I meant to post this a few days ago. In case you might have missed it, I did a cover of Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and A Beat.” Why? Because I promised that if Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s Kickstarter for the RAYGUN CHRONICLES sf anthology he wanted to edit hit full funding in the final 24 hours of the project (which it was looking like wouldn’t happen), that I would record myself singing a Justin Bieber song. And “Beauty and A Beat” is the only one I can claim more than a passing familiarity with, since my pals Hollywood Ending covered it a while back (and put their own spin on it).
I was originally going to just download the karaoke track and play it on my laptop while I sang into the camera on the laptop, but then my friend Darrell Long got involved, which pulled our friend Barry Mangione in, and the result was four hours in DisGraceLand Studio in Brewster, recording my vocals and Darrell’s rap (we call him Dicki Minaj now) and Barry’s backing vocals, then mimicking the effects on the original, then shooting the video, and then spending another hour getting it uploaded to Youtube. The result is here:
Over the weekend, I made another promise: that if the Kickstarter for the LONG HIDDEN anthology hit $30,000 (enough to include brand new artwork for each story in the anthology), I would record myself singing a Britney Spears song. (The LONG HIDDEN folks chose the artist this time.) So be watching for that sometime in the next month or so. (I’ll be on the road for two weeks for work starting Sunday, so recording will have to wait til I get back.)
Now I’ve also committed to two other videos.
1) If Barry Mangione’s APPLY THE GRAFT project manages to raise almost $10,000 in the next few days, Darrell and I will create a Bieber/Britney/Buble mash-up. Here’s the link to donate to that project if you’d like. And here’s a link to my interview with Barry about the project.
2) My young actor friend Sam Lant is doing his annual fundraiser for Ronald McDonald House in Pasadena. He’s about $1,500 short of the goal he set for himself. So I promised that if he hits his goal, I’ll do a cover video of whatever song he chooses (So far, it’s a toss-up between Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” and Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance.”) If you’d like to donate to that worthy cause, here’s the link to Sam’s Donation Page.
Interestingly, no one has asked me to cover One Direction. I wonder why.