Creepy Sleepy

independent music and independent politics: our victory is imminent

The Evolution of Creepy Sleepy

Creepy Sleepy was never an innocent idea. As pretentious as it sounds, Creepy Sleepy was born to provoke. Thomas Jefferson once said that it’s not only the right, it’s the citizen’s responsibility to call the government on it’s shit. Creepy Sleepy takes that responsibility seriously.

Creepy Sleepy ran as an hour-long radio show on 89.1 KBHU, the college radio station for Black Hills St University, from 1998-2002. Every Sunday night at 9, we (I was joined for a semester by my then-roommate Mike Torretta) would delve into a massive stack of CDs that had been sitting in a neglected corner of the station’s office. While I loved highlighting independent music each week, I felt as though the potential to make a statement was left unfulfilled.

In the fall of 2002, I moved to Northern California to work (pro bono, I might add) for a recording studio. I took the name Creepy Sleepy with me, in the form of an ASCAP-registered publishing company. For two years I worked (again, pro bono) for a few bands. Disenfranchisement with the music business came quickly. While this may seem embarrassingly self-evident (hind-sight, ya know?), the music business street wisdom that ‘hookers and blow’ get things done isn’t too far off the mark. What I found more surprising was the large number of people willing to lend advice, and in some instances mentor.

In 2004 the Creepy Sleepy Show returned to Spearfish with a vengeance. Comrade Bill (Dolque) Stodden joined the show, and became an indispensable part of it’s identity. Doq and I spent countless hours in the production room of KBHU creating production elements and show content that we hoped would communicate a message of both humor and political dissent. Along the way we interviewed former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, Senator John Thune, God, and covered the 2004 Presidential election. If we accomplished nothing else in that year, we throughly entertained ourselves.

Podcasting exploded in the late-spring of 2005. The concept of a more democratized form of information dissemination was appealing for multiple (and fairly obvious) reasons. While we continue to struggle with the idea of ‘democracy for the bourgeoisie’ (think about it: everyone is sick of the radio; only the privileged of society can afford a computer and an iPod), podcasting has allowed us to drop the shackles of radio, and create something truly unique. Dohq has moved on to graduate school, but remains a vital part of our spirit. The show was augmented by the addition of Doq’s brother, Derek, as well as a rotating cast of political dissidents including (but certainly not limited to): Hugh Tweedy, Cody Winchester, Josh Wolff, and Josh Cooke.

In the past year the Creepy Sleepy Podcast has been featured on the Daily Source Code with Adam Curry, Sirius Satellite radio and KYOU radio. Doq and I interviewed Senator Tim Johnson in May, becoming the first podcast to interview a US Senator. On first pass, this may seem a bit boastful (and we won’t deny that we do plenty on the show), but I tend to view it as a vindication of common man. I know that sounds pretentious as hell, but if I can do it, then you most certainly can. Seriously.

At the time of this writing, I look to 2006 with a sense of both apprehension and excitement. The President is wiretapping citizens, Google is fighting a subpoena that might force them to hand over our personal data, the dynamics of the Supreme Court are about to shift dramatically, and, of course, it’s an election year.

Additionally, we are leaving the friendly confines of our parent site, DiamondMineMedia.com (the home of BHSU professor Dave Diamond), and launching our own. CreepySleepy.com will launch in a few weeks, and our ambitions are lofty. We hope to aggregate the various blogs and podcasts in our small social network into one channel of news and information. Additionally we hope to sell albums from a few bands. The first, an LP by Life in Braille (www.myspace.com/lifeinbraille), will be sold as a vinyl album. The incentive is that if one purchases the vinyl record, we will provide digital downloads of the tracks for free. That way, one can have an artifact of the album, and still be able to load it onto an mp3 player.

We cannot, and will not, pretend to be a primary news source. We do not have the same credibility that a traditional media outlet does. Most importantly, we will not change the world.

However, we do have one powerful advantage. We have the ability to tell the truth; or, at least the truth as we see it. And so do you. And that’s the the point. May you live in interesting times.

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