Music – Page 24

There you go

Yay for me! Yay for a day off! I’m gonna make $564 every two weeks (before deductions)! It may not seem too impressive, but it’s $564 more than I was making before. And that’s if I don’t take any extra shifts. And speaking of that, it turns out that my shifts on both last Saturday and Sunday were extra, so I could have had the weekend off, but I didn’t really have a say in the matter. They just told me to come in on those days.

In other news, I finally did that article I was supposed to do last week. This is just my first day off since Friday, so I’ve had a lot to do lately. You can find it here. Or at least I hope so. I have a history of bad links.

I also bought Donkey Konga. God damn it’s fun. And I’ve become more accepting of certain musics. A lot of the stuff on there is poppy or not what I would normally listen to. The only songs I can’t stand are “Rock Lobster” and the children’s songs. I mean, they have “Bingo” on there, and it’s remixed in this “funky” new way with the kids yelling stuff like “Go Bingo, go Bingo” and “You can do it Bingo!”. You can do it Bingo? Geez, he’s Bingo, not Lil’ Brudder. He lives on a goddamn farm. He doesn’t need encouragement. Stupid Bingo. On the upside, there are some great songs on it like “Rock This Town” and the “Kirby: Right Back At Ya!” theme. And, it took me this long to figure it out, but the Pokémon theme is a kickass song. Sure, it’s a song about Pokémon, but it’s got a sweet guitar solo and, well, just awesome music. But yes, overall awesome fun to be had. Even the one of my brothers who doesn’t do much gaming at all thinks it’s a brilliant idea.

I guess that’s it for today. It’s been a nice little break, but it’s back to the grind tomorrow, and Saturday. Ugh, Saturday. So damn busy.

Everybody Konga!!

Sorry it’s late, but the new gallery is finally online. And it looks pretty slick. Or so I think. It’s not full yet, because there have been many distractions in my way, but I did get it up and running. And that’s all I really intended to do.

In other news, having a job has totally overwhelmed me. I didn’t even do anything today and my head is running in circles. Oh well. They did let me go an hour early, which segues nicely into the bigger events of the day.

First, and very most importantly, I went to Toys R Us. Why did I go there? Well, you see, there’s this thing I’ve been obsessing about lately. It’s what they like to call “Donkey Konga”. It’s not out until the 29th, but TRU conveniently has a demo station. So I went and I played the crap out of it. Well, maybe not that much, as I only played one song. But I do intend to go back tomorrey and have at it again. Anyway, the game is a blast. Even though I was only playing on “chimp” level, it was fast-paced and exciting. Through the whole jam session I was smiling and trying to restrain myself from really giving ‘er and acting like a lunatic in the store. I even used subdued claps when they came about so as not to attract too much attention. But Hell, that game brought me more joy than most things have lately. The only thing that upset me was that the demo didn’t provide any of the songs I wanted to play (read: the Legend of Zelda theme and We Will Rock You). Totally buying it.

But it got better. I found two really awesome things in the store, and I’m going to review them by the end of the week. Maybe you won’t see the awesomeness they bear, but I love both of ’em, and I’m glad I picked them both up without hesitation. But that’s all I’m telling you for today. Just go and enjoy the pretty pictures.

Band of the Month – September ’04

Yes, it’s that time again. Time for me to take a band and review it! Only, this time I kinda misjudged how much time I actually have to do it, so this one is probably going to be a little short and typo-filled. But in light of that little oopsie, the show must go on.

September’s BotM is one of my favorite (and apparently not too well-known) rock n’ roll bands, Firehouse. While most hair/rock n’ roll bands were having their best times in the 80’s, Firehouse started up (or at least released their first album) in the 90’s. Probably right after the tides of pop culture had shifted, and this could be why they aren’t quite as popular as say, Poison. Actually, I don’t really have any idea exactly how popular or whatnot they were, but nobody I know personally has ever heard of them, so I can only assume that they’ve spend most of their career just under the big time radar. Nevertheless, they’ve released a grand total of 6 albums, one hits collection and one live performance disc, spanning all the way from 1990 to 2003. Not bad, I say.

While I’ve never been able to track down any of these discs (and looking at the track lists, I know I’d pick up at least one or two), I have listened to a lot of their stuff, and I’ll just make various assumptions about some of the CDs. The first one, a self-titled debut (which seems like a rather common way to name a debut), is all-around pretty awesome. It’s got a lot of their best stuff, like “All She Wrote” and “Shake & Tumble”. Also in this little bundle of joy is “Oughta Be a Law”, which at first listen I thought was Motley Crue. Possibly my favorite song on the CD too. And then down near the end is without a doubt their best slow song “Love of a Lifetime”. The next release was Hold Your Fire, and I’ve only heard one song from it, “When I Look Into Your Eyes”, which is pretty good, but if I based it alone versus any of the songs off Firehouse, it really wouldn’t hold a candle the the first disc.

Next up comes 3. Short, appropriate, and to the point. Not generally what you look for in an album title, but it works well. Again, I’ve heard very little music from this disc, and I can’t make an appropriate judgement of this CD. But the few songs I have heard were pretty good, so the rest is probably along that track somewhere. Then came the hits collection, Good Acoustics. Haven’t heard every single song on this one, but it’s a hits collection. It has to be good if it’s made up of their best stuff. After that comes Category 5 which seems pretty good, if a bit out of order. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as though slower songs work best near the end of a CD, especially with rock bands, and this one’s got a really slow song, “Dream” right in the number 4 spot. But it starts with another of my favorites, “Can’t Stop The Pain”, so I’m not going to ding any points.

And that brings us to the live CD, entitled Bring ’em Out Live. This is pretty much a second hits album, just recorded at a live show. Then we get to the twentieth century albums, O2 and Prime Time, both which I have never heard a single song from. But I have read a couple reviews of them on Amazon and the reviewers seem to think that they don’t even come close to the stuff on the first two releases, so I guess that’s all I’m able to tell you about ’em.

As a quick conclusion, I love the music. It’s really not quite up to par with some of the bigger bands of the genre, but it could fill in in a pinch. I’d love to talk about what parts of the music I like, but I really have no clue what’s going on there. I’m not really licensed to review music. Anyhow, great band, and you should definitely download a couple songs to see what they’re like. And if you ever, EVER see one of their CDs in a store, you tell me. That’s an order. I guess this got a little longer than I expected, but there was quite a bit to say. And to make up for what’ll probably become a post drought (yes, this month will probably be pretty uneventful), here are some links that I fancy.

Ninja Turtles anime, reviewed – Yes, a Ninja Turtles anime. You will be 100% surprised at what goes on here. Unless you’ve seen it, of course. But still. Six pages of wacky Japanicised Ninja Turtles. I’m still in shock. And toying with the idea of squid ink pizza.

TMNT musics! – More turtles. A bit of an overdose for a normal people, but for a TMNT fanboy like myself, this is just icing on the cake that was that review. Oh, and they’re soundtracks and such from different TMNT stuff, like that live concert (which I have the original tape of!).

The Number 000 Blues – *sigh* Another webcomic. I’ve gotta stop reading new ones. It’s just too much to keep up with. This one’s a sprite comic about what goes on behind the scenes before and during the first MegaMan game. Pretty interesting for someone such as myself, probably mundane for someone such as yourself.

Spider-Man reviews crayons – If you thought the bullshit was done, here’s some more! Seriously, if anyone but Matt (except maybe -RoG- of I-Mockery) had done it, it would be stupid as hell. But somehow, it works and it’s hilarious. Must be another six pages here, but it’s mostly pictures.

A call to drivers and rockers

On a happy note, new article! But that’s not all that I have to go on about today. Plenty of whining, good news and bad news will now ensue.

Nintendo Fusion Tour? Damn, I need to go! Featuring Story of the Year, Lost Prophets and My Chemical Romance? Damn I need to go! Three other decent bands? Oh why can’t I go? Only the closest they’re going to get to me is Minneapolis and Toronto… My birthday is soon and tickets are 20 bucks. Somebody take me! OK, the money I can handle, but I’d still need a ride and someone to go with, and that’s where other people come into play. Right now it don’t really matter who. I just wanna go! Having no car/license and girlfriend sucks every once in a while.

In other news, I might very well be going to see Van Halen when they come here in October. I’ll be going with my dad and brother, but it’s freaking Van Halen. They are the band that got me into rock n’ roll. It’s just something I have to do as a man and a rocker.

Better news yet, the X-Box that’s been dirtying up the house has been sold! Huzzah! As soon as we get rid of these Windows-based computers, the house will be Microsoft free!

Bad news, I’m out of mini bagels. This isn’t really relevant to anything, but I loved those little things.

I know there was something else I was supposed to be mentioning about now… Ah yes, Wolf Pack Productions, my favorite anime subbing group, has teamed up with Planet MegaMan to provide torrents for several entire MegaMan soundtracks. Awesome opportunity, and a wise use of your bandwidth. You know I have them all already.

That’s about all that I needed to get out of my system today. Now if you don’t mind, I haven’t played Tales of Symphonia for like a week and it’s really starting to bug me. Ryan, away!!

In the nick of time!

GorillaMask.net has gone through a major change. It’s been totally revamped, and you probably wouldn’t recognize it at a glance. And to think that I stole the site layout for myself just more than a month ago. That certainly was close. I guess this means that I’m not directly copying anyone anymore? Oh well.

There is more than that little note afoot, however. Two things, to be exact. Firstly, and it’ll be more important to my friends than anyone who’s stumbled across the site and has kept reading for whatever reason, I’m going to stop drawing new Spare! comics. As much as I loved doing it, I’ve realized that this comic endeavour is more of a big joke than anything else. Ever since I started reading Penny Arcade I’ve wanted to write my own webcomic. Reading Real Life made me consider starting a new site devoted to the comic, but there are two major obstacles in my way:

1) My source material is gone. With no more school to attend (for the moment), I’ve got nothing to write comics about. Sure, I could try to make some up on my own, but looking back at the fictional ones that I’ve already done, they’re some of the weakest ones there (bar the “imaginary girlfriend” saga, I really like those ones) and I’m just not good at writing funny. If someone would like to write for me, that would be excellent, but out of the people I know, and no offense to you guys, we’d need a whole team of writers to get anything done.

2) No webspace. Yes, I have a few options, but none of them sit quite right with me. Making another site on Angelfire is not something I want to do. Hell, I can’t wait to find an alternative for this one. I hate having to rely on free providers. A friend’s webspace? No. That way, I lose a lot of immediate control. And I wouldn’t be able to put up spur-of-the-moment stuff like this. It just wouldn’t be right. I could make my hard drive into a web server thing, but then my site would be a number, and people are less likely to remember a number than a name (not that “Torrential Equilibrium” is easy to spell either…). Someday, I’ll buy space and a domain name, but as it stands, that won’t be happening soon.

So as it stands, the comic is dead. I’ve begun the slow and painful process of Painticizing them, but that’s not looking too bright as an option. Nobody would respect a webcomic done in Paint. I’m probably gonna get a scanner for/around my birthday, so I’ll at least have them all up for viewage in a month or so.

Now, onto the other thing I needed to rant about. Damn, I went on so long about the comic that I’ve forgotten. Well, I’ll just leave this then. My brothers and I have all decided to forsake our Christmas presents this year, and will instead be getting a new computer (hopefully) sometime in November or early December. Yes, it’s a long time away still, but I’m pretty pumped. Obviously, there aren’t any ideas on the table yet in regards to specs or manufacturer, but it’ll certainly be able to run Doom 3, so I think that “the shit” is a pretty good ballpark description. Personally, I’m most looking forward to the possibly huge (looking at 200+ GB) hard drive. Living with ~10 (considering space for other users) gigabytes of storage space is very hard these days, what with current games taking anywhere between 500MBs and 6GBs each. Now that I’ve let out enough geek for the day, I think I’ll go do something productive, like mowing the lawn. Yeah right.

Ah, Hell. Now I remember. Planet MegaMan is currently offering MP3s of the entire soundtrack to RockMan X Command Mission. A pretty good bunch of tunes, if I do say so. Not quite as great as the original NES games’ tracks, but enough to tide me over until the game is released over here in the West. Go and download them now if you want ’em, as they probably won’t be up there long.

New feature! Band of the Month!

Yeah, I think I need a new feature for the site. It really doesn’t have that much of it’s own personality yet. Mostly just taking ideas from other people and changing them up a little. But this one, I thought up all on my own. Yeah. Okay, it’s not original, but I don’t read any sites that have the same thing, so I’ll call it my own for now.

So here’s a brief rundown of how it’s going to work. Basically, every month I pick a band to do a short review on (and I mean short. I’m not sure how to review bands/music.). I guess for the most part, it’ll be whatever band I’m listening to the most at the time. Unless I’m still listening to the same thing two months in a row, in which case I’ll choose one at random. To kick off this little feature, I present to you My Chemical Romance.

I’ve honestly only been listening to them for 4 or 5 days, but I cannot deny that MCR is one kickass band. Plainly stated, they rock. Solid guitar work, some impressive drumming, and excellent vocals all wrap themselves together quite nicely to form one helluva band. The genre issue is a little up in the air with these guys, as they sound like they could be either punk or rock, while having a slight tinge of goth and/or emo in the lyrics. In the end though, genre doesn’t matter much, because they still kick ass.

A relatively new band, MCR has realeased a grand total of two albums in the last two years. While their debut I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love is a lot more praised by their fans, the new one, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge is in my opinion just as good as the original. While I haven’t heard most of the songs on Three Cheers…, what I have heard is just as impressive to me as the stuff off their first disc. I guess a good place to start would be taking a look at some of the songs.

I’ve listened to the entirety of I Brought You My Bullets… and there are a lot of things to pick out. First off, the apparent most popular song (and incidentally the first I listened to), “Vampires Will Never Hurt you” is a great song, but I don’t really see what the hype is about. I personally prefer the upbeat and ironically worded “Headfirst for Halos”. It’s fast, almost poppy (while retaining the hardcore), and the lyrics are the exact opposite. I’m not going to get into it much more, but they contrast with the music in an almost artsy kind of way. Another song that I like quite a bit is “Skylines and Turnstiles”. It’s mostly your basic rock, and I just find it more catchy than most of the other songs. “Drowning Lessons” is damn sweet too, but I find “Cubicles” to be a little irritating. An overall great album, with a good bit of variety without changing the way they play. Very nicely done.

At this point in time, I’ve only listened to two songs from Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, but I love the songs. One, “The Ghost of You” is one of those slow songs that isn’t a slow long, like Lifehouse’s “Hanging by a Moment”. It’s got a lot of emotion in it, and some of the best vocals that frontman Gerard Way has ever sung. The other song “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison” is a real grab bag of sounds. It starts off sounding reminiscent of Hoobastank’s “Can I Buy You a Drink”, but then quickly goes to a much faster paced and takes on a tone suited well to speed metal. Well, maybe not that fast, but the chorus is pretty damn fast. Oh, and the song kicks absolute ass. If you’ve never heard of MCR before and want to download something to see what they’re like, go with this one. It’s my favourite song from the guys, and it’s just (for lack of a better word) “fun” to listen to.

Now, I need to point out some general things about the band. The one thing that I really notice is that a lot of their songs have obscenely long titles. If I had a band, I’d use almost all one word titles, but that’s just me. I don’t know why, but this bugs me. I’ve never seen any bands with such a tendency, but then again, I haven’t listened to a lot of lesser-known bands. The other thing that I took note of right away is that most of the time, the vocals are particularly screamy. I’m not a fan of bands that scream a lot (how the Hell do I like Slipknot?), but it’s not too common to be annoying, so I’ve no trouble tolerating it. Lastly, it’s often hard to make out the lyrics. Not quite AFI hard, but if you like to know what they’re saying, you’re going to go through some frustration if you try to figure them out on your own. Me, I like to know the words so I can sing along, so I’m slightly annoyed, but like the screaming, I can brush it off easily.

Overall, My Chemical Romance is an excellent band, and for the sake of keeping it real, it would be a lot better off if they didn’t get the mass attention that ruins a lot of bands (see Good Charlotte, Serial Joe, etc.). They’re definitely on my “good enough to buy” list, and I suggest going to check them out right away, cause I’m pretty confident that 100% of my readership has never heard of ’em. Now, can anyone tell me if I’m supposed to use underline for album titles and quotation marks for song titles? I did it the other way for the HIM CD review, and I have no clue which way it’s supposed to be. I just never know. I’d use italics, but I find they’re too hard to make out with this font at this size.

Anyhow, that’s this month’s “Band of the Month”, and I hope that I can do this for at least a couple months before I forget about it. It seems like a good idea to me, and I like the feature, so I’ll be keeping up with it as best as I can.

BEST. CD. EVAR. And some other issues, too.

The title really says it all. I don’t buy a lot of CDs. Not to say that I burn them all (only OC Remix CDs these days…), but music just isn’t that big of a priority for me. I do listen to it a lot, but I’m rather satisfied with the library I have now. All I really want for it is to complete my Queen and HIM collections. And a couple days ago, I got one step closer. This here, if you can’t read the text on the pic, is HIM’s greatest hits CD, entitled “And Love Said No”. I can easily say that it is the best CD that I own, and possibly one of the best CDs that I’ve ever listened to. If you haven’t ever listened to HIM, go check them out right now. I know you have the tools to do so.

So why is this CD so great? Well that’s obvious. The music rocks. HIM is in a tied spot for my second favourite band (competing with Rammstein, Queen is #1) and there is nothing that could please me more than a CD comprised entirely of their best songs. “Razorblade Romance” was damn near close enough, but it does lack a couple of my favourite songs, particularly The Funeral Of Hearts. “Love Metal” was excellent too, but they both had their weaker points. This CD, as you might expect from a greatest hits CD, is indeed the finest bunch of their songs that you can find. It’s even got my three favourite songs; the aforementioned The Funeral of Hearts as well as Your Sweet 666 and Heartache Every Moment.

What’s even better, is that there are some totally new songs on the disc as well! Or at least that’s what I’ve been told. The title track, And Love Said No, is in my opinion one of the best songs ever, being possibly the catchiest rock song ever. And that’s quite a feat, as rock songs aren’t normally “catchy”. This is one you’ll probably be humming/singing for days on end, if you’re anything like myself. The other new track, a Neil Diamond cover by the name of Solitary Man is equally great. The original song is pretty good as far as old-type stuff goes, and HIM’s cover just totally blows it away. The only thing that could have possibly made the CD better would have been the inclusion of Endless Dark.

And that’s my two cents. Take a penny, leave a penny, whatever. I suggest going out to buy the disc if you know the band and like them at all, or just downloading a song or two listed above to see if you like them and then going to pick up the CD. It’s definitely worth the cash, but while I was searching for the cover, I found that there is also a 2 disc version that includes an extra track and a DVD bonus disc. I never saw this while I was looking around at music, but it’s not that big a deal. I got what I wanted, and even if I do miss out on a couple videos, I don’t mind. I still love this CD.

As for other things that I need to blab on about, I’ve noticed a couple defects in the site. For one, I don’t have a proper logo image. If anyone with any Photoshop-type skills feels like taking a little time out of their day to whip something simple up for me, I’d be very appreciative. I’d prefer to do it myself (I take great pride in being able to create great art), but I don’t have the necessary skills to make anything half decent through a digital medium. You’ve seen my art gallery.

Secondly are some things that I have absolutely no control over. The first is a little trouble that seems to pop up in the Opera browser. When I’ve table’d an image to the side of some text, it goes back to red, rather than that nice yellowy colour it is supposed to be. I’m not sure if it’s got this issue in any other browsers, but it works fine in Internet Explorer, and I’m not about to comprehend the stylesheet just so I can fix a problem that would affect a minimal amount of surfers. and the next problem stems from me using Angelfire as a web host. They’ve gotten rid of the ads, and instead have forced IE to open the search window on the side of the browser. It’ll happen each time you open a page, so you can’t close it and be done with it. Me, I’ve just pushed it as small as it will go and cope with it. After a while, it’s not so bad. I’m not sure if this affects other browsers, but it’s not such a big deal that it’ll cause mass disarray. And that’s really about it for today. I’m thinking about posting a nice review of Tales of Symphonia either tomorrow or soon and getting the rest of that Disney stuff out of the way, so make sure to check back regularly.

L’oiseau de bonheur

It’s not really related to my site in any way, but Planet MegaMan is now offering downloads of the entire RockMan Zero 2 remastered soundtrack. You may not be interested at all, but as a fan of both the MegaMan Zero series and video game music in general, I was pretty happy. It’s good stuff, and even if you don’t intend to burn it to CDs (like I did) you should listen to a couple tracks. Particularly 1-03, 1-12, 1-20 and 2-17. Well, all is said and done for now, so I’ll seeya later.

~Ryan out.

Triforce majeure

First, I finished an article and put it up. The first one with a background picture in a while to boot. I also added a few little/crappy pictures to the gallery to make up for the lateness. And third and finally I have to make sure you know about this remix. It is quite possibly one of the best pieces of music I’ve ever heard. So now that I’ve given you three (2.5 really…) things to check out in one day, I expect that you shouldn’t be expecting much for some time now.

~Ryan out.

Everybody to the limit

I’m not supposed to be making posts until later this month, but I just felt like I needed to let you guys have a little something to anticipate. In recent site news, I’ve gone over a few things and corrected a couple spelling mistakes, and there are two articles ready to be written. Pics and everything are done already, and all I have to do is write them. Expect to see the premiere of my comic soon, and I really really really want the “Strong Bad Sings” CD. So on the 25th, I’ll most likely be adding at least one new article and mayhaps some art or other stuff from my big English project. My teacher thought I was pretty clever so I’ll make sure to add eveything I see fit. And that’s all for today, folks. It’s off to play more Super Mario Sunshine with me!

~Ryan out.