lost all track of time

A couple of Fridays back, the wife and I had to make a trip to scenic North Reading on feral cat business. As we were already in Burlington on another errand, I decided to bypass the forbidden zone that is the I-93/I-95 interchange and take the back way, which involved heading down Cambridge Road (not "Street") towards the Billerica line then turning onto Route 62's serpentine path to glory.

It had been a while since I'd been down that way, and I was astonished to find that so little had changed in the past twenty years. The development boom of the past decade or so has completely transformed huge swathes of greater Boston's landscape. Communities that were considered positively honky-tonk when I was a kid, places like Billerica, Wilmington, and Tewksbury, have since become upmarket suburbs, and there is no open space so rocky, swampy, or otherwise tagged with liabilities that some ambitious developer won't clear-cut and terraform it into McMansion-friendly subdivisions. The local "boonies," as much I knew them from childhood, have all but evaporated into a single homogeneous sprawl radiating out from Boston to the edges of I-495 loop.

But not along Route 62, apparently, where old houses are encircled by forests of old trees, and even the post-WW2 ranch homes have gradually assimilated into the backdrop of the green. The corridor hasn't been entirely immune to the sprawl's encroachment, but compared to my old neighborhood in North Woburn, it has remained largely intact...a place where you still need to use your high-beams to navigate in the dark hours.

TWO WARPS TO URANUS!
(Granted, that also applies to the very developed and upscale town of Winchester, but that's because those rich motherfuckers are too cheap to turn up the brightness on their streetlamps. They're also too cheap to pay for trash pickup, which means you see assholes in Porsches illegally dumping their garbage in the Middlesex Fells Reservation.)

We passed by truck and equipment yards with unpaved surfaces bounded by pine trees, anachronistic retail islands at long-bypassed intersections, a poultry farm, and the requisite series of non-chain, locally-owned eateries with inexplicable names. (We also stumbled across the location of the local Wal-Mart store, suggesting that the honky-tonk aura is not so easily dispelled.) It's an odd thing to wax nostalgic over, but it's comforting nonetheless to know that the topography of my childhood exists in some form or another less than twenty minutes from my house. Until the next frenzied round of development begins, that is.

The sharpest jab of nostalgia hit me while were crossing over the Boston-Lowell train tracks by the intersection of Routes 62 and 38 in Wilmington. There, to the left of the road and beside the tracks was this place of many childhood pilgrimages...

Our Mecca, Lourdes, and Graceland rolled into a single seedy piece of commercial real estate.
I couldn't see what occupies the space now, but back in 1984 it was the location of "Trains & Games," the only arcade within reasonable distance of my North Woburn stomping grounds. I don't know which one of the neighborhood crew discovered the place, but once we knew about it, we hopped onto our off-brand BMX bikes and made the long trip to Wilmington whenever time, weather, and availability of quarters permitted.

The selection of games at the place was an adequate enough mix of perennial favorites (Pac-Man, Robotron: 2084, Dig Dug) and a handful of newer titles like Gyruss, Punch Out, and Mr. Do's Wild Ride. The arcade attached to the go-kart further up Route 38 in Tewksbury had a bigger and better selection, but it also involved biking an additional four miles each way. What Trains & Games lacked in diversity, it more than made up for in convenience. Plus the lone staffer behind the booth was far more laid back than the uptight eagle-eyed crew at the Speedway who'd show you to the door the moment your last token was spent.

Mr. Do's Franchise Fatigue!
Weekday afternoons were the ideal time to make the run, as the place tended to be packed on the weekends. The fact that most of the gang had strict dinnertime curfews made it tricky to pull off without split-second timing and frenzied pedaling.

Hit the ground running when the 2:45 final bell at the Linscott-Rumford rang. Throw your book bag in the porch and holler to the parents that you were going out. Meet up with the rest of the crew and zip down the old train tracks to the Wilmington line. Pedal your ass off down Route 38 for a half hour. Burn through a pocket of quarters in twenty minutes. Pedal back to North Woburn while ignoring the stitch in your side. Collapse on the lawn with five minutes to spare.

...and even if you could barely choke down your mac 'n' cheese through the dry heaves and heat exhaustion, those brief minutes of pixelized joy were totally worth it.

"You know what this game needs? A boss with a rape conviction and a penchant for ear biting!"
In the autumn of 1984, my family moved out of North Woburn to the center of the city. The additional four miles of biking required and the discovery that the local pool hall and bowling alley had game rooms (and were in walking distance) put a stop to my trips to Trains & Games, though I occasionally tagged along with a friend whose mom used to drop him off there. The last time I visited the place, sometime during my sophomore year in college, the arcade had gone under and had been replaced by one of the many lousy comic book stores that attempted to make hay during the 1990's speculation boom. It, too, went tits up a short while later.

Seeing the place after all these years brought back a flood of vivid memories -- nothing especially dramatic or important, just very distinct impressions of a time long past. I can see the shortcut to East Dexter Avenue in bright light of a spring afternoon. I can smell the muddy tang of the shallow stream that ran alongside the path. I can hear Steve Perry's "Oh, Sherrie" and Phil Collins's "Against All Odds" -- and I wish to Christ it would just stop.

I place a lion's share of the blame on Hot Hit Videos, an attempt by the local CBS affiliate to cash in on the music video craze of the time. The show's 4:30 PM time slot made it ideal cooldown time viewing after getting back from the arcade, but the programmers' fondness for AOR cheese has left me scarred for life.

If I have to remember the spring of 1984 through pop music, at least let it be pop music I actually enjoyed at the time...like these two tracks...

The Go-Go's - Head Over Heels (from Talk Show, 1984) - Goodbye, bubbly new wave....

Ratt - Round and Round (from Out of the Cellar, 1984) - ...and hello, ugly pop metal.

a champion of fools

A letter to the editor from the July 1983 issue of Blip ("The Video Games Magazine"):


A news item from the August 1983 issue of Blip:


Moebius - Video Soldier (from Video Soldier in a Radio War, 1982) - Martial chants for a digital age, an era when the battle lines were rendered in monochrome vectors set against featurless black voids and winning meant staving off inevitable oblivion for one more level.

(More on Moebius here.)

got your name, got your number

Like, those graphics are totally trippindicular!
It's 1983, and the home videogame industry is on the verge of a catastrophic collapse. The mad rush to cash in on the videogame craze has led to a market saturated beyond sustainability with substandard product. The bargain bins of Heartland Drug (oh, how I miss that place) are groaning under the weight of hundreds of unsold cartridges priced at a deep discount.

So how did C.B.S. Electronics choose to differentiate Solar Fox, its adequate port of an unremarkable 1981 coin-op title, from the rest of the hastily programmed contenders for the weary consumer's dollar?

By attempting to ride the coattails of an ephemeral popcult phenomenon engendered by a hit novelty song by Frank (and Moon) Zappa, of course...


Solar Fox: The TV Commercial
Solar Fox: The Comic Book Version
(clicking makes it even more bitchin', like totally)
Is the comic book ad an expanded "director's cut" of the television commercial? Or is it akin to one of those novelizations where the professional fan-ficcer author takes liberties with the source material? ("Chewie put a soft paw on Han's shoulder and gazed longingly into his roguish eyes...")

Unfortunately for C.B.S. Electronics, their tantalizing promise of "valley girl in outer space" action was sadly undercut by the utter lack of such within the actual game, and the "excitement" did end abruptly in 1984, when the company, along with most of the other cartridge mills, fell victim to the market implosion they helped bring about.

I was fairly oblivious to the great videogame crash of 1983-84 while it was unfolding, except as a beneficiary to the flood of Atari 2600 games marked down within purchasing reach of an eleven year old with a $10 weekly allowance. At $4.99 a pop, it was easy to build up a substantial library of cartridges. Even if most of the games were utter shit, one of the benefits of being a kid is that one's critical faculties tend to be rather lacking, which meant that even something like Space Jockey (hastily slapped together by the gaming wizards at Quaker Oats) could hold my attention for hours.

(Most of us grow out of such bottomfeeding habits as we get older. The ones that don't tend to be found in places like the scans_daily Livejournal community or the Newsarama forums.)

Occasionally I reget not holding on to my collection of 2600 cartridges, which was scattered to the winds in the great upheval after my mother passed away, but the feeling fades quickly after I revisit some of the more interesting titles via emulation software. Even the most dedicated retrologist is occasionally forced to admit that some things really are better left in the past.

Yeah, given the focus of today's post, I trust you're all probably expecting me to post "Valley Girl" by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa. The truth is that I'm not all that fond of the song, which I find more irritating than anything. Instead we've got the breezy new wave pop theme from 1983 Zappa-free film Valley Girl, which is my wife's default viewing choice when there's nothing else worth watching on cable...

Bonnie Hayes with the Wild Combo - Girls Like Me (from Good Clean Fun, 1982)

...and a sparkling synthpop obscurity...

Circuit 7 - Video Boys (from a 1984 single)

Friday Night Fights: Cannon Spike!

In this week's contribution to Bahlactus's never-ending battle, Cammy White, the Shadaloo assassin turned MI6 operative, demonstrates to a couple of thugs that wanting something and getting something are entirely different things.

(from the Super Street Fighter II: Cammy graphic novel by Masahiko Nakahira)
Of the diverse roster of characters in the Street Fighter franchise, Cammy is one of my favorites (tied for first place with Final Fight alum Cody Travers from Street Fighter Alpha 3). Maura attributes my fondness for the character as another example of this supposed "thing" she's convinced I have for petite blondes, but I would like to go on record as stating that Cammy's speed and Cannon Spike move make her ideally suited for carrying out the cheap corner traps and hit-and-run attacks that are the lynchpins of my winning SF strategies.

Then there's the whole Kylie-as-Cammy thing from Street Fighter: The Movie, which is the only reason I could ever bring myself to sit through that steaming cinematic turd...


Okay, so maybe there is some truth to the wife's "petite blonde" theory...

Kylie Minogue - On a Night Like This (from Light Years, 2000) - I make no excuses nor offer any apologies.

Kylie is, and that's that.

ain't gonna give anybody any slack

Surfin' the zeitgeist with my homies! Woooo!
...which is why I need your help in getting my old lady's car out of here. I'll pay you ten bucks.
Making the Wu-Tang Clan look like The Lettermen...
Tough, yet with a tender side that yearns for the embrace of a pair of firm, 'roided-out arms...
Of the many words that come to mind when I think "cat," "tall" is not one of them.
So come up with a comprehensive community policing plan, a source of decent-paying jobs, and a midnight basketball program, quick!
...and I won't stop until you get enough! Ooooh! That goes double for you, Martin Bashir!
PROTIP: When pursued by Nigel, take cover behind the sloppily-rendered streetwalker.
I'm (not really) sad to say that I wasn't able to re-establish law and order in Center City's BAD part of town, as the game's shoddy digitized graphics, piss-poor collision detection, and painfully lame attempt to exploit popcult trends were too much for me to bear. Honestly, though, any town that allows itself to be conquered by the Gloved One probably isn't worth saving in the first place.

Back of Tha Neck - Hangin' Tough (from the Rock Vegas Boston compilation, 2004) - In which the local hardcore lads pay homage to Beantown's proud musical legacy.

The Uniques - You Ain't Tuff (from Uniquely Yours, 1966; collected on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1998) - Yer grammer an spellin iz two gud fer you two be a reel tuff cooky. Mebbe this slyce uv Louisiana garage rok will stiffn yer spyne.

Fluke - Hang Tough (from Puppy, 2003) - But never forget the importance of staying chill. Let Fluke show you how to do so in style.

don't believe the honeyglaze

Do you know what has a very short shelf life?

Donuts. I bought a cream-filled donut at the bakery Sunday afternoon, and by the time I got a hankering for some greasy goodness on Tuesday morning the surface of the confection was covered in little green spots of mold. The sugar sprinkles were the responsible party; their capacity for absorbing moisture created an ideal environment for rapid spore growth. I was very disappointed by--

--wait, there was someplace I wanted to go with this before I got distracted.

Right, I remembered. The other thing that has a very short shelf life and has generated countless disappointments is shameless hype, the frequently unfounded hard sell presently euphemized as "buzz." I'm not talking about instances of retrological hindsight, like "sporting a whopping 4kb or RAM" or "at thirty-five pounds, this is the PORTABLE adding machine," that offer quaint glimpses into the march of human progress (or painful reminders of reactionary backsliding). I'm talking about "they'll know you've arrived when you show up in a Edsel" or "the long anticipated smash hit follow-up to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours" -- commercial foreplay of the most relentless variety that promises the sun, moon, and stars but results in the most anti-climactic, well, consumer climax upon the unveiling of the final product.


Even the most cynical and jaded among us have been there at some point in our lives. The promises are made, complete with breathy overreaching speculations made by the relevant pundits or authorities backed up with a smattering of cautiously vetted teasers released though official PR channels. Exciting jargon is coined and spread like manure (also known as "bullshit") to better cultivate excitement -- "Featuring unprecedented pixel-deform wraparound compression algorithms" or similar media-specific seduction talk -- which eventually grows and builds to a fever pitch of "NEED NOW! WANT NOW! NO DOUBTS!"


Then the end result lands like a wet turd in one's lap, resulting in a sense of bewilderment born of atrophied critical faculties ("Is it really that bad? Or is it just me?") which eventually leads to anger and disgust when it becomes obvious that, yes, the emperor is completely starkers...and sporting an astonishing number of dingleberries. (Think the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.)


To be fair, that's what marketing is there for -- to make our longings and anticipations override our better judgement. I'm less charitable to representatives of ostensibly independent (looking past questions of access or advertising revenue) media outlets like Entertainment Weekly, EGM, Spin and the like who relish in stoking hype's hellish fires, only to convienently forget their active collusion when the truth inevitably comes out.


The transition between "Jade Empire looks like it will be a groundbreaking videogame experience" and "Jade Empire is on track to be the unquestioned Game of the Year" to a three-out-of-five star review and a "Wow, Jade Empire was overrated bit of mediocrity" retrospective a couple years later takes place in a parallel universe where contrition simply doesn't exist. I cited that example because it was the first that came to mind. It's not exclusive to that particular medium by any stretch. (A certain comics columnist and a certain online movie "reviewer" both come to mind.)

Hey, if I have to live with constant reminders that I once thought Shampoo's "Trouble" was fit for an in-car mix CD, these individuals ought to have the decency to come clean about their roles in pimping House of M or Nickleback to an overly impressionable public.

Less offensive in hindsight but more amusing in shameless shilling and unadulterated hyperbole are the corporate-sanctioned organs of propaganda, publications like Nintendo Power or the late "newsmagazine" Marvel Age which radiate Glengarry-esque levels of desperation and false sincerity. Because, honestly, this...


...evokes more pity (and laughter) than anything else. We're talking about a "redshirt picked by Kirk for an away mission" level of pathos. As a nice bonus, the piece, which ran in Marvel Age #43 (October 1986), did contain what was probably the only Lene Lovich reference to appear in a Marvel publication:


Thomas Dolby did the soundtrack for Howard the Duck, and also wrote the song used as the theme for Misfits of Science? How could that film have been anything but a masterpiece? (Apart from being a completely and utterly misguided disaster right down to the sub-molecular level, that is.)

I guess the point of all the above is to remind people that, given the large array of forces out there whose life work is applying lipstick on pigs, it's in one's best interest to take a closer look at your partner before puckering up. (Also, if you don't plan on eating the donut you purchased right away, store it in a cool, dry place.)

T. Rex - Rip Off (from Electric Warrior, 1971) - Listen to Marc Bolan, for he speaks the truth.

Buzzcocks - Promises (from a 1978 single; collected on Singles Going Steady, 1979) - Even if it's personal, that doesn't mean it has to be taken personally.

Special Bonus Content:

Since I had my old issues of Marvel Age handy, I thought I'd share this little slice of sophomoric joy with you. It's from an article spotlighting the finale of the Vision and Scarlet Witch mini-series. Depending on one's world view, it features either the best or worst choice of words since Giant-Sized Man-Thing...

better rev it up and put it to use

Today we have an excerpt from Andrew's Notes on the Grand Unified Theory of Pop Culture:

Even before production finished on 1982's Nick Nolte/Eddie Murphy cuss word vector, 48 Hrs., director Walter Hill, screenwriter Larry Gross, and producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver has already started work on their next project, a "rock and roll musical" intended as a big budget follow up on the cult success of Hill and Gordon's 1979 film, The Warriors.

The end result was Streets of Fire, an art-directed mess of a film and one of the the summer of 1984's bigger cinematic bombs, grossing a little more than half of its $14.5 million production costs during its initial run. Frequently evoked as a poster child of the style over substance ethos and as a cautionary example of adhering to an "MTV" aesthetic, the film has since gone on to be a modest cult favorite, spurred on by countless showings on basic cable during the late 1980's and early 1990's. Fans of the film tend toward rabidity, while the unconverted tend to just shake their heads sadly whenever the subject is brought up.

It's not bad for what it is, a minor action/romance timewaster set in a very 1980's reimagining of 1950's Chicago. Tough but tender mercenary Cody (played by tabula rasa Michael Paré) returns home to rescue his old flame, rock goddess Ellen Aim (played by the stunningly gorgeous Diane Lane)...

...from a pack of fiendish bikers led by the lean and fearsome Raven (played by Willem Dafoe, who rocks the "shirtless in pleather overalls" look like no one's business). The battle between good and evil culminates with a sledgehammer fight beneath the El tracks, which is how more movies ought to end. (I'm talking to you, P.S. I Love You.)

It's certainly not the worst way to spend ninety minutes, and there's plenty of fun to be had in spotting the supporting cast members, which include, among others, Robert Townsend (as a doo-wop singer), Rick Moranis (as Ellen Aim's manager), Fear frontman Lee Ving (as Raven's lieutenant), Elizabeth "E.G." Daily (as a groupie), and the always welcome Bill Paxton (as "Clyde the Bartender").

The film's soundtrack also encroaches (cheesily, but still) on excellence, which is kind of important for a quasi-musical -- sorry, a rock and roll fable (as opposed to an acid jazz parable or a jump blues syllogism.) The only track from the score that registered on the popular consciousness was Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You" (lipsynched by a moonwalkin' doo-wop act in the film and music video) which made it into the Top 40 charts, making it a bigger success than the film itself. The Fixx and The Blasters also contributed songs, but the movie's signature sound (apart from Ry Cooder's distinctively twangy score) comes from the tracks "performed" by Ellen Aim and her band, The Attackers (played by Boston new wave outfit Face to Face), particularly the two bombastic rock tracks ("Nowhere Fast" and "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young") penned by Jim Steinman (the man who gave Meat Loaf his flavor) and performed by Fire, Inc., a front band featuring frequent Steinman collaborators Holly Sherwood and Rory Dodd.

Fire, Inc. - Nowhere Fast (from the Streets of Fire OST, 1984) - Judging it as a rock song, I'd have to say it makes a perfectly adequate show tune.

Ellen Aim's other overdubbed efforts featured vocal performances by Face to Face's Laurie Sargent and Maria (Lone Justice) McKee. Oh, and guitarist/Weird Al collaborator/pinball wizard Rick Derringer was also involved in some capacity.

(On a side note, the movie's title and ostensible inspiration were drawn from Bruce Springsteen's "Darkness at the Edge of Town," but The Boss balked over the proposal to have other performers rerecord the song for the film.)

As I mentioned before, the film tanked at the box office. "Tonight is what it means to be dead," remarked Joel Silver upon seeing the initial grosses, paraphrasing the movie's tagline. I can remember hanging out on the roof of a friend's garage with our neighborhood gang back in the summer of '84, arguing over what movie to see. We split along gender lines; the girls wanted to see Streets of Fire and the boys wanted to see (I swear, though the release dates don't line up) Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. The boys won, as much as sitting through a lousy Charles Band 3-D sci-fi flick can be viewed as "winning."

Though unappreciated upon its release, Streets of Fire went on to have a significant influence in Japan, where its hyper-stylized aesthetic dovetailed nicely with contemporary trends in anime. (You can't go wrong with bad boys and idol singers in that market.) The first installment of Megazone 23 features a scene where the principal characters attend a showing of the film, but the original Bubblegum Crisis OVA series took the homage a couple steps further with the character of Priss Asagiri...

...a rock singer-slash-cyberpunk avenger whose look and sound are directly patterned after Ellen Aim's.

Priss and The Replicants - Akuma to Tenchi no Kiss (from Bubblegum Crisis: Complete Vocal Collection, 2000) - A case of going one better than the source material, I'd argue. The band's name is a clever (well, I thought so) homage to another, equally art-directed 80's flick.

The trans-Pacific love for Streets of Fire wasn't limited to anime offerings, either. The lead designer of Capcom's Final Fight, the quintessential example of the co-op "beat 'em up" videogame genre, was very much smitten with the movie. That would explain why the game features a character named Cody, a scruffy street fightin' man with a more-than-passing resemblance to Michael Paré, punching and kicking through a city full of thugs in order to rescue his girlfriend. (He is assisted in his efforts by a ninja and a pro wrestler -- thus providing a wonderful capsule view of the late 80's zeitgeist. All that's missing is Fido Dido.) Personally, I lament the fact the game didn't feature a playable analogue for Amy Madigan's tough-as-nails mercenary character from the film.

After a nine-year abscence, Cody (now an escaped convict) went on to join the cast of Street Fighter Alpha 3 before appearing as a supporting character (and 'roided up monstrous adversary) in the excremental Final Fight: Streetwise. As of late, Michael Paré has been working with director (and I use that term in the loosest sense of the word) Uwe Boll in films such as BloodRayne (I and II), Far Cry, and Postal, which, I have to admit, is an even worse fate than the one suffered by his videogame counterpart.

...and that thing is not starring in horrible videogame-based movies made for tax write-off purposes...

awake unto me

I've started playing Dark Crusade again, which does a pretty decent job at capturing the fun of playing tabletop Warhammer 40k while eliminating the problematic aspect of having to deal with real-life fans of the wargame. Or the scandalous cash outlay required to field a respectable army.

(When I got into the hobby in the late 1980's, you could get a blister of four models for five dollars. These days, a single model can set one back in the neighborhood of ten bucks. And I though polo was the sport of the obscenely wealthy...)

Edwin Starr - War (from War & Peace, 1970) - Contrary to what the song tells us, war is good for many things -- boosting support for an inept president, lining the pockets of defense contractors, generating business for the manufacturers of body bags and prosthetic limbs, and generally promoting an environment of state control that would not be tolerated in other circumstances. It's important to keep a fair and balanced attitude about these things, after all.

John Leyton - Beautiful Dreamer (from The EP Collection, 1995) - Britain's answer to Edd "Kookie" Byrnes (and member of Joe Meek's stable of pop singers) does a swinging take on a Stephen Foster standard.

Tuesday Weld - Are You the Boy? (from a 1960 single; collected on Ultra Chicks, Vol. 3, 1998) - Not The Real Tuesday Weld, but the real Tuesday Weld, the starlet who played Thalia Menniger in Dobie Gillis and the object of one of my hopeless retro-crushes (along with Ann-Margret and Melody from Josie and the Pussycats), here doing her best Shelley Fabares impersonation.

but that's the way that it goes

Another minimal content post today, as my brother drove down from the Granite State and our day was spent checking out the local comic shop's half-off sale for interesting finds (and there were plenty, some of which will make their way into upcoming posts), getting batter-fried mushrooms and sandwiches from the roast beef place around the corner, playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance in co-op mode, and, as always with these sibling get-togethers, talking crap about comics.

For the final act of the day's events, I busted out my copy of Karaoke Revolution, strapped on the PS2 headset microphone, and barnstormed my way through this synthpop classic...

New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle (from Brotherhood, 1986)

...while brother and my wife bore witness to my glorious (if heavily accented and nasally) alto vocal stylings and spasmodic dance moves.

how the hell did you get here

It's been another busy Sunday, so I hope you'll forgive me if I keep this brief...


...or rather, "briefs." It's from the cornucopia of licensed crap dangled in front of impressionable tykes within the pages of Nintendo Power's 1988 holiday gift guide. As someone who spent the second half of his childhood in the mythical era known as the Eighties, the concept of merchandising extending its slimy tendrils into the realm of fine washables doesn't surprise me, though the sly conspiratorial tone of the ad copy did give me pause. "What happens beneath your acidwash jeans is between you and King Bowser, kid."

Even worse, my mind keeps trying to contextualize the ad in terms of this...



...resulting in crippling bouts of nausea and an utter lack of faith in a just universe. (I get the same feeling whenever I see an article or news clip dealing with Victoria Beckham.)

Please Agent #015, can you or your magic mullet tell me how one can escape from this existential crisis?

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start? Of course! Why didn't I think of that?

Pulp - Underwear (from Different Class, 1995)

The Go-Go's - Skidmarks on My Heart (from Beauty and the Beat, 1981)

where do we go from here

Nine consecutive boss battles -- four cakewalks, four tedious grinds, and one absolute pain in the ass -- with nary a savepoint in sight. Lose one, and it's time to start all over again at the beginning.

FUCK YOU, ROGUE GALAXY. If I hadn't already invested three days of my life in playing the game, I'd have snapped the disc in two.

Soft Cell - Frustration (from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, 1981) - Marc Almond feels my pain. Why do I find that so disturbing?

-----------------------------

I seem to know a lot of August babies. Is there something about November that makes it especially conducive to human fertility?

If I remember correctly, friend and fellow blogger Dave Lartigue of Dave Ex Machina celebrates his birthday today. Since I know Dave is a big fan of games (boardgames, that is) and music, I gathered together a handful of relevant tracks in honor if the occasion.

Rubella Ballet - Games of Life (from At Last It's Playtime, 1985) - The fun side of anarchopunk.

Pop Will Eat Itself - Games Without Frontiers (from Peace Together, 1993) - I'm still waiting on the grebo revival movement, complete a new line of mass-produced cyber-pirate-yeoman wear available from Hot Topic.

The Cardigans - My Favourite Game (from Gran Turismo, 1998) - I was this close to posting the bemani cover version of this track, but I was able to pull myself back from the Eurodance abyss just in the nick of time.

three times ten plus three equals cake and ice cream

Friend Kevin Church celebrates his thirty-third birthday today. I'm not exaggerating for the sake of praise when I say that BeaucoupKevin.com was a major source of inspiration behind my creating Armagideon Time. As someone who specializes in convienience and complacency, I find myself dumbfounded by the attention to detail and drive toward aesthetic excellence that Kevin puts into his site. The written content ain't bad, either.

Kevin also collaborates with the also-awesome Benjamin Birdie on The Rack, a mighty fine webcomic, updated multiple times weekly, and through some unnatural ability to manipulate temporal currents finds the time to also maintain Very, a blog dedicated to the pop music institution that is Pet Shop Boys. There's this, too.

Happy birthday, Kevin!

Cibo Matto - Birthday Cake (from Viva! La Woman, 1996) - A song with a strong message, and that message is "You really ought to go back and play Jet Set Radio Future again."

Underworld - Tin There (from the WipeOut XL OST, 1996) - Because Mr. Church digs the Underworld, and "Born Slippy" would have been too predictable.

Decoder Ring - Ether (from Decoder Ring, 2002) - Every party needs favors. This Decoder Ring comes from Down Under to impart sweet communications of rock-inflected electronica (or vice versa).

muay thai birthday

Darn, I almost forgot what day it is. Chris Sims, karate bear-kick Zen master and the man behind the always entertaining ISB, celebrated his birthday today.

In commemoration of this blessed day, I called in a few favors and scheduled a celebrity command face-kicking performance. Mr. Sagat, will you do the honors?



When he's not kicking Japanese schoolgirls in the face or plotting vengeance on his hated enemy Ryu, Sagat has been known to cut the occasional novelty rap single.

Sagat - Funk Dat (from a 1994 single) - I think it's the same guy. It's not like there are dozens of dudes running around with the name "Sagat", right? Though I always imagined him having a deeper voice for some reason.

where we’re going, baby, ain’t such word as no

Ah, Chernobyl in the springtime… The sunsets are to die for, until you realize that you're facing eastward, and the faint glow on the horizon is due to fission, not fusion.

Recently, I’ve been burning up a lot of free time playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl for the PC. The game, which had been in development so long that some were starting to write it off as vaporware, is an open-ended RPG/FPS hybrid best described as a cross between Fallout and the Elder Scrolls games. The premise of STALKER was loosely inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker, about a quest through a radioactive dead zone where even the laws of physics have begun to break down, but set within the real-world environment of Chernobyl’s “zone of exclusion.”

In the game’s alternate universe, the Chernobyl reactor experienced a second, more violent, meltdown, and the quarantined area has become a haven for looters, scavengers, and other predators, both human and inhuman. The player’s in-game avatar has been plunked down on the periphery of the “Zone” with no memory of his former life, only the crudest survival gear and a PDA containing an order to hunt down and kill someone or something called “The Strelok.”

While there is a sequence of missions to the further the overarching plot of the game, I’ve been content so far simply exploring the rather large and extremely haunting game world, with its not-quite-unpopulated assortment of ruined villages, farmsteads, and industrial areas, searching for caches of weapons and supplies, and picking (or avoiding) fights with some of the more unfriendly inhabitants.

The “Garbage” level, with its abandoned truck yards, trash piles, and heaps of abandoned building materials, reminds me a lot of the old North Woburn dump, before they capped off the landfill and built a Target store and Raytheon plant next to it. The verisimilitude extends to the stands of cat’o’nine tails poking up through scattered scummy microponds. Granted, the environmental hazards of that locale involved accidental chromium (or some other toxic byproduct of Woburn’s old tanneries) poisoning, rather than radioactive fallout or hidden gravitational anomalies.

It’s been a very entertaining, if frustrating experience. The free roaming aspect of the game, combined with excellent enemy AI scripting (human opponents will aggressively seek out cover and advantageous positions, the aggressiveness of certain creatures depends on the size of their pack) and draconian inventory management rules based on item weight, makes for a steep difficulty curve where quicksaving is an absolute necessity.

The game has some minor -- or major, depending on the OS and video card – bugs and stability issues (the current patch did fix many of the worst ones), and it can take a while to get it running smoothly at a decent framerate, even on a machine whose specs definitively exceed the ones recommended on the box. That’s par for the course in current PC gaming, however (and it will only get worse as Vista’s hidden eccentricities come to the fore over the next twelve months or so).

Tech hassles aside, STALKER is an extremely engrossing game set in an incredibly detailed game world, and it’s easy to burn away ninety minutes merely conducting house to house searches in an ruined Ukrainian farming village in hopes of turning up a unique piece of loot. Just be sure to scout out the positions of your enemies before starting a firefight. It’s always the fellow hiding in the bushes with a sawed-off shotgun who will do you in.

On to the music portion of our program:

It would take a massive environmental catastrophe to get me to post a track by The Smiths. Actually, this particular Smiths’ track was indirectly inspired by the Chernobyl disaster, or rather how the event was presented by Radio One. DJ Steve Wright followed a news announcement of the 1986 disaster by playing “I’m Your Man” by Wham! “Panic” was Morrissey and Marr’s response to that bit of callous frivolity.

Horrible, isn’t it? It should be obvious to everyone that when an atomic death cloud is looming on the horizon, the proper Wham! Song to cue up would be “Young Guns (Go For It)”:

Hey sucker, what the hell’s got into you?

Cesium-137, Iodine-131, and Strontium-90. Thanks for asking! Got any bone marrow I can borrow?

Wham! – I’m Your Man (from a 1985 single, collected on If You Were There, 1997) – If I was pressed to name the precise moment new wave music died, I’d hem and haw and offer several weasel-y qualifying statements before answering “The release of Wham!’s ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ single.” That first utterance of “Jitterbug” was the final nail in the coffin of the dark futurist and new romantic visions of the early 1980’s, and heralded the rise of a saccharine, day-glo dance-poptopia.

The Smiths – Panic (from a 1986 single, collected on Louder Than Bombs, 1987) – Carter USM covered this song on the b-side to “The Only Living Boy in New Cross” single and, as blasphemous a statement as this may be to Smiths’ enthusiasts, I prefer it to the original. Carter’s version added a level of invective bite that was sorely lacking in The Smiths’ original rendition.

sitting in a corner in imperfect clothes

I spent most of my Saturday playing the adequate PS2 port of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. It has the same “expansion pack” feel to it that Liberty City Stories had, although I’m enjoying it far more than I did that game. It’s no San Andreas, but it’s a decent waste of twenty dollars nonetheless.

The game also features a return to licensed soundtrack music, a feature sorely missed in the previous game. There’s a very nice spread of retro tracks covering all the expected genres. The pop and wave material is where my interest is greatest, and even though I have most of the featured songs already, it’s fascinating to see what selections Rockstar Leeds picked for use in the game. Three of the big 80’s pop axes are heavily represented: the Vince Clarke faction (with tracks from The Assembly, Yazoo, Alison Moyet, and Depeche Mode), the Trevor Horn combine (with ABC, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Art of Noise), and the extended Human League family (with Heaven 17, Human League, and Oakey and Moroder’s “Together in Electric Dreams”).

While a large portion of the material comes from bands featured on the original GTA: Vice City soundtrack, I was pleasantly surprised to discover “I’m in Love With a German Film Star” by The Passions on the tracklist for the Emotion 98.3 in-game “radio” playlist. It was sandwiched in between Elkie Brooks’ version of “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)” and “I Want to Know What Love is” by Foreigner, but the GTA series has a history of strange musical groupings. (“Sunglasses at Night” on Vice City’s “new wave” station and the Ozzy track on San Andreas’s grunge/alternative station both come to mind.)

Best (and probably only really) known for the ethereal pop of the much covered “I’m in Love With a German Film Star,” The Passions started with a fairly standard postpunk sound that developed into something that could be seen as a precursor to the shoegaze genre of the late 80’s and early 90’s. It’s possesses the same dreamy introspection, without the heavy accent on sonic effects and with a much colder tone. (A new micro-genre, perhaps? Entropic Proto-Shoegaze?) I’d venture to say that if you were to draw a triangle with Songs of the Free-era Gang of Four on one corner and My Bloody Valentine and pre-Lovelife Lush on the other two, The Passions would dangle precariously in the center, depending on which song was being played at the moment.

Here’s the band performing their signature song on Top of the Pops in 1981:



The Passions – I’m in Love with a German Film Star (from 30,000 Feet Over China, 1981)

The Passions – Man on the Tube (from Michael & Miranda, 1980) – This is an example of their earlier postpunk material, which echoes Delta 5, The Au Pairs, etc.

dead girls and enchanted firearms

I see pal CJ has decided to continue what he started over at 8-Bit Gadfly, and I applaud his decision to do so. I’ve reached a point where I’d rather read about lousy old videogames than make the effort to play them myself. (This is not too far from my attitude regarding current superhero comics, actually.)

Elemental Gearbolt is a high fantasy-themed light gun game developed by Alfa System for the Sony Playstation in 1997 and localized for the American market by Working Designs. The game’s plot deals with a rebellion against an overreaching technology-based empire, and unfolds over a series of anime cutscenes which play between the levels. It’s all very confusing, as the plot sequences flip back and forth between different time periods, all of which are wrapped up in the framework of a scholar-narrator’s long extended flashback about the events in question. While it may be tricky to figure out what the heck is going on at times, I appreciate the efforts by the designers to aim higher than the default “kill everything that moves” shooter genre backstory.

The game’s graphics were excellent for its time, although judging the aesthetic merits of old polygon-based PS1 games has gotten more difficult as time and technology progresses. Sprite-based graphics tend to stand the test of time better, either through detailed 2D artistry (Chrono Trigger) or iconic design (Robotron: 2084). In contrast, even the most sophisticated polygon-based PS1 game from a decade ago looks like a rather crude precursor of the fully-rendered, high powered wonders to come. That’s probably why the old PS1 games I still play with some frequency tend to feature prerendered backgrounds (Parasite Eve) or sprite-based graphics (Valkyrie Profile, the Suikoden games, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night).

The gameplay is pretty standard on-rails light gun shooter fare with a couple of flourishes tossed in to freshen things up. The player can switch between multiple fire options (rapid, strong, and spread) patterned on the elements, and the genre convention of reloading by firing off screen has been replaced with preset rates of fire. The player also has the ability to level up and alter character parameters between levels, which adds a very limited RPG feel to the proceedings. It’s a fun game, and has a certain epic quality that no other representative of the light gun genre can match, but in some ways that works against Elemental Gearbolt. It requires an investment from the player that runs counter to the “pick up a gun and shoot stuff” quick and easy entertainment ethos of the genre, best typified by the Virtua Cop and Point Blank series of games.

The game’s soundtrack, composed by Kei Wakasuka is outstanding. It consists of symphonic arrangements with heavy use of choral and wind elements that lend the affair a suitably epic, yet mournful tone. (You have to expect “somber” in a game where the protagonists are executed sisters turned into reanimated angels of destruction.) While this style has become de rigueur for RPG games, rarely has it been done this well. I don’t regret the steep price I paid for the soundtrack at all.

From the Elemental Gearbolt OST (1998):

Shou

Sei

Bu

broo broo skies

Years ago, before we were married, my wife and I used to kill time on Saturdays nights by watching Medford public access television. In the mid-to-late 1990’s, Medford Channel 3’s offerings were pretty unique compared to what was coming out of its neighboring communities. Where Woburn’s public access programming largely consisted of taped city council meetings and last Sunday’s First Congregational Church services, Medford provided a wide open platform for local auteurs to strut their stuff in interesting, if not always successful, ways.

One could tune in at any given hour and be treated to homebrew martial arts and horror films, sketch comedy of varying quality, a local scenester’s answer to Howard Stern’s and David Letterman’s shows, and my personal favorite, hour-long blocks of karaoke performances taped a local bar the previous weekend.

I have nothing against karaoke, per se, but I’m inflexible in my conviction that it depends on its environs to function properly. Performances that would be perfectly acceptable in the smoky, alcoholic haze of a dive bar or wedding reception become uncomfortably intimate glimpses into the soul when viewed via cathode ray tube in the comfort of one’s bedroom. The clips were presented without any context, which begged all sorts of questions about the folks onstage and goaded us into forensically reconstructing their lives based on their interpretations of popular songs.

What was the story behind the thick-necked, sunburned contractor-type who delivered a pitch-perfect rendition of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”? Was the overly cosmeticized thirty-something who slurred her was through Madonna’s “Holiday” a former Saugus club queen, trying to grasp a bit of the cocaine-and-vodka-fueled magic of her life before marriage, three kids, and mortgage payments brought her crashing back to earth?

We once caught someone my wife and I knew from college strutting her stuff in front of the camera. She was a nerdy, fantasy aficionado, and her choice of song, Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” sent the pathos meter crashing into the red zone, an unforgettable bit of spiritual voyeurism to which a long painful wince is the only logical response.

That brings us to today’s featured track, one I’ve been waiting to spring on you folks for a while now, but I couldn't come up with the proper context to do so. The song is “Sky High” from Takenobu Mitsuyoshi’s soundtrack for Sega’s 1993 hit videogame, Daytona USA. Although it’s my policy to shy away from describing music in the entirely subjective terms of “best” or “worst,” this song is, without a doubt, one of the most pernicious little earworms I’ve had the misfortune to encounter.

It starts off innocently enough; light, energetic jazz rock of the type familiar to even the most casual j-pop/anime/videogame fan. Then the vocals kick in, and the nightmare begins in earnest. I don’t want to seem ethnocentric here. My studies of the Japanese language were cut short when I realized I had a specific sort of tone deafness that prevented me from grasping the correct intonations and inflections necessary to master it. I knew I was over my head, and chose to bow out rather than to reach for something that would forever exceed my grasp. It’s not just linguistic either, if one’s vocal range is limited, the wisest course is to avoid ever singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If only the singer on “Sky High” had been as conscious of his own limitations. A singer with shaky grasp of tricky English consonants and lyrics that go out of their way to showcase said consonants is a recipe for aural damnation. “Frying high” and “broo broo skies,” indeed.

He gives it his best shot, however, apparently unaware of the horrors being unleashed by his vocal cords, and feels confident enough to toss in the obligatory “hey, ay, yo” soulful flourishes. I can’t help imagining Osaka’s reigning karaoke champion -- with punch-permed hair, a pencil thin mustache, and the finest fashions 1978 has to offer -- his hands pressed against his headphones and his eyes screwed tightly shut in emotive rapture pouring out his soul in the recording booth.

Wow. Now I feel a bit ashamed for making fun of the song…

All this obloquy might seem a bit much for something created as sonic wallpaper for a racing game, and if the experience ended with the “Game Over” screen I’d agree, but the song lingers, having used the game as a effective delivery system by which to permanently imprint itself upon one’s neurons. Hours, days, weeks later something will inescapably trigger the hard-coded mnemonic sequence, and you’ll find yourself softly humming and muttering “I want to fry, sky high” to yourself as you wait in line at the ATM or local Dunkin Donuts.

Or not. It might just be me.

Takenobu Mitsuyoshi – Sky High (from the Daytona USA OST, 1994)

face worker, a serpentine miner

My twenty-five year love affair with Dig Dug began, as many love affairs do, in the dark alcove of a Howard Johnson’s off Interstate 90.

Every summer, my maternal grandparents would take my brother and I with them on vacation, although perhaps “vacation” isn’t the correct word to describe these trips. My grandfather was a very kind, generous man, but he was also something of an odd duck. His idea of a vacation was to gather up everyone into his gigantic sedan and drive to a set point, be it a motel parking lot in Asheville, North Carolina or a plot of swampland he owned in north central Maine, then immediately drive back home (except in the case of the Maine trips, where he’d stop in to visit family and putter amongst the blackflies and mudholes for a couple hours).

Whenever we had to make a rest stop or the occasional visit to a roadside tourist trap or strip mall, my grandfather would park in the furthest corner of the lot and send my grandmother, brother and me in to do our business while he sat in the car. This being the early 1980’s, there were arcade machines everywhere, and I could always count on scoring a couple of quarters from my grandmother in order to keep me busy while she tried to keep my grandfather’s deliberately complicated food order straight, lest he fly into paroxyms of rage over finding too much relish on his overpriced hamburger. (She never succeeded, nor did my grandfather ever want her to, I suspect.)

It was during one of these stops that I played my first game of Dig Dug, and it was a case of love at first sight. The graphics were amazingly colorful and detailed in comparison to the minimalist black backgrounds in vogue at the time, and the dig-your-own maze aspect (“free roaming gameplay” circa 1982) felt like a quantum leap over the preset environments of other entries in the maze game genre. The ability to actively manipulate the environment of the playfield, along with the directly-controllable ability to stun or kill persuing Pookas (tomatoes with ski goggles) or Frygars (fire-breathing green dragons) with your in-game avatar’s air-pump weapon, encouraged a level of creative gameplay that contrasted sharply to the rote pattern recognition skills required to master a game like Pac-Man.

I spent the years following that fateful encounter practicing my tunneling and monster squashing/bursting skills whenever the opportunity arose. If I wasn't biking to the nearest arcade (five miles away, by the train depot in Wilmington), I was sneaking away from my Cub Scout pack at Canobie Lake and making a bee line for the secondary arcade (next to the fake rocketship that would play clips from Journey to the Prehistoric Planet while the operator banged the hull with a stick to add drama) where the amusement park kept the older, less popular arcade machines in search of a Dig Dug fix.

While I've cast off many (but not all, not hardly) childish things over the years, my affection for Dig Dug has remained constant. It's simple yet elegant gameplay and visuals have not lost their capacity to entertain me, and it makes a great de-stresser and mental palate cleanser whenever the need for either arises.

Plus, there’s a certain visceral thrill to be had in luring a conga line of enemies to a squishy doom via falling boulder. Some things never go out of style.

Here’s a medley of the incidental music and sounds from Dig Dug.

Chaos UK – Pump It Up (from Heard It, Seen It, Done It, 1997) – Thank you, Chaos UK, for sparing me the indignity of having to post the Elvis Costello original version.

The Jam – Going Underground (from a 1980 single, collected on Snap! 1983) – I have the same reaction to The Jam that I do to Strawberry Pop Tarts. I love them occasionally in small doses, but there is a clearly defined limit to my tolerance, past which the love quickly transmogrifies into nausea.

Lush – Outdoor Miner (from the For Love EP, 1992) – I debated going with Wire’s original version of this song, but ultimately decided in favor of something a little more obscure. Besides, we all could benefit from a little more Lush in our lives.