What would happen if Dan Brown joined Weezer? See, if you’d asked me this, I would’ve said that Dan would end up crying in a corner after it became clear that his input was not needed, and that his musical ability was insufficient.

But put the question to Dennis Mott and you instead get this brilliant reimagining of “The Alexander and The Swine Flu,” which he has transformed into a fictionalised history lesson (with bonus conspiracy theory) about our favourite Macedonian king. It is awesome.

My apologies for the radio silence of the past month, I know I said I’d be back in a week or so with a new music site, but that seems not to have happened. It’s partially me being busy, partially me being lazy, and partially a huge case of analysis paralysis because I want to come back with something that has proper artistic merit.

Bit anticlimactic, this, I feel like I should’ve ended on a high note – but since this isn’t really an ‘ending,’ we should be okay. I’ll get that link up in the next week or so.

(YouTube link)

I won’t embed it, because there’s a spoiler in the thumbnail pic, and because it’s weird seeing two little me’s looking out from the screen.

I am not sure what to make of this.

Anyway, as promised, I’ve added an Older Songs page, with about an hour of material, which is more than I expected. I’m not so sure about the name, since it’s easily confused with the Archives section, but I can deal with that later (come to think of it, I might remove Older Songs from the sidebar and add it to the Archives page).

I’ve actually had concerns about the user-friendliness of the site in general. There’s a lot of info all in one go, and nothing to really show the user where to start. Perhaps if I add a picture to the top of the sidebar it’ll both break up the wall of text, and draw the attention of new users to the introduction.

In other news, as per the request in song #15, I’ve received my first cover song: ‘Grim Beards,’ by Quinn Fox. For the moment, you can download it here, but once I’ve received a few more I’ll add a ‘Fan Contributions’ page. When people take the time to do this sort of thing, I want to make it easy for their work to be heard.

Not much else to say, except: please keep sending song ideas in! Don’t be discouraged if I don’t use your idea straight away – I’m not casting any of them aside, they’re all being kept for possible future use. All ideas are welcome, don’t sit there waiting for inspiration to strike. Just let your brain pour through your fingers and onto your keyboard. Except, you know, not gross.

As usual, thanks for listening, and thanks for reading. And enjoying, hopefully.

(If you haven’t heard #13 yet, it explains that I’m taking every fourth week off. We’ve just finished the third week.)

This doesn’t seem fair to them, and on a selfish level it also reduces the chance that checking the site will become a habit. Basically it’s making me rethink the decision. As I see it, my options at the moment are:

1. Three-weeks-on, one-week-off. It’s what I’m running with at the moment, but it’s also the option that gives listeners the greatest opportunity to forget about the site and never return.

2. Doing it every week, but skipping Wednesdays in addition to the weekends. My main problem with this is that it messes up the name of the project.

3. Doing it every day, every week, but artificially limiting how long I allow myself to spend on a track. The obvious risk here is that the quality of the songs could (and probably would) take a dive.

So please weigh in, I’d like that. Either say which of the three you’d prefer, or suggest other options altogether. I’m open to ideas.

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On another note, my good friend and musical almost-rival Quinn Fox found himself inspired by this site, and set out to do a song-a-day project of his own. The result is “Survived The Cold War,” which I suppose I’d call an EP. It is excellent, and freely downloadable in MP3 format.

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Speaking of MP3s, I’ve had a few people ask why I don’t post them, instead releasing these songs exclusively as YouTube videos. Simply put, it’s for the hits. The way I see it, getting decent view counts on YouTube is pretty much my one chance of gaining an audience for this project (side note: it helps a lot if people rate the videos too ), and as much as I’d like to make MP3s available – they sound a lot better, for one thing – I’d be robbing myself of views.

Once the view count for a song reaches a certain amount I’ll make its MP3 available, though. So yeah, I’m holding them for ransom. Ruthless, I am.

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Last of all, I’m probably going to add a ‘Previous Work’ section to the sidebar over the next week or so, with some earlier, non-Daily Refrainy songs. I might not, but keep an eye out for it anyway.

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OK, that was ridiculously long. This is why I don’t blog. Perhaps I should vlog instead, though I’d have to buy an egg timer or stopwatch or something. If you’ve read all of this, then thanks! If you didn’t, then thanks for reading this sentence at least.

And thanks for being here at all. I hope you’re enjoying the music.