Dragon Warrior! I played that as a kid. didn't really get it at the time. But I love those games now!
James HOrner's alien soundtrack is REALLY good. Very moody.
I really need to listen to more Zappa.
On 06/04/2015 at 04:08 PM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
I'm thinking all about 1986 this week, as mentioned in my previous blog. Yesterday, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, I picked up quite a haul of music, and a single game. Here's a pic.
Dragon Warrior was a little tricky to find. I had to go to a second Jay Street Video Games store to get the loose cart for $10. Both stores had it complete in box. One store had it for $26 and the other $40 (I guessing of different quality). I'm not collecting it though, I just want to play it, and, unfortunatly, DW1 is not available on Virtual Console or anywhere else other than iOS digitally. I'm excited to play it on the original deck though. That's always cool.
Now for the music. I figure this will be the last year in music history I'll search for vinyl. 1986 wasn't the final year for mainstream vinyl production, but it did taper off quite a bit after that date. I shuffled around Shady Dog Records, looking at copyright dates, and didn't see any vinyl later than 1986, other than the very recent new stuff, which is overpriced, and thus not interesting to me.
Shown below are the titles I got, not all of which are visiable in the lousy photo I took (1986 stuff first):
Frank Zappa - Jazz from Hell
Black Sabbath - Seventh Star
Van Halen - 5150
Tesla - Mechanical Resonance
Megadeth - Peace Sells. . . But Who's Buying
REM - Life's Rich Pagent
The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
They Might Be Giants - debut
Michael Nyman - The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (opera)
Chess (musical)
Sting - Bring on the Night
Beastie Boys - Licensed to Ill
UK - Danger Money ['79]
Foghat - Energized ['74]
David Bowie - The Man Who Sold the World ['70]
Beastie Boys - The Mix-Up [2007]
I'm so excited to hear all this stuff, especially in shuffle mode. I listened to my '86 playlist last night, and I noticed that the creepy soundtrack to Aliens (composed by James Horner) sounds really good next to metal albums like Slayer's Reign in Blood. There's nothing like musical jump scares from Aliens followed by a tune like Slayer's Piece by Piece. Frickin' awesome!
I played Dragon Warrior a few years ago and it was tough. You have to be very careful out in the wild. One too many encounters and you'll find yourself dead and lose all your stuff.
I love James Horner. He did the Star Trek Wrath of Khan soundtrack, among many others, too. It's one of my favorites.
I remember seeing Zappa play on the Baby Snakes live concert DVD, and during his solo, I suddenly realized how good he was. I was like, "Wow! This guy's like Hendrix!". He's a more thoughtful player than Hendrix. I think of him as a kind of guitar philosopher, but I was majorly impressed by him.
When I was buying games at flea markets five or more years ago, they were super easy to find. It wasn't that hard to find this time really, but it was a little harder. Why hasn't DW or any of the Dragon Quest games appeared on Virtual Console? I'd like to play the early ones on my 3DS.
I distinctly remember reading the Rolling Stone Album guide on that album. The reviewer couldn't understand why someone would create such complex loud music (I wish I could remember the exact quote. It was funny. I'll have to get that book again). The Rolling Stone Album Guide is hilarious to me because they so clearly hated metal and prog rock. All my favorite bands got rough treatment from them.
At first, I was seperating music into genre's, but it got too complicated so now I just listen to everything together. I'm discovering that some music really doesn't go well with other stuff. Genres aren't simple either. Some rock stuff is labeled alternative rock or indie rock. I can't select for rock and get all the variants of it in a genre shuffle. It's frustrating expecially when I have friends in the car who have specific genres that they listen to. I'd like to shuffle just the stuff they are comfortable with. I need to do more complicated shuffles of this music from one specific year.
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