Cruise on over to Cecil's Youtube Page for a collection of classic rock songs playing in very specific, and oddly effective, scenarios.
Most of the tracks are either presented as "Playing in an Empty Shopping Centre" or "From Another Room" but there's something undeniable about their appeal. Here's a few I enjoyed:
I hate to admit it but I recently succumb to the allure of a video entitled "The Lost Zelda Game | The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets." In the 11-minute piece you are educated on Satellaview, a Famicon add-on that received Broadcast games that only worked during that specific hour of transmissions. Interestingly enough, the games featured familiar graphics but a much richer audio experience. Full voice acting and very rich soundtracks were present, a rarity at the time.
One such game released during that time was the aforementioned BS Zelda (that's Broadcast Satellite Zelda). Since it was only available during specific hours and few people had the technology at the time to save the game data, it was thought to be lost. Of course some pioneering Internet sleuths have found a way to revive the game and make a fully playable emulated version.
For me, all of that background info is strangely fascinating but the fact that the music was fully orchestrated really makes for something special. Listen to the Overworld theme for a rich experience or Toy Music for some vocoder and background story, akin to something The Protomen would do.
I can only imagine what other strange attempts videogame companies at the time were making to try and out-tech the other guy but this odd niche experience is one I'm happy to know a little more about.
Bandcamp just published their 2017 Year In Review and it seems things are still going strong for the direct-to-fan giant. I wish they'd publish some more distinct numbers for the year* but, regardless, it's good to know that, all time, they've paid out $270 million to artists on the platform. The summary piece also takes some nice jabs at the streaming platforms and their dropping stream rates.
Bandcamp turns 10 this year and really helps to fuel both yk Records and We Own This Town, so I thank them for their service.
* EDIT: Brian points out that they do provide more numbers in another post but I just wasn't paying attention. Regardless, I'd love a more distinct breakdown of income for BC and artists within the given year, not all time.
Happy to announce a new, limited, podcast on the We Own This Town network. Vidalotry is a ten part series from Ryan Breegle that explores the wit and wisdom of famed intellectual Gore Vidal, in his own words.
The show's teaser gives a good overview of what to expect from the show; namely the range of controversial topics that Vidal was not shy about speaking on publicly.
The first of ten episodes will be available on Monday, Feb 19th. So fire up your podcast apps and start subscribing now. Ryan has done a phenomenal job of exploring a vastly interesting human being that I've always wanted to know more about.
We're about two weeks away from A Night of yk Records 2, a celebration of my little label taking place over at the Mercy Lounge here in Nashville, TN. Tickets are on sale and you can always RSVP on the Facebook. All that being said, you should know the bands performing! So, here's a handy sampling of tracks from the artists performing.
Several of the artists - Jasmin Kaset, Tower Defense, Quichenight - will be playing tons of new material, others - Patrick Damphier and New Man - are new to the scene and everything will seem new from them. All that, coupled with the hilarious hosting of Ashley & Jamie from Hott Minute will make for an enjoyable evening.
So, please, get your tickets and help me rest easy about throwing a big show.
Thanks to Charlie, I ran across this great Frank Chimero piece on Everything Easy Is Hard Again, a transcript of a talk he gave in Berlin on the changing nature of the web. Specifically, he speaks on the ever growing complexities of getting started making websites and the near-futile nature of trying to read modern day source code.
I wonder if I have twenty years of experience making websites, or if it is really five years of experience, repeated four times. If you've been working in the technology industry a while, please tell me this sounds familiar to you.
This does sound familiar to me. I'm in roughly the same boat as Chimero (in terms of tech, he is clearly far more successful) as I started with simple HTML, learned CSS, learned Javascript, learned PHP and then had to re-learn them all again as progressive enhancements were made. I find many of these new tech tools to be wonderful but also feel myself up against a barrier occasionally as learning something like React is not as simply as learning how Flexgrids work.
While I don't think his insights apply to people working at a small scale (you probably don't need a package manager or a robust framework of backend tech if you're just building a simple website), I do think it's a solid read for anyone that works on the web. His desire for the web to be an accessible, and legible, place is irrefutable, especially as someone that learned most of what they know from View Source.
I want to go on tech job interviews to see how long I last spouting nonsense before I'm kicked out.
"Do I know AWS? I'm certified in Optimus Prime, Sleddog, and manage servers using Hagrid. I deploy sites with Guster, use the Gin Blossoms framework and do follow 311 protocols"
I'm heads down for the next few days getting ready for some new announcements around A Night of yk Records and a new We Own This Town podcast. I may have bitten off more than I can chew but I'm confident that a little diligence will get me through it. Looking forward to sharing the news with everyone.
King Cake Baby - I know very little about sports but I know that the Pelicans have the best alt-mascot with their nightmare-inducing King Cake Baby. This video is fairly boring but you can't look away from his sculpted face.
The Blue Marble - I can only assume showing a teen a Rube Goldberg esque journey of this nature would bore them to tears but I find myself captivated.
SNL: My Little Step Children - the "Cut For Time" sketches are almost always the best. This one isn't flat out hysterical but it's got some hearty laughs.
Low Poly Mario - want to take a ~20 minute journey through every polygon style Mario model that's existed and inspect their differences? I can not begin to explain why this is fascinating to me but it sure is.
Last Wave - What happens when you let They Might Giants create a stream of consciousness song paired with Run DMC's cover of "Walk This Way"? You get this bizarre creation, that's what.
Oh, if you want to watch Elon Musk's trash float towards another planet, you can watch it live. Amazingly, yet unsurprisingly, Flat Earther's think it was a hoax. Great.
All that being said, I think this is maybe the best thing I saw all week. You decide.
