THE GOODNIGHT KISS CONTEST...

Well, they lied. Broadjam, that is. The pitch was if you signed up for their “Free Mini-MoB” account, you could upload a video for the Goodnight Kiss Music Contest. (The contest would still charge an entry fee, of course.) Alas, ‘tain’t so. I am told I am not “allowed” to upload any videos until and unless I sign up for Broadjam’s not-free ($5-a-month) regular membership, and on my non-existent salary, I am not doing that. (And I hate bait-and-switch tactics. I will not participate in them.)

The alternative is to snail-mail it. I could do that—the old H-P laptop will burn DVDs (one of its few skills)—but I’d have to drive somewhere and purchase a blank recordable DVD, and suddenly the cost of entering a contest I expect to have little hope of winning just went up. I’m better off just sending them a couple of songs, instead of a song and a video. I was going to send the songs by snail-mail anyway, and I have the blank CDs for that—I buy them in quantity.

I expect there will be other video opportunities. I would like the opportunities to be free or nearly free: I am in my infancy as a videographer, and the things I’ve uploaded to YouTube are really experiments—each one I’ve done has incorporated some new technique I’ve learned—on which I am primarily after feedback and input. And it’s not like any of these have “gone viral”; the most popular of them has gotten less than 300 “views” since it was posted back in January, so at best it’s “gone head cold.” Now, with songs, I think I know what I’m doing, and I’m okay with investing a little bit of money in showcasing what in my semi-professional opinion is a good (and potentially prize-winning) product. Videos? Not so much.

What to send? There are 11 songs on the Deathgrass album; I’d already decided to send Goodnight Kiss “Dead Things in the Shower.” “No Good Songs About the War,” I think, will be the other. Production’s good—I love Mike Simpson’s harmonies—and I got to play lead guitar on it, too. That song did win a contest once, so I know somebody thought it was good.

I checked on two other contests I entered—and comfortingly, the reason I hadn’t heard anything is they haven’t decided anything yet. The Angler’s Mail magazine song contest in England only closed yesterday (Oct. 31), and the Songwriters Association of Washington (D.C.) said they won’t be announcing winners until early in 2012. I thought I’d entered a third contest already this year, but if so I can’t remember what it was. With luck they’ll notify me if I won.

I was asked at the Writers’ Group meeting what I expected to get out of entering these contests. Exposure, primarily; if I win top prize or close to it, I’ve got somebody else promoting not so much that particular song as promoting that I exist and I’m a writer. (I still get occasional comments from the Website of that writers’ group in England that awarded us first prize in their “Can you write like Dylan?” contest—back in 2009.) While exposure in remote places might not translate into the “butts in seats” that Madonna (among others) maintains is the key to making money in the music business, it might generate some online CD sales if nothing else.

There is a new literary magazine starting up on the North Coast—the North Coast Squid, they’re calling it. First issue’s due out in February. It would be nice to send them something; it’d have to be poetry, I think—songs don’t lend themselves easily to publication solely in print, and plays (the puppet shows) are a little long for publication in a magazine. They’ll take photos, too, but my photography I am not impressed with. I do have one piece that might work: “The Cat with the Strat,” which started life as a poem; it only got set to music because The Collaborators, the Internet “band” I was working with at the time, wanted to record it and it had to have music for them to be able to do that. I have until the end of the month to decide whether I’m brave enough to send it.

Music Thursday night at the Tsunami, Friday night at Garibaldi City Hall (gotta tell everybody about the Open Mike), Saturday afternoon at the Tillamook library, Saturday night in Bay City (the Open Mike at the Arts Center), and Sunday night at the Rapture Room. I’m ready.

Joe