It's been a bit since I did a Friday Night Videos, but maybe it's the dark of winter that has my mood looking to some new music from some of my favorite women-fronted bands. And while we are at it let's make this a #FollowFriday too! Follow them all and don't forget to buy their songs, albums, or whatever they have. People have been saying "we don't need artists during this quarantine" and to that I say bullshit! Artists have kept me living in all of this. We need them more than ever.
Let's get into it!
Up first is a favorite of The Other Side, Arden Leigh.
Arden fronted the band Arden and the Wolves. Now she has a new project she is doing Prospertine. Which consists of her and Jeremy Bastard. Their first single is Home.
You can follow her, The Wolves, and Prospertine on the web at:
Another favorite here is the sister group Neoni. Their newest song Notorious is now out. It has a serious Lorde vibe and I mean that is the best possible way.
Neoni also gave Fandom the gift of covering "Carry On (Wayward Son)" for the Supernatural Series Finale. For this alone they have earned a solid place in geekdom.
Taylor Momsen of The Pretty Reckless has been putting out some great music for while now. Their newest album, Death by Rock and Roll has a lot of great songs on it. Personal, Taylor is getting better with each album and I have to admit I am pleased she quit acting to do this full time.
Witches Burn grabbed my attention right away.
It's going to be interesting to see where she is in a few years because I think she is just getting better with each album.
Confession time. When they first came out I really didn't care for Evanescence. I mean I recognized that Amy Lee had a powerful voice, but they never connected with me really. Fast forward a few years and I am listening to her doing duets and singing background on other artists' songs and I am just impressed with her. I think she is a better singer now than she was 20 years ago. Here is Evanescence's most recent one and as a bonus Lzzy Hale is singing backup.
It's Friday! It's October! Let's start some Friday Night Videos!
Since I am also doing my October Horror Movie Marathon posts I am writing these posts early to autopost.
So let's get started.
Last week I did the Hex Girls, a fake all-girl band. Tonight lets do a real all-girl, witch-themed band. And these women have more in common with the Ostrogoths than they do with eco-goths.
This is the first video of the Witches I ever saw and features their former lead singer Seraina Telli (now of Dead Venus) and former guitarist Sonja "Anubis" Nusselder.
After this Lead singer Laura Guldemond took over and oh does she has some energy!
And just released two weeks ago, The Circle of Five! With new Witch Larissa.
I am looking forward to seeing some more new material with Larissa!
It's Friday! It's October! Let's start some Friday Night Videos!
Since I am also doing my October Horror Movie Marathon posts I am writing these posts early to autopost.
So let's get started.
Tonight I have the music of my favorite all-girl, eco-goth band of witches, the Hex Girls! Not just the songs from their Scooby-Doo episodes but some clever coplayers and cover bands.
Copies of NIGHT SHIFT: VETERANS OF THE SUPERNATURAL WARS have ALL been delivered to the Kickstarter backers and people are also getting the Kickstarter special Player's Guide.
Copies of NIGHT SHIFT: VETERANS OF THE SUPERNATURAL WARS have ALL been delivered to the Kickstarter backers and people are also getting the Kickstarter special Player's Guide.
One of the things that really motivated Jason and me while working on this is music. Spend any time here and you know I am a big music fan.
So I thought it might be great to share some of the music that reminded us of the stories we were telling with NIGHT SHIFT and the games we have ran.
Up this Friday Night Videoes are songs from my playlist. Tonight, songs from "Welcome to the Academy of Magical and Paranormal Arts" for the Generation HEX Night World!
So continuing with the music of the time when the BECMI sets were new here is some music from 1985!
I created this playlist last year to celebrate the start of Stranger Things Season 3. Which, truth be told, has done a lot to get people back into D&D.
So June is BECMI Month and I am going to be doing some BECMI-flavored versions of regular features.
Since the Basic Set of BECMI came out in 1983 I thought it might be fun to pull out a play-list from 83.
But not just any play-list.
No, this one follows the line up of a cassette tape I bought back in 83, likely at the K-Mart. I remember getting it because it was the only tape I could find with my then favorite song "Shock the Monkey" by Peter Gabriel.
Of course, I can only mean K-Tel's "Chart Action '83!"
Does it have anything at all to do with D&D or BECMI?
Not at all! But it is what I was listening to then.
Not music videos tonight but the trailers for The CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths five hour crossover that begins on Sunday.
It is no lie or exaggeration that Crisis. the comic. had a HUGE impact on me and my games. We did our own Crisis of Infinite Oerths back in 1986-87 to bring all our various worlds into alignment. I am doing something like it again with my Come Endless Darkness campaigns for 5e.
Wednesday, July 6 is the birthday of one of my oldest friends Jon "Flat Black" Cook.
Growing up Jon's birthday always meant that going over to his place and playing D&D until sunrise. Great times really.
Since I have not posted one of these in a while I wanted to do this one for him. Plus Jon always had a great collection of music. He got me into Rush and Iron Maiden. He was the one that threw a copy of Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" at me and told me to listen to it and don't come back till I knew all about Eddie.
Metal, D&D and summer's hanging out with Jon were what made the early 80s for me.
Also this is more like Friday Afternoon Videos since I want to tag him on Facebook with this.
I'll admit it. During the height of the "Satanic Panic" Jon and I would do whatever we could to make matters worse. Playing D&D and listening to Iron Maiden was the norm. Thankfully for us we had parents that were neither impressed with two teens nor stupid.
I am not really sure who introduced me to Pink Floyd first. Jon or my late brother Mike. I am inclined to give Mike the credit because Mike was really cool like that and that is how I want to remember it. But Jon certainly introduced "Not Now John" from Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut" to me. I am in the minority here, but I rather enjoy the bleakness of this album. People say The Wall is depressing. That's a cake-walk compared to Roger Water's soul-bearing requiem for the post-war dream.
Fuck all that. This is just a great song.
One of these days...I need to do a FNV dedicated to Pink Floyd.
One of these days I am going to dance with the grim reaper...or cut you into little pieces...never was sure hat he was saying here.
It is no doubt that Jon introduced me to Rush. To this day I equate Rush and D&D so tightly largely due to these summers. This was the first song I can remember him playing while we gamed.
Another group Jon played a lot of and I associate with gaming to this day is Blue Öyster Cult. Veteran of the Psychic Wars from "Fire of Unknown Origin" might be the most D&D song ever written.
It wasn't all metal. David Bowie's "Let's Dance" was a BIG hit around this time.
Even years later as I was getting ready to go away to college Jon still had something new for me. With his typical "you need to listen to this now" attitude he popped in a tape (yeah tape) of this new band he discovered; Guns and Roses.
No association with gaming here. Just Jon once again being Jon and finding out about music when no one else in our little midwest town had never even heard of these guys.
The Sisters of the Aquarian Order are full of idea I have had for a number of years. Some of those ideas have come from the music I listened too while conceptualizing it and other from music I listened to while writing it.
So here is a brief selection of songs that get me in the mood to write and play.
First up is a favorite of mine, but a newer song. The Sword know how to do witchy imagery well. The protagonist of this song, "The Veil of Isis" is an Aquarian Sister if I ever saw one.
A lot in this book is what I like to think of as "left-over hippie shit". The 70s were a heady brew of occultism, psuedo-science, emerging technology and science fiction. If that was the stew that fed my creativity then this is the broth. The 5th Dimension recorded "Age of Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In" in 1969. It featured prominently on the soundtrack for the musical Hair. I never liked Hair, but this song I always kind of enjoyed.
True fact. I love Psychedelic Rock, especially if it is in that sweet spot between 1968 and 1977. If sounds like the band took a lot of drugs and traveled in space then I am there. The Amboy Dukes really only had one hit, "Journey to the Centre of the Mind". But it is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy.
Slightly earlier, but no less awesome, was Procol Harum. "Whiter Shade of Pale" is just one of the songs that seems to call out to me from some great distance of time and space that I can't quite transverse. An echo of something I should have heard, but have no idea what it was and only have the memories. I think it is the Hammond organ to be honest.
On the other side is 1979's "Children of the Sun" by Billy Thorpe. It is almost so corny and campy that you would assume it was a parody song, but Thorpe meant it in all earnestness. From the album of the same name it was one of his biggest hits in the US. I can honestly say this. The seeds of the Aquarian Order are here. I remember the summer of 79, I was out riding my bike and I heard this song and thought about a group of Space Wizards. Interestingly enough the album was released by Capricorn Records.
Even getting further away, but still close enough to matter to me, is April Wine's "Sign of the Gypsy Queen". Something about this song really gets to me.
If Stevie Nicks is an archetypical witch then Grace Slick is an archetypical Aquarian Sister. I have had a long and complicated relationship with Jefferson Airplane/Starship. "Winds of Change" hits a lot metaphorical notes for me. From 1983 it fits into my timeline for solid D&D/Chill game playing.
"Sleeping, not yet dead."
No big theme tonight. Nothing to do with RPGs either.
Just a new artist I discovered this week.
Leo Moracchioli of Frog Leap Studios (which I think is just him and his wife, and sometime their daughter) does these amazing metal covers of popular songs.
A while back I posted a bunch of videos from women that rock.
It was quite popular.
I said then that a part 2 was in order. So here it is!
K's Choice wis a band from Belgium that had some notoriety in the mid to late 90s. The biggest album was 1995's Paradise in Mewhich gave us the hit "Not An Addict". This was a huge song for me during my Sojourn in Hell period, for what should be obvious reasons. My biggest issue with K's Choice is that for years I swore they were Canadian. This is the European version of the video which I prefer.
Speaking of the 90s, no one, and I mean no one, does angry like Tori Amos. Don't think so? Listen to her lyrics sometime, especially songs like "Me and A Gun", "Pass the Mission", "Spark" and "Cornflake Girl" or to a lesser degree "Crucify". Taylor Swift sings about someone and it is fodder for Twitter. Tori Amos sings about someone and it is Primal Scream Therapy.
Though the song that always gets me is the first time I saw her. "Silent All These Year" from the phenomenal Little Earthquakes.
My scream got lost in a paper cup You think there's a heaven Where some screams have gone
Never fails to get to me.
I am not all about pathos. Last time I mentioned my love of Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees. That is still true. But I was thinking back to the first song I ever heard of theirs. Without a doubt it has to be "Cities in Dust". I remember hearing this all the time in the hey of MTV. I actually sat down to listen to the lyrics once and realized it was about Volcano Day.
At this point do I really need to explain why I am including Stevie Nicks? No. Ok good. But I will add that this is my favorite song from the fantastic The Other Side of the Mirror. This is a more adult and more mature Stevie. This is a woman that knows who she is and where life is going. At 31 she was more interesting than the "Wild Heart" girl of her early to mid 20s.
Last time I also mentioned Joan Jett, but I really need to give a shout out to the band that gave us Joan Jett, Lita Ford and Cherie Currie, The Runaways. The Runaways have been given their due more lately. There was the bio-pic in 2010 and appearances of their signature song "Cherry Bomb" in both Lollipop Chainsaw and Guardians of the Galaxy. The version from the movie is not too bad, but lacks something raw that original had in droves.
Taylor Momsen may have gotten her start as "Cindi Lou Who" but thankfully for all of us she sold her soul to darkness. Just kidding...mostly. Well years later she is fronting the band Pretty Reckless and she seems to be constantly trying to shed that wholesome image. She is, in some sense, the spiritual successor to The Runaways. She looks like Cherie Curry and tries to sing like Joan Jett. She isn't bad and the band has some good songs. "Heaven Knows" might be the most recognizable.
