REVIEW: World Motern Day Extravaganza 2
“You didn’t come to hear perfect music. You came to hear a lot of music.”
Honored with such titles as “Spotify Spammer” and “Genius Lunatic,” Matt Farley is a humble Massachusetts man who has graced the internet with more than 19,000 songs over his career. He sings about any and all topics under 75 different pseudonyms, including The Motern Manly Band, The Smokin’ Hot Babe Lovers, and The Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities & Towns. By his efforts and a smart assessment of Spotify’s payment algorithms, Farley makes tens of thousands of dollars a year on Spotify revenue alone.
So when I discovered an opportunity to witness this phenomenon in person, I took it. On Saturday, June 2, a friend and I trekked out to Danvers, Mass. to see his five-and-a-half-hour set held in a local historical building, an event dubbed World Motern Day Extravaganza 2.
What the 35 or so audience members attended was not just a middle-aged man’s garage band fantasy. Between his five sets of original songs, we received a complementary pizza dinner, mingled within the audience—which was required—and witnessed Farley consume his first hamburger ever. More madness ensued during the music: the actual monster from his famed film “Don’t Let The Riverbeast Get You!” joined the crowd for a mosh pit; Farley was blackmailed into signing his entire company over to his evil bassist, Chris “Pete” Peterson; and attendee Jon Cross routinely appeared to contradict Matt’s personal beliefs about the world: (“Hear ye, hear ye, the pyramids were built by people!”).
His seemingly endless setlist included such songs as “Hotwire My Heart,” “Dancing on the Beverly-Salem Bridge,” and “Marco Polo! Punch in the Face!” Matt played both solo and with the rest of his band, Tom Scalzo, Froggy (Doug Brennan), and Peterson, introducing each from beneath mysterious red and blue cloaks. While much of his music is silly and on-the-nose, some of his songs were very personal. In one written for his long-lost dream of writing a great American novel while living in a West Virginian trailer park, he repeatedly sings, “I’ve got nothing to say but I’m saying it anyway.”
But the most incredible part of the Extravaganza was not the performance, but rather the audience itself. Littered with familiar faces of friends and family who had starred in his multitude of films (the latest, “Slingshot Cops,” now available for free via Amazon Prime) as well as fans from far away, every single person there had a connection to Farley.
Belgians Melvin and Judy first heard Farley play on the Chris Gethard show. Two years later, the couple bought tickets to WMDE2 without making any travel accommodations, and Melvin even picked up another job to be able to afford the trip. Oli Harris flew up from Australia to attend World Motern Day Extravaganza. According to Harris, Farley encouraged him to pursue a “Southern Hemisphere version” of the Motern model, and has since released more than 7,000 original songs. Canada-native Peter Kuplowsky discovered his talent when he received Farley’s submission of his film “Freaky Farley” to the Toronto Film Festival, and was the only person who believed in it. Kuplowsky has since attended both World Motern Day Extravaganza 1 and 2. As Kuplowsky put elegantly, Farley is “someone who has big ambitions and big dreams, and he refuses to let reality discourage him—he just goes and does it, and in doing so has begun to transform his community of friends and families into an infectious mythology.”
I myself discovered Farley’s music six years ago. Two songs in particular (“Women Love Jared Padalecki a Lot” by Papa Razzi and the Photogs and “Chris Baio Plays Bass Very Nice” by The Passionate & Objective Jokerfan) caught the attention of my friends and I early in high school. Every time I’ve rediscovered his music since, I fall deeper into the world that is Motern Media.
The morning after WMDE2, all show attendees were invited to challenge Farley in both one-on-one basketball. Word has it he beat every challenger. Unfortunately, I could not attend.
Find Matt Farley and his many bands on Spotify and YouTube. For a complete list of his pseudonyms, films, and podcast episodes, visit moternmedia.com.
-Caroline Barry
