381 - Jonathan Coulton
The Comedian's Comedian Podcast
Stuart Goldsmith
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2021
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You might know brilliantly witty and wise singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton as the writer of the Portal theme “Still Alive”, or from his many viral hits, albums, huge tours, or even his fan-cruise…
We talk about "JoCo’s" Thing-A-Week project and how it (combined with a timely fascination for crowd-funding) propelled him from a software career, to one of the kings of online creativity. We also discuss the pros and cons of aiming for viral success, his tool-kit for uncovering catchiness in his music, and why he secretly finds it hard to rock authentically.
32 mins of extra content from this interview is available exclusively to the Insiders Club!
We discover Jonathan’s manifesto on art and commerce, and how the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig informs it; learn how many fans you need to make a cruise happen; and find out what moderation is necessary to keep the space safe for risk…
Go to www.comedianscomedian.com/insiders for this and much more, including the exclusive Insiders Q&As with Nish Kumar, James Acaster and Fern Brady and the incredible “self-help for comedians” special with Amanda Donnet.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello Stu here just popping in before the show starts to let you know that my comedy special |
| 0:04.2 | I need you alive is now available at Stuart Goldsmith dot com |
| 0:08.1 | There's a link there where you can watch it on an breathtaking array of places for the rest of the month |
| 0:13.2 | Including the 800 pound gorilla website Amazon Prime in the UK and US X-Box |
| 0:17.8 | God knows how they do that as well as loads of other links to catch it on audio go to Stuart Goldsmith dot com and |
| 0:23.6 | Watch this show that I am staggeringly proud of and do watch it if you can because it's very pretty |
| 0:30.7 | Oh |
| 0:45.2 | Hello and welcome back what a break. It's been what a summer |
| 0:48.8 | It's been here in the UK and Brett Goldstein got an Emmy just to round it all off and I say congratulations to Brett now |
| 0:54.9 | This is an episode that I've been sitting on for over a month |
| 0:58.2 | I recorded this at the beginning of the summer break and I wanted to wait until I had some in the can before we launched back into |
| 1:03.4 | What I will actually called season two of the podcast that isn't official? |
| 1:07.5 | Don't bear that in mind although do bear in mind that in March next year this podcast becomes 10 years old |
| 1:12.4 | And there is a possibility that I could sink it up so that that's episode 400 but equally knowing me |
| 1:17.3 | I'm unlikely to bother but my point is I've been so giddy about this one because this is someone of whom |
| 1:24.0 | I am such a genuine fan and because we almost never have |
| 1:28.0 | Singer songwriters on this show. This is me branching out |
| 1:30.8 | I don't know if this is this makes it a non-compod rather than a con-compod, but Jonathan Colton is definitely comedy adjacent |
| 1:36.8 | He is a brilliant and funny and wise |
| 1:40.9 | singer and writer and |
| 1:43.9 | Song guy I'm my words fail me and I hope they don't during the interview. I think I did okay |
| 1:49.3 | Given that I'm such a phenomenal fan of him and that I know nothing about music |
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