100 Bands: Video Game Tribute Night.
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Andrea: I am not a gamer. I don't even know what that means. I've played some pinball and a couple of games of Pac Man. That is the extent that video game culture has touched my life, I think. Attending a video game tribute night seemed like an interesting musical experiment for me – to hear the music without getting the context. Would the music have any meaning? Would I be overwhelmed by the geekdom of it all?
The initial scene wasn't too intimidating. I was worried that everyone would be in costume or be in character. Only the DJ was dressed in some yellow and black bee-inspired costume. It seemed like any other night in the Toronto indie-music scene. There were TV screens with games that weren't too scary looking - in fact, one of them, TETRIS, I'd actually played before.
Mark: Video game events are emotional for all nerds taking steps towards evolution. As I surveyed the crowd, the high girl/guy ratio, esoteric T-shirt references, prevalence of long and scruffy facial hair and passive-aggressive social discomfort were in the air. Combined with my elation at being amongst my people, an odd sense of superiority and pity spoiled my deja-vu buzz. Only one person was in costume. The DJ. He came dressed as Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, yet seemed pissed when a fan mimicked his signature move from the game. The Half-Life 2 and Tetris Death-matches on projector screens had considerable crowd attention that continued even during the show.
Andrea: All of a sudden there was this guy crawling on the floor of the stage. The show had started and I didn't even notice. The performer, “Women In Tragedy”, was a guy making a bunch of distortion using various electronic equipment. It didn't appear to have much to do with games. I would also argue that it had little to do with music. I wondered if the noise was an evocation of a youth lost in the arcade? One can only wonder.
Owen Pallett's “Boy Magic” followed (before he, no doubt, dashed out to play 4 or 5 more gigs that evening). They were a bit more traditional. Actually, I thought they could easily be a “Zit Remedy” tribute band. Though I don't think that Degrassi references were part of the schtick for the evening. Here is where the theme of the night's music began to take shape: the use of a cheap Casio sound either accompanying or as a background rhythmic pattern for a decidedly contemporary sound.
The next band, “Better Than Everyone” wasn't. Maybe it was more engaging for those who got it.
Mark: “Women in Tragedy” was some dude with an array of drum machine sequences, guitars and effects and pedals writhing on the floor. Like “Sonic Youth” it is difficult to tell what the core melodies are and impossible to discern what relation they have to the simple progression of classic games. Maybe the connection is technological rather than literal. Abstract and intellectual, it left me cold like most “experimental” music. For all “Women's” jazz pretensions, the crowd seemed confused, but happy to be there. No dancing, which was to become a theme of the evening.
“Boy Magic” was pleasant, if a little nondescript. The crowd dug both tunes, only the second was familiar to me. I believe it was “Garage Variations on a Mega Man Level -- 4 .”
I loved the intermission, which featured “The Empire Theme” from Star Wars, Mario Bros and some backpacker rapper rhyming about Boba Fett from the CD player.
“Better Than Everyone” was telling stories more than singing songs. The first song was about a young, weird kid at a show-and-tell stating that he was going to be on a now defunct video game-themed game show. The second was about the computer AI cheating in an obscure electronic Rock Paper Scissors game called “Wild Paw”. The crowd was into it.
Andrea: I enjoyed the intermission music, it made me laugh. Survivor's “Eye Of The Tiger” is cheesy enough without being brought down to its barest melodic frame in the tinny sound of 80s game technology.
“The Resource Editors” were the most techno-geek group of the night. So much so that they introduced their set with a brief explanation of what they were going to play: a mixing of sounds taking from an early MacIntosh computer. God love the Mac geeks. I appreciated the concept, but musically it didn't translate into anything too compelling, even from a minimalist electro-acoustic wallpaper sort of way.
I thought “Daiquiri” was the most interesting band of the evening. The lead singer was in a costume that was like My Little Pony got dressed up as Elton John. And the guitar player had this creepy pig thing on. They really played the crowd. It was fun and infectious.
And they were followed by another good band “The Crystal Castles” which featured the first female performer of the evening. They had a wholesome raunchy sound, kind of like Wendy O. Williams meets Gloria Estefan. And the final band we saw was “Ontario Power Generation” that was more funk than punk – I think at that point my ears gave out and everything was a big sonic blur.
It was an interesting musical evening – a lot of concept music, which I find, if not entertaining, at least interesting.
Mark: “Resource Editors” did an abstract electronic set based on samples from the Apple Operating System. Not very musical, but the crowd laughed at the introduction of some of the samples.
In musical terms, “Daiquiri” were the stars of the evening. In the vein of the Stooges, the sloppy passionate synth loops, drum machine, vocalist and guitarist combo got even this reticent crowd to volunteer four pogoers. With the Castlemania theme, Daiquiri had me hooked enough to float along with the other original messy freak-outs. While wearing his pig-demon mask, the stocky guitarist charmed me and the vocalist was entertainingly enthusiastic. “Daiquiri” even got four people to pogo.
During the intermission the DJ dropped 8-bit soundcard interpretation of hits that made more of an impression than some of the other bands. Long live gameboy music.
While the most anticipated band of the evening was Crystal Castles, their song using a Pac Man sample was only decent electronic metal. Also their sound was the most consistent and professional compared to the other acts. I liked the sloppiness and underdog geek qualities of “Daiquiri” et. al. contrasted with the “holding pattern till we get a record deal” vibe of Crystal Castles. Electroclash does little for me that Ministry didn't and better.
Mega Man's level interpretation by Ontario Power Generation evoked earlier acts, but was fresh enough that I didn't mind the repetition. Like Pavement, with heavy feedback and sloppy timekeeping.
After that, my attention span was exceeded. This gamer was ready for home.
After playing video games for 20 years, I can say with some authority that I have heard the Mario Brothers theme more times than any other song by an order of magnitude or two. I wonder if the technology behind my earliest gaming experiences shaped my tastes today. The cheap synthesized bleeps or the Atari, Space Invaders and GameBoy may have made me tolerant of sampling and synthesizers in a way that New Wave could not. With the first three notes of each song directly lifted from a video game, the crowd cheered as they identified the familiar melody. Perhaps techno and house owe their delayed acceptance to accidental programming of musical tastes by the gaming industry?
“Video games affect kids behavior? That's nonsense. Look at Pac Man, if games did affect kids, we would all be bouncing around dark rooms munching pills and listening to repetitive music.
Andrea: Ha. I think I'll stick with my Shostakovich.