Music

Paul Verhoeven, please come back. I miss you.

Paul Verhoeven was the director of the movie "Starship Troopers," based upon the book of the same name by Robert Heinlein.

This song, kind of ironically, is a cover of David Bowie's original "I have not been to Oxford Town." Although it's not from composer Basil Poledouris (but it is sung by his daughter, Zoe), it still fits the movie well.

And what a movie. And what a soundtrack. And what a cover.

The movie works on so many levels that, nearly 30 years later, it still resonates with audiences. The best movies always do, even if, at the time, the movie was a dud. It has since become a cult classic (much like how John Carpenter's "The Thing" was a dud only to become a much beloved cult classic), having spawned sequels of all sorts and its visual style is still used for the franchise.

It's strange how the movie has evolved over the years for me. On its surface, the movie parodies fascism and propaganda. Deeper, the movie mimics the old "cowboys & indians" black-&-white westerns of yesteryear. There's more than just a hint of 'Red Badge of Courage' & 'All Quiet on the Western Front'-styled anti-war messaging.

Yet, finally, it has come to represent the public's naivete over the Internet itself. 1997 was still very much a formative year in the Internet. A year of webrings and multiple young, scrappy search engines. AOL, Prodigy & other "mega-BBS" companies still existed. Everyone thought that the Internet would "solve everything." Did the teenagers and young adults of the 90s really do it and create the perfect tech that would propel human society into Utopia? There was no shame in thinking that way at the time.

And, of course, it all fell apart, much like the bugs shatter humanity's vision that they were the dominant species in the universe. As the great philosopher Michael Gerard Tyson once said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

This cover is the perfect 1990s equivalent of "The Morning After," the 'love song' from the movie "The Poseidon Adventure" (the original); It's that song that's played before the spit hits the fan. Everything is safe. Everything is wonderful... And then everything falls apart. This is the last time everyone will be young and happy and healthy and all together.

Everyone has that moment in their life if they live long enough. Everyone has the moment that, when looking back, everything was quiet and simple and normal UNTIL THAT MOMENT HAPPENS, be it someone dies or everyone graduates and moves away or someone has a major health issue.

That's what this song represents. The pinnacle of Eden. The final evening inside of Utopia.

And the brutal nature of this song and "The Morning After" is that no one is aware of it. Everyone is ignorant that a storm is coming and they will never, ever, be the same after that.

And, in a way, that's what the movie "Starship Troopers" and this song represents for me. The shining promise of the Internet that will *solve everything*. You're still young and healthy. Your friends still live in the same time zone as you do. No one has health issues. Your whole life is still ahead of you. Everyone your age is still on a level playing field.

Maybe Paul Verhoeven no longer has his proverbial "fast ball." Maybe, like so many others, he has simply gotten too old or too tired or too cynical to make the biting social commentary that permeates his classics such as "Robocop," "Total Recall" or (obviously) "Starship Troopers." It happened to John Hughes. It happened to Stanley Kubrick.

I may not have been to paradise, as the song says, but I was privileged to live through the era of Prime Paul Verhoeven. Thank you, Mr. Verhoeven and, if you ever feel the urge to come back to the Starship Trooper universe, I would definitely love to know more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiSy7KsXi6I

no new musicguy posts... what now?

I've always had a soft spot for puppetry. Puppetry really was the first version of CGI. Sure, there's also stop motion (and I like stop motion animation as well) but I've always admired puppeteers and their craft in general.

"Mysterious Mose" is a song from the 1930 but, here, it's been given the music video treatment. In this rendition, it has a definite Halloween vibe with an indie production and aesthetic. This video is the type of thing you'd see back when cable access channels (think of them as "Youtube before Youtube was Youtube") still existed.

The lighting, puppetry, animation and even stop motion animation work really well together. It's creepy but not too creepy and even though you see the support wires and rods for the puppets, you can also tell that a lot of hard work went into the production.

This song also reminds me of the early Internet. I have no idea if this particular link is the same one that I used well over a decade ago but it doesn't matter. If anything, this video looks fairly crisp compared to what I remembered it as.

Listening to this song again and watching the video makes me feel old. It also makes me feel sad. The Internet, quite frankly, has moved on and something odd like this is old hat for an Internet that has an endless capacity to weird people out in all sorts of imaginative ways.

But it is a catchy tune and it has nice production values for what it offers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2rjEUpmzow

>>3675
this one was a really fun read... thanks music guy!

I honestly miss the early Internet.

And while the term "early Internet" means different things to different people, my definition is that time when finding things on the Internet required effort. A time of webrings (ask your parents about them) and multiple search engines. A time when you went to the W3C website every day to see what new exciting HTML technologies that they were developing. CSS? What's that?

The early Internet was weird and wonderful. All that you needed to do in order to impress a prospective employer was say, "I know Microsoft Office, HTML, Javascript & Java (with a little bit of Perl thrown in on the side)." Hey, did I mention my expertise in VBA?

It has been ages since I've listened to "Bathtime in Clerkenwell," a song that is best described as rhythmic babbling. It was odd, it was funny and the music was catchy. The animated music video loosely follows a series of birds as they organize into an army to overthrow... A guy in an apartment in London (I think they call it a "flat" over there)?

I know that today's Internet is "better" than the Internet of yesteryear. It's faster, brighter, better resolution, you can find things easier... I understand all of that.

Yet there was a charm about the early Internet that today's Internet just doesn't have. The Internet itself was a strange and wonderful puzzle, the ultimate ARG. This song reminds me of it (BTW - This is a better resolution version than the one I used to watch).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETyOwymflXc

Sometimes, the premise of a movie is far better than its execution. To each their own and sincere people may disagree as to which movie delivers on its promises and which do not.

The premise of the movie "Limitless" is that a man comes into the possession of what society now dubs a "brain drug" which gives the man seemingly superhuman abilities to remember every thought that he's ever had and prioritize his life correctly as opposed to spending most of his time on the internet doing stupid things like writing opinion pieces about movie sou.. nd.. trac...

Anyway, although I ultimately didn't like the movie, that's not to say that the movie wasn't without its moments.

"Howlin' for You" is the song playing when the brain drug first kicks for the main character and you see him get his act together. The song is a great choice for the scene; It has a nice driving rhythm that accentuates the "get it done" spirit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCZI2C-tWzM

brandon won.

>>3494
DRAIN GANG!!

do yall fw yung lean or bladee

Chip here in /music/!!! :D I wanted to talk about my guitar, Kittycrusher! She's a short-scale 24 fret electric Ibanez guitar and is a double humbucker. She plays amazingly, and she looks really sparkly! I personally put Hello Kitty stickers on her and teeth stickers. She's adorable! Me and her have a strong bond. You tend to get that when you play an instrument for a while. Her sound is great for a short-scale. It's much more accessible for a kid born female like me. So yeah! :D I'll talk more about my guitar playing soon, so yeah. Music guy if you read this, thank you for inspiring this post! I'll probably be here more. (ゝ∀･)

I have to be completely honest in that I don't know which one that I like more - The soundtrack to the computer game "Titan Quest" or the game itself.

I remember buying this game (Titan Quest: Gold Edition) at a Salvation Army Thrift Shop (for the international audience, just think of it as a bargain bin store or second-hand store).

I can't tell you the number of hours I have sunk into this game. Is the game perfect? No. Yet it's such a comfy game that I keep coming back to it every 6-8 months.

It was a bit disappointing when I played "Grim Dawn" (the spiritual successor to "Titan Quest") and found the soundtrack to be a bit underwhelming compared to Titan Quest.

The link below is to SEVEN HOURS of music (by no means should you listen to it all in one sitting) with the original Titan Quest OST being roughly the first half - I include the Immortal Throne expansion as 'original').

And, if you're interested, 'Titan Quest' the game is usually cheap as dirt on Steam (along with the earlier DLCs although Eternal Embers is still a bit pricey).

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=RbOxUyY_ehM

Oh my FUCK I love Sheena Ringo (And 東京事変, of course). Too bad I discovered her music 20 years too late... I love searching for and archiving anything related to her older works, wether that'd be someone's blog post or an almost-lost MV. Dunno where I'm going with this. Anyways, go listen to 真夜中は純潔 - but NOT the 2019 remaster - the original mix from 2001!

yo, musicguy! i wrote about you on the wiki!

https://boardsarchive.neocities.org/wiki

>>3331

Holy fucking hell.
Never thought I'd be reading a whole ass article on Boards of all places

You should start a blog, Mr. MusicGuy

It is very humbling to realize that it has been 32 years(!) since the computer game "King's Quest 5: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow" was released on PC.

It is even more humbling to realize the state of gaming music at the time of that game's release. Game music during the early 1990s was still relegated to the 'bleeps' and 'bloops' that so many would recognize today as 'chiptunes.' And while there were several extremely talented musical artists who created amazing works with what they had to work with, they were still 'bleeps' and 'bloops.'

But all of that changed with CD-ROMs. Finally, computer gaming could use the full power and storage of CDs in order to convey an awesome level of graphics and sound effects that could only be dreamed of a few short years prior.

And with CD-ROMs also came full album-quality music as well. Developers were no longer constrained to the 'bleeps' and 'bloops' of yesteryear and could have traditional music artists render songs that were no different than what could be heard on a soundtrack or a studio album.

Computer gaming in the early 1990s strived for legitimacy amongst more traditional media, such as movies and novels. It wanted to be taken seriously as an art form and certain developers always felt constrained by computing technology up until that point.

One way that developers and studios tried to convey that gaming should be taken seriously was to use traditional music and movie talent in their games. The early 1990s was the era of full-motion video (FMV) and pre-rendered graphics. This was a time of computer games such as "The 7th Guest" and "Myst."

"King's Quest 5" was released both conventionally (on floppy discs) and on CD-ROM. When it was released on CD-ROM, it came with the song, "Girl in the Tower," which was the unofficial main theme for the game. It was encouraged to request this song on radio stations, not just to market the game but to also market the fact that computer gaming could deliver the same quality of entertainment that movies and television could as well. Computer gaming was 'closing the gap' with movies and television and "Girl in the Tower" was proof of that.

Is the song schmaltzy? You bet. Syrupy? Absolutely. Cheesy? Without a doubt.

But it is also a milestone in computer gaming. It marked a turning point that computer gaming needed to be taken seriously by Hollywood. The budgets of games was getting larger. The graphics were getting better. And now the music was no different than what you could buy from any music artist.

I remember being in the dorm room of one of my friends when I listened to this song for the first time. It was awe-inspiring back then that games could have music like that. And it is awe-inspiring today to think that we think nothing of the gap between gaming music and film music and television music today. None. But there was a time when everyone else snickered at computer and video games because all they could produce for their music was 'bleeps' and 'bloops.'

No more. And that happened 32 years ago with this song.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=H3GM4Z1WF-8

wheres musicguy?!

got into lily allen a while back, i wish brits were real

no more heroes ost is good, seriously

There was a time in my life when I was a big-time American Civil War buff. It didn't help that I had a high school history teacher who was also an American Civil War buff. You could derail every single class he taught by asking how whatever he was talking about related to the civil war and then he'd spend half of the class spouting off endless facts about the civil war.

The movies "Gettysburg" and its prequel "Gods & Generals" is shameless fan service to anyone who considers themselves American Civil War fanatics. It is the equivalent of a long-lost 8-hour cut of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" for Harry Potter fans.

"Going Home" is the opening theme to "Gods & Generals" and captures both the beauty, sorrow and futility of fighting in the bloodiest conflict in American history. I like the opening theme to Gettysburg more (I should post that at some point) but this one is done really, really well.

For normal people, the movies are a bit of a bore; No illusions. However, if you're even slightly interested in the American Civil War, do yourself a favor and watch the movies (although it's perfectly fine to take breaks because they are long movies).

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=8XtNTJhyEYo

I've never been much of a Marvel movie fan. Like Harry Potter, it just arrived too late for me to really invest any time into it.

However, I've always been a Classic Disney guy. If it happened before 1990 and it's Walt Disney... There are few times where I can turn it down. Case in point: I have a copy of one of the most obscure Disney movies ever made, "Victory through Air Power," and not only watched it but enjoyed it.

I love Classic Walt Disney.
And I *LOVE* Classic EPCOT Center.

And this song from the movie "Iron Man 2" merges those two loves into one unstoppable force.

Yes, only one of the two Sherman Brothers was involved with it. Yes, it's more than a bit derivative from the Sherman Brothers proposal for the Horizons pavilion song (and deserves it's own post here).

Yet it's still awesome and wonderful and would be absolutely at home being piped through the speakers of EPCOT Center circa 1982-1989 while guests walked through the amusement park.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf5ZZ0C88ik