Month: December 2012

Xmas Values/N-lite

2012-12-25, 10:42 am
Categories: Music

Think I'll take it easy on the blog today -- merry Christmas/Newtonmas/Tuesday/holiday of your choosing.

Anyhow, here's a video made by till593, to Xmas Values and N-lite.

In-Laws

2012-12-24, 1:27 pm
Categories: Announcements

My in-laws do not understand the concept of waiting until I am awake to be as loud as possible.

Loud hammering, from 9 AM to about 10:30. Sleepy now.

Not Only In It for the Money

2012-12-23, 10:29 pm
Categories: Music

I thought an article called Frank Zappa's not only in it for the money (By Derk Richardson, Bay Guardian, February 2, 1983) would make a nice counterpoint to that talk about the artist as a businessman.

Guess there's not much to it -- it's another piece about Zappa's appreciation of Varèse, with a sort of rote, more-than-slightly-condescending rundown of his career. Still, it's got some good bits and is worth a glance.

Business

2012-12-22, 11:21 pm
Categories: Movies, Music

Frank Zappa: Portrait of the Artist as a Businessman, by Rob Partridge and Paul Phillips, Cream, 1972. Courtesy once again of afka.net.

Frank discusses the business side of things. He was certainly a much savvier and more thorough businessman than most rock artists, then or now -- but his comments about what a good deal he has with Warner Brothers are an indication that he still had some hard lessons left to learn; he'd be singing a much different tune a few years later.

Advance Romance

2012-12-20, 11:01 pm
Categories: Music

Video's tough to watch but audio sounds better than the other live recordings I found. Upload by bongolampos, who says it's from a performance in Stockholm in 1988.

Motavia is Bullshit

2012-12-20, 9:50 pm
Categories: Games, Stream of Consciousness

Okay. So, big empty planet, with like four landmarks on it; the rest is empty desert with nothing but the same fucking three enemy groups, one of which you will run into every five seconds.

To get to where you need to go, you must:

  1. Talk to a guy.
  2. Talk to the same guy, a second time.
  3. Wander through the aforementioned big empty desert of constant annoying monster encounters until you find a cave.
  4. Go through the cave until you come up in a town.
  5. Talk to another guy.
  6. Talk to him a second time, too.
  7. Go back to the first town.
  8. Talk to a lady.
  9. Go back and talk to the first fucking guy again.
  10. Go back into the cave.
  11. If, and only if, you have talked to all those people all those times in that order, you will find a dragon hanging out at one of the dozen or so dead-ends in the cave.

So why does the fucking dragon not show up until you've done all that shit? Does he have, like, some kind of agreement with the village chief? Does he hide until the village chief calls him up and tells him "Hey, dragon, I sent some adventurers to go fight you"?

I haven't gotten that far into the original Sega Master System Phantasy Star. This is the PS2 remake I'm playing. But I assume -- hope -- this is merely a faithful translation of a profoundly stupid set of goals from the original 8-bit version.

But hey, memo to people making remakes? Automaps and item descriptions are awesome, but it's also okay to simplify down stupid, nonsensical bullshit so I don't wind up wandering the goddamn desert until I finally get pissed off and just look up a walkthrough.

Cavett, Part 3

2012-12-19, 11:18 pm
Categories: Music, TV

I've always loved the nuance, the sort of duality, to Zappa's philosophy on music: he's certainly got strong opinions on what he likes and what he doesn't and that the industry is a bottomless cesspit, but he also believes the bottom line is that people like what they like and that's okay. He writes deep, complex music and lyrics -- but sometimes he writes silly stuff like Dancin' Fool, and he thinks people who overanalyze Jim Morrison's lyrics are missing the forest for the trees.

Ultimately, he's a Serious Musician who has the good damn sense to understand you shouldn't always take music so seriously.