You know itâs official when you hold an actual piece of promo material in your hand! Last week I picked up postcards for the big Pachelbel Rant 20th Anniversary Show, and just yesterday the stickers arrived!
The artwork, that great screaming guitar player silhouette, was drawn by my friend Drew Dernavich, whoâs a really talented artist and illustrator. Check out his Whisperbubble substack! The postcards turned out really good too and I think it helps, especially when promoting a live event, to have something to hand to people.
And if it looks interesting enough, maybe itâll make the fridge! I wanna make the fridge!
The show, Monday, November 23 at 7:00 pm, is gonna be tons of fun. There will be stories about the rant, songs new and oldâand some very old, some vintage video, and an updated version of the rant!
And if you canât get to NYC you can still see the show! Caveat has an amazing streaming set up, with 3 cameras and amazing sound! Tickets are available now for both in-person and streaming. Get yours now and weâll see you in November!
I am not excited to announce that Iâm releasing a new album this fall!
Donât get me wrong, Iâm very much excited to work on the album, and Iâm excited to release the album, which will coincide with the 20th Anniversary of the Pachelbel Rant show on November 23. Itâs the announcement part that was filling me with dread.
But before I explain the dread I want to front-load this post with the good vibes I found. The reason Iâm making this album is because I like making albums. It sounds simplistic but thereâs really no better reason I could come up with.
I like arranging songs. I like figuring out if a string part or a horn part or a bloopie synthesizer is the right sound. I like playing with genres and discovering what makes a yacht rock arrangement in this song different from the lite-pop 1970s sound Iâm going for in another.
I like arranging backing vocals!
I also like writing songs and I think Iâm pretty good at it. Setting meaningful lyrics to a good melody with an interesting underlying chord structure fires the best-developed sections of my brain and itâs hugely rewarding when it works. Itâs like that satisfaction of solving a tough crossword or sudoku times a million.
So the reason for releasing an album in the year of our Lord 2026 to me feels like the reason some people (definitely not me) run marathons. Most people who run them arenât trying to win, or even finish in the money. Theyâre doing it to challenge themselves. The date of a marathon gives them a date to structure their running, because a lot of people (again, not me) enjoyâor at least feel compelled toârun long distances.
Theyâre pushing themselves to do something better than theyâve done it before. Or theyâre pushing themselves to keep doing something that they love. Results be damned, finishing the thing is its own accomplishment.
With that as my new perspective, Iâm super excited to work on and release this album. And that excitement makes me dread announcing that Iâm releasing an album a little less.
Stock photo of runners (not me) running for some reason
So, why the dread?
The dread came from me trying to figure out what the point of releasing an album even is these days. I put my first albums together in the 90s to have something to sell after comedy shows, and it wasnât just to make a little extra gas money from weekend gigs. Back when sharing music online was difficult to non-existent, selling a CD was a way for someone who enjoyed my show to hear the songs again and share the fun with their friends. Now you just repost a link to spotify, soundcloud, or (shudder) a low-fi phone-recorded TikTok video.
In the early days I would send the CD to radio stations, especially morning shows that were always looking for comedy to fill three hours every day. If the songs got airplay I could find new fans. Now you record yourself singing the song into your phone, post it, and hope to be blessed by the algorithm.
As far as making a little gas money goes, I havenât sold more than 1 CD at a show in years. In fact, I just got rid of a few hundred copies of my old CDs, finally admitting that there was no chance to sell them. With each release Iâd order fewer copies, from 1,000 of American Cheese(1998) and Living it Down(2001), to 500 of Songs from the Second Floor(2009) and A/B(2016), to I think only 100 of The American Songbook: Redacted(2022).
Releasing an album these days is mostly about getting it up on the streaming services and YouTube, where artists get infinitesimal compensation and independent artists are being drowned out by growing waves of AI slop.
So it would seem that putting out an album in 2026 accomplishes none of the goals I had when I started putting out music 30 years ago. Yet when I decided to put my latest work together, finish up a set of songs, and set a release date, I found myself excited and motivated and eager to share the work with whoever may find it.
And thatâs where the analogy of running a marathon has become helpful. Iâm not looking for this album to bolsterâor even greatly affectâmy comedy career. But maybe a few friends will cheer me on as I challenge myself to achieve a personal best.
And Iâm having a blast working on the bloopie synthesizers and backing vocals!
My plan is to release an advance single in mid-September and the whole album on November 23, when I do my big 20th Anniversary show for the Pachelbel Rant. Itâll be available on all the streaming services, Iâll probably, stupidly, get a few actual physical copies pressed, and maybe Iâll send a QR code to a link to a digital version for radio stations and playlist makers.
And yes, Iâll probably make some vertical videos for TikTok. Haha, El-Oh-El, hashtaghustle.
P.S. Most importantly there will be no generative AI in this project. F&%$ that stuff. All of the sounds will be played and programmed by me, playing guitar and bass, singing, and programming and playing the samples and synthesizers. I’m not even using any pre-made loops or chord packs, which are a thing that DJs and producers use, like stock photography for music I guess.
AI tools should be used for things like going through a stack of contracts to find out the average royalty rate of a company’s patent over the last 20 years, arranged by country and industry. Or whatever. But using it for creative expression and communication? Nope. Uh-uh. Keep that slop away from me.
Iâve been going through some of my first YouTube videos, from 2006, while preparing for the big 20th anniversary of the Pachelbel Rant this November, and this one from my Life as a Comic series really caught my attention. Itâs about doing topical material, and the topical material of July 2006? The World Cup, war in the Middle East, and judging a countryâs national team by the current leader of its country!
The connections to todayâs current events were so strong that I did a short video about the episodeâand that was before our stupid president got involved in the whole red card business and every other country in the world decided to root against us!
Thereâs even an Iran connection, which I didnât feature in the above video because it took a little more setup than a 1â2 minute social media video allows. The bit starts with the fact that one of the American announcers mentions that the Iranian president was a Holocaust denier while the team is playing near the site of a WWII concentration camp (the World Cup was hosted by Germany in 2006). So the announcer basically implies that the whole Iranian national team are Holocaust deniers because their current president is an idiot. Kind of unfair.
I go on to speculate what would happen if our national team was judged by our then-current president George W. Bush, which is the bit I included. And I thought this 20-year-old topical material was relevant before Trump got involved in the red card suspension controversy, which ensured that the U.S. team would be judged by our current idiotic president.
The entire episode from 2006 is still on YouTube, but itâs unlisted because I guess Iâm a little self-conscious about having material on my channel thatâs older than half the people on YouTube. But itâs still there, and if you wanna check it out Iâll embed it below.
Meanwhile, mark your calendars for Monday, November 23, which is the big 20th Anniversary Show for the Pachelbel Rant. Itâs going to be at the beautiful Caveat theater in NYC and will be live-streamed across the globe! Watch from anywhere!
And if you have any Pachelbel Rant stories or memories, please share! The popularity of the Rant has led to so many cool connections and opportunities, and itâs found its way into so many unexpected places Iâd love to share as many as I can in the anniversary show.
Plus Iâll be posting more stuff from my first year on YouTube. Though it makes me feel old Iâm grateful the material has reached people and made them laugh.
Hereâs the full âTopicalâ episode in all of its 320×240 pixel glory! (YouTube videos were tiny in those days ð)
On June 3, 1996 it rained over 3″ in NYC, a record that still stands. I know this because that’s the day, 30 years ago today, I started a sublet in Hell’s Kitchen and the pouring rain against the urban backdrop that night made me feel like I was stepping onto the set of Blade Runner. Hellâs Kitchen was in the middle of its transition from urban blight to NYC chic and the guy whose apartment I was subletting told me to tell the bus driver from LaGuardia I was headed to âmidtownâ just to be sure he’d stop for me. I brought a suitcase, a guitar, and a backpack with my brick of a laptop.
Setting up a show at Solo Arts Group, 1998
I spent the summer getting my bearings here in the city, doing a few shows, meeting comics, and finding my way to the alternative performance scene on the Lower East Side at Surf Reality and Collective Unconscious. I also pounded the pavement looking for an apartment for a longer stay.
To find an apartment I would go on AOL (LOL) and search the classified ads. I realized the NY Times Sunday classified ads were available online starting on Friday evening and apartment managers were AMAZED at my foreknowledge of their listings. And I still remember a story* the Sunday real estate section did that summer about a young college graduate whose monthly rent budgetâwith the help of her parents, of courseâwas $2k ($4,250 in today’s $), which made a mockery of my 500-800 budget with no parental help. Sunday NY Times real estate has been trolling New Yorkers for generations!
I didn’t have a cell phone so I used the apartmentâs land line and answering machine for messages, which feels like stone age technology now. I used tokens for the subway because Metrocard readers weren’t yet in every station. I remember when they were finally installed in my Brooklyn station (Union & 4th Ave) in late ’96 or early ’97.
A lot of my Chicago comedy friends said theyâd come visit me that summer but only one did: the now well-known W. Kamau Bell, who was pondering a move to NYC. He took one look at the apartment I was subletting and decided to move to San Francisco. The Upright Citizenâs Brigade, some of whom I knew from Chicago, had just set up shop here, and I caught an early show of theirs in a basement theater called The TriBeCa Lab Theater, with Bill Chott subbing for either Matt Walsh or Ian Roberts.
From the roof of my brooklyn apartment in 1997 (or maybe 1998)
There were a few other Chicago comedy people in town, mostly from the improv world rather than the standup scene I was involved in, but it was enough to have some semblance of a social life. My friend Joanne, an actor and high-end hair stylist who hosted some epic loft parties over the years, would check in on me; and my sister’s former college roommate, a broadway actor who helped me get that summer sublet, suffered through the first and last bringer show I was stupid enough to do.
One of the things that prompted the move was my dad passing away at the beginning of 1995. He and my mom had lived in Weehawken for a few years in the early 60s when they were first married, my dad getting his masterâs degree while studying method acting with Bobby Lewis, my mom working in an office in midtown (she was a secretary at a chemical company, she said) before giving birth to my older sister.
And here it is 30 years later, about a year and a half after my mom passed away and I’m still here. Do I consider myself a âNew Yorkerâ yet? Let’s not label things, man. Thereâs always some nativist who needs to work into every conversation the fact that they were born here, as if it were an accomplishment that they themselves achieved when in truth it’s something their parents gave them, like the rent money the college grad in the Times piece got. Whatever. NYC has been home for 3 decades, which is more than half my life and longer than I’ve lived anywhere else.
And the record rainfall on June 3, 1996 still stands.
*I found but wasnât able to reread that story because paywall. Even logging in with google to access a free article only brought up a big subscription window that blocked all of the content and couldnât be clicked off. Do you have a times subscription? Wanna send me a gift link or the text so I can see if I remember it correctly? Also, the NYTimes subscription window has the audacity to say âsupport independent journalismâ! Oy. One of the biggest corporate news outlets in the country, the one that fully supported the Iraq War, dubya, and has both-sides-ed politics from Clinton to fascism calls itself âindependentâ!?! Eff all the way off!
It will also be a fun place to be, Friday, May 8, because Iâm headlining a night of comedy and music at the Mopco Improv Theater along with the very funny Bobby Curious! This will be my first headlining set in a while and Iâm very excited to be going back to Schenectady to do it.
Thatâs right, âbackâ to Schenectady, because Iâve been there before, back in 2009 for a show at Union College, when I drove through an ice-storm to get there and my car ended up looking like it got hit with a freeze ray (see below)!
I also just love saying the word âSchenectady.â I even made a video about it!
So if youâre in the greater Albany/Capital Region of Upstate New York, come on out to this beautiful theater space, thatâs a former fire station and once housed an underground strip club(!)
Mopco Presents: A Night of Comedy and Music with Rob Paravonian and Bobby Curious
Friday, May 8, 8pm The Mopco Improv Theater
10 North Jay Street
Schenectady, NY 12305
$21 ($20 + $1 fee)
Iâm really happy with this new-ish song and I got great video of it from my recent sets at The Lincoln Lodge in Chicago (boy, those were fun shows!). And now that Iâve decided to post the song on YouTube Iâm having that classic comedy songwriterâs dilemma: how do I title this video?
See, the fact that the song is about a Tinder date is the first big joke reveal at the end of the first verse, so calling it âThe Tinder Date Songâ gives it away. Thankfully thatâs not the only joke in the song; my favorite joke is the start of the bridge, or middle eight*.
One of the reasons I really enjoy this song is that the music and lyrics work really well together. The music is upbeat and kind of new wave pop, or at least as close as I can approximate with one acoustic guitar. In my head Iâm hearing something along the lines of Elvis Costello or Squeeze. On the lyrics side, I think they cover a lot of ground in 2 minutes, and itâs really fun to have the audience go along for the ride.
I hope you dig it! Iâll eventually work on a studio version where Iâll be able to explore those Costello/Squeeze inspirations to see if they work or if it goes in another direction. If you hear something style-wise in the song let me know! Sometimes a different set of ears helps find the essence of a tune ð
* song nerdery here: this song is in the classic AABA format (like Over the Rainbow and a million others) and the B section is sometimes called a bridge or âmiddle eight,â because itâs usually 8 bars in the middle of the song. In this songâs case it would be more like a middle 12 because itâs extended a bit, but itâs my favorite thing about this song because it changes the perspective of the story at the same time the music is departing from the main melody. Then we go back to the A section with a new perspective to close it out. Thereâs a lot going on in 2 minutes!
While Iâm back in the homeland of Waukegan, IL, getting ready for a couple of shows this weekend in Chicago, I took some time to head down to the city to check out some of the places I did comedy back when I lived in the city and starting my comedy career.
Some, ok most, of the places have changed since then, and it was fun, sad, and interesting to see what was in their places. Check it out!
Iâm looking forward to adding a new venue to my Chicago comedy history, the new location of The Lincoln Lounge. If youâre free Friday or Saturday, March 6 or 7, 2026, come join me!
When the calendar hit 2026 I made the stunning realization that Iâve been posting videos on YouTube for 20 years!
The Pachelbel Rant, my most popular video by a country mile, was posted in November of 2006, and the earliest video still up on my channel is episode 8 of my Life as a Comic podcast. The first 7 episodes are <no idea emoticon>
To commemorate I put together this video with some background on the Rant, other videos, and a few interesting tidbits from my 2 decades (ðĪŊðĪŊðĪŊ) on the platform. Enjoy!
I do! I send out an update about once a month and I just sent out the first one of 2026. Instead of recreating all of the info in a blog post, I just cut and pasted the bulk of the newsletter below. Mostly so the first post on my site isn’t from November of 2025
You should sign up! I only send about 1 email a month, I promise not to blow up your inbox like everyone other company in the world seems to do, and you’ll be up to date on the latest stuff ð
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Is the wave of end-of-the-year, Xmas, Black Friday, and New Year emails finally over? Jeez Louise, I’ve been so bombarded by promotional emails I can barely bring myself to do my monthly newsletter!
ð But here it is, I have found the gumption!
This year will mark the 20th anniversary of my first posts on YouTube, with the Pachelbel Rant video turning 20 in November, and that really boggles my mind! I’m working on some ideas to commemorate the milestone; it’s been an important part of my life and career and I love hearing how people have found and enjoyed it over the years. In the meantime:
Cover Tuesday is back Tuesday, January 13th, 8:15 NYC time! The theme is “Command Performance,” meaning the titles of the songs are commands, like “Don’t Bring Me Down” by ELO, though I won’t be doing that song because I’ve been warned that there would be protests. Plenty of others to choose from, like “Don’t Do Me Like That,” “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go,” “Gimme Three Steps,” and such. It’s the perfect combination of my strengths: dumb covers and grammar nerdery! You can reply to this email with requests/suggestions, i.e. ârequestions.â
For NYC I have an early warning for a show: Friday, Feb. 13 at ReCirculation Bookstore in Washington Heights (info below). It’s a great songwriter forum and I’ve been working on new songs that I’m excited to try out for the first time, which is a big step for me after my year of mostly creative hibernation.
ð I also have a car for the first time in a long time and my goal is to start doing more shows on the road, first around the East Coast and eventually more widespread. I even have a compact PA system that works well in small bars, performance spaces for about 40-50 people, or house concerts, so I’m open to venue suggestions!
Or maybe I’ll just throw the guitar and PA into the car and drive around looking for places to play, rolling in to some dusty, high desert watering hole filled with glum faces, breaking out the ax and asking, “who likes clever and jaunty pop songs?”
If I disappear without a trace, the above plan going horribly wrong is what happened.
Thanks for reading and be excellent to each other!
RobP
Last winter, while I was mostly skipping holiday stuff and taking care of my mom’s house out of state, I started messing around on my guitar trying to put together an instrumental version of Vince Guaraldiâs âChristmas Time is Here,â that classic mellow jazz piece from A Charlie Brown Christmas. By the time it started sounding good it was mid-January so Iâd missed my opportunity to share it during the actual holidays ð I set the arrangement aside with a mental note to try to post it in time for the holidays this year.
And I remembered to do it! In fact, I enjoyed working on the arrangement so much I attempted 2 more holiday songs: Mel TormÃĐâs classic, made famous by Nat King Cole, Merry Christmas To You (aka The Christmas Song, aka Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, the non-jolly Met Me In St. Louis version of which remains my favorite.
And if youâre a guitar player and want tabs of my arrangements, I made some! You can download pdfs of all 3 songs from my store, and if you wouldnât mind sending me $2 for the effort it would definitely help make my season bright. Theyâre intermediate level so if you’ve got a little guitar experience and are comfortable reading tabs you should have no problem with them. Heck, you can probably embellish them a little and make them your own! And if you do let me know, Iâd love to see what you do with them.
I hope you have a lovely holiday season and if you have a youtube playlist of holiday songs, I think these would fit right in.
And for you gearheads, Iâm playing a Gretsch G5622 into Apple Mainstage using the Boutique British Combo amp and the Boutique British 2×12 cabinet miced with a Dynamic 57. There’s a little room reverb using the Space Designer reverb plugin “Diffuse Hall” setting. My audio interface is a MOTU M4 ðĪ
Itâs been a while since Iâve had time to do a fun set of stoopit covers, a.k.a. Cover Tuesday, and if youâve been missing the fun and ridiculousness get ready to get âwild!â Weâre back on Tuesday, Nov 11, 8:15 NYC time on my twitch channel!
The idea came about when I was having a lovely conversation with Cover Tuesday regulars Neil and RickyRae and a song with âwildâ in the title came up. I thought âhey, âwildâ would make a great Cover Tuesday theme!â And we immediately came up with a bunch of ideas for songs that were fun, were from a lot of different genres, and most hadnât yet been covered on Cover Tuesday. Thatâs when you know itâs a good theme!
And Iâd been thinking about doing a couple Cover Tuesdays (Covers Tuesday?) before the end of the year, itâs so much fun to do and Iâve missed it. And with winter rolling in and people spending more time inside it feels like the perfect time.
So get your requests to me with a few days to get them show ready, you can either email me at info at robprocks dot com, or drop me a message on instagram or bluesky.
As you may now, things performance-wise have been slow for me lately. I’m still dealing with my momâs affairs, not to mention the life changes that come with saying goodbye to a parent. But I have started to tinker around in the studio, working on some new and new-ish tunes, hereâs a peek!
And last month I did a really fun singers in the round show that was streamed live from the stylish Milliron Studios here in NYC, check it out below! Also on the bill were Amy Englehardt, Mark Aaron James, Matt Gronert and a few guests!
My songs are at 23:00, 41:00, 1:05, and 1:30, but if you have time I highly recommend watching the whole thing, everyone’s really good!
Iâll keep you posted on when Iâll be doing more shows and putting out more stuff. And itâs a great time to catch up on anything you might have missed! My whole discography is right here.
Are you an American who wants to travel overseas but wants to avoid talking politics and the embarrassment of being attached to Trump and his policies? Then this is the song for you!
I wrote it back in 2017 and Iâm re-upping it now because Iâm feeling this times a million.
Hereâs the lyric video I just made for it. Listen! Laugh! Cry! Sing along!
And hereâs a karaoke version, so you can perform it at your schoolâs talent show! A local open mic! When youâre trying to filibuster fascist bills in the legislature!
And hereâs the original official music video from 2017, directed by Victor Varnado and featuring backup dancers!
While Iâm very sad this song is relevant again I am proud of the writing and arranging. I recorded the whole thing in my home studio and am particularly proud of the bass track. No timing tweaks! Just punched in where I needed to. Itâs so upbeat and frenetic I jokingly referred to it as the âcocaine bass line,â picturing a Tom Jones style lounge band playing a casino in Vegas in the late 60s and chemical augmentation being the only explanation for how the bass part was created.
So take a moment to enjoy the music, and then weâll get back out there to work to restore democracy.
Iâve been lying low lately due to some sad family news, but Iâm doing a few things! Like a Cover Tuesday tonight on Feb 4, full of songs with âlost,â âlosing,â or âloserâ in the title. It’s gonna be a fun set!
Iâll be streaming on my normal twitch channel and for the first time simul-streaming on kick.com, which is basically a twitch clone thatâs not run by Amazon. Will it be better? The same? Not even noticeable? Weâll see!
As for The Odd Rock Comedy Hour, itâs on hiatus for the time being. I paused booking the show when QED announced they would be closing; then they announced that they were staying open (yay!) but in the interim my mom passed away, so Iâm not gonna have the time or be in town enough the next few months to run a monthly show.
But! I hope to restart the show sometime this year, hopefully in Brooklyn if I can, weâll see. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, I hope to do a few more live stream shows. And my comedy special is still there, and as relevant ever!
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You canât make fun of American culture without making fun of the way we put commerce above everything. âThe business of America is business!â said one of our presidents*. So Iâm posting a couple of business-related songs from my recent special as standalone videos, mostly because they turned out really good and Iâm proud of them, but also because they compliment each other really well in a one-two punch of satire, digging into some of our underlying cultural beliefs that have formed this culture we’re swimming in .
The Invisible Hand of the Market! ðŧ
One of those cultural beliefs is found in the metaphor of the invisible handâthe belief that free markets are guided âas if by an invisible handâ to produce the most equitable distribution of goods and wealth and thus the best of all possible worlds. Itâs a belief held by those politicians who tell you regulations are the enemy of progress, freedom, and prosperity. They have an unwavering and almost religious belief that if you let people and companies pursue their self interest things will just work out.
When someone tells you âwe donât need laws telling industries not to pollute, the invisible hand of the market is in control!â it sounds less like economic theory and more like thereâs a shadowy villain organization like Spectre or Quantum called The Invisible Hand running things.
So thatâs why I wrote The Invisible Hand in the style of a James Bond theme song, with amazing video design by Steven Rosenthal.
Corporations Are People Too!
Another odd economic belief we have here in America is that corporations are treated like persons in the eyes of the law. Itâs why a company like Hobby Lobby can say they have religious beliefs that allow them to deny birth control coverage in their health care plan. And itâs also how corporations get away with spending billions to support political candidates: their money is considered speech, to which they have a constitutional right because theyâre persons!
This idea of corporate personhood gets so ridiculous I had to make fun of it the best way I knew how: with a sunshine pop animated video in the style of Schoolhouse Rock! Character design and illustration are by my good friend and great artist Dan Pavelich (check out his TeePublic store!)
If you want a little more backstoryâand more jokes!âon these topics check out the intro monologues in the full special! Or better yet, check out the whole special! There are songs about the Satanic Panic, Henry Ford, 19th Century minstrel shows and how they kind of relate to current laws that try to control the way we teach the history of race in AmericaâĶ
*the full quote is âthe chief business of the American people is business,â from Calvin Coolidge, 1925.
This year will mark the 20th anniversary of my first posts on 
For NYC I have an early warning for a show: Friday, Feb. 13 at ReCirculation Bookstore in Washington Heights (info below). It’s a great songwriter forum and I’ve been working on new songs that I’m excited to try out for the first time, which is a big step for me after my year of mostly creative hibernation.
Last winter, while I was mostly skipping holiday stuff and taking care of my mom’s house out of state, I started messing around on my guitar trying to put together an instrumental version of Vince Guaraldiâs â
As for The Odd Rock Comedy Hour, itâs on hiatus for the time being. I paused booking the show when QED announced they would be closing; then they announced that they were staying open (yay!) but in the interim my mom passed away, so Iâm not gonna have the time or be in town enough the next few months to run a monthly show.
You canât make fun of American culture without making fun of the way we put commerce above everything. âThe business of America is business!â said one of our presidents