Music – Page 14

And they feed vegetarians to whales

Hmmm. It’s been a busy month, sort of. Busier week too. At least, I’ve been up to plenty; most importantly, thinking of what to say in this Band of the Month post.

A lot of people will stutter for a while, and flip-flop on the subject for a while, but if you were to ask me what my favourite band is, I’d immediately tell you that it’s Queen. I listen to a couple bands more often, but I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Queen.

You may wonder why if Queen is my favourite band, I haven’t featured them as the BotM until now. Because, quite frankly, I wanted to save them for a special occasion. And I think that special occasion took place just a couple months ago, though I didn’t really realize it until late August. See, I’ve always liked Queen (I have all their original releases, all their live albums, and most hits compilations), but I’ve always fallen back on their more popular content, like “Somebody To Love” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”. I had listened to all their albums, and it’s easy to see that their music changed a lot over time, which is officially a good thing, but I’d always go back to A Night At The Opera or A Kind Of Magic, never really listening to the fist couple albums. Big mistake.

See, my special occasion here is that I think my taste in music has finally grown up. Lately I’ve been eschewing the later albums for the first two, which I’ve come to see as the best of them all. Songs like “Liar”, “March of the Black Queen” and “The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke” now far outclass the likes of “Somebody to Love” and “Play The Game” in my opinion. I mean, I still enjoy the vast majority of Queen’s work, but the early stuff is really reacting with me lately. I used to think fantasy had no business in rock, but now I’ve come to accept it. Perhaps even like it. An increase in Led Zeppelin intake may be behind this change in opinion.

Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, Queen died with Freddie Mercury. Don’t get me wrong, Brian and Roger still rock on, and I guess Paul Rodgers is a pretty good singer, but it’s not the same. I know a lot of bands change up members all the time, but Queen was Queen for over 35 years, and without the original members, they might as well just be a different band. The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert kicked ass all over the place, but I’m a crotchety old man who hates change. So as much as I enjoy the band, that fandom lives only in memories and dusty vinyl records.

So those are the couple things I wanted to touch on. If it seems really disjointed and crappy, that’s because I’m a poor writer. But I got my ideas across, and that’s what I came here to do, whether they came across sloppy or not. Now go download the Queen discography. It’ll take like a week because it seems like they release the same hits album under a different title every couple months (the songs are also slightly rearranged), but it’ll be worth it. Or maybe just download the first album and then one hits disc, just so you can see the huge difference in musical style.

Tomorrow: Battling addiction!

What about the thieves?

I guess everybody knows that BioShock is awesome by now. If not… Get on the fuckin’ train man. I’m not really into shooters, but there’s so much to love about BioShock that there’s no way I could skip it. The funny thing is that for the longest time I just kept ignoring the hype around it, and a week before the thing launched I decided to give the demo a shot. It kind of goes without saying that the demo really sold me on it.

Most people just keep going on and on about how great the story is, but for me, it’s all about the atmoshpere. Honestly, I love playing scary games, even if they’re kinda bad in the gameplay department (except for Clock Tower 3, that was just awful), but BioShock is fun to play as well, especially given the fact that you can search like everything for items, and there are roughly seventy billion character upgrades of various sorts to collect. Incase you weren’t aware, I love to collect things in video games. One of the other less-mentioned things I like is that the harder achievements are challenging but not frustratingly difficult to earn, as they would be in oh, let’s say Crackdown. I really don’t even know what else to say. It’s a game you totally have to play. If I can’t convince you, read this review. It should do the trick. Made me want to buy the game a second time.

Oh! And also make sure to grab the soundtrack as well. It’s free!

Nobody can buy your love

Now, I know that in the spirit of choosing a band I like for each Band of the Month feature, I generally end up recommending the band at the end. I guess this time it’s a bit different. I want to invest all my energies into recommending the Pink Spiders right now, before I type anything else. Seriously. Here’s their MySpace page, go there and listen to “Easy Way Out” and tell me you didn’t get up and start air guitaring like the world was going to end. But yeah. Now go out and buy Teenage Graffiti because it’s like the single best album ever… released in 2006. It’s amazing though.

The first time the Spiders and I came in contact was on a regular ol’ day. It was like a week before (the now totally lame) Pandora started denying their service to Canadians. I was just listening to it in the background, and suddenly “Easy Way Out” came on and I practically jumped on the computer desk wailing on my air guitar and singing along even though I had no idea what the words were.

I may be exaggerating a bit, but that’s of little importance.

The thing to note is that right then and there I knew I had to listen to more of The Pink Spiders, and wasn’t I pleasantly surprised to find that they were good for more than one balls-to-the-wall rockout song. Their eponymous first album was easy enough to get my hands on, and I wasn’t going to complain about it, because it’s a pretty slick package. Plenty of great songs, mostly powerpop with some great rock ‘n’ roll influence, and most of them are good driving songs too. Their second album, Teenage Graffiti was a lot harder to secure, and when I did notice it, I was hesitant to pay the asking price because a third of the disc is recycled from the first album. Big mistake. All the retreads are cleaned up and rerecorded, and sound even better than ever. The fresh songs are completely kickass too. Most notable are “Adalae” which I want to describe as vaudevillian, even though I’m not sure if it’s the right word to use, and “Hey Jane” which is right near the top of my list of greatest ballads ever.

But seriously. I cannot see how anyone couldn’t like this band. The songs are just so damn catchy, and practically demand that you sing along. You’ve gotta be pretty closed off to not be able to enjoy what is pure ecstacy condensed into musical form. Again with the exaggerating, but I really want to sell this band, man! If even one presons starts listening to the Pink Spiders because I told them to, then the world will be a better place.

Bang your head

I’m a very happy Ryan today, as my copies of the Okami and Kingdom Hearts 2 soundtracks arrived this morning. Both are spectacular soundtracks, and I highly recommend both.

Yoko Shimomura’s Kingdom Hearts soundtracks have been one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed the games so much; as fun as the gameplay is, and as much as I love the grinding/collecting/creating aspect of the synth systems, most of that joy would be moot if there wasn’t a wonderful soundtrack to go with it. A lot of the music is comprised of remixed Disney tunes, but you know what? They’re often so good that that barely matters to me, and the quality of the original work is so high that the soundtrack is worth owning even if you dislike the Disney tunes. This being the soundtrack to the second game, it seems to me that there’s a lot more original stuff to, because there were so many more original environments in Kingdom Hearts 2 than there were in the original. At least, I think so. Taking actual numbers may prove the amounts are equal or at least really close, but I’m going to stick with my assumption. In any case, totally worth owning, and even moreso beause it was on sale when I bought it. Not so much anymore though. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I can’t wait to see what Ms. Shimomura contributes to the Smash Bros Brawl soundtrack. If her work on Kingdom Hearts (not to mention Super Mario RPG and the Mario & Luigi series) is any indication, it’s going to be awesome.

Now the Okami soundtrack, that’s a completely different beast (ha!). I didn’t realize when I bought it (though I really should have, because nearly all Capcom soundtracks have similar “issues”), but it’s five discs long. Why? Because along with the basic themes and BGMs, Capcom likes to add every little jingle and sting in the game on their soundtrack CDs. I’m not complaining or anything, but it makes it a little hard to quickly find the track you’re looking for, especially when everything – even the MP3 tags – are in Japanese. But hey, it’s totally worth it, because Okami has one of the best game soundtracks ever. Maybe you won’t like it because it’s all very medieval Japanesey, but I love it because it’s so enjoyable and relaxing. It’s the kind of soundtrack you can just turn on and do whatever to. Great for ambient music while cleaning, typing, browsing the internet, reading, whatever. Also I like that fact that nothing in my music collection (even the digital half of it) even comes close to resembling it. I can’t really recommend it to everyone, but Okami is my favourite PS2 game, and that should say enough.

Oh, and because it’s way too late to bother now, just consider this the replacement for the Band of the Month.

We’ve got a line in the sky

Needless to say, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80’s is fantastic. I mean, essentially, it is no different than any other Guitar Hero, but the fact that the soundtrack seems tailored specifically for me is very nice. Only 30 songs may seem like a gyp, but they’re wicked awesome songs. And hard as hell too. Some of the solos on these bad boys will murder even the most seasoned GH vet, and some, particularly “What I Like About You”, are just rough all the way through. It may lead you to believe that my life up until this point has been completely inconsequential, but playing “No One Like You” is probably the greatest thrill I’ve ever experienced. “Radar Love”, despite being the inferior White Lion version, also makes me go crazy. I almost feel bad that I’m butchering songs I hold so close to my heart. Oh well!

Other news? Spent the morning and afternoon with my car. Its muffler has been blown out for a couple weeks now, and today I went to get that repaired, and coupled with the oil change it got on Sunday, I’m assuming it’s a happy car. Also went and gave it a good wash down for the first time in months, so that’s good too. The little guy really pulls his weight around here, and I think he totally deserves the best treatment. Ergo, perhaps I’m not the best owner for it.

Ummmm… elsewise I’ve been hooked on Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology. It’s kind of like an MMO, just without the massive or the multiplayer, and less online. But the idea is to take missions, and form parties, and while it’s quite simplisitc, it’s really engrossing. Probably has a lot to do wiht the historically aweome battle system. And the fact that I can have Reid, Lloyd and Senel all in my party at one time. It’s a fangirl’s dream come true!

Lastly, I rented Transformers: the Game today. I’ll tell you how that goes later. Having loved the movie like a son, I’m hoping it’ll be decent.

I can see you

It would seem that the Toys ‘R’ Us “radio” is slowly turning into a bastion of horrible, horrible cover songs. First it was 900 bad versions of every Christmas carol back in November and December, but I guess those are to be expected. But once the Christmas garbage went away, things didn’t get a whole lot better. At first, it was a Godawful version of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed”, and that was enough to get me riled up, because nobody can sing that song as well as Paul. Nobody. Lately, it seems that a new offender has snuck onto the playlist, in the form of a mockery of U2’s “Pride”. And you know it’s gotta be bad, because I’ve never really liked U2 to begin with.

I can’t imagine that these bad covers will go away, and I know that more will amass in time, which leads me to my topic today: Women should not cover songs originally by men.

I know it sounds a little bit sexist, and it is, but you’ve got to respect that I actually have a somewhat valid point here. Beyond the two songs I’ve mentioned up there (which I forgot to explicitly explain were done by women), let’s take another example that hits pretty close to home. A while ago, Damone released a video of a cover of Billy Squier’s “Everybody Wants You“. Now, I love the original song, and as those who pay attention know, I generally like Damone. This is a problem because their cover sucks ass. Watch the video clip. Or better yet, just turn it on in another tab and keep reading this, because the video is even worse than the song. “But Ryan,” you say “It sounds exactly like the original!” You’re right, but that’s why it blows. There’s no inspiration here! They pretty much play the song note for note, and I cannot respect this type of cover. Even worse is that Noelle’s singing sounds so forced and disinterested, which is totally uncharacteristic of her. Half the reason I like Damone is because they have a vocalist who really seems to love what she does, but that doesn’t show at all here.

You could argue that this doesn’t fall into “covers by women” because the rest of the band is dudes, but it’s still kind of there. In fact, I bet if I hadn’t pointed that out, half of you would never have thought of it. Anyway, the point here is that in my experience, cover songs by women are sad husks of the songs they once were. I mean, it’s not like no women have any musical talent, but historically, men have been far more successful at crafting fine music, and when women try to emulate that music, it generally ends up as a garbled mess.

I actually had a lot more to say, with points and counterpoints and everything, but it turns out that if you want to say something and not look like a complete dumbass, you either have to know a lot about what you’re talking about, or do a lot of research. I have a pretty fair knowledge of music (taste being no factor), but I didn’t really feel like going the extra mile to make it really good. I hate research, unless I’m doing it for fun, and I don’t file “blogging” under “fun”. The really sad part about it all is that I was going to turn it around and get to the point where I would be discussing how the women who are really good at making music are overshadowed by prepackaged pop idol garbage, and my apparent sexual bias would be defeated, but no such luck. So let’s just say that any woman who’s achieved any degree of mainstream success in music sucks (except the girls from Heart), and that all the good ones are underground.

Also, uness you’re Paul McCartney, do the world a favour and don’t sing “Maybe I’m Amazed”.

Monkey magic

Was out at the cottage for Canadia Day celebratations. Happy belated, by the way. I’ll run up some general impressions/stories/whatever it is where you tell about a generally uneventful trip probably tomorrow or maybe even Wednesday. Now, more Ouendan chatter.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time away from Resident Evil 4 playing Ouendan 2, and while I’ve already mumbled a few uncoordinated sentences about it, I think it’s probably worth a revisit to pick out the more outstanding nucances of the series, and what makes it so much more enjoyable than the basic rhythm game.

I said last time I talked about Ouendan 2 that I had been apprehensive about the soundtrack, and why wouldn’t I be? My experience with Japanese music is shockingly limited, given my burning desire to seek out new music. And given that a lot of popular music in the North America region does in no way suit my tastes, I guess I was kind of expecting popular Japanese stuff to be equally off-putting to me. But quite to the contrary!

Not only do I find almost the entire soundtrack enjoyable, but a lot of the songs are really fantastic. The main factor here would be that even on the most basic level, Japanese music is so obviously different than North American – and even European – music, that it kind of falls into it’s own category. Our Black Eyed Peas are one of the few bands that feature constant simlutaneous male and female vocals, and they have a weird sort of sound that merges rap and pop. Mihimaru GT, on the other hand, has the same man/lady vocal schtick, and they also do the rap/pop blend thing. But depite the simlilar nature of the two bands, I cannot stand the former, and cannot help but be entranced by the latter. Plus, if we’re comparing Fergie to Hiroko, Japan wins hands-down. Ewwww Fergie.

And let’s not just skip past the really high points for the sake of making a semi-intelligent sounding post. Have you heard “Bambina” yet? If not, get that embedded video above loading on the double! Hotei Tomoyasu is nothing short of a musical genius, and I don’t doubt that everything he touches turns to gold (metaphorically, of course). That isn’t to say the rest of the soundtrack isn’t splendid as well; “Samurai Blue”, recorded by ZZ – apparently Japan’s answer to Fall Out Boy – given all the oh-oh-ohing – is fantasically catchy, and Mika Nakashima’s “Glamorous Sky”, when kept in the context of the Ouendan scenario, tugs at the heart like a box of abandoned puppies.

But the music in not the only thing that has really drawn me into the game. I discovered with Elite Beat Agents (Ouendan’s North American counterpart) that iNiS’ simple approach to rhythm-based gameplay was was fantastically addictive. Rather than confounding yourself with making sure you’re hitting the right button/fret/whatever it’s called on the dance pads, the Ouendan formula makes life easier by just having you tap beats in the right order at the right time. Of course, while the concept is simple, mastery of it takes time, practice, and most of all, good rhythm. That is to say, Jews are pretty much screwed. (jk jk jk I’m not anti-semitic!) When you start out, the beats will appear long before they need to be hit, but once you get up to the higher difficulty levels, they show up almost right when they need to be poked. And the fact that once songs get beat-heavy, the chains will start intertwining, and you’ll not only have to make sure your timing is right, but you also have to be careful that you’re following the numbers properly. Needless to say, it can get pretty hectic.

Of course, this is all before you factor in the ever-present “rhythm game life bar”. You may know it better as a “Dance Gauge” or “Rock Meter”, but it’s all the same thing; basically a bar present of the screen that causes you to lose if it’s emptied. The various gauges and meters in other rhythm games are pretty damn leniet, decreasing with a missed mark, and increasing with a hit mark. Ouendan’s is a little more evil. Rather than being static between beats, the life bar in Ouendan is constantly depleting, and at higher rates in higher difficulty levels. Missing a beat altogether will cost you a serious chunk of the bar, and on expert mode (“Magnificanet cheering”), hitting anything less than perfect beats will only serve to slow the trickle. One song in particular, “Believe”, is so slow that while playing on expert, I could hit every note (albeit not a perfect hit each time), and still fail the song halfway through because the bar was emptying faster than I could fill it. It took a long time, but eventually, I pulled of a long enough streak of perfect hits to make it to the end with but a sliver of life remaining. To put it simply, the game gets difficult. And it’s not like you’ve got a Star Power gauge to carry you through the rough spots either. No, if you want to play Ouendan to its full potential, it’s really a go-big-or-go-home kind of game. Like Bonk’s Revenge or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where you can only play through the whole game if you’re playing on the hardest difficulty setting.

So yes. I think that’s about everything I needed to say. Also, if you haven’t played them yet, or can’t see them for some reason, I’ve embedded music videos for two of my favourite songs from Ouendan 2 in between the preceeding paragraphs. Hotei Tomoyasu’s “Bambina” was an obvious choice, because it’s not only like the best song ever recorded, but the video is wicked trippy too. The second, featuring Sambomaster’s “Sekai Wa Sore Wo Ai To Yobundaze” is a great song too, and I really like the concept of the video. In conclusion, if you have a DS (or even if you don’t), import it now. Buy Elite Beat Agents too while you’re at it, because despite the somewhat sketchy track list, it’s still incredibly fun. And more sales mean more sequels, so hop to it!

My rock is in you

Back from my little vacation at the cottage. And just in time too!

My copy of Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii: Osu! Tatake! Ouendan! 2 arrived yesterday, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. I enjoyed Elite Beat Agents to no end (still play it quite a bit, actually), and I’ve gotta say that the J-Pop soundtrack in Ouendan 2 is far less of a problem than I’d originally expected. In fact, most of the songs are really good. And it’s maybe even a little harder than EBA too, as I’ve been playing “Sekai wa Sore o Ai to Yobundaze” on Hard for like an hour, and I still can’t manage to get past the last part. But then again, “Jumping Jack Flash” took me a long time to finish too, so maybe they’re equally difficult. We’ll just have to wait and see how far into Very Hard I can get on Ouendan 2.

In other news… Er, I don’t know. There was somehing else I meant to say today. OH! Wait… No, nevermind. I’ve long since forgotten, and I don’t think it’s coming back. That means time for more Ouendan!

I can get back on

It’s been June for a few days now, and with another week of vacation looming on the horizon, I guess there’s no better time to get the Band of the Month post done with is the present. This month? RUSH!

Yeah, that’s right. It’s mother fucking RUSH!!! I don’t know… I kind of get excited when talking about Rush, or listening to Rush, or thinking about Rush… Odd obsession aside, I obviously love the band. For a while back in the day I really couldn’t get why everyone seemed to like them so much, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I still don’t quite understand it, but Rush is up near the top of the list of my favourite bands.

What better time to do a Band of the Month on Rush than June? The answer: May. Seven days ago May to be particular, when they released their most recent album: Snakes And Arrows. I only picked it up yesterday (what in God’s name took so long?), and to tell the truth, I was really looking for Harlequin’s new disc, Waking The Jester, but had no luck there. Snakes and Arrows was technically my consolation prize… Damn. It’s odd though, because I’ve heard their new single “Far Cry” on the radio tons of times, and each time I said to myself that I should go pick up the CD, but it never really happened until yesterday. Odd.

Anyhow, Rush has a pretty nice place in mainstream entertainment too. Not only is “Spirit of Radio” the Trailer Park Boys Movie theme (not to mention that the Big Dirty Band was founded by Alex Lifeson and features Geddy Lee), but there was a whole episode revolving around them in season four; it remains one of my favourite episodes. The wicked instrumental piece “YYZ” is one of the most fun songs to play in Guitar Hero 2, and Fry’s “Rush mixtape” is one of my choice Futurama moments (right behind every scene with Zoidberg in it, and the entire “Roswell That Ends Well” Episode).

Official site

Rush on Last.fm

Wikipedia: Rush

Wikipedia: the Big Dirty Band

This song’s about anal

I got a frightening E-mail the other day, letting me know that Pandora would no longer be providing its service to Canadian interwebbers. I thought it was just a really bad joke, but it turns out it’s true. This makes sadness. I’m sure there’s some crazy garbage I could shove into one of my web browsers that would keep the site from detecting my location, but then I remembered that I have well over 25 gigabytes of music on my hard drive, and my CD count is coming around to about 200. So yeah. I’ll miss the occasional new bands that I like (gotta thank Pandora for Gary Hoey and The Pink Spiders), but overall, I guess sticking iTunes on random play is more than good enough to fill the void.

I knew he’d mention them eventually, but I beat Matt to the Shrek Snickerses by one day! So check that out to see what someone who knows how to work a camera thinks of them.

All the old people on the internet have really been abuzz this week. Why? Apparently everyone in the world already knew that ActRaiser is an awesome game, and they’re just delighted that it’s shown up on the Virtual Console. Me? I tried the ROM once, died and gave up. Turns out I missed out on a wicked game.So I plunked down the 800 or whatever Wii Points it cost, and I’ve got to say it’s my best purchase yet. Tecmo Bowl notwithstanding, in three days, it’s already the Virtual Console game I’ve spent the most time with, and considering I’ve got Super Mario 64, StarFox 64, and A Link to The Past on there, that’s really saying something. But yeah, ActRaiser is an Enix game, so of course it’s awesome. I’m hoping for maybe some Wonder Project J in the future… or even better – a new Wonder Project specifically for Wii! But God forbid Square-Enix makes a sequel to a totally original game when they can keep inundating the industry with more and more Final Fantasy garbage (and occasional Dragon Quest goodness).