When my oldest daughter Molly (I'm writing this as if anyone besides my oldest daughter Molly is reading this) was working for a little independent candy company in Brooklyn, one of the company's owners told Molly about Jonathan Coulton. And Molly then told me about Jonathan Coulton. And, just after that, I got the cool opportunity to take a Saturday morning DJ shift at WXPN. And the Jonathan Coulton song that I first listened to, Tom Cruise Crazy, was so good that I played it on the radio. And some guy called the radio station, saying how cool it was that we played Jonathan Coulton.
So, as it turns out, Jonathan Coulton is cool. Not particularly widely known. But very successful. He's from Brooklyn, went to Yale, sang in Yale's famous acapella group, the Whiffenpoofs, worked as a computer programmer, and wrote a whole bunch of geeky, funny, awesome songs. Oh, and he also has been the house musician for NPR's game show, "Ask Me Another."
There are a bunch of Jonathan Coulton songs that could be featured. Tom Cruise Crazy, of course. But another one, called Shop Vac, is just too good not to feature here. So here are two versions of Shop Vac. One is a kinetic typography animation version, which is kind of dazzling. And one is Jonathan just singing an acoustic version in Santa Monica, California, in 2006.
So here it is: Song 10: Jonathan Coulton doing Shop Vac, the animated studio version and the live acoustic version.