It was yet another jam-packed weekend…
Friday during work, Jeremiah, aka nullsleep, reminded me via IM that there was a chiptunes show at the Tank later that night. The original plan was to spend the night at SVA scanning MK’s pages for Pale Fire; with 40+ pages to do, I assumed that it was going to take all evening. So when I said thanks, but Id have to pass, Jeremiah simply replied with: “No worries, I’m not playing … but you’re going to miss Virt’s nyc debut.” And that was enough to haul my ass down to the 2nd floor labs to one of the nice flatbed scanners and get it all done in less than two hours. There was even enough time for dinner with Joe and June. Afterwards Joe showed me pages from his upcoming bible comic (which was written by Stephen Baldwin… yeah, that Stephen Baldwin, brother of Alec, star of Usual Suspect and Bio Dome). I tried my best to convince both of them to come along to show, but no dice; it’s so frustrating since I know all my friends would totally love it, but no one seems willing to give hearing a guy make music from Game Boys live a chance. Though they did promise to go this Friday’s show, which is actually pretty important, since it a fundraiser for the upcoming chiptunes world tour. At least Robin was game once again.
I ended up running into Jeremiah on the way there (we were both on the same train), and he passed along some bad news: he wasn’t able to get a copy of Judegement Silversword, the WonderSwan shooter that goes for $200-300 on eBay, despite the fact I was able to refer him to a Japanese site that had it for just $60, because he couldn’t get ahold of anyone in Japan to order from him, and its now sold out. He also had to remind me how awesome Under Defeat is, and its driving me nuts that I still don’t have the cash to pick that, and Radilgy up.
There were three performers in the line-up; first was Tristain Perich, aka One-Bit Music, who’s music comes from I’m guessing one of his One-Bit Music devices, which he accompanied with drums. He did a Misfits and a Fisherspooner cover, or so said Robin (I’m so out of the musical loop, so I couldn’t tell… hence another reason why I wish Joe had come, being a big Misfits fan and all). Next was Josh, aka Bit Shifter, and he rocked the house, as expected. And finally, the main eventer, was none other than the man himself, virt.
I’ve been listening to his work for years, back since 2000, which was when I was first discovered the game music remixing scene. The guy’s considered one of the true innovators of the remix scene, and one of the biggest movers and shakers as well (I won’t bore everyone with a long story, plus I don’t know all the details, but basically, the entire scene was just one place, OverClocked ReMix”, till a few folks, including virt, got sick of the way things were run, and decided to form VGMix, which really opened things up). Truth be told, I haven’t paid attention to things on that end for a few years now, but I still listen to his Faxanadu and Balloon Fight arrangements on a regular basis. Hence why I absolutely had to see this guy live, and up close; its funny because for the most part I just sat back and watched a bunch of young kids dance around to Tristain and Josh, but for virt I had to be up front, while all the kids decided to just sit back… virt’s stuff is not the (relatively) friendly, dance-type stuff, but as hardcore as game music can get. You can tell who the virt fans were in the room, and while some may have been wondered why one guy got on his knees to do the Wayne’s World “we’re not worthy” shtick, I certainly wasn’t. The guy is easily one of the top talents in the scene worldwide. Among the many highlight was his “what if Castlevania was done by Capcom” piece (or “If Mega Man and Simon Belmont had a child, what would he sound like?”), which was fucking mind-blowing, immediately followed by a shooter mix that totally sounded like a PC Engine/Turbo Grafix (I’m not sure if virt literally used a HuCard, but I wouldn’t put it past him). That and his sound rig, which was a keyboard, mixer, and even a laptop, all patched directly to a NES.
The next day I took part in a tournament for Rockstar’s new table tennis game for the Xbox 360 where I faced off against a bunch of other NYC based game reporters and bloggers. I went on the behalf of GameSetWatch, which is where you’ll find my write-up in the next day or so. But I will say this… its a damn fun game, with a definite Virtua Tennis vibe in terms of play and appeal.
Later in the evening I went to the MF Gallery to once again see Joe paint the body of some roller derby chick….
… There was actually two other artists painting a second roller derby girl.
The crowd was easily the most Studio 54-esque I’ve been around in a while, with art-farty types mixed with punks and Lower East Side locals. At one point this bald Spanish guy comes in to gawk at the woman and tried striking up a conversation with Mike Moosehead, whom I was sitting right next to. At first he’s totally incoherent, but later made sense, and Mike being the nice guy that he is, tried talking with him, who by the way was the sweatiest motherfucker I’ve ever seen. No joke, the guy’s bald head was literally gushing perspiration, and it wasn’t even that hot in there. And after about five minutes, the dude went in for the kill by trying to sell Mike some bootleg CDs. There was also this homeless looking guy who I just figured was some eccentric looking avant guard artist, till I realized that it really was a homeless dude (though others made the same mistake by trying to chit-chat with the guy, and sorta became the life of the party for a small while). He finally got kicked out after he spilled his drink all over himself (he was primarily there to mooch off the free booze), but I didn’t see the spillage take place, so when I turned around, I though the dude peed himself. And then there was this pare with crazy costumes that came in: a girl dressed like a big blue cat and a guy who had all these multi-colored moth balls all over his suit…
BTW, there besides seeing two naked chicks getting painted, there were plenty of other fine art to see at the gallery proper, like this awesome print which they were selling for just $40!
When the place became too hot and crowded, I made my exit and went back home. MK arrived later in the evening to spend some quality time together for the rest of the weekend, before gearing up for APE. We mostly just sat around watching old sketch comedy; I finally introduced her to SCTV, which was sort of a big deal for me since its seriously like my most favorite show of all time. As a small child, I was so gay for the show…. I used to dream that it was a real network that ran 24 hours… its hard to explain, but yeah, I was sort of a weird kid. But yeah, its the show that all true comedy aficionados know, respect, and love, and I was super happy that MK even liked some of it (despite the fact that it hasn’t aged well in certain aspects, plus its rather inaccessible). After that was the classic SNL, which this time around was from 1985 and guest starred Pee Wee Herman. MK was getting pretty tired as it went on, but I insisted that she stay up for the classic Dinosaur Town sketch (in which Pee Wee has to save the local dinosaur amusement park/musuem from foreclosure by getting everyone to look for a Coke bottle with a mouse in it for a “million, billion, trillion” dollar pay-off from the soda company).
We slept in pretty late the next day (even more so than usual thanks to the change it time), watched some more SCTV, then went out to Rocketship to pick up some comics; MK had to get the new Becky Cloonan book, East Coast Rising, and she managed to snag the very last copy!. Afterwards went for some food, and ended up spending about 30 minutes driving around the same six block radius in an effort to look for some parking near Rice. Have I ever mentioned how much driving around Brooklyn (and NYC in general) totally fucking bites? Though on the plus side, it funny running into all sorts of folks on the streets, such as how we ended up running into (not literally though… more like passed by) Dean Haspiel and Alex from Rocketship who were on their bikes in a weird bit of “whoah, small world!”-ness. Eventually we found a place to park, and as expected, dinner was damn good (though I decided to try the Thai ice tea, which was disgusting as fuck… its basically sweetened ice tea with some super sugary dairy creamer mixed in). Then we went into Manhattan, to SVA, to scan the final Pale Fire pages, and finally returned back to Brooklyn and watched the first two episodes of the new season of Trailer Park Boys. The Cheeseburger Picnic must certainly did not disappoint! Before heading out, MK played with my DS for a bit, including Zoo Keeper and Electroplankton, which led to one of the nicest things that MK has ever said to me: “You’ve got great taste in games!” Yeah… I’d like to think!
Anyway, if you’re at all in San Francisco area this upcoming weekend, be sure to hit the show and get a copy of MK’s new book! …. Oh, and the second issue of Unlucky will be on-hand as well!
