All I want for Christmas this year is to be cool.
Pre-order the EP and get the tabs at http://www.taptheory.net. Thanks for watching!

P.S. I've been sitting on this video for the better part of a month now and I haven't had so much trouble keeping a video under wraps for a long time. I'm terrible at keeping secrets when I'm excited about them. I really hope you all enjoy the video and the song!

You been cool since the word was coined.

Awesome video. I've been singing your little ditty nonstop for two days now. Good earworm.

My only criticism and it's a minor one and I would only mention it because the rest of the video is obviously a superior work: it bugged me just a tiny bit that you're not really playing the flute--not that you had to at all! But you were pretending to. I'm not really sure what the things you're beating on are, but they look like some kind of MIDI controllers, that are triggering drum samples. And that all checks out and looks like you're really playing, even if it's just Christmas wrapping cardboard tubes with tape on them.

And of the course the Stick playing is real. And the singing is real. And there's no attempt to fake the keyboard playing at all. Just the flute playing. And you're obviously not really playing it, and that's somewhat funny. But you're obviously really playing the Stick, so...

Again, a superior song and a superior video. But I called my son in and asked him to watch the video and he liked the tune and the video. But he also wondered what was up with the flute. And he wondered why there was no hoodie on the drum playing, but then he is a percussionist and a hoodie lover, and he liked the tune too.

An excellent song, Josh, and thanks for putting this earworm into my head for two days now!

If you want to get "literary interpretive" about it, it does make sense. Each frame is a different side of Josh. Notice that in each frame, he is wearing a variation of the same clothes, but always with some difference. The flute frame is the outgoing side that gives the appearance of cool. It is only an appearance, as he is not actually playing the flute. This coincides with the theme and title "Am I Cool, Yet?" The vocal frame is the cerebral frame, asking the questions. The percussive frame is the physical foundation, featuring only hands. This is supported by the bass frame, which is similar. The "groove" he states he is desiring to be cool is actually presented in the Stick frame. Summing it all up, he actually has the cool he wants, which is hidden under the cool he presents for certain audiences. This is verified by the end eye-roll. The man is good. In other settings, I have seen him use this false cool to balance anxiety, although I enjoy the real cool much more.

Guys thanks so much for checking out the video, it really means the world to me!



Steve, that's the joke! If you want to look at it deeper, then yeah, it's a guy pretending to be cool, drinking from the cool guy's cup in an attempt to be cool himself but he's still faking it.

But really, it just made me laugh to think of that. The percussion isn't a collection of MIDI controllers. They're a pitched percussion PVC piano I made as my high school physics final over 10 years ago. When I showed GEPH's drummer Josh Merhar he started cracking up because in his words "he loved that the "drums" kept getting lazier and lazier as the song went on." I just did it because it made me laugh.

The sound of the "flute" is actually a sample lead I made by recording my finger circling a crystal glass, and then running it through a sampler and some various effects. I have no idea how to play the flute, so the idea to have the most alcoholic looking version of me poorly pretending to play a flute made me laugh and so there it is in the video.



WOW! Dan, thank you for taking the time to look this deeply into my video work! Full disclosure: I did not think of any of this stuff when I made the video. It was a mix of my weird sense of humor and what I felt made the most sense for the video composition. The lack of sweatshirt in the percussion section was just because I was warm. But I'm more than happy to pretend I was that deeply deliberate with my video production haha!

Thanks again you guys! I think as an artist the scariest response to your work isn't people disliking it; it's no response at all. To see that you took the time to check it out and ALSO enjoyed it really makes my day.

This is such a catchy tune. Great job. I can still sing it days later so that’s a good thing

Thanks Rob!

Yeah, I figured that was the joke, and I was pretty sure the PVC piano wasn't an actual MIDI controller. And I could tell it wasn't a real flute either. And it's a great video and doesn't need to be explained. And I'm all for doing things purely to amuse oneself, which is about the only reason I do anything.

It's just that you know how to play Stick, so you just actually played that straight. And then jokingly faked everything else. That's cool! I wasn't sure about that. There's some Whitesnake videos I have some deep questions about, too. (And Peter Gabriel....and....)

And I hear you on just wanting a reaction, even if it is dislike, which I definitely am not expressing for this tune. I am still singing this song however many days later, so good on you for that. It's all cool! In a Schrödinger's cat-in-a-box way, where you will remain cool unless observed.

So when, exactly, did you start playing with Oingo Boingo?