Cash from Nigeria, Chat Room Romeo, The ‘Under Construction’ Blues. Each of these phrases could caption a screen-shot of the erratic events that transpire on the Internet each day. But penned by digital Web designer and singer-songwriter Jody Levinson (aka Eva Moon), the idiomatic language of the Internet is being handily transformed into rollicking music and verse.
Gliding from her computer keyboard to her piano keyboard, Eva translates the word pictures that illustrate our Web lives into poignant and often hilarious lyrics. A top-flight Web weaver and Internet pundit, Jody has created online marketing domains for many of Seattle’s high-tech elite through her firm TroutDream Graphics. This talented creature of the Net transforms herself into an alluring creature of the night when she slips into her alter-identity as “Eva Moon,” lead songstress and lyricist for the Redmond-based band by the same name.
Formed in 2002 by four members of the popular folk-gypsy band Balkanarama, Monsoon Teacup combines a frothy, caffeinated blend of coffeehouse rock steamed with a number of torchy ballads and playful punk-like parodies. Built through the teaming of Levinson, Mike Gordon, Tym Parsons and Ferko Saxmanov, the Net effect is a quadruple-shot of Internet savvy and biting cyber-satire powered by Jody’s/Moon’s sassy, sultry delivery and keyboards, and punctuated by deft guitar licks, a mean bass line, smooth sax and a punchy rock-and-roll backbeat.
Eva’s searing wit and empathetic eye for the wired, wierd and wooly ways of the Web have fashioned lyrics that everyone who has ever opened up an e-mail can relate to:
(from Eva Moon’s Cash from Nigeria)
Man says he’s got 40 mil
Needs my help, if I will
Wants to use my U.S. clout
To help him get the money out
If I’m the one to represent
I get 25 percent.
Chorus: Cash cash cash from Nigeria
Not from from England or Siberia,
I’m gonna be a millionairia
With the cash from Nigeria!
– and –
Lose 30 pounds in 30 days
Get down with that hormone craze
Stock advice that wins awards
Iraq’s most wanted playing cards
My libido will increase
With herbal secrets from the east
(from Monsoon Teacup’s Under Construction Blues,
Click here for a free MP3 download.)
My website’s a disaster
Total disrepair
Images are missing
And the links they go nowhere
Searched high and low on Google
My site was ignored
I typed in the URL
And I got 404’ed
Chorus: I got the blues
Bad website news
My site’s a snooze
I got the under construction blues
We caught up with the tuneful Webstress/Songstress between sets.
Where do you come up with the ideas for your songs?
The themes that run through a lot of my songs are lust, shopping, chocolate, the Internet, cloning, and did I say lust? Really, anything is fodder for a song, as long as it’s not too ordinary. There’s got to be some original twist, or I’m not interested. I like irony and incongruity and don’t shy away from unusual references or long words. To me, a song is two-way communication – like that tree that keeps falling in the forest. If no one hears it, it might as well not exist.
You write a lot about “Internet life” in your music. What are the links for you?
Surfing the Net is a non-linear experience and one of the pleasures is the incongruous leaps from subject to subject. You never know what you’re going to discover or what strangely juxtaposed images/themes/ideas you’ll come across next. It’s those random, surprising connections that get you thinking in different ways than you would if you were being organized. If I weren’t so enchanted by that randomness, I might never have written a tango about chocolate or Springsteen-esque rock anthem about shopping or a sexy number about dinosaurs in the streets of Seattle.
And then there’s this song about a budding love affair with the “man in brown.”
(from Monsoon Teacup’s UPS Guy, Click here for a free MP3 download.)
It started in a simple way
An auction item on eBay
Then I saw the man in brown
Park his truck and come on down
That’s the day that was the start
He drove his truck into my heart
I hear the bell and I confess
I hope it’s the man from U P S.
Contact Eva Moon and the Lunatics for your next online or offline gig via [email protected] [24×7]
Web author by day and songwriter-vocalist by night, Jody Levinson (aka Eva Moon) turns Web’s quirks into snappy lyrics and tasty tunes.
