Though Penn has produced musical talents such as John Legend and Tammi Terrell, whose songs are heard by thousands daily, one alumnus now has thousands performing his song — on Rock Band.
Simsbury, Conn., native Matt Kap, who graduated from the College in 1997, is a member of the band Moving Picture Show, whose song “Perfect World” is available at RockBand.com for download for Xbox 360.
Kap, who began playing guitar at age six, performed in high school rock and jazz bands. When he came to Penn, he found it harder to find other musicians. He played in a ska band called The Benevolent Security Men with two other students who “said that they thought I was going to make it and be successful,” Kap wrote in an e-mail. “They believed in me.”
He also acted in student plays and a Penn television production called Locust Walk. In addition, he sang in Penn Madrigals, an a cappella choir that performed Renaissance music.
Kap and his band have performed at the South By Southwest concert series in Austin, Texas, and their songs have been played frequently on popular Los Angeles rock station KROQ.
At Penn, he created his own major focused on music composition. After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles and worked with a film score composer. However, “I quickly realized it was not the life I wanted to lead,” he said.
Kap began writing his own songs and quit working with the composer. Soon after, he met his current bandmates, and they started performing as Moving Picture Show. “It just kind of happened organically,” he said. He worked for a music publisher, a jazz record label and Disney “to keep the band going.”
Earlier this year, Rock Band employees decided to open songs for the game to a wider variety of bands, including those who were unsigned. Technicians created visuals to accompany Moving Picture Show’s song “Perfect World” for the game.
The song, which is the lead single on their new self-released album Studies Have Shown, was chosen as a download on the Rock Band website last March. “It was crazy the way [the opportunity] came about,” Kap laughed, as the experience was fast and unexpected.
Ironically, “I’m terrible at video games,” Kap said. “I’m kind of scared to see how badly I’m going to perform [our song].”
Kap described Moving Picture Show’s songs as “rock music you can dance to,” drawing inspiration from late ’70s and early ’80s bands and influences such as David Bowie, Arcade Fire and Peter Gabriel .
While the band’s music is danceable, “I’m a firm believer in ‘the songwriting comes first,’” he said. He went on to call his lyrics the “bare skeleton” of a song.
Though music in the 21st century is often confined to digital sources such as MySpace, Facebook and iTunes, Kap said “the only way to rise above the static is to play live.” The band has been playing shows along the West Coast recently, and is currently planning another tour. “We’re all East Coast guys,” he said, enthusiastic about the possibility of playing a show in Philadelphia in the future.
While Kap loves performing live, his favorite experience as a musician was the first time he heard his song on the radio. “There’s nothing like it,” he said. “It’s kind of a high.”
