Archive for August, 2002

Gen Con UK report, part 1

Thursday, August 29th, 2002

I’ve survived the first day of Gen Con UK, even if we made a complete mess of the GURPS Cliffhangers adventure. For once it was truly bad tactical decisions, not awful dice rolling which caused things like my character getting stuck inside a crashing plane. At least I didn’t completely miss the bad guys’ Zeppellin!

Don’t like the way the demo hall closes at 6pm, which means any in-progress games have to relocate if they haven’t finished by then. Fortunately there was a free table tonight in the CCG hall; probably by the weekend these tables will be filled with hordes of Magic:the Gathering players so such an option won’t be possible.

Full report on the rest of the con on Sunday - Tomorrow night I’m at the Pyramidian dinner at Belgo’s in Covent Garden.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever

Thursday, August 29th, 2002

Memetic Life has a collection of really bad metaphors allegedly from US High School essays.

The Computer can read your mind

Tuesday, August 27th, 2002

Either that, or it’s got speech recognition you didn’t know it had. Try this ESP Experiment!

No thinking traitorous thoughts, comrade. The Computer is your friend! Thanks to Twylyte on Dreamlyrics for the link.

20 Favourite Albums: Part 2

Tuesday, August 27th, 2002

Here’s the next five of my Nick Hornby-like list of 20 favourite albums.

Dream Theater - Metropolis II: Scenes from a Memory

Dream Theater are the pack leaders of the prog-metal scene. Earlier albums such as “Images and Words” showed they had the chops, even though some of the songs turned into poorly-structured jams. They progressed through the darker and heavier “Awake”, and the tighter, more radio-friendly “Falling Into Infinity”. Their masterpiece, “Metropolis II” combines the best elements of these three preceding albums, and shows how they’ve developed compositional and arrangement skills to match their undoubted instrumental virtuosity. It goes without saying that this is a concept album, the theme being memories of past lives, and a murder mystery.

Genesis - Selling England by the Pound

I’ve reviewed this album on this blog before. I find it difficult to choose between this and “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”; both show the band at their peak, before Peter Gabriel left and the band began to turn away to a more commercial, blander direction. This is what 70s prog-rock was all about; Peter Gabriel’s sometimes surreal lyrics, complex classically-influenced arrangements, and lengthy instrumental workouts spotlighting Steve Hackett’s liquid guitar and Tony Banks’ keyboard skills.

IQ - Subterrainea

IQ had a chequered history. They began in the early 80s, and their early albums “Tales from the Lush Attic” and “The Wake” were clearly derivative of Gabriel-era Genesis. With a different singer they tried a more commercial approach with the “Nonzamo” and “Are You Sitting Comfortably” albums. They vanished for several years before reforming, back with the original vocalist Peter Nicholls. Their new sound was a more polished combination the best elements of the two earlier phases of their career. Of the three post-reunion albums, the second, the double concept album “Subterrania” shows them at their best.

Jon Lord - Sarabande

Attempts to combine rock and classical music get a bad press. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. This 1976 solo album by Deep Purple’s Jon Lord is an album that works, and is the best of several solo albums he’s released in parallel to his career in Deep Purple and Whitesnake. It’s based on the concept of baroque dance suite. Featuring Andy Somers, later of The Police on guitar, the rock band and the orchestra integrate into a single whole; sometimes the band play the theme with the orchestra adding tonal colour, in other places the orchestra takes the theme with band providing rhythmic support. Listeners are also treated to an extended jazz-rock workout from Jon’s Hammond.

King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King

King Crimson were to define the progressive rock sound, and then move on to different things as soon as making this musical statement. Although later incarnations of Crimson formed around guitarist Robert Fripp, this one is dominated by the soaring vocals of Greg Lake and the mellotron on Ian McDonald, and of course, the marvelous baroque lyrics of Pete Sinfield, although Fripp shines on the metallic opener, the classic “21st Century Schizoid Man”.

A new meaning to “Buffer Kissing”

Monday, August 26th, 2002

An enthusiast charter marking the farewell to the Class 58 hits the buffers at Walton-on-Naze in Essex. The train, named the “bone-breaker” after the nickname of the class 58, “Bones” ended up breaking bones of two passengers (one with broken leg, and one with a couple of cracked ribs) after a 5mph collision with the buffer stops. The cause is so far unknown. 29 other people suffered minor injuries.

Walton-on-Naze has a reputation for being one of the most snobbish towns in England. The place was notorious for refusing to give planning permission for a chip shop because it would attract “the wrong element”. Not sure what they make of a trainload of stranded class 58 fans.

20 Favourite Albums, Part 1

Monday, August 26th, 2002

Over on BlogCritics, someone (can’t remember who) suggested the reviewers came up with a list of their top ten albums to give people an idea of where they’re coming from musically. He admitted the whole thing is a bit Nick Hornby-ish, but a lot of people like compiling lists, so here’s the first part of mine. Mine’s a top twenty because I couldn’t pare the list down to ten, even by ruling that no artist could have more then one album in the list.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the first five, listed alphabetically

Anathema - Judgement

Anathema began life as a standard death-metal act, all grinding riffs and death-grunt vocals. But once their original vocalist left, and rhythm guitarist Vincent Cavanagh took over vocals, things started to change. By the time they recorded “Judgement”, a strong Pink Floyd influence had crept in and they were sounding as much progressive rock as metal. “Judgement” is an atmospheric and emotional work, musically balancing light and shade, metal riffs contrasting with delicate acoustic passages.

Asia - Asia

Most critics scoffed at the idea of this supergroup, consisting of ex-Yes men Steve Howe and Geoff Downes, ELP’s Carl Palmer John Wetton of King Crimson, Uriah Heep and UK fame. While many expected a prog-muso chops-fest, what we got was a superb AOR pop-rock album, with the instrumental breaks cut back to fit the songs. Great combination of good playing, good songs, and powerful production, sadly they were never able to repeat the quality of this debut.

Black Sabbath - Heaven and Hell

I know I’m probably a heretic for prefering Ronnie Dio’s operatic melodrama to Ozzy’s angst-ridden howl, but to me Dio’s voice and Toni Iommi’s guitar seemed a perfect match. As much the follow-up to Rainbow’s “Long Live Rock and Roll” as to “Never Say Die”, this is a great metal album when considered on it’s own merits rather than in comparison to the Ozzy canon.

Blue Öyster Cult - Secret Treaties

Blue Öyster Cult have always been my favourite American band, with their multi-layered sound, high wierdness lyrics and Buck Dharma’s wonderful guitar playing. All their albums are good, most of them are great, and this album, their third, is their best.

Deep Purple - Machine Head

What can I say about Deep Purple? One of the defining groups of the heavy metal genre, with the riffs that inspired a generation of bedroom air-guitarists, some of whom would go on to pick up real guitars and form the next generation of bands in the 1980s and beyond, even if most guitar shop owners are sick of hearing “Smoke on the Water”. Every song on this album is a classic; no filler at all.

The Alphabet Synthesis Machine

Saturday, August 24th, 2002

Thanks to Eric Olsen for this one: The Alphabet Synthesis Machine - generate your own fictional alphabet, and download it as a true type font!

UFO: Regenerator

Friday, August 23rd, 2002

It was January 28th, 1982, the day after my 21st birthday. As part of the celebrations, I had tickets to see UFO at the second of three sell-out concerts at what was then the great temple of British rock, the Hammersmith Odeon in London.

The BBC recorded the show for their regular Saturday night ‘In Concert’ broadcast a couple of weeks later. This has shown up as a bootleg in the past, now it sees an ‘official’ release. While many people associate UFO with Michael Schenker, the often overlooked period with Paul ‘Tonka’ Chapman saw their greatest commercial success. This recording shows just why; it shows the Phil Mogg/Paul Chapman/Pete Way/Andy Parker/Neil Carter line-up at it’s peak.

In complete contrast to the classic “Strangers in the Night” live album released just three years earlier, they draw the bulk of the songs here from their most recent albums ‘No Place to Run’, ‘The Wild, Willing and the Innocent’ and ‘Mechanix’. Just a few Schenker-era favourites remain, four on this album, since the final encore ‘Doctor Doctor’ is missing.

High spots are the “No Place to Run”, the harder and heavier version a great improvement on the weak studio version (I always felt the lightweight production on ‘No Place to Run’ was the major blot on George Martin’s copybook; perhaps hard rock just wasn’t his fort�), a fast and furious “Long Gone”, and the storming cover of Elvis’ “Mystery Train”. Paul ‘Tonka’ Chapman’s playing is superb throughout, unconvinced Schenker fans should listen to his solos on “Only You Can Rock Me” and “Love to Love”.

This is of course an ‘official bootleg’, no overdubs or edits, and suffers from the odd pops, clicks and fades. But the live intensity of the performance shows though; this is just what live albums are supposed to be about. The only thing missing apart from the final encore is the bit where Phil Mogg announced that the gig was being recorded for the radio, and got the audience to shout “Hello Mum”. Turn up the volume as far as the neighbours will tolerate, and enjoy!

And I do still have the T-shirt, 20 years later.

Game Wish 9: Changing the World

Friday, August 23rd, 2002

This week’s WISH from Turn of a Friendly Die

What’s the most fun you ever had creating something in a game that changed the game-world?

I think this has be the goth/doom-metal band Ümläüt, which has been a feature of not one, but two games. The first game was an on-line modern-day Call of Cthulhu adventure set in London, running on the late lamented CompuServe RPGAMES forum. My PC was Karl Tolhurst, guitarist of the band. The back-story in my character submission was that the band had split after lead singer Steve Leywood had run out of sanity and murdered another band member (who was also Karl’s lover), before killing himself.

The GM skillfully wove all this into her game background; NPC Steve Leywood’s occult obsessions had turned him to incorporate forbidden Cthuloud rituals into song lyrics and getting audiences to chant them. He was later to turn up as an undead thing, to murder another band member who the GM was using as an NPC in front of another PC in a different game thread. The Cthuloid rituals themselves may or may not have been responsible for the earthquake in Docklands that did terrible damage to the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

Ümläüt have their own spoof web page, which more than one person has mistaken for the web site of a real band - the fictitious murdered keyboard player turned up on the dead rock star site. There is also a recording of Ümläüt’s music, made by my brother. The GM refuses to listen to it.

The band has now resurfaced in another on-line game, Edge of Hell running on Dreamlyrics, touring the US slightly earlier in their own timeline. They’re currently stranded in California following several dates falling through due to incompetent management. This time four out of the five members are player characters, including Steve Leywood and one of his murder victims. Time will tell if history will repeat itself; this time the crowd chant of “Iä! Cthulhu F’Tagn!” resulted in a severe thunderstorm and a power failure that terminated the show.

10p for the Hamster!

Thursday, August 22nd, 2002

BBC NEWS | England | Fare cop for Nibbles the hamster
I beat Patrick Crozier to this one! A boy is charged a 10p fare for his hamster! Is this the new First Group policy, I wonder?