Fan of The Call

The Call was a kind of religious band and Lead singer, composer and bassist Michael Been was the core of the band. 
They had a history of making 3 albums for a music company, had some success and get fired. I and my sister both bought albums and CDs of the band, which was strange. 
Most of the time we disagree about our musical taste. 

To be honest I only bought 1 album ("Into The Woods") and my sister bought several on CDs (from "Reconciled" till "To Heaven and Back"). 
I bought also the first solo album of Michael Been on CD, great guitar work, but the songs just not good enough to score a radio hit. 

The Call makes rock music with a meaning. The way Michael Been performs each song is not always a pleasure for your ears (sometimes like wolf crying) and it gets you always under your skin. Even today. 
I recorded once the best songs of The Call and it took me 90 + 45 minutes of tape to do so.

The Call had some success with songs "Everywhere I Go" with Bono in the background,  "Let The Day Begin" and "I Still Believe". But I found many other favs on each album. 

At the end like so many groups, the core of the band (M.B.) started a solo career, 
he wrote the soundtrack for a movie "Light Sleeper" and released a couple of albums himself. However, I think the best songs he ever wrote was with The Call. 

You can find here the 2 sides of the C90 tape, which was in good shape consider the date of the recording. The second tape was compiled with some fav of an other underrated band Chagall Guevara with Steve Taylor as lead singer. Maybe I post about them too. Check out one of my favs

Now I will name a few favs of The Call like "Oklahoma", "Into The Woods", "Red Rain", 
"A Swim In The Ocean".

To my suprise his son  Robert Levon Been plays also bass and has the same voice 
as his dad, Michael Been, who died backstage in 2010. And Robert played live with other members of The Call with amazing results. They also still have a website

On YouTube I found an very long The Call Playlist, a tribute to The Call by The Simple Minds and also a (short) Playlist of all the musicvideos they made. 

Listen and maybe you find yourself a new band to listen too.

TnC Internet Adventures : 8Bit-Guy / 8Bit-Keys

This is a YouTuber I am so happy to find by accident. Just searching on YT for Philips MSX keyboard belonging to the Music Creator package for the Music Module I found a guy talking about Meow keyboard, yes you heard it right , a keyboard where you can play a song like a cat , meow songs .It was 8-Bit Keys that demonstrate it and was also a bit exited about this curious thing. Well, other vids about repairing/restoring old keyboard are not that interesting, but I found the same guy has another YT-channel called 8Bit-Guy.
 

Again repairing / restoring, this time computers. But with a few suprises like this serie 
I found, about how old games were made. Very interesting even nothing is told about MSX, only "those" other computers of Nintend, Atari, Apple and Commodore.

And more technical stuff like about bad VHS tapes (or not).

Fan of Virtual Audio Project

Years ago I bought a 2CD pack online at ECI (now called bookspot), a shop with mostly books. They sell also a lot of music, computergames and some game gear, sometimes cheaper than other real games selling shops. The 2CD pack contains a CD called Mystery and the other Relax, I bought it cause I liked synthesizer music and the covers and titles seems interesting enough.

Well after a while I found myself standing at the cashout of a recordshop with more than 10 CD of the Virtual Audio Project (VAPs) in my hands. But most of the CDs I bought from their own webshop, not cheap unless you bought a lot of them together.

And so I did.

Virtual Audio Project is a CD-serie of a music-company in Italy called Cybertracks with maybe 15 composers. Each CD is recorded in Dolby Surround, has its own artwork, sometimes release notes (or inlay book). On each CD there are a lot of different composers with tracks that should fit the theme or title of the CD. 

After more than 35 CDs with different themes, VAP started to repeat themes and music. 

I lost interest buying more. Occasionly I listen to one of the VAPs, although most of the tracks are not house oriented, not a big problem, I still like some of the tracks.

Sadly, I dont have a stereoset with Dolby Surround, so until now I never heard how a VAP CD should sound. with Dolby Surround.

I played with the idea of uploading some of my favs CDs of VAP on YT, but as so many times, somebody else had the same idea. Not all, but bother the trouble of uploading the ones that are not on YT ?

When writing this post I ask myself do I want to buy the rest of the collection of VAPs ?

Well maybe someday, now I have more fun listening to Retro-Wave/Synth-Wave/Retro-Elektro mixes on YT.

Xplora 1 CD-Rom - Peter Gabriel

Let's begin with saying "There is no Xplora 2". You can stop reading here! 

Now I will continue for those who want something about "Xplora 1". 

Peter Gabriel is one of these artists who knows how to use new technologies.
So when the CD-Rom games starting to become very populair, he not only release a CD called "Us" and also a CD-Rom with a musical multimedia experience, with video clips from his singles of the CD "Us", some musical games, puzzles, photo's, sounds and other interesting info.

With the CD-Rom came a beautiful book with more stuff to read,  more pictures, photos like on another magazine ever.

I kept the book somewhere (in other words: I don't know where I put it) and the CD-Rom 

cause I liked the idea of a musical adventure, where you can just watch or explore.

When I bought it, my PC was not capable of running it (too slow) and when I got a faster PC, it won't run it, cause it used an too old version of Video for Windows. Yes, this CD-Rom was made when Windows 3.1 was all around and Windows 95 not yet to be released.

Now recently on my virtual Windows XP, it works a bit, except for the videos.

Lucky for me, others like it too and posted some videos of "Xplora 1".

It was also released for Apple Mac computers and Philips CD-I. Understandable, but CD-I was a very very bad system.

Of the whole CD-Rom, I like the video-clips of the songs of the album "Us" the most.

"Kissing That Frog", "Steam" and "Digging In The Dirt"is very fascinating to watch.

Yeah, I know "Steam" is just another "Sledgehammer", but almost as good.

I will leave you with a short video review and sort of play through by a proud owner of de CD-Rom.

And some videos of my fav songs of "Us" or "Xplora 1"

My Music Memories : Hit Me With Your Rhyme-stick - Ian Dury and the Blockheads

When I was at primary school, Ian Dury was for a short time very popular. 

His first hit "Sex and Drugs and Rock n Roll" was sung by everybody in the translation "Koek and drop and Milky-Way". 



But his 2nd hit with the "Rythme-stick" was even better, and I still like it. 


It's funky, funny and everyone likes to shout HIT ME ! with Ian. 
If some white guys trying to be funky, then this is should be the result. 
The blockheads play like crazy and with the stoïcijns Ian at the front talk-singing 
his crazy lyrics, it's magic. 


Because of these Ian Dury hits, I bought much later the MSX version of Deus Ex Machina, but that's another story 
I already posted. 

After 2 hits I never heard anything from Ian Dury...
Years and years later I bought some kind of greatest hits album of Ian Dury, a bad buy.

All songs even those the other ones with the Blockheads, were just songs you listen to in an empty bar, easy to forget and not worthy to listen to it twice ( well maybe not: Reasons To Be Cheerful part 3 )

Examples: 
- Wake up and make love to me
- Sueperman's Big Sister
- Billericay Dickie
- I Wanna Be Straight
- What A Waste




 
These are just more avant-garde then funky, just not catchy enough. 
No surprise, these titles were no hits in the Netherlands. 
He did want he wanted to do, no concessions in lyrics or music. And no more hits.

But every time I hear "Hit Me" I just smile, turn up the volume and shout "HIT ME !!!" 

Sorry, here are a couple remixes that can compete with the original (sorry Paul Hardcastle).

Some Basics 4 MSX Basic ( part 5 )

Some Basics 4 MSX Basic ( part 5 )

Problem: 
Sometimes you cant start the next program automaticly, for example the Wordstore+ Basic replayer. Why ? Cause the replayer removes the entire Basic program that started the replayer.

Example:

10 PRINT Play the WS+ sample"
20 BLOAD "sample.ws",R
30 A=USR(0)
40 END

It wil not work. After the BLOAD the whole Basic program is gone.

Solution: 
An easy methode is, let the user press a key to start the next part of the program.
 Example:  

10 ' Some Basics 4 MSX Basic 5
20 SCREEN 0
30 PRINT "Press ENTER to run this program again"
40 PRINT:PRINT "run"
50 LOCATE 0,CSRLIN-2
60 END 

The trick is in line 50. The CSRLIN has the value of the current Y coordinate on the text-screen. We extract 2 from the current Y coordinate, so the cursor will be on the first character of the word "run" and we end the program. 

If the user press ENTER, it will start then same program again.
Of course instead of "run" you can use "BLOAD"sample.ws",R".

It's not very fancy, but I used this trick  a couple of times, 
cause I didn't had a better solution.

TnC Internet Adventures: Red Zora (Magix & Ultra Red)

For some posts about Kaleidoscope software programs I had bought in the past, I was browsing in my special CD case full of Multi-media CD-/DVD-Roms.

Before I even found those Kaleidoscope CD-Roms, I re-discovered an enhanced Audio-CD
labeled Ultra Red Red Zora published by Magix. That was very interesting, because it was not only a maxi CD-single (4 tracks), but had also a multimedia part by Magix with demo's and the PlayR remix-program to create your own version of Red Zora.

I never liked the song Red Zora, but the Berlin Jones Remix (track 3) was not too bad. 
The single version reminds me a little too much of the remixes of disco-classics Daddy Cool and Ma Baker of Boney M.

Anyway, I tried to get the PlayR to work on my Windows 10 PC, but Windows 10 didn't let me install it. Too old. When I tried again with a VMware version of Windows XP Professional it installed, but cause my soundcard doesnt support the DirectSound of DirectX6 (yes that is old) the program crashed and never started up again after that incident.

What I saw was to turntables where you could add en remove samples of Red Zora in realtime, so while the music played you can play with the samples. Nice Idea, I saw it earlier in DJ Station, maybe from the same programmer.

There was also a possibility to create your own video-clip, with some visuals and short vids of a moving creapy version of a Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) clone.
I wondered if Magix wanted to create a "Red Zora" horror-movie, glad I could not find it at YT. And I am not planning to create a video myself with these vids, too scary.

I was wondering if I should find all tracks on YT and to my suprise "Red Zora" was not an original song, made with Magix Music Maker ( or any other Magix clone), but a remix of the theme from the TV-series "Die rote Zora und ihre Bande ". The TV-serie was made for children in 1979, but the story was much older, made in 1941 by Kurt Held. After the TV-serie they made a movie called "Die rote Zora" and they used the remix of Ultra Red as the new theme for the movie.Sorry, most info is in Germany language.

From the original music from the TV-serie I found an instrumental version (basic stuff for the remix of Ultra Red), a French version "Zora la rousse" and a German version "Die rote Zota". I liked the French version, cause I dont like any kids choirs...

I tried to find better remixes than in this maxi CD-single, but if you dont like the original,
you will find noty much, so I like only this remix of Tom Borijn, cause he used almost nothing of the original Zora song...

MSX Google: week 17, 2018

After all current my internet adventures I found enough websites to create an other MSX Google week. 

This time I searched for MSX TV and MSX monitor images, to be used in a long video I still want to make of the Moonblaster mix "Between Good and Evil Gabba Heads"  I created already a short video-clip ( "2 Felix" ), but I wanted to use the Kaleidoscope animations from the Philips Designer program also in the long mix and using images of all kinds 
of MSX computers (with monitor or tv) to display those animations, just like in the video clip, only with other images.

 
The results were poor, lots of images of MSX computers, but 99% without any TV or monitor. So I must re-think the whole idea for the video for the long mix.

But all is not lost. I found some websites that had some interesting MSX content. There is also non-interesting MSX content. I don't care much about the history of MSX, 
why it's a failure and why not, where the name MSX came from, etc. etc. 

You can believe msx.org, Wikipedia or any other website. I believe they all have facts and opinions, so I believe all stories are true.

For me, MSX stands for playing very old but good games, programming in powerful Basic
and listening to amazing music from games or made especially for MSX on the MSX by lots of composers.

Enough bullshit, here are some interesting MSX content I found: 

The Nightfall Crew website shows how computer hardware looks like inside and gives lots 
of information about what must be repaired and how it's done .Together with lot of images, it's nice to browse. Not many MSX stuff, but some obscure Philips computers and a Arabic computer, all with interesting technical details. 

Yes, there is still 1 Dutch MSX shop !!!
Not much to buy, a couple of Dutch MSX books, a UMJA controller for using an USB mouse (even wireless) on your MSX computer and a SE-ONE MP3 player with FM radio. An UMJA may come handy, cause 2nd hand MSX mouses are hard to get. 
But a MP3 player ? Why do you want that ? We all know you better play MP3 files on much newer devices. Why prove that MSX computers are capable of playing MP3 files? 
Hellow, it's 2018. Nobody cares. 
Everybody listens to music on smartphones, tablets and laptops. 

Better go on with the next site.

I never heard of Wilbert Berendsen, till I found this page.
He was the programmer of the WBASS MSX assemblers !
Finally, I know where the WB stands for. 
Not. I was never interested in assembler programming, too tough to handle for me. 

Well, that was all the MSX stuff he ever made, but his CV is very impressive.
Now he is an organ player, composer and still a computer nerd, interesting combination.




And now I break a tradition, a non-MSX link in the MSX Google week. While the MSX world is still waiting for the MSX-3 computer, I present to you: the MSX-5 Monitor !!!

Well, that's all Folks !!

Some Basics 4 MSX Basic ( part 4 )

Hellow again.
This example is a bit longer than earlier posts. 

I wanted to make a good example of what you can do with characters in SCREEN 1,
but colours would make the example too long.

Problem:How to get bold characters in SCREEN 1

Solution: VPOKE only the charcters you want to speed up your code
 

Example:
100 ' SB4B-04 apr/may 2018 TnC
110 SCREEN 1:WIDTH32:KEY OFF
120 PRINT "SCREEN 1: Bold Characters":PRINT: PRINT
130 '---
140 T$="ABCDEF":PRINT T$:PRINT:GOSUB 220
150 T$="123456":PRINT T$: PRINT: GOSUB 220
160 T$="abcdef":PRINT T$:PRINT:GOSUB 220
170 '---
180 PRINT:PRINT "Press any key when ready"
190 IF INKEY$="" THEN 190
200 SCREEN 0:KEY ON:END
210 '---
220 FOR T=1 TO LEN(T$)
230 A=(ASC(MID$(T$,T,1)))*8
240 FOR V=A TO (A+8)
250 VPOKE V,VPEEK(V) 0R VPEEK(V)/2
260 NEXT:NEXT
270 RETURN 

I wanted to make a good example of what you can do with characters in SCREEN 1,
but colours would make the example too long.


The clever VPOKE in line 250 does the whole trick, but you need to know the ASCII table. Then you know which characters must be bold.

For example: 

ASCII 65 = "A", 90 = "Z"

ASCII 97 = "a", 122 = "z"

ASCII 32 = space
ASCII 48 = "0", 57 = "9"


Please remember: Never use special msx chars to vpoke if you publish it online. 
Better use standard ascii characters like # or $ or ?




And after a CLS or SCREEN command, the bold characters will be normal again.

"Deep State" Theme Music - Dan Berridge (Fox TV series)

Sometimes you see a trailer on TV and you think, not too bad, another James Bond clone, whose family is being kidnapped and he had to kill someone for the last time. 
But after seeing episode 4 (Reunion, I missed the first 3) you know its more than just an old secret agent trying to stay alive and rescue his family. 

It's also about powerful people in any secret service, who have the power to change anything if they want if they get enough money to do so and let others take the blame or say its for the best of their country. 

For the intro, Dan Berridge made a really haunted version of the intro of "Once In A Lifetime" by the Simple Minds. I recorded by hand the intro with Dutch subtitles from the Fox TV, cause that intro shows really what the series is all about. Not another Rambo action series (like all official trailers of Fox networks), but this intro let you think about what happened behind the news of today. Is the news not manipulated by any secret action of any security agents?

And why did Fox TV choose the "Once In A Lifetime" song for Deep State?
I made me wonder why Swedemason took the song, speeches of president Trump and mixed them together.. 
Want more Deep State conspiracy theories, here it is.
If you just want to know more about this TV serie, check out the offical website.
Very stylish, just like the intro I recorded.

Some Basics 4 MSX Basic ( part 3 )

My MSX Basic tips and tricks part 3. Yes, I know more than just a few tricks.

Problem: How to generate GFX on an MSX-1, without showing how it's generated?

 
Solution: Using DEFUSR=&H41 and DEFUSR=&H44 commands
 

Example:

100 SCREEN 0
110 PRINT "This screen will be switched OFF"

120 PRINT "and switched ON after printing texts"
130 FOR T=1 TO 1600:NEXT T
140 DEFUSR=&H41: A=USR(0)
150 FOR T=1 TO 160
160 PRINT "ON on ";

170 NEXT T
180 DEFUSR=&H44:A=USR(0)
190 IF INKEY$="" THEN 190
200 CLS:END

I think I need to explain it in detail. Line 130 is just a pause (count to 1600), so you have time to read the text. In line 140 the screen will be switched OFF, you can see only the background color, but the foreground is invisible.

The lines 150 t/m 170 are just to generate some text to show what had been hidden.
Line 180 switched the screen ON and you see the generated texts for the first time.
Then another trick in line 190, this is the easiest way to wait until the user pressed a key.
However, SHIFT, CTRL, GRAPH, CODE and other special keys will not work. 

The DEFUSR trick works in any SCREEN, but in the SCREEN 4 and higher (on MSX-2 
and higher) you can use the SET PAGE command to display a nice waiting screen while generating other GFX on other pages. On SCREEN 0,1,2,3 you don't have pages and this DEFUSR trick works very well.

TnC Internet Adventures : MSX logos Part 1 - Yahoo

To find some background info or covers about MSX stuff I am blogging about, 
I use a lot of times search words with word MSX added to. And when I search for pictures 
I get lots of strange pictures that had nothing to do with MSX computers. 
The word MSX is nowadays commonly used for all kinds of things. 
From motors till Viagra pills, anything is possible. 

I decided it was interesting enough to search for MSX logos, what they mean and for which products they use the word MSX for. 
Well, I can tell you there will be no Microsoft on this list. 
They give their name to the MSX standard (well if that is true is for another post), but they totally forgot about it. 
You might say, world domination fallen with MSX, but with Windows, it worked out fine. Enough about big MS, let's see how other companies use MSX for their products.

This is a collection of MSX logo's I got with a Yahoo search ( it's mine default search engine, cause I use McAfee ), here we go in random order:

MSX was never going international, but there were plenty of countries

where MSX computers were sold. 

I think the logo was to use for all MSX groups and seemed 

to be forgotten.

Honda made a motor called MSX 125 in lots of variations, a fan made this cartoon picture.

Somebody uploade an animated MSX logo in different versions on YouTube, 

but for what use ? I could not find out. 

 

Yes, there is an MSX radiostation and no they dont play MSX music, 

but it's a fake radio-station in GTA games itself.

Check out the D&B music on big YT.

This is a logo from a graphic designer company, do they work as a trio ? 

Cant find the 3 names of these designers.

Next is a musicshop which sells CDs with sounds from real instruments. 

But why do you want so many different cymbalsounds ?.

Here is some other graphic designer company, dont know where the logo was used for.

The site was not very helpfull.

Yes, MSX energy drink !! 

If enough people at Microsoft drink it, maybe they produce 

an MSX-3 as a new X-Box game-console.

 

 

Logo for a bikersclub, for mini bikes only. Mmm, does the M in MSX stands for Mini ?

Well, some people do. 

That other logo seemed to be for another motorgang, 

for some very bad-ass MSX-ers, but the link is broken.

 

The logo of a never existing magazine, somehow I'm glad. Do I like to play Space Manbow on a MetroSexual computer ? So weird.

Another logo from a graphic desgner studio, purpose yet unknown.

I like it. Put this logo on any MSX-3 computer and I will buy it. 

Here is a company called MSX contents and uses MSX in the name of their product, 

like MSX Pressforce... Maybe handy for any magazine publisher.

Strangely their website is called: fivecom.

Does that mean they have only 5 computers and employees ?

A shop that sells outdoors stuff, I like the title MSX Mainstream, it's a good title for a new MSX blog. I dont think I need any of this stuff, I'm too lazy for that.

Well, that all for now. Next time a new search engine. BTW the original MSX logo in this post, came from a very interesting blog of Dave Voyles. In this post, he described briefly the history of MSX computers in a very good article. Take a look to his other posts.

Fan Of De Raggende Manne

Again it's time to post about some of my Dutch Music Memories. Ow, I am sorry. 
This is the Fan Of Series. Good to know.

I was always a big fan of college rock or punk rock and when I heard the song 
"Poep In Je Hoofd" on the radio, I wanted to find out more about this band "De Raggende Manne". Later I saw them playing live on TV a kind of ballad "Allemaal Voor Jou" . 

For me 2 reasons to buy the CD called "Rooie Pap". Lucky for me there were enough other great songs and lots of Dutch humor too. Like a song for the Dutch king with a duration of 10 seconds. 
Their greatest hit was "Nee's Niks" (see playlist) with a duration of say... 7 seconds, however, it was not included in any chart, cause the song had to be at least 30 seconds long. 

Another plus for "Rooie Pap" was the multimedia part. Yes, it was an audioCD and a CD-ROM together. It was made with an old version of Quicktime of Apple and so it worked on Windows and Apple computers. The multimedia part was showing different parts of the body of De Raggende Man and by clicking on each part you got a different interactive part full of bizarre Dutch humor. I liked it a lot and made a video about the intro and menus. Not showing all the content, cause that would ruin the surprise, just making all watchers curious was my goal. Check it out, here.

After "Rooie Pap" I bought their CD "Zaad". It was noisy, avant-garde music with sometimes a bit of melody and strange lyrics. I only liked 2 songs 1 was a cover from Willeke Alberti 
(by then famous Dutch female singer) "Telkens Weer" (see playlist). 
I liked the jazzy style of De Raggende Manne and the way singer Bob Fosko performs this song I decided to create a 10-hour version...Telkens Weer means Once Again. ..get it? 

Still "Zaad" was a bad buy and I bought the album they made after "Rooie Pap", called "Omschudden". Once again I didn't like most of the songs, it seems everybody was starting and stopping together at the same time but in between they go just randomly making music. 
Only the protest song "Denk Daar Eens Over Na" ( about no drilling for gas or oil in the Wadden Sea, a famous Dutch nature area) was worthy to listen too. After that I never bought anything from De Ragende Manne... except a single from Bob Fosko the lead shouter of the band...and that is the other story...("Me Vader Is Behanger")

Their live performances were the best, but did never last more than 30 minutes, after that the band and the public were exhausted. I browsed YT and created a playlist of I think the best tracks you can find of De Raggende Manne, maybe it is even better than their Best of album called "Het Rottigste van De Raggende Manne."

Like so many groups they had their own comeback, at that time I already lost interest in them. However, the lead-shouter Bob Fosko is still active in all kind of activities, check out his website.