Oxyfish » Singing

Richter Scales at the Crunchies 2009

ts — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:07:37 +0000

This is our third year at the Crunchies, and I think this could be our best effort yet. Kudos to Matt Hempey and Mark Casey and the team that put this together – I basically showed up and sang. And danced. A little.

Hello, GREAT times!

ts — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:12:40 +0000

The Richter Scales got a great response from the audience at the Crunchies, after making fun of just about every aspect of running a Web 2.0 company in these trying times. My contribution consisted mostly of showing up and not flubbing the couple lines they gave me – it’s great to be in a group with such talented people!

Tis the season for video holiday cards

ts — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:22:14 +0000

I wonder if even a couple years ago anyone predicted the use of web video to send holiday “cards” to friends and family. This year we’ve been inundated by them, and I’m even in a couple. No, Yieldex didn’t do a video holiday card, although we did do a nifty video for the Amazon AWS Start-up Challenge.

The First Round Capital holiday card video is a fun take-off of a popular viral video. You can see me at 1:48 doing the silly dance in the middle of Howard St in downtown San Francisco. Mike Arrington was worried we’d get hit by a car.

Now my singing group, the Richter Scales, decided to get into the act with our own holiday parody. We shot it in half a rehearsal one night, and our own inimitable Matt Hempey put it together in just a couple sleepless nights. The song is a parody of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, with lyrics updated for 2009.

Enjoy!

Bubble wins a Webby!

ts — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:02:16 +0000

The Richter Scales most recent video, Here Comes Another Bubble, won the Webby award in the Viral Video category. We are so excited! CNN even picked up the story. We’re now trying to figure out who from the group can make it to NYC on June 9 to be at the awards ceremony. We’ve even offered to sing the song live.

If you are in the Bay Area and want to hear the Bubble song live, come see us tomorrow night in Palo Alto!

UPDATE: Kara Swisher wrote a post congratulating us – thanks, Kara!

Free Richter Scales show in Palo Alto

ts — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:53:09 +0000

This Thursday night at 8pm, if you happen to find yourself near Palo Alto, come by and hear the Richter Scales sing at the Palo Alto Arts Center at 1313 Newell. You can hear Here Comes Another Bubble performed live, among other funny originals and some covers. Also featuring another local a cappella group, Redshift. Hope to see some friends there!

Vote for Bubble 1.1 as Yahoo’s Funniest Video!

ts — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:03:05 +0000

The Richter Scales recent video, Here Comes Another Bubble, was nominated for the 2008 Yahoo Video awards. Go and vote for us today!

Click here to vote!

UPDATE: We didn’t win, but we did get a nice T-Shirt…

A fable of YouTube

ts — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:57:41 +0000

Once upon a time, there was a merry band of troubadors called the Richter Scales. They enjoyed making music and entertaining people, never trying to make any money at it.

One day they discovered a new country, YouTubeLand. They thought they might entertain some of the residents there. So they produced a video and sent it over, where some people enjoyed it.

Emboldened, they produced another. This one even more people enjoyed. But one person felt the video was rude to her, and started shouting that the Richters had broken the law. Without ever telling the Richters what she wanted, she used a hammer to banish the video from the land.

Confused, the Richters consulted wizards, and learned that even wizards disagreed on the laws of this new land. They felt bad that some people thought they were rude, though they were new to the land, and there were many other loutish people there already.

After much internal consultation, and encouragement from many native denizens, the Richters decided to venture forth into YouTubeLand again. They took out the objectionable parts, and replaced them with funnier ones. And they made up for their unintentional rudeness by giving credit in a new and clever way, which some in the land hailed as a new standard for virtue.

And everyone lived happily ever after. Well, most people, anyway.

“Dance for the Sun” wins IMA Children’s Music Album of the Year!

ts — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:14:03 +0000

I wrote a while ago about my sister Kira’s album of kid’s yoga songs. Now the fine judges at the Independent Music Awards have selected her Dance for the Sun album as the winner of the Children’s Music category in their 7th annual contest. Not only that, but her song Caterpillar, Caterpillar (with me singing the bass line) was selected the best Children’s Music song. Hooray for Kira!

Go buy an album, from her site Fireflies Yoga, or from CDBaby. Especially if you have kids.

Bubble Video Takedown

ts — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:58:27 +0000

Our video was taken down from YouTube based on a DMCA notice. We have not see the notice, so we don’t know who or why. Kara Swisher posted in our favor, Valleywag had some criticism. We are in the process of compiling the list of photo credits and posting it, not because some self-styled copyright cops are demanding it, but because we would want credit if someone re-used our work. But we’re not firing off DMCA take-down notices to the several folks on YouTube who have already done it (deliberately not linked here). Nor are we threating physical harm, as some of the commenters on Flickr seem to be advocating. You can tell I’m kinda mad about the way this was handled.

In the meantime, you can still (for now) see it on Yahoo or FunnyOrDie.

Here Comes Another Bubble

ts — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:22:46 +0000

Kara Swisher says “pure genius“. Robert Scoble finds it so funny he spews Diet Coke through his nose. This could be my 15 minutes of internet fame! Matt Hempey of the Richter Scales deserves all the credit, he wrote the song, sang the solo, and created the entire video, I just sing the bass line and show up in the video for a few milliseconds. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Updated to version 1.1 of the video.