Rhyme of the Ancient Keyboards reminds us of the elder days of flared trousers, when men were men, beer was one and six a pint, and keyboards didn’t look like ironing boards. Just remember the wonderful music made on instruments like these.
I forgot to put this up yesterday, just like I forgot to get my article in by the deadline. D’oh!
Anyway, this week’s Carnival of the Vanities can be found at Kesher Blog!
Perverse Access Memory: WISH 35: Music
How does music influence your campaigns? As a GM, do you feel there are “soundtracks” for scenes, and as a player, do you perhaps have “songs” for characters? Name three songs that relate to favourite characters or situations.
Interesting question. I’m a big rock fan, such that this blog is as much about music as it’s about gaming, so this ought to be much easier to answer than it is.
I don’t tend to think of music for individual scenes in games, but I do occasionally hear songs that strongly remind me of characters, not only my own, but sometimes other player’s characters in games I GM. For instance, the song Paper Chains (The Crime Part 3) from the now-defunct British prog-rock band Grey Lady Down is to me the theme tune of Kalnyr, the demon-possessed wanderer of Kalyr. Not sure what his player would make of that, as far as I know she’s not much of a prog rock fan.
Of course, I have to mention the rock musician character I play, Karl Tolhurst. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to come up with a list of songs that illustrate how I imagine his band Ümläüt to sound. They’re influenced by the 1990s British goth-metal scene, including such bands as Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and most of all, Anathema. I actually bought several albums by these bands as ‘research’. Probably Anathema’s album “Alternative 4″ is the closest; when I first listened to that album, my first reaction was, “That’s Ümläüt!”. There is of course the infamous Ümläüt tape recorded by my brother, which Karl’s original GM (also Kalnyr’s player) stubbornly refuses to listen to. At the moment I’m trying to come up with a list of covers the band played before they started writing their own material.
Now I could try to link my first long term character, Mudgard, with Yngwie Malmsteen’s ridiculous “I am a Viking”. But I won’t.
Finally not so much individual characters, but a couple of songs who’s imagery evokes scenes from published game settings; I can’t hear Black Sabbath’s “Neon Knights” now without thinking of Malakim from In Nomine. And the song “Master of the Wind” from the mostly risibly awful but occasionally brilliant Manowar powerfully evokes the storm-god Orlanth from Glorantha.
projo.com have started a weblog about the Rhode Island club fire tragedy, collecting links to blog and news entries.
Following the runaway success of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of “Lord of the Rings”, filmakers are turning their attention to other classic fantasy works. One such work is Michael Moorcock’s anti-heroic dark fantasy saga Elric of Melnibone. So who’s going to do the soundtrack? Will it be Blue Öyster Cult, or will it be Hawkwind? (Link from Arthur Chenin from the boards of Pyramid Online)
I see via Scott that the Blogosphere has discovered the sick and evil individual Fred Phelps.
When somebody posted the URL of his virulently homophobic Westboro Baptist Church to the message boards of Pyramid Online, a few months back, I assumed it was a hoax site created to discredit lunatic-fringe fundamentalism. Sadly, I was wrong - the Anti-Defamation League shows that the site is ‘for real’. Addicted to Hate gives a long background story; a nasty story of violence, wife-beating and child abuse, in which ‘Pastor’ Fred Phelps proves to in the same realm of evil as Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin; all he’s lacked is the ability to practice his evil on a large enough scale.
Warning! Do not visit any of the above sites if you are easily offended. True evil is neither funny nor entertaining.
I’ve been a naughty person today. I said “Bollocks” to a Jehovah’s Witness.
He was giving me the standard speil about how the world was getting worse and worse, how crime was rising and the threat of terrorism was increasing. I cut him off before he reached the conclusion that this was proof that the ‘End Times’ were upon us.
I pointed out that, worrying though the threat of terrorism might be, it’s nothing compared with the horrors of World War II. How many million died in that conflict? And isn’t crime actually falling?
People, especially older generations, have claimed society has been declining throughout all ages. Wasn’t there a clay tablet dug up in Assyria from 2000 BC that read like a Daily Mail editorial?
I’ve read a couple of theories as to why conservative-minded people think like this. One is that children are shielded by their parents from the darker things of life; my parents were children during World War two, and I’m sure they were too young to realise the full horror of what was going on around them. Because children are shielded from things, when they get older some of them idealise the times of their childhood as an imaginary ‘golden age’.
The other theory is that the 1950s were a historical aberration, and really did have atypically low levels of crime and disorder, probably a consequence of a significant percentage of people at the more violent end of the bell-curve getting themselves killed in the war.
Or maybe it’s just a consequence of wider reporting of wars and tragedies by the media. Two hundred years ago we’d never have heard of events like the genocide in Rwanda. Probably fifty years ago it wouldn’t have the same level of reporting. And in the days before the Internet it would never have occurred to me that anyone I know might have been killed in the Rhode Island fire.
While I’m a Christian, I don’t believe in the literal “End Times” in the way that Jehovah’s Witnesses and other fundamentalist sects do. As far as I’m concerned the Book of Revelation is very specific to the times when it was written, and “666″ probably refers to the Emperor Nero. I certainly don’t believe the coming Gulf War II is the precursor to Armageddon.
Yes, Blogcritics has it’s own awards! The Critiquees - Blogcritics Music Awards. Needless to say I don’t have any of the top 10 albums of the year.
The Tories are imploding again. Michael Portaloo is having another go at their nonentity of a leader, Ian Duncan Smith. Read about it here and here.
Reading this article from Samizdata.net suggests the problem with the Tories goes much deeper than the personalities of the leadership, but a fundamental split in Conservative voters. There’s one group (who I’ll call Daily Mail readers) who are nationalistic, deeply socially conservative and hostile to immigrants and minorities, and there are a second group who are socially liberal but believe strongly in free markets. It’s increasingly difficult for a single party to appeal to both groups; any policy that appeals strongly to one will alienate the other.
I think Britain is due for another political realignment, along the lines of the one which eventually saw the birth of New Labour. Under our first-past-the-post electoral system such things are messy, which means we’re likely to be stuck with New Labour until the dust finally settles on the centre-right, which may take another ten to fifteen years.
It’s impossible to predict what will eventually happen; maybe the Tories will split and fight it out directly in the polls. Maybe the Daily Mail readers will win the internal struggle leaving the social liberals to drift away to the Liberal Democrats. Or maybe the social liberals will win out, leaving the Daily Mail readers to drift off, perhaps to the openly fascist British National Party, which is a scary thought. Or perhaps a charismatic leader will emerge and somehow unite the two wings.
Today’s Grauniad has an interview with the unrepentant new glam metal act The Darkness, which has an a lot of resonances with this article about jocks vs. nerds in American high schools (link from Cold Spring Shops). When you read the whole of both articles the resonances become clear.
“None of us have bought an album by a new band in 10 years,” says Dan. They shudder at the mention of indie. “The difference with rock is that it’s all about working hard, playing hard and showing discipline,” asserts Poullain. “Indie bands don’t have the ability to do any of that.”
Musically, they say, bands of their nature are simply more accomplished. “It goes with the whole uncool thing,” explains Justin. “You have to spend a certain amount of time in your bedroom practising your guitar. You can’t hang out and be cool. That’s why geeks are better musicians.”
The NME think they should be killed; presumably because they’re in total opposition to everything the NME stand for.
Only thing I can’t understand is the definite article in their name. The one thing all good bands have in common is the lack of a “The” at the beginning of the name, which is an indicator of punk or indie.
