My Music Memories : Supergirl of Reamonn

Simple lyrics on a pop-rock song about a relation with a Supermodel going not too good. 

It's how singer of Rea Garvey puts these emotions in the song so well. Like a rollercoaster of emotions that never stops until "Supergirl" is finished, leaving you with a sad feeling. 

At first the song almost let you put to sleep and wakes you up the hard way in the refrein. 

I like songs that take risks. I checked out other songs of Raemonn. 

Mostly rockballads, the song "Sometimes" hit me the most, I guess because of the lyrics and the home-made clip itself, sooo sad.

2 clicks and I found already a cover of Anna Naklab, which changes the song into something different as the original. Good or bad, it's up to you !

TnC House Classics presents : Swamp Thing by The Grid

When housemusic became populair, everybody tried to find a next gimmick to make easy money . So for a short period of time country music with a housebeat was the top, with hits like  "Cotton Eye Joe" and "Swamp Thing". But The Grid had already several hits on its list and this was just one ot them.

 When I listen to it now, it seams too repeat itself too often and the duration should be half of what it is now. 

Still the banjo riff is catchy and thats the best part of the song, the rest of it is more filling , like the bridge part in "Acid Folk". 

"Swamp Thing"is an exellent song to mashup I would say (for maybe an hour ???)

PS: The followup of "Swamp Thing" was a re-release of "Texas Cowboys", a piece of crap. The country theme is there, it  "Swap Thing" with the banjo replaced by a mouth-organ and the DJ replaced by a bad singer, argh !!!

Instrumental Highlights : Underwater of Harry Thumann

I waited very long to start with this post, cause it's the start 
of a serie of posts I don't know where it will stop. 

"Underwater" is a soundscape in disco style with a complete orchestra . When I listen to it, I feel like I'm watching a movie about dolfins, who race against eachother, a bit like 
"Where is the Walrus" of the Alan Parsons Project. 

The track "Underwater " was part of a serie of Italian Dance Classics complation of a company called Arcade 
(once very famous by Dutchies). 
There were only 4 CDs made and number 1 was of course the best of the serie (featuring Underwater). 

Well, I try to found more of Harry Thumann, but he seems more a sound engineer than a dance producer, check out Ruff Mix if you don't believe me)

My music memories : Speak To Me of Galactic Cowboys

I liked King's X sometimes, but I liked Galactic Cowboys more. At least their first album.
"Galactic Cowboys" go where KIng's X stopped, it's something like The Eagles goes Metal or the Beach Boys meet Hard Rock. I think you know what I mean by now. 

Their album was full of great songs, some more uptempo, some fun, some ballads. "Speak To Me" is the last track of the album and the longest. It presents the style of Galactic Cowboys at it's best, it started as a acoustic ballad, then a heavy metal jam, then a power ballad. The crazy ending is typical for the group. You can hear the band had great fun while recording it. 

After such a strong debut, it's hard to make it sound better. 
I bought "Space In Your Face" blindly and they tried to copy the debut, without the fun, catchy refreins it was a waste of my money and time to listen to it. 

So let's talk about more songs on the debut, I found a videoclip of "I'm  Not Amused", one of the heavier songs and of course someone put almost every song on YouTube, listen to power ballads like "My School" and "Why Can't You Believe In Me". 

They even played as "Sons of Thunder" in the 1994 movie "Airheads"  but couldn't find any videoproof of it on the net. The Galactic Cowboys did also some covers, like "Junior's Farm" of Wings (Paul McCartney) but like the Steve Miller cover, the original is better and seems for Galactic Cowboys just a way to get more airplay and be famous. Well, that didn't work out and they split. 

I leave you with an old live concert where they perform some songs of the debut album. If I look back they were just another group with one good album. And yes, bandmembers were religious, but not a Christian rockband.

My music memories : Power Of Love of King's X

I listened to some Alternative Rocktapes I made in the 90s from some cheap CD complication of unknown rockbands, like Cheap Shots and Big Buzz series and then 
I remembered some so called religious rockbands like King's X and Galactic Cowboys. 

I stubbled into a nice Top 10 KIng's X favs, listen to them all, 
great stuff but I agreed with last comment , there was no 
"Power Of Love" in the list. "Power of Love" came from their first album "Out of The Silent Planet" and is one of the easiest songs 
to remember by the catchy refrein. 

The soulfull voice of Doug Pinnick, together with the metal riffs of Ty Tabor together with the solid rhythms of Jerry Gaskill give King's X 
a remarkable sound. And despite the name of the band (invented by their manager Sam Taylor), they were nor Christian rock band or something like that. The wiki is very clear on this point.

Does it matter ? I like music that sounds as an crossover between pop-rock and heavy metal. 

Looking back I bought their first album on vinyl, the 2nd "Gretchen Goes to Nebraska" on tape and the 3rd "Faith Hope Love" on a discount CD, with some holes in the CD-case. When I played the CD for the first time, there was no song that I liked. Second time ditto. So I looked for other groups that sounded like King's X, like Galactic Cowboys...

But that something for another post.

My Music Memories : How You Gonna See Me Now - Alice Cooper

I had catched a cold last week, no fever but my mind was full of strange ideas, images and music. 

And suddenly came from all that chaos a beautiful song from ages ago. "How You Gonna See Me Now" from Alice Cooper. 
I don't really liked that guy with his black make-up and I never bought any record, I just saw the song on our TV at TopPop and I loved it. 

The video, the lyrics the way Alice sings it. Perfect. The wiki said that Alice never performed the song after 1980. Was it too commercial for him ? I guess I never know. 

Of course there artists covering the song, I just like the emotion in the voice Alice Cooper more.

Except in the live version, I smell some antipathy from Alice against the song, the way he performed it.

TnC Instrumental Highlights presents: just Introduction

There are some instrumental tracks, that not can be called House or Game Music. 

They don't seem to fit in my Music Memories serie, cause those are most of the time, hits from the past.




So this serie will have tracks that never hit the charts, some maybe a little famous, some not.

I was never was a Jean Michel Jarre or Vangelis fan and liked all the hits of them, listening to a whole album was a bit too much for me.

Instrumental tracks I still like are more than just tracks from Synthesizer Greatest Volume 1-10...

So in the years I start listening to the radio and later to other sources, like at friend places or TV, there are tracks that I never get tired listening too.

I think that's weakest link in a instrumental track, to repeat itself too many times and get the listener bored.


In these serie I present tracks without vocals, maybe even without human voices. 
See ya in the next episode....

My Music Memories : Brother Where You Bound of Supertramp

These are the kind of songs, you like when you heard it, you forgot all about it and...snap...you know part of the song again and don't know what it is.
I had this with "Brother Where You Bound", I just knew 2 lines of the lyrics and remember the saxofoon and the great guitarsolo at the end. I search on "You gotta move, You gotta hide", but Google send me to "Fred McDowel" and "The Rolling Stones"  

I was pretty sure that none of these 2 used a saxofoon, so I changed the lines into
"You better move, you better hide" and found the right lyrics at flashlyrics.
The song was from Supertramp and more than 16 minutes long, titled: "Brother Where You Bound". There was a 19 minutes mini movie made by Rene Daalder (yeah another Dutch !) for the song, which was never released as single, so why this movie, I can't tell...
The best part of the song is at the end, the part where I just remember the 2 lines of lyrics from and it was also the title of the album
The movie itself is very unpleasant, violent en despressing and let you wonder why it all happened with the hero and his family. There is even an other video made from the song with scenes from Brasil that is even more depressing and weird.

BTW Rene Daalder has done some impressive stuff, see his website

112 MSX Basic Games presents: CRAZY-G.GAM (93)

I could not get myself together to start working on some MSX Basic programs I started with, 
like WORDSTORE+ simple mixers,2 WORDSTORE+ Basic games, a WORDSTORE+ Mega Music Demo, MBR8S final version and 2 Music & Demo's collection disks. 

So instead I tried to change 3 Courbois Software games. 

This CRAZY-G (I think the full game should be CRAZY GHOST, if you look at the screenshot) was the hardest game to change for a lot of reasons:

1) No title everywhere
2) No choice of controls
3) No difficulty

4) Strange color choices 
5) Slow screen setup
6) Bad random blocks placing
7) Annoying beep sound when you move
 
I tried to fix all of them, 
but I could not change much about 4) and 5). 

Anyway this is a sort of Pacman, but not like the regular ones, running through a maze chased by 4 ghosts. No way, there is only 1 ghost, but boy he is fast and takes the shortest route to get you. 

You have to avoid the green blocks and get as many blue blocks as you can. I didnt test if you win the game if there are no blue blocks left, cause the ghost and the green blocks always got me first.

 Here are the links to Gavitex and Mediafire