Butterfly Polite’s Little Bit Of Blog

…or “How I Ended Up Writing A Solo Album”.

When it was released in 2006, I got the book “Game On! From Pong to Oblivion, The 50 Greatest Video Games Of All Time”.  I quite like videogames, but am certainly not interested (or rich) enough to buy new releases, so this book seemed to offer an opinionated list of just the best ones.  This was ideal for me, as I am a busy person.  I am not interested in just ‘good’ or ‘great’ videogames - the Crème de la crème is all I have time for.

Obviously lists like these are only as good as the people who compile them, so I thought I would investigate the authors further to see if they really had the authority to say what the ‘greatest’ games were.  A little internet probing showed that Ste Curran, Simon Byron and David McCarthy had jobs in and around games journalism, so their credentials were good.   They also went under the collecting name ‘The Triforce’, and ran a blog and a forum of very rude people who behaved in slightly silly ways.  They gave the world Om nom nom nom photos for instance.

Two thirds of The Triforce were also responsible for a videogame radio show, broadcast on Resonance FM and podcast across the internet.  Along with Ann Scantlebury, Ste and Simon host One Life Left, an hourly show which ’sometimes talks about videogames’.  I started listening, and was drawn into the banter and silliness one day per week as I drove to work.

During the show the letters section had no theme music, something that the presenters lamented each week.  In a fit of unusually generosity I decided to make them a theme.  It also tied in with the fact that I could make some music very quickly, and without having to think about how it might work within the context of my band.  The resulting jingle was adopted, and continues to be used as the letters theme on OLL each episode.

Being an egomaniac (and the fact that I rather enjoyed the show), I felt the need to listen each week to the broadcasts to make sure the jingle sounded okay.  There have been edgy moments when the jingle has played in mono (arghhh!) or has been too loud (eek!).  Nail biting stuff, I can tell you.

OLL also plays music ‘inspired by, or from’ videogames.  Much of this is blippy-blippy music that I care little for, but ocassionally an utterly amazing piece is played.  I am grateful to OLL for introducing me to the amazing Japanese 8-bit artists YMCK, for instance.  They also exposed me to The Lost Levels, who’s debut EP contains the amazing song The Early Sheets, which was given an equally amazing video with animation by Steve Jones.

One name that occasionally cropped up on One Life Left was Spencer Lee. He has contributed the occasional piece of music that was played on the show, and I had noted his name as ‘one to watch’ for his music was always quirky and interesting.

I spent New Year’s Eve 2008/2009 at a friend’s house.  A rather subdued affair, this celebration did not see me dancing naked on the tables, but rather playing Dr. Mario on the Wii.  This is one of only a few games that I would consider myself actually good at.  On this momentous ocassion I managed (for the first time) to complete level 20, on solo play, at the high speed level.  The party poppers and balloons that were supposed to be for New Year’s Eve, were all for me and my amazing feat (in my own mind).

During January I was recounting my success to anyone who would listen, at every opportunity.  By about the 25th, I had told everone I know.  I suddenly recalled that Spencer Lee had contributed a version of the ‘Fever’ music from Dr. Mario to an OLL broadcast.  It had been in Korean, and had been both amazing and disturbing.  I needed to hear it again.  Thank google for that!

But backtracking the URL that google had helped me find, I discovered that he had posted  it to a site called Sounds Of The Weak.  This website set recording tasks each week to be completed by the following Sunday.  “Record something on a new instrument”.  “Make music with no notes”.  It reminded me of Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies, and appealed to my sense of arbritrariness a lot.

The front page of Sound Of The Weak mentioned that fans of S.O.W. might also be interested in The RPM Challenge, a website that encouraged people to record an album in February.  I mentioned this to some students in the college in which I teach, as I was promoting the idea of self imposed deadlines being useful.  In a fit of practice-what-you-preach I decided to sign up myself on Jan 31st, although I did not have any material written I thought it’d be a challenge to set up some microphones and see what happened.

The results of that month are here.

It turns out that Spencer Lee actually runs Sounds Of The Weak, and also took part in The RPM Challenge.  He is, it transpires, very friendly.
Coincidentally, The Lost Levels give a ‘thank you’ to someone that I used to work with in their EP.  They are, it transpires, also very friendly.