On Christmas weekend, The Orchard's NYC HQ was slammed with 20 inches of snow. As I surveyed my snowed-in car with a shovel, a cranky neighbor crowed, "well I used to live in Vermont. This ain't nothin'." You know who else lives in Vermont? The Orchard's James Kochalka, awesome comic ...
(click image to enlarge) WHO: James Kochalka Superstar WHERE: The True Chip Till Death Awards at Pulsewave at The Tank. WHEN: January 30th, 2010. THE MUSIC: James Kochalka's music mixes the lighthearted joy of the best pop music with a twisted, demented energy and weird, usually humorous lyrics. Recently he released "Digital Elf," 15 songs recorded in Nanoloop on [...]
I believe it's safe to say that there's no creative career out there quite like the one that James Kochalka has fashioned for himself. I can't think of another artist/writer who jumps back and forth so easily between vulgarity and innocence, between the mundane and magical. For isntance, his 2007 brought us not only the charming children's story "Squirrelly Gray" from Random House, but the 4th
This is the inaugural post of a new feature I call Listening Post. It is analogous to and partly inspired by Heather Browne's Monday Music Roundup over at I Am Fuel, You Are Friends . I'll try to post one of these at least once a week.
Monkeys with spears vs. monkeys without spears! Bad astronaut was armed with a BB gun, a steel mallet, and a 4-inch knife (but no spears)! Timbalake* vows to help Spears! (*"Cool" tabloid-style name-melting moniker for Timbaland and Justin Timberlake.)
This week's James Kochalka song, "Bad Astronaut," from 2005's Our Most Beloved , is the most pathologically juvenile song I've posted yet for this feature.
By now, everyone who wants to know (and even those who don't) knows that Britney Spears is bald. I find the reactions to this fascinating. Some are appalled. Some are sympathetic. Most seem weirded out.
Last week, after the first "James Kochalka Superstar Song of the Week" post, I received this comment from "Benton": "'Hockey Monkey' is a major hit with my kids ... and it's great to know that he does grown-up stuff, too." What Benton may not know is that James Kochalka has way more "grown-up stuff" than the sweet ode to Mrs. Kochalka I posted last week.
James Kochalka makes music for the sheer fun of it. His music is unmarred by pretension. When it's vulgar, it's vulgar. When it's sweet, it's sweet. He's not the greatest singer (maybe not even a good one), but he loves to sing. He's not the greatest songwriter (a lot of his songs sound the same), but he loves to write songs.
Here's yet another CD-length batch of extrawack! approved tracks for your leaf-raking-with-iPod-on pleasure: Jay Bennett - "Replace You" mp3 The Octopus Project and Black Moth Super Rainbow - "Spiracle" mp3 The Awkward Stage - "The Morons are Winning" mp3 Nate Ferrar - "Moonlight's Just a Memory" mp3 James Kochalka Superstar - "Britney's Silver Can" mp3 [...]
Aimee Mann : "I'll Be Home for Christmas" [mp3] from One More Drifter in the Snow Apes and Androids : "Hot Kathy DEMO" [mp3] Boyskout : "Spotlight" [mp3] from Another Song Drive-By Truckers : 2006-10-23, Cleveland [mp3,ogg,flac] "The Southern Thing" [mp3] James Kochalka Superstar : "Britney's Silver Can" [mp3] from Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly [...]

Happy Halloween, all, 1975-style... I'm the one rockin' the Planet of the Apes outfit, my sister is Satan, and the other kids are our childhood neighbors, the Cheeks. You can tell what decade it is because of all the brown. For some obligatory and thematically appropriate musical content, here's one of the most self-indulgent mp3s I've ever offered here on the 'Nac... James Kochalka Superstar " Hockey Monkey Mash " live on October 28th, 2006 [...]
My social calendar, such as it is, has been a little too packed since my return from Chicago ... feel like I haven't had a single moment to adequately rest up, or write about anything. I'd hoped for a little slow-down after such an insane (and yeah, insanely great) weekend, but my can't-miss-it compulsion hasn't allowed for it. Sure, it's my own busy fault, so this is more of an explanation than a complaint. In just the past couple weeks I've caught Bottomless Pit with [...]

September's been a banner month for the two sides of James Kochalka , both the cartoonist and the musical Superstar: His band's long-delayed Rykodisc album, " Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly ", was finally released on September 12th, just a few days after he was honored with his first-ever comics industry Harvey Award . During the September 9th ceremony at the Baltimore Comic-Con , James was granted the 2006 "Best Online Comics Work" title for his daily diary strip, American Elf . But as good as AE and his [...]
James Kochalka Superstar "Britney's Silver Can" - There is something so strangely iconic and resonant about the relationship and subsequent break-up of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, and even four years down the line, it dominates the way most of us interpret their highly publicized lives. Since celebrity gossip is really just an extension of dishing about your classmates in school, it was almost too perfect when the two were together, a perfect pop approximation of the post popular boy and girl at school hooking up and becoming something like the homecoming king and queen of [...]