Promoting music a game for ‘Jewish Dave’

It's a bit past 9 a.m. on a recent Tuesday morning, and "Jewish Dave" Rosen is playing Tetris with severed limbs.

That's kind of what the gore blasted video game on his computer resembles, with Rosen twisting and turning various body parts to solve a puzzle of cleaved bone and flesh.

It's called "Musta Been Murda," which can be played for free at www.kongregate.com, taking its name from the first single from Rosen's latest horror/comedy rap disc, "Songs in the Key of Murder," a collaboration with New York City-based MC Randumb.

The CD is the hip-hop equivalent of a straight-to-video '80s slasher flick: knowingly campy, deliberately offensive, a guilty pleasure for those who feel no guilt in thrilling at the death of others (fictionally speaking, of course).

With production values as low key as the lighting in said films, it's an album with forked-tongue planted firmly in cheek (i.e., rhymes referencing everything from dead puppies to the "Human Centipede").

It's a lot of fun if you're the type of person who can actually tell the difference between the various installments of the "Friday the 13th" series -- and probably a little disturbing to those who can't.

Rosen has developed a novel way of promoting the disc with the aforementioned game, which he helped design (along with Canadian-based programmer Ryan Daugherty) and which features the album's music, with links to purchase it and free song downloads and other prizes for completing the game's 36 levels.

"Coming up with promotional ideas for the album, I started thinking of funny ideas that involve dead people and zombies and whatnot," chuckles Rosen, a good-humored, shaggy dude. "It opens up the music to a whole other audience. If I was just to go on a site like (Kongregate) and say, 'Hey, listen to my album,' they'd boo me right off it, whereas here, they're getting the album while playing a cool game."

Rosen, barefoot, sits in front of a bank of computer monitors in his bedroom, which doubles as a home studio.

A microphone stands next to a futon, beneath a rack of guitars, adjacent to a signed Guns N' Roses drumhead. Two dogs and a pair of cats intermittently chase each other around in circles, adding to the bustle of the confined space.

Rosen, who also composes movie scores and recently returned from the Sundance Film Festival where a short film that he did the music for was screened, does everything here, creating beats and recording his various projects (he also oversees the comedy rap groups D-Mize & Dee Rockz and Fa-Cock-Ta) as well as crafting sound libraries to be used in video games and motion pictures.

He self-releases all his work, and is, in many ways, emblematic of how life has evolved for contemporary musicians: Rosen can do everything on his own, no studios or record companies necessary, creating and marketing material, succeeding, or not, on his own terms.

The video game is a unique way of getting his music out there.

Next up is another one: possibly scoring a bloody B-movie brain eater flick.

"It'd be fun to see my music with a bunch of splattering zombies," Rosen grins, chewing on the outlandishness of it all. "Screw it, I'll do it."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.