Welcome back to Friday Night Videos and tonight we celebrate the best of what happens when Wisconsin and Scotland get together. Garbage!
Garbage is like the penultimate 90s band really. And perfect for the games I was planning and playing at the time.
I have mentioned before that by the mid 90s I was really burned out on D&D and wanted something new. That new ended up being various World of Darkness games like Vampire and Mage, but most of all WitchCraft. I made more than one witch that looked like Shirley Manson.
"I'm Only Happy When Rains" is exactly the sort of song that I had in mind when I was playing then. Alternative, hard, and a great lead singer. From their debut self titled album.
"Stupid Girl" showed that this band was no one hit wonder.
"#1 Crush" appeared on the Romeo + Juliet Soundrack, but that is not where I know it best. It would go on to later be the theme music to the British witchcraft serial "HƎX". I still consider it a "witch" song.
Garbage 2.0 was another breakthrough album for the band. Getting them quite a bit of critical acclaim and giving them their high chart topping songs in the UK.
"Push It" adds more electronica than their previous outings. The video has a nice homage to Village of the Damned.
"I Think I'm Paranoid" is pretty much the theme song for any Mage game I have ever played.
What is better than hearing your favorite band? Hearing your favorite band cover a great song.
"Because the Night" has been covered and recovered by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith (they wrote it), 10,000 Manics and Garbage with Screaming Females. The song is a passionate ode not just to a love but to the night itself. As a nyctophiliac myself, I can relate.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos! Sci-Fi Edition.
All week I have talking about Sci-Fi games and sci-fi themes. All of this has sent me back to the late 70s / early 80s when I was hard core into scifi and playing Traveller.
I had so many ideas back then for games. Most I'd never use or even admit to today. But back then they were awesome. You just have to take my word on that!
Again. This time was ripe for ideas in gaming. Anything seemed possible. I was already associating D&D and Star Wars together so when the 80s dawned, I threw MTV into the mix.
No one (except one other artist on my list tonight) looked more like a futuristic alien than Mike Score of A Flock of Seagulls. "Space Age Love Song" was a lesser know, or at least lesser charting, song from their self titled album. But I always thought it was a great ode for the classic space age hero like Flash Gordon or John Carter.
Who was my idea of a Space Hero? It varied, but I knew his name. Major Tom.
Here is the other Alien artist on my list, David Bowie, in his Ziggy Stardust best, singing about our hero Major Tom in his "Space Oddity". This song appeared on his 1969 album of the same name. It was written as an homage to both Apollo 11 and 2001 A Space Oddity.
German born artist Peter Schilling heard "tell my wife I love her very much" and took his own stab at the story of Major Tom in "Major Tom (Coming Home)".
Major Tom finally made it into my games, but not till much, much later and as a riff on the movie "Lifeforce". Major Tom comes home but he is carrying a virus that starts a zombie plague in All Flesh Must Be Eaten.
You can also here/watch the original German version, Völlig Losgelöst and the really-cool-even-though-it-is-a-commercial version by Shiny Toy Guns.
Back to Bowie for bit. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars just BEGS to have a game made from it. Ziggy played guitar...
Call me crazy. But I always wanted to write a game called "Space Truckers". It would be the unholy fusion of late 70s sci-fi and late 70s "trucker chic". It has not been an easy sell. Regardless of how the game comes out in needs to play like Deep Purple sounds.
Few rock acts can speak credibly on matters of scifi, let alone science. Few acts are Queen.
Brian May, the lead guitarist, writer and sometimes singer of Queen is also Dr. Brian May. He has a Ph.D. is astrophysics. "'39" from 1975's A Night at the Opera is song that grabbed me from the first time I ever heard it. The story of the song is that a man and 19 other astronauts leave on a spaceship to discover a new world. They return with good news of a new world. For them it's only been one year, for the Earth and his family it has been much longer. His wife is dead, his daughter is an old woman and his own grand children are there to meet him. "Ne'er look back, never fear and never cry."
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos! Supers Edition.
I have been thinking a lot about supers this last week or so. I have a big "deep dive" I want to do this summer with supers and of course the Summer movie season starts tonight with The Avengers.
This got me thinking about 2003-2005 (well that and a post at Age of Ravens that I will get too later) when I was working on a big Supers/Supernatural crossover. Not Supernatural the show, but rather a world, or two worlds, that were "light" and "dark". The dark world was my regular WitchCraft/Buffy/Ghosts of Albion game. The light world was a world populated by Super Heroes. Characters in one world had a counterpart in the other.
It is from this effort that I began working up a number of different versions of Willow and Tara and it gave birth to Justice. Of course I had a soundtrack.
"Heroes" was not just the centerpiece of this time period, it became the name of the first adventure. Honestly, there is very, very little about David Bowie's singing and song writing that doesn't inspire me.
Heroes always reminds me of the 1977 movie "Heroes" that starred Henry Winkler, Sally Field and Harrison Ford. The movie was not about supers, but about a soldier from Vietnam and the loss of his dream. I remember seeing this movie dozens of times. But what always, always got me in the end was when the credits closed in on a broken Henry Winkler (he came to the reality that his friend was dead) and a crying Sally Field was "Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas from their prog-rock classic Leftoverture. I put this in my top 20 of all time favorite songs. Like the movie I always felt that this song was what the characters and situations I were working on were about; Noble, but deeply flawed heroes. The fact that it is use every year for Supernatural only cements it's credibility for my games.
What I wanted to say about my next song was "Fuck you P!nk is my jam!" but you all deserve much better and more than that. P!nk is freaking fantastic. I bought Missundaztood for my wife and I promptly left it in my car where I listened to it everyday. "Just Like A Pill" is not about supers. But it did give me an idea on an old comic/cartoon trope, the drug-addiction episode. Plus if I am going to mix supernaturals with supers then drugs seem like a no brainer.
What became something of a theme song to my later Buffy games, this also captured something I wanted to capture in my own games. These characters, these supers are as removed from humanity as the monsters they fight. I wanted to capture what is was to be human.
Rob Zombie may not have the answer, but in "More Human than Human" from White Zombie's Astro-Creep: 2000 he knows what question to ask.
It's a wicked world we live in. It's cruel and unforgiving. No one raps it better than The Transplants in "Diamonds and Guns".
If you need a theme song for an end of the world Armageddon event then you can do worse than Disturbed and their cover of Genesis' "Land of Confusion" from Ten Thousand Fists. The video was animated by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, so it also has "street cred". If I need to write an adventure about destroying the world I put Disturbed on first.
Mixing Supers and Supernaturals is the Reese's Peanut Buttercup of campaigns for me; mixing two different things together to get something that is better than either on their own. Or at least something new and exciting.
EXACTLY like "Bring the Noise" by Public Enemy and Anthrax. Rap meets speed metal. This gets me pumped. Just like Chuck D says "these lines are dope".
In truth I could do an entire night of rock/rap crossovers and talk about how they influenced my horror writing.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos as we continue the Vampire theme for Vampire Month here at the Other Side.
For this last FNV of Vampire Month I wanted to do something special.
Rarely does a movie come around that captures the feeling of the times quite like 1987's. My DM had moved to Chicago, I was in the middle of my world changing campaign that would later become part of The Dragon and The Phoenix and I was getting ready for college. I came up to visit and we went and saw this film. It was full of cool vampires, great music and fantastic ride of a movie. Yes it was taking advantage of the Anne Rice craze of the time, but it did more than that. It took the stock 80s teen movie and turned it into something else.
Given I was on the edge of my Ravenloft years this was the final push I needed.
The soundtrack to this movie fueled many nights of my early college days. To this day it still holds a special place in my heart. No one song is fantastic, but as a collective they are more than the sum of their parts.
The movie opens up with the Echo and the Bunnymen covering the Doors "People are Strange". I like this version and it is a worthy version, but you just can't beat the original in my mind.
Another song that helped make this soundtrack so iconic was Roger Daltery's cover of Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me". I have a confession. I don't care for Elton John much, but I have always liked this song. Hearing it sung by one of my favorite front men made it an entirely new song. Is it better than Elton's version? Probably not. But I can't hear this song and not flashback to a time between 1987 and 1991, holding a beer and watching the sun set.
"I Still Believe" by Tim Cappello is an interesting choice. I am not really a fan of the song per se, only the memories it brings up. Though it is also the only song where the performer appears in the movie. Tim Cappello was known at the time for being a really big and cut guy. So oil him up and stick him into the movie.
Looking back nearly 30 years later, "Cry Little Sister" is not a great song. It's even a touch melodramaic, overwrought and a little over produced. So the perfect theme for 1987.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos as we continue the Vampire theme for Vampire Month here at the Other Side.
The early 90s were a great time for Vampires. Think it is good now? Back then in the RPG scene we had White Wolf's Vampire the Masquerade, Chill 2nd edition, Ravenloft and plenty of other games. We even had one of my most favorite Rifts books ever, Vampire Kingdoms.
We also had singers like Suzanne Vega with her "Blood Makes Noise". Suzanne Vega also kinda looks like a vampire.
That the one song that always got me in the mood to do some writing or run a game was Faith No More's The Morning After from their epic album The Real Thing.
Sinéad O'Connor's second album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got was without a doubt the most anticipated album of 1990. Well. At least by me. In 1988 I discovered Sinéad and The Lion and The Cobra. My best friend at the time and I blew off class to pick it up. I later bought her a copy of the EP of I Am Stretched on Your Grave. It became one of my favorite songs on the album.
Was the woman singing the vampire in this? Or was the grave she was lying on? (yeah I know it a song about a woman talking to her dead mother, but vampires worked better for me).
That best friend? Yeah I ended up marrying her five years later.
Another artist that isn't normally associated with vampire or the 90s is Thomas Dolby. Many remember Dolby from "She Blinded Me With Science", but he had a number of later released that were critically praised but not great sellers. One was 1989's Aliens Ate My Buick with the haunting "Budapest By Blimp" a song I always thought was about a vampire returning to his ancestral home to only be sad by how much it had changed.
Dolby does have street cred when it comes to Gothic Horror. He worked on the soundtrack for the movie Gothic which recounts the tale of Lord Byron, John Polidori, Percy and Mary Shelly. A weird little movie from the guy that gave us Lair of the White Worm, starring the Warlock, Wormtail., the guy who almost survived Keyser Söze, and the Handmaid.
In the early 90s nothing was bigger than Concrete Blonde. I remember seeing them opening up for Sting on the last leg of his Soul Cages tour. "Tomorrow Wendy" might not be a song about vampires, but it oozes pathos and thanatos. Frankly it captured those early days of Vampire the Masquerade perfectly.
Welcome back to Friday Night Videos as we continue the Vampire theme for Vampire Month here at the Other Side.
These songs are ones we used in our games for the few times I used music. I do sometimes like to set a tone with some music before playing, especially when I am doing horror.
Back in the day I wrote an adventure for my group called "Ravenloft III: The Necropolis". Yeah, it was not originally named, but some of the things in the adventure later appeared in other adventures and games including what would later become the biggest "vampire game" in my life: Buffy.
The Who's Behind Blue Eyes was the "theme song" for the main anti-hero of the tale. A vampire that you were supposed to feel sorry for and help.
Queen has cemented their legacy as one of the best rock bands ever. But there was a time when this was not the case. Undaunted Freddie and crew still took risks with this song, "Who Wants to Live Forever", from the album A Kind of Magic which also served as the soundtrack to the movie Highlander. Of course a different kind of immortal was featured in the movie, but the song works for either. If you have not listened to this album I suggest you do so.
Yes it is cheese pure and simple, but Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell is one of the very, very few albums I can play D&D too. In fact my Freshman year in college I ran Ravenloft I6 while playing this album.
Also Meatloaf should get special mention here since the video for Bat Out of Hell premiered on Friday Night Videos before it did on MTV.
Not much else on this album is D&D-ish or even Vampire-ish, but this song still has a special place in my black heart.
The 90s began with me playing AD&D2nd ed and mostly Ravenloft. The 90s ended with me, presumably searing off D&D forever in favor of C.J. Carella's WitchCraft RPG.
In between those two times I played Chill 2nd Ed, Mage the Ascension and of course the most 90s of all 90s angst filled games,
Vampire the Masquerade.
If there ever was a "vampire band" it was Bauhaus. No band was Gothier and Bela Lugosi's Dead is almost self-parody. I am sure there were tons of Vampire the Masquerade that looked just like Peter Murphy.
No else one "got" the whole vampire vibe better than Concrete Blonde.
From the album of the same name Bloodletting was a bloody valentine to Anne Rice.
Another love letter to Anne Rice is Sting's Moon Over Bourbon Street.
Blue Öyster Cult was a huge influence on I think a lot of people's early gaming.
No angsty vampire or Victorian sex symbol. This is Nosferatu.
And let us not easily forget "Anne Rice's Dracula", I mean Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula from 1992.
Inspiration will sometimes come from the oddest places.
Take for example the case of Eric Burdon, The Animals and War.
I "discovered" Eric Burdon while going through a stack of old 45s back in my teens. The Animals' song "House of the Rising Sun" painted such an evocative picture for me that I was obsessed with it for years.
Fast forward to the late 90s early 2000s. I began listening to more of Eric Burdon's "new" band, War. "Spill the Wine" was pretty much on constant rotation for me for the longest time. Combine these two and a vista was painted for me in sharp relief. Eric Burdon has the distinction of being the only living person I have stated up as an Occult Poet, he is also the only character I have used both in my Willow & Tara based Buffy game and my lighter tone Hex Girls game.
House of the Rising Sun is a haunting song. It is no surprise to me that it was used in the teaser trailers for American Horror Story Coven last year. For me the House was a house of ill-repute, but it became something more; something much darker. In my games Burdon found the house and uses his occult powers to keep others away.
Don't let me be Misunderstood also had a similar effect on my writing. You could almost construe it as an adventurers lament and not just a man to his lover.
We Got to Get Out of This Place. Vietnam or "Subterranean Fantasy Fucking Vietnam".
Bloggers have spent thousands of pages of text on analyzing the pulp writings of old and their effects on the genesis of D&D, but what about the music? I saw just like the late 70s and 80s captured the mood of the time and D&D, the 60s are what influenced the authors of the games.
Have you ever played a gnome? I have played one and that was during the start of D&D 3.0. Jassic Goodwalker. Jassic was a long haired overfed leaping gnome with a fondness for wine, song, and women. Spill the Wine was the song that gave birth to Jassic. Never played a gnome after Jassic, but I would dust of his sheet in heartbeat.
Welcome to a special Friday the 13th Friday Night Videos!
Let's talk about superstitions, bad luck and bad mojo tonight!
Writing about witches and magic I like to include superstitions in my games and have my characters follow them. Gives a little color to the character and separates them from the other characters a bit more.
First up is the one and only Stevie Wonder.
I will be honest, I LOVE Stevie Wonder. For Once in My Life, My Cherie Amour, Talking Book, Songs in the Key of Life, these are some of my favorite albums. One of the best songs from Talking Book is Superstition.
If you can find a harder case than Mike Ness then you are likely talking about Johnny Cash. Sometimes I think he wallows in self-pity but Social Distortion's Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell is still a hell of an album. And it gave us this song, Bad Luck.
Cream is a group that really had a influence on my writing. I don't know why, it's just something about their blues infused rock and psychedelica that really spoke to me in the 80s. Plus Eric Clapton is God. Let's just all be honest here. This is one of their bluesier recordings, Albert King's Born Under a Bad Sign.
Pete Yorn's Ever Fallen In Love Someone was part of my Sojourn in Hell soundtrack and thus was on constant play while I was working on Buffy and Ghosts of Albion. It also struck me as a "bad luck" song.
Here is something. I LOVE the Police. Really. I have seen them in concert, seen Sting something like 6-7 times. Yeah I am weird like that. But what is weirder is how much some of my own writing from the 80s has obvious and fairly overt influences from the Police.
Here is an older one, from Reggata d'Blanc and written by drummer Stewart Copeland, On Any Other Day. This was my favorite album for the longest time.
Expect a Police night one night.
Another really influential album on my formative years was Who's Next. Here is John Entwistle having a really bad day in My Wife.
Another influence on my writing (but not so much on my playing) was Frank Zappa. I might do a Frank Zappa night, but until then here is his son Dweezil (who is really cool, met him years ago) and the title track to the most under rated album from 1986, Having a Bad Day.
Tonight I want to welcome my very first Guest VJ.
Back on the original FNV guest VJs were a staple. Usually they had something to promote, a new movie or TV show, or they were pop-culture icons.
Tonight I want to welcome my very special guest Elizabeth Chaipraditkul, author and designer of new game WITCH!
I featured WITCH this morning on my Kickstart your weekend post so please check that out.
So without further ado here is Liz!
--
Hi! I am Liz and I was asked by Tim to guest VJ and make a playlist based on my game WITCH and what I listened to while creating it. This was difficult and I spent a lot of time agonizing over my Spotify playlists and YouTube history before I came to this core essence list. I hope you enjoy it.
Florence and the Machine - No Light, No Light
When I need to get in the mood for writing I love listening to beautiful things and for me that is Florence and the Machine. Their lyrics stay with me and make me think. No light, No Light is no exception. It is a simple love song with beautiful lyrics. “You are the night time fear, you are the morning when it’s near, when it’s over you’re the start, you’re my head, you’re my heart.” When creating WITCH, the fluff pieces that are meant to tempt and entice readers, I try to emulate what I feel when I listen to Florence and the Machine
Lana Del Rey - Gods & Monsters
Lana is so apathetic in all her songs, it is brilliant. I am a pretty passionate person, at least I like to think so, and Lana is the perfect Yin to my Yang. Furthermore, the subject matter of her songs is darkly shallow, the perfect mood for a simple noir setting- smoking a cigarette, sipping a martini, and trying to hide the run in your stockings. Lana Del Rey just works for WITCH, she’s mysterious, deceptively shallow, and seductive- just like magic.
Johnny Cash - I Hung My Head
Anything Johnny Cash was the soundtrack to my university years. He is a fantastic storyteller. His voice conveys so much emotion, it’s clear and it’s strong. I try to emulate Johnny when I write and listening to him clears my mind. I Hung My Head is one of my penultimate favourite songs by Mr. Cash, it is a simple story of utter tragedy. It makes me think a lot about WITCH, what would you do if you did something so stupid, what would you give up to get out of a stupid mistake you made?
Stevie Nicks – Edge of Seventeen
We’re shaped a lot by our parents. I wasn’t the coolest kid in school so, when I wanted to get into music, I asked my mom to buy me “cool” tunes (big mistake). She came back with Fleetwood Mac. While this didn't make me the most popular kid, I am now happy she did. I love Stevie Nicks and she helps me when things just aren't working the way I want in WITCH. Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac are my editing music. They get my head bopping, they allow me to let go of crappy pieces of text I through were brilliant weeks ago, and the help me get work done.
Shireen - Unmarked
Shireen is actually a band who’s lead singer I know pretty well. She’s my friend and her name is Annieke and she has the voice of a siren. Normally, when you meet people and they tell you they have a band you cringe a bit. (Note: This normally has nothing to do with the band and more me just being too judgmental). However, when I heard Shireen I was sold. Their music is amazing and haunting. I ended up listening to this one track so much while working on our Kickstarter Campaign. It’s a perfect song for WITCH (especially if you take the lyrics a bit too literally).
Tim here again. Thanks Liz. That's a great playlist.
Are you interested in being a Guest VJ here at Friday Night Videos? Send me an email at timothy.brannan@gmail.com
Tonight I want to feature videos from the soundtrack "A Sojourn in Hell". Never heard of it? No one has. It was a collection of MP3s I listened to while I was working on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG and then later when I was writing Ghosts of Albion.
Some of this music also fueled my playtests of Buffy with games that became part of The Dragon and The Phoenix, my alternate Season 7 of Buffy.
The Wallflowers were at the height of their popularity at the same time Buffy was. So I always associated this song with Buffy's last good season (season 5). In my games I always wanted Buffy to fake her death so she could leave Sunnydale and start over. Maybe with someone that looked like Jakob Dylan.
Around the same time we were hit with the death of a performer that actually meant a lot to me and my gaming life, Warren Zevon. I mentioned in the very first FNV that "Werewolves of London" was one of my favorites and the album Excitable Boy was thrust into my hands by my DM with the instructions to listen to it before our next game.
Lawyers, Guns and Money was one of those songs that just stuck with me. This version is not by Warren Zevon, but by his son Jordan with the Wallflowers (again). Of course the lead singer is the son of Bob Dylan. This is from the Warren Zevon tribute album, Enjoy Every Sandwich. A line that he gave to David Letterman when he learned he was dying of cancer. Sage advice really.
Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory was just one of those albums that came into my life and grabbed every bit of my attention. I admit I have always enjoyed the mashup of hard rock and rap. Public Enemy's Bring the Noise with Anthrax is still one of my all time favorite songs.
"In the End" was just one of the those songs and one of those videos that captured exactly what I wanted my games to sound like.
Spend anytime here and you know I LOVE old horror movies. Especially sexploitation, Euro-sleaze. No one is better at than Jean Rollin and no appreciates this more than our next artist Rob Zombie.
Hellbilly Deluxe was an album I got for my 30th birthday and I listened to it on pretty much repeat for the next four years. Living Dead Girl was what my group always thought would be Buffy's theme song, but really there is a lot here that also influenced Ghosts of Albion. The Charlatan archetype, which didn't make it into the final book, is based on Rob Zombie's character in this video.
This was also one of the first MP3s I ever bought and I put it on the Sojourn in Hell disk.
In the early 2000s Chris Rea seemed to be everywhere for me. I am not sure why a ten-year old album, Road to Hell, was so popular again, but it was. For me the song "Road to Hell" was the title track of Sojourn in Hell at least in spirit. One day I'll revisit this and maybe even talk about why it was called Sojourn in Hell. But until then here is the title track and partial inspiration for my Buffy adventure Road to Hell.
Finally for this set we have the 2007 update of the 1994 Megadeth classic, "À Tout le Monde". I have the 1995 Youthanasia version on the disk, but this version actually captures the feel so much better. A little faster, a little louder and 100% more Cristina Scabbia. If there something I like more than rap with my metal it's Goth. Not only is her French better than Mustaine's, she is a lot better looking too.
Ok. I lied.
I said Goth and immediately thought of this one. Not Another Teen Movie is actually a send up of the teen movie tropes in the opposite direction than Buffy was. Tainted Love of course was huge hit for Soft Cell back in the 80s and in the 2000s Manson made it his own. I actually enjoy how he is not taking himself very seriously in this. I mean really if the Rodney Dangerfield reference wasn't enough. You can be dark, scary and all gothy but that doesn't mean you can't have a sense of humor about it too.
To celebrate the newest member of the Victorian / Steampunk RPG gaming community I thought some Victorian Chap-hop was in order.
Of course I love Victorian games of all sorts. Just love the time period and the endless possibilities. You can have adventure, science, magic, occultism, spiritualism and the entire world is both at your fingertips and still large and mysterious at the same time.
So let's open it up with some good old Professor E!
Professor Elemental might be the first name you think of when it comes to Victorian era chap hop but he is not the only one. So just like Biggie had Tupac, the good Professor has Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer.
I am not sure how one can describe Abney Park. They are steampunk yes. But in more of a Forgotten Futures sort of way. They have their own RPG, Airship Pirates which comes to us from the same people that brought us Victoriana. In fact it even uses the same system as Victoriana 2nd Edition.
+Lindsey Stirling might not be the first name you think of when it comes to Steampunk music, but her Roundtable Rival certainly has the right look and feel to it. Plus Lindsey has upped her own geek street cred by providing a song for the Dragon Age soundtrack. So there is that.
So here is the girl that my friend Cal refers to as a "magical musical pixie" or how I think a Ghosts of Albion Occult Musician would look. Frankly I think she is amazing.
And lastly tonight back to the good Professor to remind us that we can all enjoy different things, but we are all in it together. One of the reasons why many of us in the Victorian RPG community get along so well with each other. We all enjoy each other's games and talk about our favorite bits.
Welcome to the Friday the 13th edition of Friday Night Videos!
If Iron Maiden represents AD&D 1st Ed. Then Original D&D is Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin were the pioneers of what would become "Hard Rock" and even "Heavy Metal". Though it would take bands like Black Sabbath to really provide what we think of when we consider 70s and 80s metal.
Led Zeppelin was heavily influenced by jazz, blues and folk music. Plus a rather healthy dose of themes from J.R.R. Tolkien, they have long been associated with the 70s occult scene (backward masking, drugs, lyrics) and by association D&D.
Let's start with what was start for many my age, Led Zeppelin's 4th album from 1971. Sometimes called "4", "Sticks", "Zoso" or "Symbols". I prefer "Zeppelin IV" myself. This song was on the B side and is often overlooked due to the fantastic set on the A side. Pack your bags for the Misty Mountain Hop.
The same album gave us two other greats. Well it gave us a lot of greats, but two in particular.
Honestly I doubt there is a more D&D song than Battle of Evermore. This song features the amazing vocals of Sandy Denny, the "fifth" symbol on this album.
Zeppelin IV also gave us one of Led Zeppelin's most enduring, if not overplayed song. Stairway to Heaven.
This one song fueled more D&D games of mine than I carry to consider.
Going back a bit to 1970's "Led Zeppelin III" another great song is The Immigrant Song. What it lacks in length it makes up for in Saxon fueled energy.
Finally no Led Zeppelin discussion can happen with out a nod to the near Moorcock-like visuals of Kashmir from 1975's Physical Graffiti.
This barely scratches the surface of their catalog.
I am pleased with the reactions I am getting for this feature. I have often joked that my Appendix N consists mostly of 80s music and bad sci-fi movies. I am starting to think I am not the only one!
I want to lead of though with this one.
I finally found a copy of the intro. Really, could anything be more 80s than this? The 8-bit sounding sound effects. The neon. The lone rocker dude against the world...yeah.
So here are some requests I have had since starting this.
Have a request? Send it to me.
Have a long distance dedication for next week, Valentines Day Weekend? Send that too!
Knightsky requested two songs. First up, Chris de Burgh's Don't Pay the Ferryman.
Next is Murray Head's One Night in Bangkok from the concept album Chess.
Murray Head is also the older brother of Anthony Stewart Head.
Rainswept requested Men Without Hats' Safety Dance.
While the video is more Ren Faire than it is D&D, I do have some good memories of this one and playing D&D as well.
Based on this weeks earlier Sol Invictus post, here is a request. Billy Thorpe's "Children of the Sun"
Might be better for a trippy near future space age game. Or a 70s fueled psychic game.
Ok.
Last week went great. Had some good hits and some requests.
So lets get back to it.
This week I want to feature a band who I, and many others, consider to be the quintessential Dungeons & Dragons band.
Iron Maiden!
I was introduced to Iron Maiden via my Jr. High School DM. He was a huge Iron Maiden fan and lived close to the Capitol Records/EMI plant. So we would ride our bikes there and shift through the discarded tapes that would litter the back lot. We found tons of Kenny Rogers and The Tubes, but finding Iron Maiden was a treat.
He would come up with adventures based on the album covers (at the time he had all five of their first four studio albums and "Maiden Japan") and songs. Later when we got to High School and a new DM (we both kept on as players) we would work "Eddie" into a our universe as an undying assassin. I don't think we ever came up with stats.
Somewhere in Time was my favorite album of those days. So first up is one of my favorites, Wasted Years. This video also features a pictorial history of Eddie up to that point.
"Woe to you, Oh Earth and Sea, for the Devil sends the beast with wrath, because he knows the time is short... Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast for it is a human number, its number is Six hundred and sixty six."
Honestly. Could have anything sounded cooler to a bunch D&D obsessed 13 yearolds with an healthy obsession with the occult? No. Nothing else was a cool as Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast.
No discussion of Iron Maiden and my early D&D days can happen without at least acknowledging The Trooper. This was my DM's favorite song and the one video we would wait for before playing.
And another great one from the time, Flight of Icarus.
And my first request, from Mercurius Aulicus, Fear of the Dark:
Going through all these videos and memories I realize I have enough for a Part 2! So look forward to that at some future date.
Have a request? Hit me up!
Want to be a guest VJ (video jockey for those that don't remember MTV)? Also hit me up!
This is something I wanted to start the year off with, but for some reason didn't get it set up.
Maybe it is the age I started playing or the time, but there was a strange alchemy that has forever link D&D (and most RPGs) and music together for me. When I was in Jr. High we would not start playing until we saw at least one Iron Maiden video on the then commercial free MTV. And in High School it was through D&D that I was introduced to scores of new bands and music that I remain a fan of to this day.
So it is with that in mind that I introduce my newest weekly feature. Friday Night Videos. I'll post a couple of videos, maybe around a theme, and talk about how they tied into my games. I won't just focus on the 80s, though there will be a lot of that, nor will my focus be purely D&D related.
For my first post I want to include a video that I first saw on the show "Friday Night Videos" on NBC back in the day. Just like the original, I'll have this up on Friday nights at 11:30 PM Central time.
First up is Ozzy Osbourne with the title track from his 1983 album, Bark at the Moon.
Honestly to this day I can write about werewolves and NOT think about this video. I put this album on repeat when I was working on the monster section of Ghosts of Albion.
My Jr. High DM introduced me to Ozzy and my High School DM introduced me to Rush.
Of course the song has more to do with paranoia (and Paranoia) and a police state, I took it more literally as an enemy within yourself. From 1984's Grace Under Pressure, "The Enemy Within".
Finally. Really how can we talk about werewolves and not include Warren Zevon's classic. Excitable Boy was one of those albums that my DM threw at me and told me I had to listen to it before I came back for our next game (we were doing the Slave Lords adventures then). The album is fantastic and it is almost regrettable that people usually only know "Werewolves of London". You do get people that know about "Lawyers, Guns and Money", but most don't know what album it is from. "Lawyers, Guns and Money" of course I used in my Buffy/Angel games.
"Werewolves of London" is honored in my games a number of ways but the most obvious is my vampire run strip club Mayfairs.
So what songs remind you of gaming? Put in your requests below and I might pick them up on next weeks Friday Night Videos! (People posting on Friday nights get to move to the front of the request lines).
