AP News, February 8th, 2007
Guitarist Mike Samborn used to sketch out a song, play it, decide he didn't like it and toss it in the trash.
But this month, he doesn't have that option.
Samborn is one of more than 2,000 musicians worldwide facing a March 1 deadline to write and record an entire album as part of the second RPM Challenge. There are no prizes or winners, but the participants' works will be uploaded to an online jukebox.
"Once I signed up, I realized I had to finish this thing," said Samborn, a 34-year-old from Dover. "The panic is a big impetus."
Last year's effort brought 165 finished album entries, ranging from a 35-minute instrumental work to a 10-song tribute to Annie Oakley and Bonnie and Clyde. Most were submitted by musicians in the Portsmouth area, where the RPM Challenge is based.
"People took chances they wouldn't normally take," organizer Dave Karlotski said of last year's contest. "Instead of over-thinking what their next album should be, they did what they wanted to do."
The program is similar to a San Francisco-based effort to get would-be authors to write a novel in November. Last year, almost 80,000 people participated worldwide. In the campaign's eight-year history, a handful of books have found publishers, though most find only a handful of readers.
Before signing up to record an album in a month, guitarist and singer Michelle Moon, a 37-year-old education director at a living history museum, had booked minor gigs and played for friends. But she had never written music and certainly didn't record it.
Last year, she wrote the tribute to Annie Oakley and Bonnie and Clyde. This year, she has 12 songs started, though she expects about a third of them to be set aside.
"I'm no longer as afraid of writing. I know now I can write those songs," said Moon, whose tunes this year are in the vein of Hank Williams and honky-tonk love ballads.
Samborn, who records as Floppy Jalopy, works on the project after his two children are in bed.
"I do this all at night between eight and midnight," he said. "If I don't have any deadline, I'll throw away a lot of stuff. When you have that deadline looming over you, you throw away that inner critic."
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On the Web:
http://www.rpmchallenge.com/
