2007 Pages of Fun Archive

Revisiting Old Music Part II (Bu-Ca)

My overview of my entire CD collection continues. Lots and lots of Cabaret Voltaire!

The Budget Girls - On a Tight Budget

Two screaming gals front this wonderfully crude and trashy garage rock outfit.

The Buggles - The Age of Plastic

We all know the hit "Video Killed the Radio Star" but there about 2 or 3 more songs on this New Wave disc that are just as good. Some crap too.

William S. Burroughs - Dead City Radio

The only way to appreciate Burrough is his spoken word recordings. He could read the farm report and it would seem meaningful. But, let's face it. His books are well-written but in the end, are just meandering, plotless garbage. In this case, the short format suits him better.

William S. Burroughs & Kurt Cobain - The "Priest" They Called Him

Painfully short and Cobain is there in name only. Mostly just feedback. Lame.

Cabaret Voltaire - 1974-76

Cabaret Voltaire at their rawest. Barely listenable.

Cabaret Voltaire - Mix-up

A few good tracks, but they hadn't quite got the idea that music needs some structure to make a person want to listen.

Cabaret Voltaire - The Voice of America

The first decent Cabaret Voltaire record. The noise begins to become more musical. Still, not for the feint of ears.

Cabaret Voltaire - Three Mantras

2 Long tracks make up this good early Cabaret Voltaire record. World music has begun to creep up into the noise-scapes.

Cabaret Voltaire - The Living Legends

A compilation of early recordings. Pretty good.

Cabaret Voltaire - Red Mecca

The best of the Chris Watson era Cabaret Voltaire records. Dark, dense and challenging. Not to be missed.

Cabaret Voltaire - 2x45

Almost as good as Red Mecca with more natural sounding instrumentation and some genuine grooves. A perfect transition into the next phase of their sound.

Cabaret Voltaire - Hai!

A post-Watson live recording of some of their early material. Surprisingly improvisational in nature.

Cabaret Voltaire - Listen Up With Cabaret Voltaire

A 2-disc compilation of early and mid-career tracks. Highly recommended if you want to hear some of their old material, but don't want to dive right into the hardcore stuff.

Cabaret Voltaire - The Crackdown

This record is the start of the funky, danceable era of Cabaret Voltaire's records. My favorite of their long career.

Cabaret Voltaire - Micro-Phonies

The noisier side of Cabaret Voltaire is almost completely absent from this recording. A solid record that includes the super-excellent "Sensoria" remix.

Cabaret Voltaire - Eight Crepuscule Tracks

A dreamy journey back to the noisy-era.

Cabaret Voltaire - The Covenant, The Sword, and The Arm of the Lord

Found sounds and noise are brought back into the songs. It's definitely danceable and funky but the added harshness is a nice change.

Cabaret Voltaire - Code

They really lay on the funk on this record, with pounding drums and electric guitar. The sound has once again been cleaned-up and minimalized.

Cabaret Voltaire - Groovy, Laidback and Nasty

Another dramatic shift in the direction of the band. This album is filled with traditional Chicago-house electronica and Mal actually sings melodies. In hindsight, a mediocre release, but a necessary transition into their electronica period.

Cabaret Voltaire - Hypnotised (cd single)

The best song from Groovy, Laidback and Nasty gets some remixing.

Cabaret Voltaire - Keep On (cd single)

More remixes from Groovy, Laidback and Nasty.

Cabaret Voltaire - Body and Soul

This record is a great improvement on the previous. Richard H. Kirk is beginning to get a handle on the computer music. The music still lacks some edge but is pretty good nonetheless.

Cabaret Voltaire - What Is Real (cd single)

More remixes.

Cabaret Voltaire - Percussion Force

A few remixes of "Don't Walk Away" and several new tracks. Highly recommended.

Cabaret Voltaire - Colours

The last recordings to feature the singing of Steven Mallinder. Along the same lines as Body and Soul with some further refinement in the style.

Cabaret Voltaire - Plasticity

Much of the spirit of the old Cabaret Voltaire has come back in this CD. The music is pure dance electronica, but there is a return to found sounds and exotic world-music samples. Alas, no more singing.

Cabaret Voltaire - Technology: Western Reworks 1992

They dip way back into their catalog to find songs to remix/re-record using the power of computers and such. The result as a dazzling mix of noise and beats. I think this record changed the way Kirk/Mallinder approached electonica. Perhaps one of the earliest examples of I.D.M.

Cabaret Voltaire - I want You / Kino

Remixes of the remixes.

Cabaret Voltaire - International Language

A collection of new songs continues to refine the electronica meets noise.

Cabaret Voltaire - The Conversation

Cabaret Voltaire's swan song is a sprawling 2-disc masterpiece. It ebbs and flows through various themes and closes with an epic 40 minute track filled with hypnotic sonic beauty. Awesome.

Posted on November 4, 2007 | Permalink

Revisiting Old Music

The past year or so I have been an iPod owner and have not paid much attention to my wall o' CDs. Well, the same songs are popping up just a bit too often during shuffle, and I thought it would be a fresh change of pace if I started popping in a good old CD every now again. To make sure not to miss anything, I decided to pull the CDs down for listening in alphabetical order. I happened to be listening to Big Sandy and the Fly-rite Boys when I made this monumental decision, so that's where I started.

So here's where I am so far: There's the aforementioned Big Sandy CD. It's listenable yet unremarkable rockabilly stuff. Next, a slew of Blonde Redhead records. The first two CDs, when they had a bassist, are the best. They start to get tiresome up until Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons which is when they start adding electronics and some weirdness to their songs. These were followed by my two Blue Hearts CDs. The first is their U.S. release, Blast Off. It's a collection of some of their best songs from their first 3 Japan-only albums. Amazing. Next is Bust, Waste, Hip which isn't nearly as good because the punkishness is toned down quite a bit. Moving on we have The Blue Meanies' Pave the World featuring fellow Nonagon'er, Tony on drums. Lots of ska rhythms and horns, without being a ska band. Bomboras, Savage Island is next with lots of organ tinged surf. Pretty good but not their best. Bongwater, The Big Sellout: it's funny, catchy and psychedelic all at the same time—a very good record. The Boogie Patrol Express La Polyester Fantasy is the only(?) CD from this early 90's Eugene, Oregon band. Straight-forward, ever-so-mildly ironic disco music, played expertly with real instruments by talented kids. Next, I have two wonderful Boss Hog CDs, Boss hog and Whiteout, both of which are great loud . Finally, we have Brian Brain's Time Flies When You Are Having Toast—A solo effort by then P.I.L. drummer Martin Atkins. This is a weird CD with lots of late 80's sounding synths in front of Atkins pounding drums. Some of the tracks would be at home on a childrens' record. It is about as far from Atkin's Pigface as you can imagine, but, you know what, I love this CD. It was 99 cents when I got it!

Well, that was shelf unit 1 of my big Ikea CD rack. I will report back when I get through the next section.

Posted on October 2,, 2007 | Permalink

Retro-Gaming Continued: Grim Fandango

My overview of the video game classics continues with the LucasArts adventure game, Grim Fandango. In many ways Grim Fandango can be seen as the high point of point-and-click adventures. The genre, at least as a commercially viable entity, has since retreated into the more uncomfortably geeky corners of gaming world—the gaming world's parent's basement as it were. Rather than calling these adventure games, these keepers of the flame prefer the term interactive fiction. The hardest of the hardcore scoff at the notion of representational graphics cluttering up the ASCII purity of a command prompt. However, even these holdouts can't deny the artistic vision and narrative brilliance of Grim Fandango.

If it wasn't for the fact that the game requires a user to click and solve puzzles, Grim Fandango has the makings of a Pixar-type animated feature. We all know the tried and true Pixar formula. Take a group of non-human things: ants, toys, cars, fish, etc. Anthropomorphize them, and show us the secret workings of their society when the people aren't around. In the case of Grim Fandango, we get to see the secret life of Mexican Day of the Dead statuettes.

Grim Fandango's Land of the Dead a fully realized fictional world, with its own set of rules and customs. The art direction is a combination of Mexican folk art and forties noir cinema. A host of these cinematic clichés get turned inside-out, and are transformed to work within the game world. The end result is an engrossing story that is fresh and unmatched in the repertoire of video game storytelling.

There came a point during play when I stopped caring about the puzzles, and was tempted to download walk-throughs just to get on with the narrative. Eventually, I did have to cheat a few times, due more to my ineptitude rather than my impatience. In addition, I did have a few adventure game hair-pulling-out moments during the course of playing the game—Grim Fandango does have its fair share of glitches. Most notably for me, there's a point in the game, very near the end, when, in order to pick up an object, the usual hit the enter key action does not work, you need to use the more specific pick-up item key (which I never used the whole game up until that point). There are also times when you are picking up objects just because you can, and you know there is a puzzle waiting for them somewhere. The metal detector comes to mind.

But, like I said, the story is enough to overshadow these shortcomings. I can think of a few great games that while I was playing, I felt like I was part of a story—Half Life 2 comes to mind—but, in hindsight, I couldn't begin to tell you what the narrative was. Let's see, something about a gravity gun and helicopters and physics puzzles. In Half Life or just about any first-person shooter you, as a player, are far more immersed in the world than you are in an adventure game. I mean this in the sense that your mind is tricked into believing you are within that virtual space. But in Grim Fandango, I never felt that I actually was Manny Calivera. Rather, I acted as his guide. I don't, in any way, see this as a bad thing. The designers took the time to develop (in the narrative sense), not only the main character who the player controls, but the dozens of side characters. You understand Manny's motivations and so you begin to have a vested interest in his survival and eventual triumph regardless of whether or not you feel truly immersed in the environment.

Grim Fandango is a computer game fully worthy of its legendary status. LucasArts really needs to get back in the adventure game business. The Nintendo DS is ripe for this type of game experience, oh, and PC users would like it too!

Posted on August 28, 2007 | Permalink

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Well, I just finished The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and I have to say that it does live up to the hype. I've always noted that whenever they come up with top ten lists of the greatest games of all time, this one is always near the top of the list. And by they I mean game reviewers and critics... you know, those bespeckled nerds who provide the four pages of non-advertisement content in the video game magazines. By the way, is it me, or is the top-ten list the primary literary device of these publications? Whatever happened to the plain old 500 word, rhet 101 essay about a topic of interest? If Swift were alive today would he be known for his Top Ten Most Modest Proposals... year after year, number one would always end up being Citizen Kane.

Anyhow, back to the point... which was, lemme think... oh yeah, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. So the game was pretty darn fun and, despite the crude 3-D modeling capabilities of the Nintendo 64, doesn't look too bad. I suspect, this is mostly because the artists weren't shooting for photo realism in their character design. The general design direction that Big Famous Japanese Video Game Designer Guy must have given his art team was to go for Hello Kitty and then bring it back just a few notches.

What makes this game great isn't the look of the game, it's the intuitiveness of the game play and the solid storytelling. It is billed as an RPG, but it never gets bogged down with the shortcomings of that genre: mainly inventory management and complicated fighting systems. Battles in Zelda require a smidgen of tactics, but mostly it plays like an action, hack and slash game. The real challenge of the game comes from the puzzle solving it takes to open up new parts of a dungeon and finding the weak point on the end bosses.

The simplicity in the mechanics allows for the story to be told in a way that never gets convoluted or dull. Admittedly, this isn't heady stuff, but it's enough to generate an emotional response from the player when one accomplishes his goals.

Now, the game is not perfect. It has its share of annoyances. For example, every time you pick up a bomb, you are given a 2 or 3 screen text dialog to read through. The second time you explained it to me was plenty, thank you. The camera would occasionally get obstructed by a wall, or, even worse, the baddie you were trying to vanquish. Oh, and a jump button would have been nice.

But these are minor grievances. This is a game you must at least try to play through once in your lifetime if you want to maintain your gamer cred. I would also highly recommend playing it on a PC emulator. You get much higher video resolutions than were ever possible on the actual hardware. Project 64 is a very good option if you ware using Windows. Also, most emulators allow for state saving, rather than the built-in save game mechanism of Zelda. A real time saver for a someone like me who has more games to play than time to play them.

Posted on August 16, 2007 | Permalink

The Triumphal Return of Robert Gomez's Unofficial Tribute to Planet Pimp Records!

Long ago, back in the dark ages of the Internet—say around 1997 or so—I put together a little tribute to one of my favorite record labels, Planet Pimp Records. Planet Pimp was a small label out of San Francisco that specialized in garage rock bands, but each release had a novelty edge to it, much to the chagrin of many a record buyer (and The Car Thieves). For example, at the height of the retro-surf craze in the mid-nineties, they released a 45 by the band The Phantom Surfers. This was one of the best known surf bands of that era, but their release on Planet Pimp consisted mostly of audience banter and a prank phone call. At the most there was about five seconds of actual surf music. Brilliant!

Throughout the twenty-five or so releases, there was a consistent irreverence and flat-out weirdness that really struck a chord with me. This was the early home of Neil Hamburger, and if you get his sense of humor you would also love much of what Planet Pimp churned out. The humor was pervasive not only in the recorded output of the label, but the packaging and marketing. With each subsequent release, you were introduced to the various characters—both real and made up—that comprised the Planet Pimp universe. First and foremost was the president of Planet Pimp Records, Sven-Erik Geddes.

As the nineties came to an end, for reasons unknown to me, Planet Pimp stopped putting out records. I was never able to find the last two Planet Pimp releases (if you've got a copy of Neil Hamburger's Tribute to Princess Di or Sounds of the International Airport Restrooms that you are willing to part with, please contact me!). I don't know whatever happened to President Sven-Erik Geddes. The closest I've come to finding out was an interview with Neil Hamburger in which he says, " Mr. Geddes has retired from the music business to concentrate on matters closer to his heart. That’s a nice way of putting it."

Whatever the reasons for its demise, the archeological/vinyl record remains; and I'm here to keep the virtual record of this fantastic moment in recorded music alive as well. I have given the old site a new, more comprehensive coat of pixel paint, gotten rid of the lame frame-based layout, and added tons of scans and samples. I plan to keep updating it with more stuff when I get the time—or when readers contribute something worthwhile. So without further ado, here is Robert Gomez's Unofficial Tribute to Planet Pimp Records!

Posted on July 31, 2007 | Permalink

Move Over OMG, Here's Something Leaner! Just WTF does BTG mean?

It's the latest craze sweeping the nation, and you heard it here first! It's the meme to end all memes. It's the acronymiest acronym around!

What is it? It's BTG! I intended it as a replacement for hackneyed OMG, BTG is my chat shorthand for "By the Gods!" A statement of amazement. A proclomation that you have been witness to the divine, usually in the context of having your ass handed to you by a 12-year-old in Counterstrike.

It's origin is from the great Harryhausen film, Clash of the Titans. In the film, Burgess Meredith plays Ammon, a Greek playwright and sidekick to Perseus... he is the ancient Greek version of C3-PO (and Bu-Bo is poor man's R2-D2). Throughout the film, Ammon utters, "By the Gods!" in amazement at the miracles Zues and company lay down on Perseus. Click Burgess to hear more examples.

Here at MoonRock labs we have also been researching other memes to. Here's a sneak peak: ROTCL, YG and HHJ.

So there you have it. A new thing to SMS to your peeps, BTG!

Posted on July 19, 2007 | Permalink

A Homebrew Atari 2600 Cartridge Design

Recently, I took the time to enter an art contest. It was sponsored by AtariAge.com—a Web site devoted to the the preservation of the Atari 2600 and other ancient Atari computers and consoles. They also are one of the few places that sell new(!) games for the Atari 2600.

It was one of these new, so-called homebrew games that was the object of the contest. The game is called Elevators Amiss and it involves running a tiny pixelized chambermaid up the floors of a hotel, trying to avoid the elevators that move up and down across your path. Think of it as a less complicated version of Frogger. The winner of the contest was to receive a copy of the game and a credit from the AtariAge store. That was enough to get me to give it a go (I've been eying the Joystick to USB converter for awhile now).

My approach to the design was to create an image that was dynamic and made you think you were buying a 3-D video action extravaganza... pretty much like every Atari game box tricked me into thinking when I was a kid. Looking back on past winners, I noticed that there were many entries that used some of the same design and layout of the classic games that Atari put out in the early eighties. In my opinion, such designs go against the spirit of homebrew Atari games. These games are not really about nostalgia, they more are about taking a near-dead platform and breathing new life into the system.

The hardest part about illustrating this game it that the theme of killer elevators doesn't work well outside of the constraints of the 2-D pixelated screen. My idea was to have the elevators flying through the walls and ceilings, completely dislodged from their elevator shafts smashing everything in their paths. In the image, the chambermaid is sprinting down the hall, just avoiding a crashing elevator car. Originally, I was going to give her a rainbow colored tracing of her movements trailing behind her (ala the Keystone Kapers box) but I liked my elevator painting too much to cover it up with action lines. Anyhow, here's the final product for your viewing pleasure.

Unfortunately, I did not win the contest. The winner was Nathan Strumm #1. It was one of the better ideas, but to me it doesn't capture the essence of the actual game play. My personal favorite was Patricio Cuello #1—simple idea, well executed with lots of colors. It seemed very appropriate to me. Check out the contest page to see all the entries.

Posted on June 5, 2007 | Permalink

Champaign/Urbana Music Scene and the Rise and Fall of Der Lugomen

Last weekend Nonagon took a little mini-tour to play a gig at the Iron Post in Urbana, Illinois. The town was buried, ball-deep in snow and was completely dead. All the old haunts have been sterilized, commercialized and bland-o-fied. From what we hear, gone are the days of Cham-bana's vibrant music scene. Sure, there are still some good bands down there, Triple Whip for example, and I hear the Poster Children are still alive, but the spark is gone.

All this said, our show was a blast, and we were very thankful to the people who brave the weather to come out that night. But cruisin' around the town brought back many reminiscences of gigs of years past. For me it was my college-years band, Der Lugomen. We only played out three times, but each show was an event to behold.

Der Lugomen was comprised of Robert Gomez (hey, that's me), John Burgess, Thom Burbrink (who now goes by the professional moniker of Frank T. Burbrink, PhD.), and an Alesis 16-B drum machine. Our music was much influenced by Big Black and The Jesus Lizard, basically that late 80s early 90s Illinois indy sound.

At the time we all lived in the same apartment and seemed to have endless hours available to us for dicking around and writing songs. We would have full-volume practice sessions in our 3rd floor apartment unit, and the neighbors never seemed to complain (at least not to our faces). All of our work cumulated in the release of 2 tapes full of songs. The first was a patchy hodge podge of songs entitled, "No Rules Barred." The second was our magnum opus, "Honky Lips."

I have put together a DVD of footage from our last show. Here's a clip from it that I posted on YouTube.

Der Lugomen only performed out three times. This show, at Treno's pizzeria in Urbana, was our first non-house party show and our last show ever. We basically played our songs while Thom sang, threw garbage and terrorized the folks near the front.

For those of you with good eyesight, you may be able to see Jay Ryan taking my shoes off. After us, Jumpknuckle played (featuring John of Nonagon), then Snapcase, and finally Hot Glue Gun. The local bands were all great. Snapcase was awful. Retarded NYC punk--they actually had guys on stage who would accentuate song changes by punching in the air. We theorized that they would have to pull the tour van over every couple of hours so that they could all take punch breaks at the side of the road.

If you are interested in obtaining some Der Lugomen music send me a note and maybe we can work something out.

Posted on February 27, 2007 | Permalink

More Videos from my VHS Archives

I'm beginning to slowly make my way through my old VHS tapes in search of interesting video to post and have found a couple. First we have a short clip from Ben Stiller's old MTV show. The MTV show was pretty funny, much better than the Fox incarnation that came along later. He really has the mannerism of Shatner down, but Stiller can't do the voice at all. That's basically the problem with most of Stiller's sketch comedy. He can write good sketches but doesn't have the impersonation skills (that Zoolander voice was freakin' awful) that define most of the recent American sketch comedy greats like Mike Meyers. Anyhow, enjoy this high point in his career:

Next we have the legendary performance of 3-D (Douglas Denevio... Denebio[?]) lip syncing to Paul Hardhastle's 19. I believe he won that season's competition--I hope he spent his $25,000 wisely. Anyhow, the numbers tell the story 30-30-30. We can only dream that we could as cool as Doug:

Posted on February 4, 2007 | Permalink

Sniggle's House

Ahhh... I finally realized that I can digitize VHS tape into my PC using my video camera as a bridge. This has allowed me to give bring back Sniggle to the world. I have many more goofy videos on file. Expect more soon! Fear comes from Satan!

Posted on February 2, 2007 | Permalink

My Virtual Garage Sale Is Open at eBay

Hey, we just moved to a new place and, in the process, I have begun to assess my junk collection. I have decided to start selling off some of my stuff on eBay. I will be posting items over the next few weeks. Please check out my auctions!

Posted on January 21, 2007 | Permalink