Earlier this year, this post caused a few chuckles. Who doesn’t love terrible old photos?
Certainly not me! So with pride, two more:
Lovely aren’t they? Thanks to my brother for fishing these out of an abyss 🙂
Now, some analysis. Obviously these two photos were taken at the same time as before, and painful as it may be to admit, the calendar dates it as 1987. The bottom picture (these were taken in my room) shows bits of the same posters as before. But there is now more to be seen, so much more!
For starters, in the top picture, in which I’m pulling off an early Monkey D Luffy look, the wall behind me is plastered in vaguely homoerotic art. Most prominent above me is a Depeche Mode poster (circa 1985), but I can also see Duran Duran, U2, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw and (dare I admit it?!) Wham. Can anyone decipher any of the other posters?
Ignoring my outfit for now (and frankly, for ever), let’s investigate what I hold. In my right hand is my yellow (yes, yellow) Sharp QT12 cassette player. This may have been my second favourite possession in those days. In the other hand? Well, lets just say this poster is proof for anyone who doubted this post (specifically the third-last paragraph).
But, as much as you’ll guffaw at the photo with me in it, the true gem for me is the lower of the two photos. Here we see a very rare example of my artistic skills of the day! On the dresser and back of the door you can see four pictures that I drew. The one partially cut off is an Alphaville picture, possibly the cover of Forever Young. The other three show my renditions of the following…
The white dragon from Caverns Of The Snow Witch:
The cover of Afternoons In Utopia, done in a very minimalistic style:
And a ‘Mezzodaemon’ from Fiend Folio:
If you look very closely, you can also see gamebooks in the little bookshelf in the lower left (under a statue of Mary)!
I love this photo. All the same sorts of things I rave on about now are right there – 25 years ago. I just love that I was drawing massive drawings of monsters from gamebooks and sticking them on my wall.
Next time I see some college nerd strutting his stuff, I can say with confidence “Let me tell you kid, I was drawing mezzodaemons even before you were born!” 🙂
He came out and started with ‘Shoplifters Of The World Unite’ – a Smiths song! – and we knew we were in for a treat. What followed was a setlist that contained the best of The Smiths and both the early and recent parts of Morrissey’s solo career. He looked and sounded fantastic. I could only hope I hold up so well at age 53 🙂
The venue was packed with an audience that skewed quite old! I’d say the average age was about the same as KLS and I, which means lots of old 1980’s Smiths fans were present! To say the audience cheered every time he played one of the classics was an understatement 🙂
The concert was about 75 minutes long, and after the band went off and the audience started demanding the encore, I mentioned to KLS that I was positive it would include How Soon Is Now, which is probably the signature Smith’s tune. And I was not disappointed! They came back on and played probably the best version of the song I have ever heard.
During this encore, security allowed a few lucky fans to hop up on stage and give Morrissey a warm hug. They were all guys, and some of them weren’t much younger than Morrissey! He was very gracious during this, and the crowd roared. It was quite a moment.
Rumour has it that this may be his last tour. He was so good it’s hard to believe him not continuing, but I don’t doubt he’ll never come to Albany again, so we were so happy to have seen him live. Definitely a memory that will last forever 🙂
Before I start, open this in another window and listen to it while reading.
That’s a piece of commodore 64 game music being played by the SID chip, which was the sound processor inside the C64. This particular tune was composed by one of the maestro’s of the SID, Ben Daglish.
Wizball was a another classic Commodore 64 game. In my opinion, maybe the best I ever played. It had great graphics, great gameplay and famous music. Listen to it here, and marvel that Martin Galway managed to coax that tune from a (now) 30 year old 3 channel sound chip! Apparently he based it on the work of Jean-Michel Jarre, but it just sounds like Kraftwerk to me. I was in my early teens when I played these games. I can recall for a long time having the C64 in my bedroom, and I’d often load up games (including Wizball) and leave them in the attract mode while I did other stuff. Cauldron 2 was another example (and another great theme), I’d be plotting my path via a map while listening to the songs. And Sanxion was another. In an interview I recently read with the composer of the Sanxion theme, he said that at the time he looked at his tunes and disposable. Not so Mr Hubbard, you and your ilk created an entire genre of music that persists today!
Game music is a funny thing. Much like songs by our favourite artists, the music of the games we play stick with us as well, and can trigger powerful memories. This post was originally going to be about SID music exclusively, but after starting I found myself thinking about – and then listening to – beloved music from a lifetime of gaming. Such nostalgia!
In 198X I used to wait on Hunter Street, for the bus, in front of an old arcade. This would not have been coincidence – likely the money for the bus was the only cents I had left after spending everything else in that very arcade. I even sometimes skipped food and drink for a few extra games. At the time of this memory, the arcade prominently featured Gauntlet II at the entrance, speaker turned up to 11. To this day, the theme tune evokes powerful memories of my youth.
Many of these games are almost lost to us now. I can’t easily play Wizball or Gauntlet II anymore. But the music lives on, and I suspect will live on longer than the games ever can. Some of the tunes have already become immortal, such as this one or this one. They were both composed by the same person: Koji Kondo. Games containing his work have been played by hundreds of millions of players, and his signature themes have become as important to the series they were created for (Mario and Zelda) that they have survived and evolved through 30 years of sequels.
18 years ago, when I reviewed Final Fantasy VI for SNES in my fanzine, with regards to the sound I said: “This game exceeds in every possible way!”
Even then I may have occasionally exaggerated, but with regards to this comment I can look back and say I was indeed correct. Final Fantasy VI was a masterpiece of game design, with incredible graphics, gameplay and innovative and complex game systems. That it has barely been equalled – much less surpassed – by the 7 games in the series since 1994 is testament to just how great it is. But what is perhaps most remarkable is that the best feature of the game is the story, and specifically the way the story is intertwined with the soundtrack.
Composed by Nobuo Uematsu, the music in Final Fantasy VI was not digitized, and all created by the sound chip in the SNES. Although only about 10 years had passed since the heydays of the SID chip and C64 music, you’d never tell by listening to what Uematsu managed to achieve from the SNES. Take this example, Terra’s Theme, which isprobably my favourite game music of all time (and yes, this is played by a SNES):
The game was loaded with impressive music, and many fans (including myself) would just pause the game to enjoy the music by itself. A pivotal and very emotional scene in the game was played out via an opera scene with modulated simulated voices. This signature scene (shown in full in the video below) is one of the most inventive and successful ‘cutscenes’ in game history – all realized with 16 bit animations and chip music from an SNES. Even watching it now it brings back powerful memories of the entire game. Because of how much I grew to love the music in this game, Final Fantasy VI was the first game soundtrack that I ever bought.
These days virtually all our music comes from computers. Since the technical limitations are gone, there is no longer a distinction between ‘game music’ and ‘real music’. Where once the composers had to create not only beautiful tunes, but also cram them into impossibly small amounts of memory or sound channels, now they can utilize complete orchestras and record as much music as their budget allows. And yet far too often game music is still seems to be an afterthought (especially the worst offending games, which just license charts hits and play them in the background). But the best games are often as good as they are not just because of gameplay or graphics, but because of music as well. I’m sure that 18 years from now the music of the games I remember playing at age 40 will still be strong in my memory.
The new Fields Of The Nephilim album is entitled ‘Ceromonies‘. It’s a double live album, with the songs recorded during gigs live in London back in July 2008. The package also contains a DVD containing some of the songs, but since the format is PAL I am unable to view it (without changing the region on my Mac…)
Each of the two CDs has it’s own name, ‘Ad Motem’ and ‘Ad Vitam’. The arrangement of songs onto each of the two CDs doesn’t seem to follow any specific criteria, and the full track listing covers the entire history of the band (original album the song was from in brackets):
– Trees Come Down, Harmonica Man, Preacher Man (‘Dawnrazor‘)
– Moonchild, Celebrate (‘The Nephilim‘)
– Wail Of Sumer, And There Will Your Heart Be Also, Psychonaut (‘Elizium‘)
– Shine, Penetration, Zoon (Wakeworld) (‘Zoon‘)
– From The Fire (‘Fallen‘)
– Shroud, Straight To The Light, Xiberia, Requiem, Mourning Sun (‘Mourning Sun‘)
Live albums are tricky things. Often released solely to extract a few extra dollars from fans between studio albums, more often than not they are listened to once or twice and shelved. Some bands are exceptions to this – I personally find Rammstein‘s live albums to be magnificent and almost better than the studio work – and the difference seems to be how creatively the band interprets their own music. Furthermore, live performances have a life that is not easily captured in a recording. I can still vividly remember certain things about many of the live performances attended more than I can remember exactly how I felt about the way the band played their songs that night.
Fields Of The Nephilim is one of those bands that, for me, evokes a Pavlovian reaction when I listen to their songs. It’s impossible for me not to think about my last year of high school when I hear Psychonaut, or recollect vividly the days of Newcastle University, The Hanged Man concerts and late nights out with friends when hearing most anything from Earth Inferno. Indeed, were it not for FoTN, I may never have met KLS! This band was the soundtrack for a very important part of my life, and always will be.
So listening to any Nephilim album is, for me, a good thing (well, except perhaps for the ‘official bootleg’ that was Fallen). That said, I’m sad to say Ceromonies may count itself amongst the ‘shelfwarmers’ as far as live albums are concerned.
The performances are great (the above video is from the included DVD), the packaging is great, Carl’s voice is (mostly) great, the recording quality is great and the songs are (of course) great. But the arrangements are where things get a bit iffy, and the selection of material is for me, disappointing.
Even though three years had passed since the release of Mourning Sun, the tour from which this album was recorded was to support the album so it’s not surprising that about a third of the songs are from that album. However, since I prefer the earlier (pre ‘Nefilim’) material, I would have liked more from that era. Song choice aside, the second disappointment of the album is how similar to the studio versions the songs sound. It’s been 20 years (in some cases) since these songs were first released, but some of these performances could almost be the studio versions with a bit of crowd noise added. And where a song differs from the album, it’s the same difference as it was two decades ago. One such example is Trees Come Down, which – will powerful and effective on Ceromonies – is a pale imitation of the version recorded in 1989 and immortalized on the Forever and Ever live bootleg:
And therein lies the biggest problem with Ceromonies. During their lifetime, this band has released almost as much live material as studio albums. So one would imagine another should not be forthcoming unless it offered something new. Ceromonies does not; it’s not as good as the 1991 live album Earth Inferno and not as good as either of the two live DVDs Forever Remain (1988) and Visionary Heads (1991). Yes it has new material, but the songs are too similar to the album tracks and (for me) of lesser quality (the superb ‘Mourning Sun’ excepted) compared to older works. More importantly, Fields Of The Nephilim is a widely bootlegged band, and even their most famous concert from the Town and Country club back in 1989 was bootlegged and released (as the very, very, VERY good live album ‘Forever And Ever’). Ceromonies therefore isn’t even as good as a live bootleg!
That said, I’m glad I got this release. Not only as a collector, but since it inspired me to dig out the old albums and listen to them again for the first time in at least a year. While Ceromonies may have been ultimately disappointing, it’s only because Fields Of The Nephilim as a band is so very, very good. I’m glad this new CD inspired me to once again realize just how good 🙂
