Jonathan Coulton and Jim Boggia at MilkBoy August 26, 2006

Safe In Sound could be the title of Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter Jim Boggias life story, not just the name of his bluhammock music debut. As he often likes to explain to reporters, Ive been told that I was singing melodies before I started speaking words, and I started playing the guitar when I was five. I have no conception of a life before music. Jim is the kind of hyper-kinetic guy who may never need an iPod because hes already got instant recall of practically every song hes ever heard and loved. Like a digital player permanently set in shuffle mode, he accesses riffs and rhymes with a sort of free-associative glee. At a recent acoustic gig, he managed to interpolate Paul McCartneys Live and Let Die into the middle of one of his own tunes; flirt with the hook of a sappy Chicago super-hit from the seventies; ably pluck out a verse of Dont Cry For Me, Argentina on the guitar; and lecture the rapt audience on the origins of Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft. (For the record, mysterious pop band Klaatu cut the track first, then the Carpenters turned it into a bizarre quasi-hit. Who knew?)

Jonathan Coulton is the Contributing Troubadour for Popular Science magazine and the musical director for John Hodgmans Little Gray Book Lectures. His songs about vengeful nerds, ennui-afflicted clowns, partially-imagined historical figures, and devotees of a certain Swedish prefab furniture store are insanely clever without ever being too clever for their own good. They repeatedly lure you into laughing before suddenly breaking your heart. And the sick part is, you keep coming back. Coulton's is the voice of every spooky elementary school kid who could never quite keep his shirt tucked in or shoes tied; every lovelorn mason and mad scientist; every one of us who has ever sat despairingly on the floor, surrounded by parts of an Ikea endtable, weeping over our allen wrenches. He is ready to soft-rock your socks off.

Event submitted by Eventful.com on behalf of jcoulton.