you may know, I entered the Masters Of SongFu songwriting competition, along with some other talented folks.

Well, my wife has been talking it up quite a bit, encouraging folks to go vote for me, which is nice.

Last night, in the Quickstop Entertainment Songfu Arms race, my wife may have dropped the equivalent of a tactical nuke.
She encouraged the office lady at my TaeKwonDo School to go check out the site.
Then she mentioned it to our (awesome) TaeKwonDo master, who immediately commanded his office lady to send out an email encouraging the other families at the school to vote for me.
This is about 890 families.
That is a lot of people.
Of course I am extremely grateful for the support that my wife, and my teacher have shown, but if even a fraction of the 890 recipients of that email vote for me without at least listening to some of the other competitors songs, it would be a real shame.
It’s not really how I would like to win a competition.

So please, if you are at my site on your way to vote in the SongFu competition, please take a few moments to listen to some of the other competitors and then vote for the song you actually like the best.
Check out Jeff MacDougall’s entry in particular. I really like it.
Also, be sure to check out the “Masters” entries! All three of them are great.

Thanks for being so supportive. It means a great deal to me!

Well, I have submitted my entry, along with the other folks in the contest, and they are available for your perusal here:
Masters Of Song Fu 2 - Round 1

I have always hated it when these things turn into popularity contests, so please, listen to them all and vote for your favorite.
It’s not that I have any particular nobility about this, it’s just that I only have like three or four friends.
That’s simply not enough to win me any contests, so for the LOVE OF GOD vote for the one you actually like the best.

In case any of you are wondering, my song is called “The Universe Outsourced the Moon”.
The contest thus far has been pretty awesome for me.
I wanted to see if I could write under pressure, and out of my typical musical “style”.
Three songs were written and discarded, and I was about to give up. Tuesday night I revisited the second song I wrote, and put a slightly different spin on it, and it sorta came together.
The production quality is not quite as good as other tunes I have worked on in the past, but hey, that’s what I get for whipping it together on the last day.
My Dad always gave me crap for that when I was a kid.

So the tune is basically takes the view that the Universe is a big corporate entity that is in some financial trouble, and as a cost cutting measure they outsource Earths moon. Since Saturn has so many orbiting satellites, they figure we earthlings could use one.
Something like that anyway.
Oh and credit for the “outsourcing the moon” idea has to go to my voice teacher, Erin Fishler who said to me “hey.. what about outsourcing the moon?”

So here are the lyrics if anyone is interested:

For Immediate Release the Universal Corporation
Has announced that in response to it’s financial situation
all your moon-gazing needs
must be fulfilled by other means

Now when I look up at the heavens sadness fills my heart
and I long for nights of moon-lit walks in June
‘cuase the days are short and the nights are long
and darker than before
the Universe outsourced the moon

They say saturns’ orbited by 19 satellites
and they set one aside for us they thought would be just right
They said that we could use Phoebe
But it might be hard to see

Now when I look up at the heavens sadness fills my heart
and I long for nights of moon-lit walks in June
’cause the days are short and the nights are long
and darker than before
the Universe outsourced

The Moon was our silent silver friend
and we on Earth could never comprehend
such a black and empty sky
except for maybe that Bauhaus guy
who screamed “The Sky’s Gone Out”

Flipped on the television to watch the evening news
Larry King was saying that our were-wolf problems much improved
but our outlook is still quite bleak
and the surfing is rather weak

Now when I look up at the heavens sadness fills my heart
and I long for nights of moon-lit walks in June
’cause the days are short and the nights are long
and darker than before
the Universe outsourced the moon

And when you go outside at night you better take a lamp
or your likely to be eaten by a grue
’cause the days are short and the nights are long
and darker than before
the Universe outsourced the moon

Well, I stepped in it now, haven’t I?
I signed up for the Song-Fu Challenge, and I have been accepted into the competition.
So now I gotta throw down like the bad-ass song-writing mo-fo I have always pretended to be.

Dig That FU!