The Music Module sample disks - part 3 - Time's End

Last part, part #3.
I became a big fan of Saint after I heard just a few notes from the opener "In The Night" of the album "Time's End".  

I like the cover too, with the 2 seamonsters on the front and back. So I sampled a lot of songs, but I couldnt sample the great intro of "Time's End" itself, cause it was too long. 

On this part #3 you will find a longer version of "Steel Killer" and the sample of "Steel Killer" I used in the Metal Demo II. 
Sorry, I liked the instrumental part a lot.


These are songs I sampled 1 or more times:

* Phantom of the Galaxy
* Space Cruiser
* Steel Killer (long version)
* In The Night
* Island Prisoner
* Primed and Ready
* Steel Killer

On the album "Phantom of the Galaxy" and "Steel Killer" are just 1 track, but it's clear where "Phantom"ends and "Steel Killer"begins, the tempo slows down.

And I'm sure the guitarist John Maham plays the first notes out of sync after the drumroll in "Space Cruiser", but in the reviews I read so far, nobody noticed. 

 If you play the album "Time's End" twice you will notice, that some tracks sound just like others,
and it seemed that at the last track "Phantom / Steel" they run out of ideas.
Never the less it was and is very enjoyable album, so later I bought the CD 
(without the live tracks).

Part #3 can be downloaded from Gavitex and Mediafire  
  

MSX demo: Music Module sample disks - part 2 - Others

This is part #2 of the Music Module sample disks and this time not 
1 White Metal band, but 4 of them. Some very unfamous like Martyr and Chariot,  some more famous like Saint and Whitecross. 
So I will tell you something about every band below.

I had a tape from Martyr, "Death is dead" and there was only one good song on it "Golgotha".
Well, some parts of it were really trashy (in a good way).
Sadly I cant remember how I got it, but some YouTuber uploaded the whole tape, so you can listen to more songs as well.

Chariot was a band I completly forgot until I listened to the sample I took from the song "The Truth". I think I had it on tape. Well I found the song NOT on Youtube, but somewhere else.

What can I tell about Saint, these samples came from their first album "Warriors of the Son", which I bought after "Time's End" (2nd album). It had the Saint sound from "Time's End" but the songs were not all so catchy like the next album. Some were still good enough to sample anyway.
* Abyss
* Vicars of Fate
* Warriors of the Son









Whitecross was famous because of their guitarist Rex Caroll and vocalist Scott Wenzel, but I had always my doubts about the leadsinger, I found it painfull the listen an whole album to him.
But Rex really knew how the play hardrock music. 
I sampled 2 songs of "Hammer and Nail", their 2nd album, because I thought there were only 2 good songs. I had also
 the first album, and I liked only the last song of that album, 
so I wasnt a major fan and bought never again an album 
of Whitecross.

* Livin On The Edge
* Because of Jesus
 live

Here are the links to disk #2 with these samples.
at Gavitex and Mediafire


 

The Music Module sample disks - part 1 - A Coming Storm

This is the first of the 3 disks full of Heavy Metal samples of Whilte Metal bands and just from 
1 sample I made a real demo, the Metal Demo II. The rest of the samples were not bad, but I had no fresh ideas left are my hard work to get the Metal Demo II finished.

So here is part 1, with sample of a White Metal band called Tempest. 

I can say a lot about the band and the "A Coming Storm", which I sampled, I think it better to be short. The guitarwork was really heavy and slow, the vocalist  was not capable to sound like a hardrock singer should.

I made a lot of samples, sometimes more than 1 per track. There were many great guitar-riffs to be found. 

So on the disk #1 you wil find the following tracks 
of "A Coming Storm" of Tempest:

* Games With God
* Golgotha
* Rock On
* God's Will Be Done
* Kid's Gonna Rock
* Tell Me

On "A Comng Storm" there was the best heavy metal intro I ever heard, I could not sample it, cause it was too long, but boy I wanted that intro so bad as a ringtone on my breakdown service mobile phone. If you listen to "Metal Mission" you will know why...

Well, the band Tempest made only 3 albums, I had the first 2 of them. The core members, 
the vocalist and guitarman, joined others bands with success. 

Almost forgotten, here is the disk #1 with the samples at Gavitex and Mediafire

MSX demo: Metal Demo II by MUP '90

I said it before, personal the ZZ-Top demo was for me the first MSX demo ever that had some sort of hard rock / metal, so I called it Metal demo I. And when I created a lot of metal samples 
I used the name Metal Demo II as some kind of followup for this ZZ-Top demo.

There are 5 things in this Metal Demo II that are different from other MSX demo's  in the year 1990:

1) The scroller text in Dutch language (most Dutchies tried to 
be famous international and used some kind of English)
2) You could turn the sound off (very rare in most demo's)
3) Graphics were completly in SCREEN 8 (most demo's used SCREEN 5, to have more screens)
4) The used sample was from a real Heavy Metal band (and not taken from any Synthesizer Greatest or some Disco record)
5) No greetings (it's true, really, watch the end of the scroll text)

But ofcouse this demo has also some things that were very common in other demo's from that year, like interactive scroll texts, hidden keys and everywhere copyrights of who made the demo.
Btw: MUP stand for Mr. Ugly Productions, a very strange name, but it described exactly how I felt at that time.

I mentioned it before, I made in total 3 disks full of samples of Heavy Metal band for the Music Module, but all from Christian rockbands. At that time I liked hardrock and heavy metal, 
but didnt like the lyrics about loving Satan and how long 
they all could satisfy any women. 
So I had a collection of so called White Metal and I sampled some.

The sample you hear in the Metal II demo is from the song Steel Killer, the instrumental part at the end (from 06:33). The band is called Saint (which logo is seen in the demo, if you know the secret key). I liked and still like the band Saint and the album Time's End, which includes the song Steel Killer. The singer Josh Kramer sounded like the singer of Judas Priest and the heavy unpolished guitarsound is still a treat for my ears.

I will explain more about Saint in another post.
Meanwhile you can download the demo at Gavitex and Mediafire.
I was too lazy to upload it in LZH form, sorry.

MSX demo : ZZ-TOP demo of Ax-Alex

When I made the post about "Gimme" from ZZ Top, I started to remember this...

I bought my first  MSX-2 computer and started looking for more people with an MSX computer, so via a friend in a village Arkel, just next to the city Gorinchem where I lived , 

I got some MSX programs from a guy who called himself Brainsoft  (I guess at that moment  I got the idea to name myself CopySoft) specially some Picture demos he made by digitizing images with a NMS8280, which he worked with at the Local TV satoon of Gorinchem.

He digitized me once too, but right now I wont post it. 

There were always be pictures you're not proud of...

But the guy of Brainsoft (Part of the  MGGA) gave me some German MSX-2 programs 

like Philips Drum System and some demo's of a German guy named Ax-Alex. 

I dont know much German MSX software, cause most German computernerds preferred Commodore Amiga 500 more than any MSX computer.

Ax-Alex made for example an Anti Amiga demo, which only proofed that MSX-2 was no match for Amiga 500. 

He made also an ZZ-TOP demo, the reason for this post.

It contained some partly digitized partly badly drawn screen 8 pictures and a PSG sample of ZZ-TOP song "Sharp dressed  man". 

The sound was not bad for A PSG sample and if you knew the size of your memorymapper, you could listen longer.

I called this demo Metal Demo 1, cause no demo before that used (hard)rock in any 

MSX demo. 

So when I was busy creating hardrock/heavy metal samples with FM-FAC Soundsampler 

I named my demo Metal Demo 2, but that will be in another post.

If you follow the link, you can download it from passionmsx.org, still a great website for any 

MSX software...

PS: I included the cover of the album "Afterburner" of ZZ Top  in the post, cause it had some simularities with the pictures in the ZZ Top demo.

My Music Memories : Gimme all your lovin of ZZ Top

This song "Gimme All Your Lovin" is very good example of  commercial sing-a-long rock. Great song of ZZ Top for every karaoke party, everybody will shout the refrein with you... 
 

I really liked songs like "Gimme all your lovin", "Sharp dressed man", "Legs" and "Viva Las Vegas", so I was once in a big record store in Amsterdam, and searched for a sort of best of. 

But it was very expensive if you know just 4 songs of the maybe 20...So I bought the low prized Eliminator with the first 3 ZZ-TOP hits and on the cover that famous red hotrod. 

Well there rest of the songs was not much to talk about. Millions of bands could play those songs. 

It seams these were only made to fill up the CD. 

"Gimme", "Sharp" and "Legs" were good examples how rock can sound better with some help of synthesizers. 

The other songs hadnt. 

After that I never bought the Best of ZZ TOP ever , cause if you have already 3 out of 4 favs, why buy the 4th fav for a full prized CD ?

I will end this post with a 12" of "Gimme" ZZ Top never made (but should have...)

and after listening to at leaast 6 bad remixers, If found this, not perfecty but this is how "Gimme" should sound like in the house 90s...

My Music Memories : I Don't Mind At All of Bourgeois Tagg

I was searching on YouTube for mr. Geldofs hit "I Don't Mind At All", but the song was called "Song of Indifference".
So the first result YouTube offered was this long forgotten song  "I Dont Mind At All" of a long forgotten group Bourgeois Tagg from a LP "YoYo" I once bought in a period I read reviews of band with a (let's say) possitive attitude.

YouTube offered me almost the whole LP YoYo, but now I only liked this sad ballad 
"I Don't Mind At All" and "Coma" a really hauted ballad, the rest of the LP was a kind of 80's rockfunk I seems to forgot to like it forever. 



The  song "I Dont Mind At All" has simple lyrics, but you get the message easily and if you had a bad Valentine's Day, 
this is a song for you.

I album YOYO was produced by Todd Rundgren, who also made a interactive album for Mac, Windows and CD-I called "No World Order". I have a Windows original, maybe I can let it run on Win7 and create a post about it... 
 

MSX demo : The Warp Demo of PTC

I mentioned the demo earlier on my post about Blue Monday of New Order, so here it is...
The Warp demo is nothing more than a 2 disk demo made in MSX-Basic with Philips Music Module samples.
It was made by First Class Software, PTC Rotterdam, The Poltergeist, White Shadow but in fact it was mostly done by John van Poelgeest.

The samples were recorded and looped by the FM-FAC Soundsampler (which was made, by the way, by FAC)
- There was also a FAF -


Pretty much every sample demo I made, was made with FM-FAC Soundsampler, cause they released a freeware Basic replayer to use samples in your own MSX Basic programs.

The samples used in the Warp demo came from (of course) Blue Monday of New Order and other synthesizer orientated music like Jean Michel Jarre.
When I saw the demo I was impressed about how it uses the MSX mouse to let the user interact with the demo
(mostly scrollers).
Some pictures (maybe all) were stolen from MSX games, very common at that moment in the MSX demoscene...
This Warp demo was made before John start making music with FACs Soundtracker, showing he was more than just
1 of the music composers within the FAC ...

John made at the same time also an impossible fast breakout MSX-2 game with Music Module samples, called Quattro.
I bought it together with The Warp Demo for maybe 15 Dutch guilders at the first
and last visit to a PTC (Philips Thuiscomputer Club) meeting in Rotterdam.

Yes, the PTC was a club for all users with any Philips computer. I remember that visit
very well, cause John himself demonstrated the first version of Soundtracker, which had
a nice GFX intro that was lost in the Soundtracker 1.0 when I bought later.

Wanna run the Warp demo (with a MSX mouse) ?
Mediafire: Disk 1 Disk 2
Gavitex  : Disk 1 Disk 2

My Music Memories : Rat Trap of the Boomtown Rats

It was Monday again and I was a bit down, so I though by myself I Dont Like Mondays. 

Of course that was a huge hit for the Boomtown Rats, but I liked that other song much much more.

Rat Trap was a big hit in England, not in the Netherlands, it never hit any charts. So I listen for hours to the BBC radio waiting for the song to play. 

Finally it was there ,I missed the first seconds of Rat Trap cause I had to press Play and Record together on my cassetterecorder. 

I was so exited I could record the song, it was hard not to sing along,  that would be a real problem, my trusty cassetterecorder had only a build in microphone...

I liked Rap Trap cause had a great saxofoon loop and it's still sounded fresh. I heard some bad covers on YouTube I would like to be removed by YouTube itself, cause they are incabable to play Rat Trap.

After I Dont Like Mondays I never heard again from the Boomtown Rats, altough the singer Bob Geldof had a sort of hitsong with I Dont Mind At All (I mean: The Great Song of Indifference - whatta shitty title) and ofcourse organising the Live Aid concerts...

My Music Memories : Blue Monday of New Order

When I though about I Dont Like Mondays of the Boomtown Rats,  another song about Mondays popped up. 

Yes, everybody likes a version of
Blue Monday, I like the original too. 

It got me interested in dance music for
the first time.

The synthesizer bass with computer drums, some real instruments and semi monotone singing...

I realise now it sounded like early Underground techno. 

Back then it was a song like nothing else it wasn't even a real single, it was only available as 12" ! 

So instead of let's say 4 minutes, New Order took almost double time to finish and I liked every minute of it. 

I found a documentaire about Blue Monday with short interviews with old members of
New Order, the story about the too expensive cover, how 4 different songs were used to create it, the (mis)programming of the song, the Top of the Pops failure and much more...

The song was remixed by dozen of so called DJs and also very populair in the computer scene and yes, I found a sample of Bue Monday in the MSX-2 Warp demo made by John vd Poelgeest.
But I will tell more about it in another post.

So I will leave you with 2 well known coverversions of Blue Monday in very different styles.
Flunk and Orgy and the rest doesnt matter, trust me...

MSX Google: week 5, 2016

Well, I was only browsing with Google for images of MSX Basic and I found some MSX websites I wanna share with you:

First of all: http://www.silueth.com/msx/?

This site has a very Spanish collection of all kind of MSX programs, mostly GFX related. If you wanna discover MSX programs you never heard of and you are not allergic for some Spanish words, go for it !

Second: http://msxdev.msxblue.com/

This site has some nice games to download, not all of them are freeware, but it's worth browsing if you still like MSX gaming.

Third: http://www.lavandeira.net/relearning-msx/

This site offers some kind of MSX cursus, but not just MSX Basic, but also MSX-C and MSX-DOS. It's not completed yet, but there is a lot of interesting stuff here.




The 4th https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC3R3X6_msx-games?guid=7b69b10f-6a4a-4361-9d0d-d3914c1f78ca

This site is the strangest site about MSX I ever found.

It seems you have to find 3 caches hidden somewhere in the Netherlands, by using some kind of tracking device ? I dont know how that works, but I could not resist it so maybe somebody can explain it to me...

Ho Ho Ho this MSX Xmas demo you dont want to miss !

 Yeah I'm too late for the holiday's, but Alberto Sgaggero did such a new job with programming this MSX BXmas demo in Basic, I could not let this wait until Xmas 2016.

Wait, Wonder And Enjoy the graphics and music of MSX Merry Christmas 2015 - (BASIC) 

It really shows the hidden powers of MSX-1 Basic....

112 MSX Basic games presents: 112-MENU.BAS (games 112 - 100)

Well I promised to release a disk with a working 112-MENU.BAS and the first 10 MSX Basic games, so here it is. I changed very little, so I wont mention those.

Here is a list of the contents of the disk with the MSX Basic games 112 til 100:

112) CARDS.GAM (HI-LOW)
111) CARDS.GAM (CONCENTRATION)
110) STARTREK.GAM
109) PARROT.GAM
108) ADVENTUR.GAM
107) GRANNY.GAM
106) JOHNNY.GAM
105) BLITZ.GAM
104) DETECTIVE.GAM
103) PLAYMAZE.GAM
102) BEACHBAL.GAM
101) DUTCH-J2.GAM
100) KITCHEN.GAM

When I look at the list I am happy I didnt pick only the non-action MSX Basic games,
cause it's much easier to program a game like HI-LOW.GAM then a JOHNNY.GAM

From my view a good MSX Basic game should have at least the following:

1) an intro displaying the title of the game
2) short introduction about the story in the game
3) short howto how and which controls will work
4) saving a highscore during playing the game
5) games should stop nicely after CTRL-STOP or other mentioned key.
6) the difficulty should be increased during playing

I have to say, some games are so simple, you dont have to know what you should do,
for example BEACHBAL.GAM
But in STARTREK.GAM I'm happy I made some kind of instruction page for all keys used
in the game.

I may said it before, I will say it again, translating games is not so easy as it looks, sometimes you have to change parts of the gameplay to get it right.
In DUTCH-J2.GAM I had to make a new highscore table, otherwise the values didnt fit.

And sometimes the games were too easy or too hard, so I added some kind of difficulties
in some games, like DETECTIV.GAM

Enough talking, download the disk at MediaFire or Gavitex as long as they are there...

DnBuser & TnC: Strong & Delayed (the real story)

I thought it was time to reveal the real story about DnBuser & TnC: "Strong & Delayed" tracks. If you read my post about DJ Station and see the video on YouTube you already know the real story.

So I am sorry making up a story about a DJ Collective called "DJ Station" and a real DJ DnBuser, who was only a virtual DJ created by TnC.

Now I can only tell you how I created these "Strong and Delayed" track, I just let the DJ (DnBuser) start the mix and when I liked the intro, I started to drag new samples to the numbers in the circle.

I never used the Vocal samples, cause I just hated the femal voice they used. Fun to know while creating a track, is when you drag (for example) BD to number 1 it sounds different when you drag it to number 8...

I wanted to create more tracks in different music styles, but after the "Strong & Delayed" series, all my attempts were never good enough to publish in any way...
Maybe some day...

DJ Station a music generating computerprogram

DJ Station of DATA BECKER is a really strange computer program, it can generate music in different styles, but you can on the fly change how the music sounds like. 

How ? By adding music samples, change filters and other settings like speed or mood. 

DJ Station created an impressive number of so called DJs that generate some kind of style and mood. 

It possible to create your own DJ, but you cannot add your own picture in it or generate how the DJ should look like... that's what I miss the most in DJ Station. 

And they made a horrible bad looking icon  (see below)...

While it was designed for WIN 95/98, still it runs on Windows XP 

and higher, but cannot record/save/export the mix anymore.

With the right audio-/videograbber you can record the track and make a mp3 of it. 

 

What I like in DJ Station is you can interactive change the mix, while the DJ is playing his mix, you see every nod or switch move, crazy to see...

Because DJ Station is an old program it contajns music-styles we dont use anymore, 

like Cross-Over , Rave or Euro-House and the music or mixes it produced are very minimal and could easlily repeating itself, I like it any way. 

My bigest problem with DJ Station is mainly the vocals, mostly the female voices are annoying, boring and used too often. 

I made some tracks myself with DJ Station and upload them to Soundcloud, 

titled "Strong & Delayed".

See my other posts with the same title for more info... 

DJ Station was issued as an 2 CD-Rom package, mainly containing samples in wav format.

So installing all 15 (!) music styles will take a while...

112 MSX Basic games presents: KITCHEN.GAM (100)

Yes, the countdown is still going and today it's MSX Basic Game numbero 100 !

The game is an old listing from the MSX Computer Magazine Listingbook #2, called "Kitchen Chaos, but strangely the listings name was in Dutch. But hey, the game itself was a mixture of Dutch and English, so who cares...

Well, I did and translated the last few Dutch words and  did some rework, cause original you saw the title of the game AFTER you run out of lives.
The difficulty of the game is also strange, first easy but soon it gets a bit intense and when you make a mistake the game goes back to the easy setting.

I had a great time playing it despite that, it looks nice, it's very fast and it;s hard to beat the highscore.
What more can you expect of the good game ?

So I had to include this one into the 112 MSX Basic games collection.

Get it !
Gavitex
Mediafire

TnC House Classics presents : Don't You Want Me / Dont You Want My Love - Felix

Of course should this one be included in the TnC House Classics. I remember I was speechless when I heard the song for the first time as intro on Impact's Housedisk 1.


The version of Impact was for Music Module (MSX-AUDIO ) so I tried to create a MSX-STEREO version in Moonblaster.

A slighly modified version with a sort of videoclip you can find on YouTube with the name 2 Felix (after the name of the original artist).

I used it also in the Moonblaster Housemix Between Good and Bad Gabbaheads.
Why is the song so populair ? I have never heard any organ like that and the sample was used in many other housemusic productions...even today...

Felix had a 2nd hit called It Makes Me Crazy, less sucessfull, but still a great song with another hypnotic riff that stays long in your head once you heard it.
Lucky for me it was also made for Moonblaster by Silence so I used it in my Moonblaster Housemix Cryognity Makes Me Crazy

I only included the original videoclips here, cause I don't want to waste time searching for specials, when the originals are special enough.

Here I found some interesting info about Felix. But what are you waiting for ? Get that Impact's Housedisk 1 and play it loud on your MSX-2 !

NONE Xmas songs - MSX Style - part 3

Yes there is a part 3. I wasnt planning it, but the New Year demo of part 2 was MSX-2 only
So I got the idea to create an MSX-1 New Year demo,
but because of the limitations of MSX-1 Basic (and my own limitations) I decided to make a Happy New Year Picture demo for MSX-1.

I re-used the sounds, sprites and greetings of the original, search on the net for pictures, converted them with my fav tool,  did some testing and here it is...

Gavitex LZH DSK
Mediafire LZH DSK

It took me 8 hours to finished, most of the time I was searching and converting the pictures. If you dont like it ? Well...search on YouTube for MSX demo...

But I wish you all a Merry Xmas and Happy New Year !

MSX Xmas game: Penguin Adventure

When I think of Xmas and MSX games, the first name that I can recall is Konami's Penguin Adventure. It has snow and even Santa Clause. It's a really good but hard game to handle.
I made it once to stage 3, so you know my gaming skulls now...

So I search in my own MSX archive and found an old BCF demo, that seems to be forgotten on YouTube.

When I started the demo I knew why. It had 2 little animation demo's with the famous SNOUT humor   ,
a converted picture from the cartridge box, some credits, all location of the traders, santa claus and all warps and a slotmachine just like in the game.

Only the slotmachine had some music (stolen from the MSX-2 game Red Lights of Amsterdam) and some mostly annoying PSG sounds.
So instead of uploading a video of the demo to YouTube,
I decided to search for other YouTube videos about the game Penguin Adventure.

But here you can download that old 1989 demo of BCF:
Gavitex LZH and DSK or Mediafire LZH and DSK

BCF became more famous when they created some games and their DiscStations, but of course you knew that already.

And here some great video's I found about Penguin Adventure:
1. Penguin Adventure MSX Konami overview
* The review is very nice made by a none MSX-er, it gave me a new inside info 
about the game itself *
2. Soundtrack Penguin Adventure Konami MSX
* Not the real OST from Konami, but nicely arranged, better than any so called remixes *
3. Weird Video Games - Penguin Adventure (MSX) 
* Forget all that nonsense about speed and more, just listen from 11:30 to the Penguin Adventure Rap, hilarious !!! *

  

 

NONE Xmas songs - MSX Style - part 2

This post is related to the song "Happy New Year" of ABBA. I can't remember much
"Happy New Year" MSX-demo's, with fireworks and stuff...

"Yeah yeah yeah, MCCM once published an firework listing that worked with MSX- and GW-Basic (PC), but it was so slow on MSX and PC, I had to use the KUN compiler on my MSX-2 and a Turbo Basic compiler on my PC-XT to get something that looked like fireworks..."
Noo, I won't put the listing in my blog, go to here and click on nr.35, good luck with typing in...

Well, in 1988 I got the idea to create a simple MSX-2 screen 8 New year demo with the use of my selfgenerated firework sounds and some of my creations made in Philips Designer...

So here it is, it's very old, but the listing is very readable for beginning MSX-ers or MSX-ers who forgot how to program in Basic (like me).



Mediafire: LZH or DSK
Gavitex: LZH or DSK

NONE Xmas songs - MSX Style - part 1

Of course I wanted this Xmas to have some MSX stuff in my blog, so I thought hard about the earlier Xmas posts (My Music Memories) and then it struck me. For both NON Xmas songs I could create a MSX post, so here is the first one.

On the tape I purchased from the C.U.C. composer TerjaSoft created, for both Spectravideo  SVI (side A) and MSX (side B) computers,some very nice PSG songs,
even with some animation.

At the end of the tape was WEALL, yes an nice with MSX-1 animated sprites PSG song.
Because it took a lot of time to load all the sprite data I included an timer and soundeffects to keep the waiting less boring.

So here is all SVI and MSX computers: We All Stand Together is glorious 3-channel PSG version...

At Mediafire: as file or DSK
At Gavitex: as file and DSK

I was curious about the story behind Spectravideo, so I found some info and
some fan websites.

Wikipedia
Roger's
Spectravideo Sweden
Thomas's




I think all MSX-ers should know there were once Spectravideo computers, which were almost MSX computers. And I remember C.U.C. club, who published lots of SVI/MSX related info, listings and programs, and bought lots of magazines and other stuff
at the fairs in Holland. I tried but can't find anything about C.U.C. on the net.
They really deserve their own archive of their magazines and tapes...

My Music Memories: 2 favs Xmas songs

Every blogger should have some post every christmas, so I tried to find some fresh ideas
to post. Here is part 1.

Some artists just record christmas songs almost exactly like the originals from the 50s, 60s, etc., that's ok by me. But I like the songs more, if the artists use new arrangements
to sound a little different than the traditional ones.

It was difficult to choose 2 favs songs and even more difficult to find an artist who made
a nice arrangement to that classic song.
When I finally had 2 favs I browsed YouTube to find a nice arrangement of those songs...

After 1 hour searching and listening to failed attempts of all kinds of (amateur) artists
I was so disappointed I decided to browse in my own CD-collection.
Within 15 minutes I found for both favs an nice new arrangement.

Here it is (as long as YouTube dont remove it).
"Winter Wonderland" of Steve Overland


"Have Yourself A Merry Christmas" of Tomorrow People

These songs can also be found somewhere on the Modern Christmas Tapes 1/2/3
( Another Xmas Post (Part III) )

My Music Memories: 2 NOT favs Xmas songs

Part 2.
There are xmas songs that me run as far as possible from any loudspeaker or if I cant escape I pretend I dont' hear it at all.

My choices may suprise you and you will probably disagree, well...you can always left a comments or stop reading...

First: my most annoying xmas song:

"Blue Christmas" of Elvis Presley
His Christmas album wasnt that bad at all, but this song was worst. Sadly this is the only song you hear from Elvis during the Christmas periode.

Why ?
Here is comes:
"Ahaahaa haahaa haahaa haahaa ffffff a blue xmas without you"
And:

"And I have a blue blue blue blue blue xmas"

Even a duet with Maria McBride cant save this song.

Second: my most boring xmas song:

"12 Days of Christmas" of ...that doesnt matter
It's just a memory game set to music, and it repeat itself over and over again.

Want proof:

Here it comes:

"On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
A Partridge in a Pear Tree"

On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the third day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

and we are just at day 5 !

If my true love send the same prenents every day I would tell her to stop,

No, the fool in this song wants all the same presents, 12 days long.

Stupid !

Even the Muppets with John Denver couldnt make the song less boring...

My Music Memories: 2 NONE Xmas songs

Here is part 3.


I looked to a couple of the "Best Xmas songs ever" and similair titles (what may help to sell those recycled CD collections) and saw in the tracklisting some songs, I think ,should never be part of any Xmas song collection.

First one: We all stand together - Paul McCartney.

Why is this a xmas song ?
It's a song for a animated children film with Rupert the Bear and in the musicvideo (just a rip from a short movie
"Rupert and The Frog Song" I see no snow, no xmas trees, no santa or reindeers, just a container full  of frogs !

Here is the complete movie to see for yourself if this is really a christmas movie.

Second: Happy New Year - ABBA.

Is this really a xmas song ?
Sorry, I think it is a song about New Year, Christmas is already gone then.
Yes, at New Year you can play that song from your Christmas CD, but nobody is waiting
for the next song like "Jingle Bells" or "White Christmas".

Here is the original video of ABBA and despite the "Happy" refrein, the lyrics are kinda sad.

112 MSX Basic games presents: BEACHBAL.GAM (102)

It's been a while since I post the last MSX Basic game here. I was a little tired of translating Dutch to English and modifing the games to make them more enjoyable. But recently I played a lot of MSX Basic games again and found a lot of ... and some exception games I had to post here. 
 
One of them is BEACHBAL, it was half Japanese half English game, based on the famous beach volleybal games. But of course much simplified, so it's 1 on 1 game.
I translated it long a ago into half Dutch/English version, so now I had to translate the Dutch part into English again. No problem, cause there was no story to translate or pages full of controls.
Instead it askes a few questions and you're in the game. 

You can play BEACHBAL again the computer or an other MSXer. I prefer a human competitor, cause the computer makes almost no mistakes, argh ! This is not a listing, but a game I found somewhere on a MSX BBS. This is also the first MSX-2 game in the 112 MSX Basic games series and plays in SCREEN 4 !
I never ever have used this screen on my MSX-2, just like SCREEN 3 FOR msx-1.

Enjoy the grafix and the playability of BEACHBAL and beat this %$#%# computer !!!

Gavitex / Mediafire