Friday, July 24, 2015

Friday Night Videos: Gen Con / Vacation Edition

Welcome back to Friday Night Videos! Vacation / Gen Con edition.

Tonight the songs are less overtly about gaming or my relationship with gaming and more about my vacation in Gen Con.

Summer meant a lot of thing to me over the years.  Going out with friends, picnics, drinking, teaching while in college, working two jobs for college!  But for a shinning moment there for a while in the early 80s before discovering girls, beer, or the crushing responsibility of being an adult(!). Summer was also about vacations and playing some RPGs.

So here is my ode to that time and to Gen Con next week.

The Go-Gos.  Was there ever a band LESS like D&D?  Who cares.  This is a fun song.




While I followed Stevie Nick's solo career with the obsessiveness than only a teenage can manage, I never was that interested in Lindsay Buckingham's.   I did want this album at one point I recall.




Wednesday was my 20th Wedding Anniversary.  We got married in Jamaica and you could not go twn minutes and not hear Shaggy.  This whole album is a ton of summer time vacation fun.  This song NEVER fails to put me into mood.




Let's get to some more D&D/RPG-ish songs.  Going to California by Led Zeppelin is another great one.  Why? Because no one has written a "Going to Indiana" song.




Ok. Let's pay homage to Indiana's favorite son, John Mellencamp.  I know a lot of my audience might not get this, but John "Cougar" Mellencamp is a pretty big deal here in the midwest.  And nothing captured the feel of living in the Midwest in the 80s better than his 1985 album Scarecrow.  Believe it or not but it was a huge influence on my gaming.  I wanted my Chill games to capture the same feeling of hopelessness as "Rain on the Scarecrow" and joy as "Lonely Ol' Night" (yeah, listen to the song it is an ode to summer nights in the midwest where everyone feels like they are on their own).  I may live in the Chicago greater area now, but I did grow up in a small town.



See you all at Gen Con!!

1 comment:

The Happy Whisk said...

I love how music has the power to transport.