So I did this songfight tune this past week called "Zero to Phantom". It was a jokey sort of song, recorded in 64k mono (about as low a bitrate as you could expect to listen to without wanting to turn it off). The lyrics were awful, pretty much made up in about 5 minutes. the drum mix was ok, lots of loops sampled out of reason, the keyboards were intentionally cheesy in a casio sort of way, and I pitch shifted both of my vocal tracks so that I wouldn't be recognized. And I kept it thankfully short at 1:30. Well, I am ashamed to say it won. I have no idea how it won but it did. I have a feeling somebody intentionally caused it to win, although I have no idea why someone would want to do that. Anyways, it's a hollow victory and the Iron Clef feels embarressed by all the fuss and attention. He also feels he has somehow brought dishonor to the principles of a fair vote, which caused him to recently commit harikari using the sharp end of a broken wok ladle. Sadly, there will be no more appearances of the Iron Clef. He was just a minute thirty blip on the horizon, a shining star, a comet trailing MSG, and we hardly knew him. RIP Iron Clef.

In other music news, Jack is back in a song he's proud to be part of, the latest from the Bloody Hams. "Piece of my Heat" is featured in this week's Songfight!. The Bloody Hams are a bunch of very cool guys from California, Minnesota, and British Columbia that I hooked up with a few months ago who trekked to Seattle and played a show together. I think the song turned out really well. Ken and I worked up the arrangement last friday when he came to Santa Cruz for a visit the day after thanksgiving. We spent most of the evening recording tracks after Ken worked up the lyrics. Originally we thought of just doing it as a Ken & Jack song, but then Ken suggested a bloody hams tune and it was off to the races. I may post our original version here after i remix it a bit.

Also, over on Remixfight!, MC Jack in the Box returns, putting a new spin on the UnDesirable's "Happy Machine Ankle". I think mine turned out ok, but I highly recommend a listen to Future Boy's remix, which I think is really outstanding.

Finally, I have a couple covers that I'm wrapping up which I'll be posting soon. One is an Emmylou Harris song. The other is a cover of a tune by another songfighter which i'm not at liberty to reveal yet. Bon Appetite!