When I’m not writing things on Boing Boing and elsewhere, I also play in an indie rock band called the Roland High Life. We’re all huge fans of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, but we’re all a bit scattered across the northeast right now, and coordination can be hard. So back in January, while we were together in person recording our new EP, we had the idea to do a remote video entry for this year’s Tiny Desk Contest.
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. And suddenly, the idea of a remote tiny desk concert was … much less clever and original.
But we did it anyway, complete with a Tiny Death Star, and you can check it out above. Given the quarantine circumstances, we were a bit strapped for gear — I’m on my back-up guitar, sans pedals, with a limited selection of mics — but I think we did all right. Hopefully Bob Boilen agrees.
Here’s the original (or at least, the album version; the original demo was a bit more Billy Joel-sy, if you’d believe it).
We’re in the process of mixing our new EP, tentatively titled “Songs About Comic Books and Mid-30s Malaise,” which should be out in the summer. In the meantime, I’ll let you speculate on the songwriting subject matter.