Martin Pearson's The Unfinished Spelling Errors of Bolkien is very funny, very clever, and very hard to find.
[UPDATE: Martin says it's OK to download it for free!]
(MP3)
It's a two-hour, two-CD, filk-infested one-man comedy show about of The Lord of the Rings - both the book and the film versions.
(MP3)
Even if you don't usually like those The Fiftieth Time Some Dude Put Stuff About Elves And Cthulhu To The Tune Of "Jailhouse Rock" sorts of songs, I assure you that you are going to have a very hard time not finding Bolkien funny. C'mon, the guy actually sings the Black Speech inscription on the One Ring to the tune of "King of the Road".
(MP3)
The total length of the double CD, not counting six minutes of out-takes at the end, is about 115 minutes. And there are a lot of songs in it, but there's a lot of talking too.
(MP3)
The Bolkien CDs were recorded with a live audience, which is of course essential for this sort of thing. There are also not many of those annoying comedy-record moments when everybody laughs, but you don't know why, because it's a visual joke and you don't have video.
(There are a few videos of Pearson on YouTube, by the way.)
There are also only a couple of jokes that you won't get if you're not Australian.
(MP3)
Honestly, half of the world's English-speaking nerds should have a copy of this.
But they don't, on account of how it's not very easy to buy it.
Bolkien is listed here and there on podunk online CD stores (Pearson also has his own Web site, which is currently somewhat unfinished). The only online store I could find that even claims to have Bolkien available for sale, though, is Ducks Crossing, where the double CD costs a handsome $AU40 plus $AU6 delivery in Australia, or $AU12 to the USA. They do at least accept credit cards and currency-convert the total price, though, so US customers will pay a total of a mere $US48.36, delivered, for the double CD.
Which is, of course, a bit on the bleeding steep side.
Apparently you're also meant to be able to buy the CD through 7th Dimension Music. But for months now there's been nothing in that site's shop, and the product page for Bolkien has, for lo these many months, been a database error. Some of his previous stuff used to be on this site, too, but now it's broken as well. It's all very depressing.
So I e-mailed Mr Pearson (pearsonmartinXX@XXhotmail.com, without the XXs) and informed him of the large number of people who would like to give him money, if only the CDs were available at a reasonable price. I also asked whether he'd considered opening the money-tap rather wider by letting people pay for downloadable MP3s.
Martin said that if people want to buy the CD, they can e-mail him. And maybe mail him a cheque, so he can put it on a wooden table and take a picture of it, et cetera.
It struck me that buying CDs by e-mailing the artist personally is not necessarily a completely optimal e-business paradigm. I suggested he try out a sell-your-files service like (to pick a random, presumably-honest example) PayLoadz, or of course CD Baby, who sell physical CDs, and can also put artists' MP3s up on iTunes and Amazon and so on. (This is CD Baby's "Artist Sign Up" section.) But he didn't go for it.
So allow me to postulate a hypothetical situation.
Suppose, hypothetically, that someone were to illegally download The Unfinished Spelling Errors of Bolkien, from one of those intarweb bit-waterfall things that the kids are so enthusiastic about. Beats me how you'd find it, but perhaps some cunning search string featuring Martin's name, or just the word "Bolkien", might do it.
If that someone decided they liked it, they could go on to send a few bucks to Mr Pearson via PayPal. (Once again, that's pearsonmartinXX@XXhotmail.com, without the XXs.)
Martin doesn't have a PayPal account either, but I think he may be persuaded to get one if a thousand bucks pile up waiting for him.
UPDATE: Martin Pearson his own bad self showed up in the comments below, and officially gave free BitTorrent distribution of Bolkien his blessing.
So here's the torrent, people! Remember to PayPal Martin, pearsonmartin@hotmail.com, a buck or three if you like it!
(Alternative torrent link. This is the magnet URI.)
20 April 2010 at 10:46 pm
A very funny, funny take on a well-worn path. Even those short clips had me laughing. Certainly worth looking into 'procuring' a copy from...somewhere. And, of course, throwing some $$ in the direction of Martin Pearson.
21 April 2010 at 12:55 pm
Yep, I'd pay for the MP3's. I haven't even heard the files yet, I'm willing to stake Dan's taste on them being good.
Having moved flats/house 4 times in 5 years I'm not a fan of physical recording mediums any more.
22 April 2010 at 6:44 am
Definitely a good laugh and well worth the $$, but I think the $$ would be better spent if it was sent to Dan's paypal account to encourage him or his colleagues to update his website more often.
We love your work Dan, will a pile in your paypal persuade you?
23 April 2010 at 3:01 am
My god! Those are lame!
23 April 2010 at 3:47 am
Two words: Thank you.
23 April 2010 at 4:49 pm
I'm curious, how much is singing and how much is spoken? I enjoy comedy records very much, but my taste for singing comics is very thin and I wouldn't be too interested if it's 90% singing with only spoken interludes.
Anywho, whilst on the topic of Lord of the Rings humor, I assume everyone is familiar with the Very Secret Diaries? http://www.ealasaid.com/misc/vsd/
if you are not. "Whups. Fellover."
24 April 2010 at 8:18 am
Red october, the songs are about a quarter of the total stuff, and trust me, they're at least as funny as the spoken bits. You want this.
27 April 2010 at 8:18 pm
Thanks Dan, That was very kind of you and I'm glad you like the show.
I'm getting a friend to break the CD's into MP3's, which I presume I'll be able to e-mail to people. (E-mail's ok isn't it? I'm not showing myself up here as being horribly outmoded?)
There's a nice man called Thomas in Denmark who I'm going to experiment on.
I hope that is acceptable :)
cheers
Martin
28 April 2010 at 10:11 am
Hello there, Martin!
No, that's no good either :-).
Problem 1: It'd mean an e-mail between 100 and 200 megabytes in size, which may or may not actually get to its destination.
E-mails aren't meant to be that big. Some mail servers will reject them outright, and mail clients aren't able to resume downloads if a hiccup causes the first download attempt to fail 90% of the way to the end. Your own Internet connection probably doesn't have enough upstream speed to send such a message in less than an hour.
At 256 kilobits per second, transferring 150 megabytes will take about 1.6 hours. Many home broadband accounts in Australia have only 128-kilobit upload speed; if you do a high-quality version of the album that's 200 megabytes, it'll take at least FOUR HOURS to send at that speed!
(And this may violate some ISP policy, too, that was buried in all the Acceptable Use Policy boilerplate that you just clicked "I Agree" to when you signed up.)
Problem 2: It's another solution that doesn't scale. Even if it takes a mere half-hour to send, you shouldn't have to do something every time someone wants to pay for your album. Stephen King doesn't personally mail every reader the book they've asked for.
Possible solutions, in order from most free-and-easy Internet-hippie information-wants-to-be-free, man, to least:
1. Release the album completely into the public domain, or with some sort of Copyleft-ish license, with a note tacked on that says people can send you a tip if they like it.
Doing this makes it possible for you to host the album in places like the Internet Archive or Wikimedia Commons, which only accept files that are "free" in one or another legal definition.
2. Retain the copyright, but still make the album a free download.
Distribution is easy in this case, too; you can just put the files on your Web site or, to keep bandwidth demands down, make a torrent and let all the people who've downloaded the album already help new people to download it.
As I alluded above, there's already one well-seeded torrent of Bolkien in existence. So you wouldn't actually need to do anything besides give that torrent your official blessing (some guy on a forum said you've already done this. Have you?), and/or make a new version of it that includes a readme.txt that asks for donations. The files in the existing torrent are already high-quality CD rips, so there's no need to make new ones.
(Actually, people are probably more likely to be alerted to your request for payment by bloggers who write about the free album, rather than by a text file included with said album.)
This has worked very well for the brilliant TV series The Secret Life of Machines - but Tim Hunkin, creator of that show, doesn't actually want to get paid when people download it. If you distribute your album(s) this way, you have to resign yourself to not getting paid by most downloaders, no matter what requests you make.
Since it costs you literally nothing to distribute MP3s via BitTorrent, though, I think the right way to look at it is every download being a free lottery ticket that may win you some money.
(Free downloads may also be very good advertising for your live show. Tons of bands now make whole albums worth of MP3s available for free download.)
3. Go with one of the online record stores I mentioned above - I think CD Baby would be favourite.
You can give people a whole sample track or two to see if they like the album, and the sales process is completely automatic. It'd probably only take a little work on your part to set it up. I bet CD Baby are used to dealing with artists who aren't Internet experts, too, so it should be pretty painless.
(Selling physical CDs might be more of a hassle - I don't know. I don't think you'd be reducing the market for Bolkien a great deal by only doing MP3 downloads, though.)
28 April 2010 at 12:27 pm
This is the torrent I suppose?
http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=bolkien
I bless this torrent, OK people, do whatever Dan just said :D
cheers
M
28 April 2010 at 4:27 pm
Ok, excellent! remains just one question: Do you have a paypal account where I can send you money? Is the account Dan mentioned active yet?
I'm pretty much on the other side of the globe (Netherlands), so sending a check isn't the most preferred option.
Regards, and thank you for many laughs,
28 April 2010 at 7:39 pm
yes, the paypal account is my e-mail apparently
pearsonmartin@hotmail.com
Is that right?
You may have noticed by now that the interweb isn't my strong suit.
28 April 2010 at 11:15 pm
Hurrah! It worked!
On the subject of online stores, can I suggest you check out bandcamp.com ? They appear to take no money off the artist, which is something I really admire (you retain copyright and the buyer deals direct with you through paypal. their FAQ is funnier than such a document should be - it even contains a LOTR reference!). They do civilised things like allow customers to listen to the whole album before buying, and choose between high-bitrate MP3s and FLAC (I personally can't tell the difference, but some people swear they can).
Their roster includes people like Evelyn Evelyn (y'know, amandaFUCKINGpalmer's new project?) and Dub Fx (who first brought them to my attention). Please note I am not a user of their site, except as a satisfied customer.
Anyway, best of luck Martin, and bravo Dan for doing a Good Thing. Now where's that writeup of your new computer? :)
29 April 2010 at 10:34 am
Great! I've revised the post to mention this.
When you actually set up a PayPal account, Martin, you'll be able to easily create a "donate money" button that you can paste onto any Web page you like. (Like the buttons on my main site's contact page.)
This lets people just click the button and immediately end up on PayPal's site, instead of signing into PayPal, going to Send Money, pasting the recipient's e-mail address into the To: box, etc. It's important to make it as easy as possible for people to donate, even - some would say especially - if they're not good at using computers, or very drunk, or both.
(I would have made such a button to put on this page, but unfortunately I can't just make a link for my PayPal account and replace my address with yours.)
29 April 2010 at 11:20 am
Hi Martin,
Thanks for dropping in here. I've downloaded the CD, enjoying it now, and just sent you a few dollars. Forgot to leave a comment in the payment though.
If you're interested, I'd be happy to host a website for Spelling Errors for free. Could have a direct download for a few dollars, and/or links to the torrent.
Cheers,
Josh
29 April 2010 at 11:57 am
Huzzah!!
Martin, you're a champ! I'll certainly send some funds your way. Brilliant work should not go unrewarded.
Now I'd better head off and spread The Word...
29 April 2010 at 1:27 pm
That sounds fine Josh, what have I got to lose? :)
Is it a good idea people?
??
eep!
30 April 2010 at 10:07 am
Funds sent. Enjoy! Bravo Dan for instigating a small but important triumph of Teh Intarwebs.
1 May 2010 at 9:46 am
Hi Martin et al,
I'd say take Josh up on his offer... I can't think of anything much to lose (that isn't already lost) and I'm guessing the sorts of folks hanging round this corner of the web are going to be pretty legit (although everyone else should feel free to point out if I haven't thought of something here - I haven't had my tea yet after all) :)
I'd throw some funds your way as well but I suspect that I am actually the original source of these mp3, having ripped them a few years back after purchasing the CD at Woodford, and then passing them on to a certain fellow geek whom we all love, so technically I already paid :)
I still love listening to them - they make a particularly good companion to long drives... and it's funny, you and Dan have always reminded me of each other for some reason. Something about the hair and manner of speaking...
Out of interest, did you ever try to send Peter Jackson a copy?
2 May 2010 at 7:55 am
Nope, but the show has toured New Zealand.
M
3 May 2010 at 6:18 am
Hi Martin,
My wife has bought many of your CDs over the years and we have both seen you several times at Woodford. We both love your work to bits. I hope this works out nicely for you and you make lots of $$ for your efforts.
5 May 2010 at 4:01 pm
ok, this is really bugging me. the gandalf song, where have i herd that tune before? i cannot find it on the web, is it original?
5 May 2010 at 8:40 pm
Filk never has original tunes - if it does, it isn't filk :-).
I'm sure everybody here is entirely convinced that you really did not recognise "Take Me Home, Country Roads".
6 May 2010 at 6:51 am
You need a website, a link to the torrent and a paypal button stat Martin!
Small donation sent. I think my wife is going to spread the word round her Tolkein fan fiction circles in short order.
6 May 2010 at 7:28 pm
Ditto the money sending, and thanks. :D
6 May 2010 at 7:46 pm
awesome. thanks dan, it really was bugging me that i could not remember where that was from. ask my GF, i was griping about it for almost a full day.
in other news, she said she did not recognize it either, despite my being fairly sure it was a country song (she listens to a lot more country than i do, so she was naturally the first person i asked. . . )
p.s. she says you need to apologize for ruining her fun ;-)
6 May 2010 at 9:38 pm
As a matter of interest, I didn't even know of "Filk" when I wrote this. I thought I was just writing parodies :)
29 June 2010 at 3:27 am
19.Hi Martin et al,
I'd say take Josh up on his offer... I can't think of anything much to lose (that isn't already lost) and I'm guessing the sorts of folks hanging round this corner of the web are going to be pretty legit (although everyone else should feel free to point out if I haven't thought of something here - I haven't had my tea yet after all) :)
I'd throw some funds your way as well but I suspect that I am actually the original source of these mp3, having ripped them a few years back after purchasing the CD at Woodford, and then passing them on to a certain fellow geek whom we all love, so technically I already paid :)
I still love listening to them - they make a particularly good companion to long drives... and it's funny, you and Dan have always reminded me of each other for some reason. Something about the hair and manner of speaking...
Out of interest, did you ever try to send Peter Jackson a copy?
30 August 2010 at 5:12 pm
This was great, thanks Dan.