Sudden Death performs "Cellular Degeneration" at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, GA. [September, 2006]
Sudden Death comes to us from the far off land of New Jersey. A fantastic performer and big part of the FUMP and dementia music scene. He rocks some old school nerdy raps about games, technology, and more. Check out his work at suddendeath.org and myspace.com/suddendeath
A few questions with Devo Spice of Sudden Death.
1. Is there a lot of overlap between the nerdcore and parody music scene?
I don't think there's a lot of overlap, but there's definitely some. Most comedy musicians, whether they do parodies or originals or both, tend to be geeks for one reason or another. So naturally a lot of nerdy topics work their way into the music. Conversely, most nerdcore rappers have a sense of humor which tends to work its way into their music. While they don't do comedy full time they do have their moments.
2. How did you come up with your act of using a projector?
I saw "Weird Al" Yankovic at AlCon 98 and at the time I had recently recorded a cover of Al's song Happy Birthday and turned it into a rap song. He heard this song and liked it, but I thought it would be funny if I could get him to do a fake interview saying how much he hated my cover. I asked him and he obliged. So I had this hilarious video of Weird Al saying he thought my song was the worst piece of crap he's ever heard, it makes him physically ill, etc. At AlCon 2000 I wanted to show this video during my performance. I made a copy for their tech guy who ran it before I performed Happy Birthday. The crowd loved it. I realized then that the projector could be a valuable tool to help increase the humor level of my show, so I started using it more and more. Now, I use it to run my entire show and have a video or animation to accompany each song. It adds a lot to my show but it's a pain for me because it means I have to create a new video or animation for each song I want to perform.
3. When did you first begin doing parody music and rap?
I've always loved funny songs. My mother found one of her old Allan Sherman records and played it for me when I was a kid. I was floored. A few Dr. Demento compilations and Weird Al albums later and I was hooked on comedy music, or dementia as we like to call it now. Rap was the first style of serious music I ever really liked. When I was a kid my friends were all into hard rock which at the time I didn't like. But when I found rap I just seemed to take to it like it was my own. So when I decided I wanted to start writing my own songs I started writing raps, and the humor just seemed to be there whether I wanted it or not. Sudden Death was officially formed when I was 13. We did it strictly for fun and as a hobby until just a few years ago when I thought maybe I should make a go at doing this for a living.
4. What are some of your favorite nerdy past times?
I really enjoy programming, especially video games. I've released a few games as shareware and even licensed a few to some publishers. Programming gives me a challenge which always has a new puzzle to solve. My most recent conquest was a 192k RSS feed for FuMP subscribers that I programmed which is password protected. The .htpasswd file is updated dynamically via a PHP script that runs whenever someone access the RSS feed. The script pulls the user names and encrypted passwords out of our database and writes them to the file. That was a challenge, but it was fun.
5. What musicians are you guys influenced by?
Lyrically my biggest influences are my fellow comedy musicians such as Worm Quartet, the great Luke Ski, Possible Oscar, Rob Balder, and the rest of The FuMP. Musically, my DJ The Professor is into circuit bending, and likes to experiment with kids' toys and finding new ways to make creative sounds. Combine that with old school hip hop and video games and that's pretty much it.
6. Why should people check out your set?
People from all walks of live seem to enjoy my live show, whether they're fans of rap or not. I have lots of people who have seen my show and bought my CD after it because they enjoyed it so much and then told me they never thought they would ever buy a rap CD. I'm very proud of my live show. Seeing me live is a whole different experience than just listening to my songs.
