Category: From The Vault

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I’m Busy, Watch This

https://youtu.be/PjBO6bzVM4o

In 1998, a little known company named Valve released a first-person shooter named Half-Life and changed the face of gaming. Where other shooters struggled to provide even a semblance of a story, Half-Life had brains to match its brawns; a stirring tale featuring a realistic human cast and a protagonist that was more than a hand and a gun unfolded before the player’s eyes as they progressed through each level.

As Valve grew, so too did Half-Life’s reputation, with Half-Life 2 in 2004 once again revolutionizing the genre, and its episodic expansions, Half-life 2: Episode One and Episode Two, further raising the bar. The series didn’t release consistently, and occasionally suffered unexpected and painful setbacks; but when it did, it seemed as if Valve could do no wrong – until the series suddenly stopped. Shifting priorities, a lack of motivation, and other, more nebulous factors would lead Valve to put Half-Life on ice in the middle of its prime, leaving a generation of gamers adrift, and an opus unfinished.

And yet – Half-Life lives on. Be it in the innumerable games and series it inspired or provided the computative bedrock for, an undying stream of mods, or other media based on the franchise, Half-Life’s DNA is permanently embedded in the fabric of the video game industry, and will likely remain so for some time. As sad as it is that a Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or a Half-Life 3 will likely never happen, and as frustrating as it is that Valve remains belligerent as to precisely why, the series, for the most part, has only really fallen… out of Valve’s hands.

This is the rise and fall of Half-Life.

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Please Kill Me Radio Documentary

And if you haven’t read the book, we can’t be friends anymore.

Please Kill Me: Voices from the Archives
Two one-hour documentaries that explore an America that birthed the new order of today.

20 years ago journalists and music historians Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil recorded interviews with the icons of Punk for their New York Times best-selling book “Please Kill Me – The Uncensored History of Punk.” Now, these rare, candid interviews have been meticulously restored for Public Radio and compiled to create an oral history of the Punk movement in Please Kill Me – Voices From the Archives.

The stories of these bands are more than music, they’re the cultural evolution of America:
the end of the 60s
the ferment of the 70s
Watergate to the Women’s Movement.

Part One -The Pioneers of Punk
How the Warhol 60’s morphed into the Punk 70’s, marginalized inhabitants of a near-bankrupt New York City, changed 20th century culture, and influenced the World.

Part Two – The Punk Invasion
The music of the Velvet Underground, Iggy and the Stooges,The New York Dolls, and others were meeting fierce resistance in the US. With no other options open to them, during the July 4rth weekend of 1976, as America was celebrating it’s bicentennial, the Ramones went to London and launched punk rock. In England, punk would explode and become a cultural force to be reckoned with.

Features exclusive, never-before-heard interviews with Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, the Ramones and many more.

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Fear

I was reminded of these guys at band practice the other night. LOVED this record in high school, in a way that kids tend to love stuff they know will piss off their parents. Listening to it again 30 years later, I think it holds up. I’m particularly impressed with Lee Ving’s vocals. (Hilarious lyrics and a tight band who can really play don’t hurt, either.)

As is my want, I did a little research. Turns out, Ving (real name Lee Capallero) is a bit of a journeyman musician. Before Fear, he sang in a Philadelphia blues band called Sweet Stavin Chain, who shared stages with B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Cream. Most recently, he plays in an outlaw country band called Range War. He’s an actor too, typically cast as degenerates and lowlifes. He was Mr. Boddy in the 1985 film, Clue.

There’s too many of us
There’s too many of us
There’s too many
There’s too many of us
There’s too many of us
There’s too many

Let’s have a war
So you can go and die
Let’s have a war
We could all use the money
Let’s have a war
We need the space
Let’s have a war
Clean out this place

It already started in the city
Suburbia will be just as easy

There’s too many of us
There’s too many of us
There’s too many
There’s too many of us
There’s too many of us
There’s too many

Let’s have a war
Jack up the Dow Jones
Let’s have a war
It can start in New Jersey
Let’s have a war
Blame it on the middle class
Let’s have a war
We’re like rats in our cage

It already started in the city
Suburbia will be just as easy

There’s too many of us
There’s too many of us
There’s too many
There’s too many of us
There’s too many of us
There’s too many

Let’s have a war
Sell the rights to the network
Let’s have a war
Till our wallets get fat like last time
Let’s have a war
Give guns to the queers
Let’s have a war
The enemy’s within

It already started in the city
Suburbia will be just as easy

There’s too many of us
There’s too many of us
There’s too many
There’s too many of us
There’s too many of us
There’s too many

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Jac Mac And Rad Boy Go!

Any of you bastards remember this from Night Flight?

Interestingly, Wes Archer was one of the original three animators (along with David Silverman and Bill Kopp) on The Simpsons, Tracey Ullman shorts, and subsequently directed a number of The Simpsons episodes. He’s also directed episodes of King of the Hill, Futurama, The Goode Family, Bob’s Burgers, Allen Gregory, Rick & Morty, and Disenchantment.

There’s a great article about Archer and his cult classic (which my place of business chooses to block, because of course it does) right over here.

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Back In Print!

Ian Hunter’s Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star is back in print, as of this past August. Out of print copies can go for three figures on Amazon, although one is currently listed at $3,214.79 on some site called Books on Demand. (More like Dealer on Drugs.) Anywho, the new paperback is $17.25. Cheap!

Ian Hunter’s Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star has received a litany of plaudits and been described as “an enduring crystallization of the rock musician’s lot, and a quietly glorious period piece” by The Guardian. A brutally honest chronicle of touring life in the 1970s, and a classic of the rock writing genre, Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star remains the gold standard for rock writing. This edition includes new content from Hunter and a foreword from Johnny Depp.

Great article and interview in The Guardian here.

BONUS! Because I really wanna hear this song now.

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Big Jim, Big Jeff, & Dr. Steel

Is it me, or were these toys incredibly homoerotic?

Exhibit A, the copy for this commercial …

The incredible Dr. Steel!
You’ve got Big Jim and Big Jeff hacking ‘cross the land
Stopped cold by a gleaming hand
Of the incredible Dr. Steel
With rugged face and strange tattoo
You make him break a bar in two
Make Big Jim and Big Jeff strike a blow
Is he friend or is he foe?
Get him drunk and make a pass
Take him in the alley and pound that ass
Of the incredible Dr. Steel!

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Funnier Than You Remember

https://youtu.be/QtdpVKpl8qY

Here’s the very first episode The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (AKA Rocky and His Friends, The Bullwinkle Show, The Rocky Show/The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show/The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle/The Adventures of Bullwinkle and Rocky, and Bullwinkle’s Moose-O-Rama), which aired on ABC way back on November 19, 1959.

Crude animation and clever as hell.