Quick Acknowledgement of a Cooverthon

For the past six weeks or so I have been engaged in a Cooverthon...that is, I've been re-reading all of Robert Coover's books* in chronological order in an attempt to get a sense of his development and his themes.

Doing this same thing with John Barth a few years ago pretty much destroyed my enjoyment of his work, so I'm aware that this is a dangerous and stupid thing to repeat with another of my favourite authors. One reason I'm doing this is to prove to myself that I didn't sell John Barth short; that other authors CAN stand up to such a rigorous and exhausting re-reading without becoming repetitive.

In some ways, Coover has an edge on Barth because his fiction is so unabashedly repetitive to begin with. My impression after years of fandom has been that -- following "The Public Burning" -- Coover used the same structure over and over again in all subsequent books: a protagonist is stuck inside a nightmarish (and usually genre-specific) environment from which he cannot escape, and as the book progresses the environment becomes increasingly horrifying.

That assumption was incorrect. Coover has been dabbling with that "nightmare" structure since his 1969 collection "Pricksongs & Descants," and while the structure DOES become a regular background feature of most of his subsequent novels, those novels ALSO contain many other novel elements: distinctive characters, bizarre authorial quirks, new types of focus.

We'll see if that impression continues to hold as I make my way through "Pinocchio in Venice" (1991) for the third time. Halfway through "Gerald's Party" (1986) my enthusiasm flagged a bit -- particularly discouraging because it has always been and still remains my favourite Coover novel by far -- but that's to be expected: most of Coovers books are INTENDED to exhaust you ("Gerald's Party" more than most).

I wish I'd rigorously blogged the earlier novels while I was reading them (and I wish I could guarantee that I'll continue to blog them as they come), but here are some scattered impressions:

• Coover has dabbled occasionally with theatre, but his plays are underwhelming. Having just read "A Theological Position" (1972) for the first time, my belief that Coover is not a great playwright is further reinforced.
• The real joy of "The Public Burning" (1977) is Coover's characterization of Richard Nixon: insecure, self-centered, nervous, awkwardly outgoing. Much of the book is just Richard Nixon endlessly pontificating in his head, and this is some of Coover's best writing. He's masterful at distinctive and consistent characterization (see "Gerald's Party" for the extremes of this), and it's easy to lose sight of that with all the experimental flim-flammery going on.
• On the other side of this, however, is "Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears" (1987), whose Jewish socialist sculptor is Coover's biggest failure: he never comes to life.
• "You Must Remember This" (the concluding short story in his "A Night at the Movies" collection) is, I think, his crown jewel. Although "The Babysitter" and "The Magic Poker" tend to be his most anthologized stories (probably because they're early works and -- more importantly -- do not have extended scenes of outrageously graphic sex), "You Must Remember This" sums up everything Coover does well. A close second is "Charlie in the House of Rue," also in the same collection. If you only read one Coover short story, pick one of those.

And now, a list of common Robert Coover themes.

• Women with big hips and butts. This obsession tends to taper off eventually, but it begins right there in 1966 with the introduction of the wonderful nurse "Happy Bottom."
• Cartoon/vaudeville mime routines. This again is more a feature of his early work, and again begins with "Happy Bottom."
• Bawdy songs.
• Vicious, fickle audiences.
• The protagonist is trapped inside an environment which he cannot escape, and the environment degrades over time. The landscape is usually disconnected -- doors never lead to predictable places -- and often chronology is confused as well.
• As a continuation of the nightmare environment, the protagonist usually suffers most when he is feeling proud or confident.
• In addition, the protagonist is constantly being punished for failing to follow rules, through no conscious fault of his own.
• Sometimes the environment and protagonist are part of an obvious genre.
• A large cast of couples who screw around with each other.
• Scatology. People tend to poop their pants.
• Puns.
• Extremely dense, impenetrable, high-brow concepts introduced in tiny snippets within the most banal of events, with the result that the concepts themselves seem banal. This starts happening during Coover's middle period.
• Sex with strangers.

* ...with the exception of independently-published pieces, which are difficult and expensive to find.

"Hergest Ridge" Revisited

I've talked at length about my love for Mike Oldfield's classic albums. The fact that those albums are now being re-released in new 2010 deluxe editions is cause for celebration.

I already had the deluxe edition of "Tubular Bells." The demo material was fascinating and Oldfield's remixed versions were an interesting insight into previously-hidden aspects of the master tapes, but the remastering job of the original mix offered nothing new. I didn't expect it to: it's the mix I've been hearing all my life, of course.

Now his other two classics have been released. I'm most excited about "Ommadawn" -- which I haven't yet received -- and I didn't particularly care about "Hergest Ridge" until a fellow Oldfield fan said it was an album that could ONLY sound better if it were tweaked. Like, it was so poor that ANY treatment could improve it.

Many people consider "Hergest Ridge" to be unfocused, weak, and twee. I've always agreed but I bought the deluxe edition anyway...and HOLY FREAKING COW!

"Hergest Ridge" was released during a petrochemical shortage, so the 1974 vinyl was of notoriously bad quality. Also, Oldfield was unhappy with the final result and he mixed a new quadraphonic version in 1976...this is the version (flattened to stereo) that was eventually released on CD.

So all my life I've been listening to two versions of "Hergest Ridge": one that suffered so much from its crappy vinyl that all subtlety was removed, and another that was never properly for CD and was supposed to be quadraphonic to begin with.

I didn't think that mattered; I thought the album was "blah" from conception to execution, so poor reproduction couldn't make it any worse. I was totally wrong.

Right now I'm listening to the ORIGINAL 1974 stereo mix, finally liberated from poor-quality vinyl AND mastered for CD, and it's like hearing an entirely new album. The annoying reverb-heavy trumpet has become clear and clean and perfectly suited to the rest of the instruments. The acoustic guitar positively GLITTERS. The backup vocals are suddenly audible for the first time in places where I didn't even know they existed; that dreary "overdubbed guitar" section at the end of Part Two has been brought to ecstatic life by the grace of Sally Oldfield and Clodagh Simonds, howling away in the background.

There are so many differences to this mix that I have to keep checking to make sure it isn't one of the new "2010" mixes.

I'm thrilled that I can stand on this blog hilltop -- this ramshackle virtual ridge -- and proclaim that "Hergest Ridge" is genius. I've you've dismissed it, now's the time to give it another listen. If you've spent your life listening to the inferior versions then you will be totally amazed by what you hear.

Hack Your Dunjonquest

My "map the Dunjonquest games" project was going fine until I hit level 8 of Hellfire Warrior. Not only does it feature some tricky "room connection" puzzles in the middle of the Great Plain, but it does not provide you with any room numbers. Even though I knew I'd still be able to solve the puzzle, it reduced my chances of ever being even remotely certain that the whole level was mapped. What would be the point of a half-assed job?

Well yeah, there'd be a point, but it would still be discouraging. So tonight I dove back into the Hellfire Warrior code -- which is very similar to the Temple of Apshai code -- and made a few changes.

Here are the things I've learned by poking around (literally). Some of them are generalizations based on Hellfire and Apshai that I haven't fully checked, so take them with a grain of salt.

The Files

"Temple of Apshai" contains the following files:

TEMPLE.PRG - The Innkeeper program
TEMPLE.DUN - The Dunjonmaster program
TEMPLE.PT1 to .PT7 - Files .PT3 to .PT6 are the data for levels 1-4, but the other .PT files are a mystery to me: character set data? Treasures? Traps? I haven't looked closely.

"Hellfire Warrior" is a bit more complicated, but the main files are:

INN - The Innkeeper program
DM - The Dunjonmaster program
HELLFIRE.5 to .8 - Levels 5 to 8.

There also appear to be different character sets for each level, and perhaps colour data for each level (since the levels ARE different colours).

The Code

The Innkeeper and Dunjonmaster programs are written in ATARI BASIC, with a few machine language routines that I think are for loading the custom character set and drawing the dungeon.

Here are some important things to remember when looking through the code.

• It's atrocious. Just sayin'.
  
• Variables that start with the letter U are really constants that represent numbers...U1 represents the number one, U10 represents ten, etc. This was a common way to conserve program memory, because the ATARI BASIC interpreter tokenized variables but treated every number as a separate piece of memory.
• The code is full of PEEKs and POKEs, because all character and level data is stored directly to memory addresses, not usually -- as you'd expect -- in variables. This allows the data to persist when the Innkeeper switches to the Dunjonmaster and vice-versa, but it's extremely difficult to untangle.
• Variable KA represents the memory address where the level data begins, and KB represents the address where the character data begins. In "Apshai," KA is page 103 (103*256) and KB is KA+2251.
• Much character data is also mirrored in variables, and the program swaps between the variables and memory occasionally, which might explain some wacky behaviour.
• Each level contains sixty (Q) rooms, but not all levels utilize every room. Judging by the file sizes (identical) I assume that the unused rooms are just full of padding.

Important Variables

• L: Character level (see below).
• O$: A string of all the commands that can be entered.
• MSTR: The line number for monster routines (7000).
• KF: The direction the character is facing (1 = up, 2 = right, 3 = down, 4 = left, I think).
• YA: The character's vertical position.
• XA: The character's horizontal position.
• TA: Fatigue.
• WC: Weight carried.
• PC: Wounds.
• PH: Maximum wounds.

Experience Points

One of the more mysterious aspects of both "Temple of Apshai" and "Hellfire Warrior" is how experience points are evaluated. You are told the number of points you have, and the "Book of Lore" says that you will benefit from a greater number of points, but it's difficult to figure out HOW.

Here's some insight. The programs DO check your "level" during combat, and characters with a higher level definitely get an edge in the calculations. Some stats also go up when you return to the Innkeeper with a higher level than you previous had (in a circuitous and bizarre chain of statements that I haven't bothered looking closely at).

How do you know when you've gone up a level? That would be nice to find out, wouldn't it? For some odd reason the programs never tell you, but the number of experience points you need to have for each level is 1000 times the square of the level number. So:

Level 1 = 2000
Level 2 = 4000
Level 3 = 9000
...
Level 20 = 400,000 etc.

The highest number of experience points you can get is 16,000,000.

Note that certain things in the game (like potions) can silently raise your stats, which might APPEAR to be a level bonus but isn't really. Also, "Hellfire Warrior" (at least the ATARI version) seems to have a bug where the Innkeeper gives you different numbers for your stats when you arrive from the ones you see when you return to the dungeon, and this discrepancy persists, as though the arrival stats are unmodified and the exit stats are modified by bonuses. Weird.

Important Line Numbers

• 5000: Parses input at each turn.
• 5100: Movement.
• 5300 and higher: Other actions.
• 7000: Monster stuff.

Unfortunately, many other routines -- various drawing and sound stuff, for instance -- is tucked away wherever it would fit. Lots of it is in the first hundred lines and is GOSUB'd to frequently. Presumably it's there because the earliest lines run fastest in ATARI BASIC.

Hacking the Program

It's easy enough to stop the program during operation (just press BREAK). To get back to the normal character set:

GRAPHICS 0

To reposition the coloured vertical bars (the remainder of the P/M graphics which represent you and a monster):

POKE 53248,0
POKE 53249,0

After you've made your changes, continue the program nicely with:

GOTO 5020

Make Mapping Easier

Here are some changes you can make to the "Hellfire Warrior" Dunjonmaster program to make mapping easier.

To force it to always print room numbers (which it skips for all levels numbered 6 and 8):

65 POSITION LS,U4:? "ROOM NO.:";

To always reveal a secret door when you (E)xamine a wall:

5701 IF PEEK(K+NT)=U3 THEN POKE K+NT,U2:RF(KF-U1)=U1:GOTO 5710

To always reveal traps when you (S)earch:

6300 IF PEEK(NP+KR)>U0 THEN GOSUB 670:GOSUB 679:GOTO MSTR

The last two might work in "Temple of Apshai" as well.

"Survivors 1975," Season One and a Bit

I had extremely low expectations of "Survivors," mainly because it was created by Terry Nation.

I associate Nation with some of the most plodding and formulaic Doctor Who scripts, usually involving some combination of killer virus, invisible monster, deep chasm, and cowardly-character-makes-brave-sacrifice. Nation's hack jobs for Doctor Who were notorious; the show's producers had a running joke about him just selling them the same Dalek script over and over again.

So when I heard that Nation had created a television series about -- you guessed it -- a killer virus, I just HAD to find out how the invisible monster fit in. But I'm sad to say that "Survivors" is anything but formulaic or plodding...in fact, for the first half, it's absolutely brilliant.

These are not your typical Terry Nation characters; they are complex, understated, and always interesting to watch. Sure there's a funny little Welsh tramp that you can laugh at...but then comes episode nine, "Law and Order," which is the first of two truly harrowing treatments of the "survival" theme: what do you do with a funny little Welsh tramp who isn't so funny anymore?

This theme is pretty simple: when almost everybody in the world dies suddenly, and the diverse survivors have to...well, survive...how do they live through the first few days when they can no longer rely on anybody else, let alone the creature comforts they've known since birth? How do they cope with their shock and grief? How do they find each other? What sort of communities can they form, and how do those communities relate to other groups who disagree with their philosophy? Who the hell knows how to make coal, and what will they do when the tea runs out?

That's the basis of season one, but it's so much more than that, because all of this is approached in a quiet way: no music, no big moments, no flash or spectacle. By contrasting the 1975 series with the new 2008 remake, the Outland Institute explains what is so wonderful and refreshing about this approach, compared to the way it would be (and is) done today. The 1975 series is has an almost documentary style, complete with atmospheric filmed outdoor footage.

Until halfway through the season, however, when things go downhill a bit. First of all, this was the transition period when the BBC was switching from film to "O.B." for their program inserts, and the outdoors look far less "real" when they start using videotape.

This is made worse by the simultaneous arrival (in episode seven) of Hana Maria Pravda, a woman who stands out from the otherwise excellent cast by turning all of her scenes into overwrought babooshka-stereotype cartoons. Combine her with the quietest bunch of cheerfully-prancing "feral dogs" -- especially in one scene when she must actually be ATTACKED by them -- and you get the first glimmers that things are going downhill.

And they do. The plots become more heavy-handed and deliberate, each episode involving the destruction of yet another hard-won and essential social advancement due to the stupidity of others, often the stupidity of the children whose sole purpose is Get Into Trouble or Get Others Into Trouble.

I also have to mention what I refer to as "The Tritovore Technique" (using convenient accidents to get rid of characters who would be too burdensome to keep around) and "The Lucy Saxon Technique" (using secondary characters to kill villains because the primary characters are too principled to do it themselves), which become more and more obvious as the show goes on.

I thought I'd give up after watching the first season, but the second season -- following a truly ridiculous Tritovore-style character-purge of last-season's dross -- has introduced Ruth, a character who harkens back to the complicated and interesting survivors of old. And the second story of the season ("Greater Love") is, once again, unpredictable and beautiful and terrible.

Here's to Ruth and Jenny and Greg and the rest of the survivors. May their wheat ripen, may their sheep multiply, may their babies survive and their horses never go lame. And may they never suffer the indignity of a crappy remake.

Oh, well that already happened.

"Brats! Brats! Brats!"

I love this movie, and somehow this scene makes me happiest of all!

Dunjonquest: The Curse of Ra

Rah rah rah! Here are the maps for the third and final expansion module in the original "Apshai" trilogy, "The Curse of Ra."

Level One: The Well of Forever


This simple level is a nice introduction to both the game and the overriding Egyptian theme, and it only gets hairy once you reach the pit.

Level Two: The Sphinx


No annoying riddles in this one. The actual MONSTER sphinx is something you meet right near the beginning. The fun part is enjoying their attempt at creating a level which is actually SHAPED like a sphinx, complete with paws, ears, and a tail.

Level Three: The Pyramid

And what a huge place it is, too! Here's the exterior and interior:


but you only reach those inner rooms when you go partway up and then return through the FIRST passage:
Compared to all the other levels, this one provides the most opportunities for increasing your stats (in the sandy rooms to the north). Watch out for the moving statues.

Level Four: Temple of Ra


Because the Apshai engine didn't allow for triggers or conditions of any kind, attempts to convey a complicated causal environment were bound to falter now and then...if you enter a room LATER that the level designers assumed you'd enter much EARLIER, for instance, you might read a room description that tries to evoke a progressive narrative by referring to a room you haven't been in yet. Causality gets reversed. It feels weird.

This is my way of saying that if you proceed through the levels in the way they HOPED you would, you'll feel nicely submerged in the action. If you DON'T, however, then you might feel like you're watching the episodes of a TV series in the wrong order.

Fortunately I played "Temple of Ra" in the "correct" way, so I was baffled by the "mysterious force" in the secret area following the Temple Room. I do suggest you play through the base of the Ra statue before going to the upper section.

And after you're done...that's it for "Temple of Apshai!" But don't despair, the "Hellfire Warrior" sequel comes next.

The Hallowed Halls Emmanuel

I love reading yearbooks. They're curious anthropological documents that capture certain elements of a subculture, allowing some degree of "backstage" information to seep through, while simultaneously being constrained by the idea of what a "yearbook" should be: that is, a collection of memories that everybody can supposedly relate to, giving tribute to the institution and its people, and also usually some really terrible poetry.

Imagine my joy when I discovered a heap of yearbooks that a nearby church was throwing out! But these weren't just run-of-the-mill highschool yearbooks...these were for the Emmanuel Bible College.

Oh bliss.


I had no idea that our twin cities contain a thriving, long-standing bible college, and I'm anxious to take a bus out there just to look at it. Other than looking at the slick website and fantasizing about what the dorms must be like, how could us secular folk ever know what a bible college is really like?

By reading the yearbooks, spanning the years 1966 to 1991, and finding all the little gems of culture: the things that you'd find in ANY yearbook, and the things you'd ONLY find in the yearbook from a bible college.

First off, the similarities. The usual tributes to the institution's president, the pictures of the students with special attention given to the graduates, the pages given over to clubs and teams (and the egotistical editorial by the yearbook editor), the myopic cafeteria ladies, followed by a dry list of advertisers. And don't forget the candid pictures of goofy campus life! Yes, even in the Emmanuel Bible College yearbooks you will find men in drag with balloon breasts.

But what's different? First, lots of pictures like this.


That's not a bomb drill, it's a time to make personal contact with your multi-denominational saviour. Myself, already breaking the commandments, I covet that girl's leopard jacket.

Next, many of the students are quite old. Ex-farmers from a myriad of itty-bitty Ontario towns seem to come to Emmanuel when they get the calling. Here's Harry Habel from the graduating class of '66, and one of the little poems that the yearbook staff banged out for the graduates that year.


As somebody who was once a member of my highschool's yearbook staff, I vividly remember the torture of having to write upbeat and personal blurbs about people I disliked and barely knew. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Habel -- in between doing a spot-on Jimmy Durante impersonation -- got on everybody's nerves in the cafeteria. Inka dinka doo!

What's disappointing about the books is the constant focus on God's authority. It's to be expected, obviously, but simply EVERY piece of text must lead into a parable or a scriptual quote of some kind, which reduces all of the activities -- even badminton -- into a Thin Tasteless Gruel of God. I can't help wondering if these students -- who so happily write "God is GREAT!" on their dorm murals -- secretly wish the message was toned down a little bit. It's not like everybody who goes to bible college is exactly the same as everybody else.

But besides the emphasis on two aspects of evangelicalism that I find particularly horrible -- missionary work and the Crisis pregnancy center -- there's very little in these books to offend or to cast the college in a bad light. These folks seem intelligent, diverse, passionate, and fun. Granted I'm getting that impression through the rosy-coloured yearbook lens, but even so I find myself wishing I could spend a day or two there, just to experience the comfort and solidarity of a bunch of people who believe very strongly in what each other are doing.

Hey, is there any chance I can get a scholarship? And if so do I REALLY have to learn Greek, and why?

Dunjonquest: The Upper Reaches of Apshai

(See this post for background on what I'm talking about here)

Give some creative and intelligent people a framework for creating games, and before long they'll figure out how to do tricks that are far beyond the original specifications. "Temple of Apshai" may have kept rigidly within the Dunjonquest engine's parameters, but "Upper Reaches of Apshai" has the software jumping through hoops.

Specifically, they've realized three things:

1. Rooms can overlap. Because each room's data is totally discreet -- not being part of a single large structure -- you can create a multi-leveled effect. This is first seen in the spiral staircase of level four, "Benedic's Monestery."
2. Adjacent doors don't have to have the same connections. This is first seen in "Merlis' Hall of Magic," (level 2) where returning through a door takes you to a room that LOOKS identical but is totally different (and might have different exits, secret doors, etc.) This adds a whole new dimension to the game, allowing rooms to "change" depending on how you enter them.
3. The other effect of disconnected doors is the simple one-way exit, fully exploited in the "cave ins" within "Olias' Cellar" (level 3). It's easy but effective: walk through a door, and the next room doesn't have a door that goes back in the opposite direction.
4. Finally, the most maddening and subtle trick of them all: the "two rooms appear to be one room" trick. Because all Dunjonquest rooms must be rectangular, you begin to assume that every rectangle is a single room...you check for secret doors within a room and then you walk out. But by creating two adjacent rooms, each with only three walls, the level creators can make a "hidden" room that is only visible when you cross the midpoint. A treasure might be in that room, or -- in the case of the "bear cave" in "Olias' Cellar" -- a secret door that cannot be detected until you cross the room.

What amazes me about these games is how polished they are. Each time I find that I've missed a room or a treasure, my first thought is that I've encountered a bug, but no...after diligent searching I realize that I didn't find what I was looking for because the level designers wanted me to WORK HARD.

That said, I think there IS a bug in "Olias' Cellar," involving a secret door in room 19 that leads to a corridor section (15) which overlaps another corridor section (20) but shares the same exits. Nothing in the text explains why this happens, so I suspect the design was glitchy and they just left it in.

(I also think there's a missing treasure in the final level of "Curse of Ra," but I'll get to that next time).

Anyway, here are the levels for "The Upper Reaches of Apshai."

Level One: The Innkeeper's Backyard



Level Two: Merlis' Cottage



Level 3: Olias' Cellar



Level Four: Benedics Monastery


Besides the innovations in the room connections, these levels are more fun to play because they're coherent. They have interesting backstories and little mysteries which go far beyond the "kill monsters and find treasures" plots of "Temple." More importantly, these levels tend to be FUNNY. There are actually JOKES in them. Rather than endlessly fighting motivationless Antmen ("Oh no! Antmen") you are meeting vicious farmyard animals ("Oh no! Goose!") and doing your darnedest to vanquish the Creeping Crud.

Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai

I have so many guilty pleasures that I'm in a permanent state of mortification, and one of my pleasures is a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl. It's not because I love killing monsters and collecting treasures; the actual BULK of a dungeon crawl game is incidental to me. What I REALLY like to do is to EXPLORE.

I've always gotten a thrill out of mazes, tunnels, and imaginary digital worlds. Unfortunately there are few games that are simply about exploring...pissy monsters are always attacking you and you have to solve anachronous "eight queens" puzzles at every second step. I'm of the opinion that the world (the real one) is waiting for a computer simulation of a rich landscape that doesn't necessarily have anybody else in it. The fact that I'd enjoy such a thing is creepy, really.

But anyway, my favourite games as a teenager were the ones where you could wander around a maze and map it, and then stare for hours at the map wondering what sort of cool place it would be to live in. Unfortunately back then I had a very low threshold for frustration, so I rarely succeeded in finishing the games that were so fun to explore: Ultima, The Eidolon, Alternate Reality, and...

...the Dunjonquest series, considered to be the first dungeon crawls for the 8-bit home computers. Originally developed by Jon Freeman (who is most idolized these days as being one of the creators of Archon) for his fledgling Automated Simulations company (likewise most idolized for later becoming Epyx), these games were all about wandering around mazes, killing monsters, raising your stats, collecting treasures, and running from Antmen who apparently used a vanilla-scented body lotion.

The Dunjonquest game that most people remember is "Temple of Apshai" and its two sequels, "Upper Reaches of Apshai" and "Curse of Ra." These three games -- like the "Hellfire Warrior" trilogy that followed them -- presented you with a very basic depiction of your surroundings, requiring you to actually read the room descriptions from the accompanying manual (or "Book of Lore.")

Originally written in BASIC in 1979, the first games required a great deal of patience and imagination, and the subsequent games -- with the exception of "Gateway to Apshai," a very different arcade-style adventure -- used the same engine. Even when the Apshai games were eventually released as a re-written, integrated, machine-language "Temple of Apshai Trilogy" -- the way most people remember them -- you still needed to shuffle your little character along featureless corridors, bumping into walls and slaying barely-animated 4-colour monsters.

So Dunjonquest games don't have a lot of appeal to gamers these days, and they've slowly faded away from the eyes of even the most nostalgic 8-bit fans.

Until now!

I'm happy to say I'm not alone in my love of these games, and I've been collaborating with Robinson Mason -- and scrounging the darkest corners of the internet -- to reclaim the programs. And not just the programs, but also the even more rare "Books of Lore" which are both essential for play and a delight to read.

While my compatriot tirelessly unearths more of the games and materials, I've been concentrating on reverse-engineering the BASIC code and mapping all the levels. I've discovered some interesting things buried in the convoluted rats-nest of oddly-ported BASIC, but that will come later. Right now, here are maps for the four levels of the first game, "Temple of Apshai."

I decided not to include room numbers, traps, or treasures -- that would not only clutter up my tiny drawings but would also spoil more of the game. And I make no claims to the 100% accuracy of these maps; they are complete and fully-connected, but their proportions may be slightly off. Click on an image to see a larger version.

Temple of Apshai - Level One


Temple of Apshai - Level Two


Temple of Apshai - Level Three


Temple of Apshai - Level Four


The maps for the next game ("Upper Reaches of Apshai") are coming soon (along with playing tips), and I expect there'll be a resource site starting up eventually. Until then, spare a thought to all those digital worlds that are locked up in decaying floppy disks in attics and basements, and consider rescuing them for one last time.

Music I'm Buying and Then Loving

I have a new ritual which keeps me smiling on Monday mornings: when I go to work that day I allow myself to buy ONE album off iTunes. I might buy something old that I'd never managed to find, or something new that I've been dying to get, or I'll simply hop around using the "People Who Bought This Also Bought That" links until I finally find something interesting.

Here's a chronological list of what I've been buying since I started doing this last August, with linked YouTube videos to appropriate songs when available:

Various singles by Rose Elinor Dougall. My favourite Pipette has gone solo with these lush songs, apparently inspired by '80s acoustic-goth music.

"Sign 'O' the Times" by Prince. I've long admired the tour video of the same name, but I've never been able to find the studio album until now. It was a shock to hear the original, stripped-down, somewhat bizarre versions of songs which became epic onstage, but it's grown on me...and "Hot Thing" is SUCH a sexycool song.

"Dali's Car" self-titled EP. Mick Karn from Japan and Peter Murphy from Bauhaus produced a very odd album: exotic, brooding, somewhat Arabic in its sound. It's not GREAT, but it's INTERESTING, and something I fondly remember listening to on vinyl.

"Imaginary Friend" by The Faith Healers. I heard their song "Don't Jones Me" on a compilation at CKMS, and it took me almost twenty years to give them a bigger listen. It's very much rooted in the '90s shoegazer-meets-grunge scene, but with a nice eccentricity and a hypnotic vibe. The twenty-minute "All at Once Forever" is especially fab!

"Here and Now" and "Moon Bathing on Sleeping Leaves" by Sky Cries Mary. Talk about eccentric: funk, prog-rock, DJ beats, and gorgeous vocals. The live album is amazing, but I'm disconcerted by the apparent presence of TWO copies of Anisa Romero singing at once. Overdubs or backing track? Either way, not cool.

Self-titled album by Zaza Fournier. Delirium gal Anissa sent me Zaza's debut video because she said Zaza reminded her of me. I am infinitely flattered, because Zaza's persona is the one I have always subconsciously tried to cultivate: playful, gawky, cute, individualistic. Do you think you wouldn't enjoy an album of accordian-dominated songs sung in French? YOU'RE WRONG!

"The Warning" by Hot Chip. Their song "Over and Over" is perhaps as close to perfection as a song can be, and it's one that DJ Al at Club Abstract plays when he's feeling very happy. "The Warning" is a good album but just a tad uneven and overproduced.

"Couples" by The Long Blondes. A happy random discovery, but again, a sort of uneven album...it's all good, but the hits stand head and shoulders above the rest. Oh, "Guilt!"

"Fixin' to Thrill" by Dragonette. Toronto's very own electro darlings full of attitude, oddness, and buzy-synthiness. Yet another slightly uneven album -- too long, maybe, to sustain its necessary energy -- but you've got to admit they have something original going on.

"Unmixed" by Freemasons. When I heard their cover of "Uninvited," I had to grab the album, and while it covers a huge number of styles -- being basically a collection of non-remix versions of their recent hit singles -- it thumps so beautifully hard, and the singers they choose are ALWAYS AMAZING.

"Replicas" by Gary Numan. I've mentioned here before that I've never picked up a cheap Gary Numan album that I didn't like; I love his gulpy voice and his ominous keyboards, no matter the era. But I found "Replicas" to be a tad overhyped; it's considered such a landmark album -- and it certainly helped shape the burgeoning New Wave sound -- but it's also awfully monotonous and sloppy.

"Damp" by Foetus. I'd buy anything by Foetus, so this was a no-brainer. A collection of demos, remixes, singles, and previously unreleased songs. His collaboration with Rotoskop will have to be an upcoming iTunes purchase, that's for sure...

"Your Bag" by Lida Husik. Back when I heard this album in the early '90s, it seemed so fresh and interesting: an oddball let loose in a recording studio to release a series of equally oddball releases, often with unconventional effects and weird noises and cut up tape montages. These days, however, it seems like more of a "good idea" than a "good album."

Self-titled album by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. I'd buy anything by OMD, and I was looking forward to finally hearing all those older albums I'd never been able to find. The subsequent disappearance of most of their catalog off of iTunes has put the kibosh on that plan, but at least I got this one, their first. It's a mix of perfect pop songs and bizarre experiments, best listened to in the early '80s but still a real treat.

"Big Sexy Land" by Revolting Cocks. I'd heard good things about this first album, but it's of the more monotonous type of '80s proto-industrial noodling: the worst parts of both collaborators, Ministry and Front 242. In University I had a friend who said that, to him, all industrial music sounded like a sample going "Bodies everywhere. B-b-b-bodies everywhere." I was less than delighted to find out that he was thinking of a song on this album ("Union Carbide").

"The Golden Age of Wireless" by Thomas Dolby. One of my favourite albums ever, finally remastered and restored to its original track sequence. Worth it just for the album itself, even more worth it for the additional material.

"Lust Lust Lust" by The Raveonettes. Recommended to me by a friend, and an excellent Jesus and Mary Chain brand of lo-fi -- love that spring reverb! -- but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing...the album is longer than it needs to be by far.

"The Frenz Experiment" by The Fall. I'd buy anything by The Fall. Another excellent album from their Brix/Schofield period. "Hit the North" is such a wonderful song!

"Ljubi in Sovraži" and "Arhiv" by Videosex, both incredibly cheap, both wonderful, both with awful sound quality, and both previously mentioned here.

"Horehound" by The Dead Weather. Since I'm probably the last person on earth who isn't 100% sure who Jack Black is, I can approach this supergroup without any preconceived notions or expectations. It's got a fun, gritty, dark-blues sound that gets a little dull after a while...but when it's good, it's GOOD.

"The Hazards of Love" by The Decemberists. I admit it: I've never heard anything else by them. I only stumbled across this album because amazing animator Julia Pott made part of their album-length music video. I watched the video and said "wow," and bought the album and said "WOW!" (Chorus of dead children excluded)

Many albums by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, bought in release order, from their self-titled release to "Solar Fire." Thank you iTunes, I finally get a chance to hear all the albums by a band I'd Buy Anything From.

"Prince Charming" by Adam & the Ants. It's hard not to love the Adam Ant concept: sexy guy dresses up like a "Top of the Pops" version of a highwayman, then sings a bunch of fetishy, over-the-top songs for a public scandalized, annoyed, and in lust. Do all the albums live up to this? Not "Prince Charming," but it's...well, charming.

"On the Threshold of a Dream" by Moody Blues. Another of my favourite albums, finally remastered and released with tons of bonus material. It's still just as scary and lovely as ever and -- in my humble opinion -- the only Moody Blues album you need to own.

"Tale to Tell" by The Mummers. Weird woman with amazing voice teams up with a soundtrack composer and releases and album with lots of potential. Composer commits suicide shortly afterward. We will never know what could (and should) have happened next, but at least we have this difficult album of outrageous orchestral pop.

"The Family Jewels" by Marina and the Diamonds. The only album in recent memory that has kept me literally SWEATING for its release...and yes, it's good, but the singles are far and above the most distinctive songs. Even so, I'd pay double the money just for that handful of songs, and there are some others that are "just good enough that another fabulous artist might have been able to do them."

"All Request Live" by Ween. They're always fabulous. Their new renditions of songs from the past are all wonderful, but check out "Where Did the Cheese Go," an insane presentation of their rejected Pizza Hut jingle. Six minutes long. It's the best.

All the cassettes by Pain Teens. I've already mentioned that I'd buy anything by the Pain Teens, so imagine my joy when I discovered all of their original cassette albums on iTunes! Well, lots of songs have been removed (probably for copyright reasons) and they're generally overpriced, but I love them both for the chance to hear the "demo" versions of songs from later albums, and for a format that they represent and has largely disappeared: the 4-track 90-minute tape recorded in your parent's basement by a person (Scott Ayres in this case, with a bit of input by Bliss Blood) who seems to have no end of creativity and talent. I recommend "Manmade Disasters" and "Cathy" if you like more song-oriented albums, and "Narcolepsy" for experimental oddness that is still listenable.

The self-titled album by Sons of Freedom. The tightest rhythm section ever, made even tighter by the fact that the guitarist usually played rhythm as well. This one just thumps and thumps and thumps along, and while the songs near the end are a bit self-indulgent and weak, the first half of the album is massively great.

The self-titled EP by Lioness. How appropriate that this should follow Sons of Freedom; take their thumpy rhythms and add the best bits of Dragonette -- everybody being Canadian, incidentally -- and you get the catchiest song in ages and a darn good EP too. They Will Be Big.

"Eyelid Movies" by Phantogram, recommended to me by Joshua, king of the OTHER twin cities, doesn't have a lot of variety to it but is excellent background music.

"Too" by Madita. Ahh, this is so good: a pop album that always sounds great, but still manages to pull the in influences and oddities that make it something special. And she has a perfectly capable voice without distraction.

"In the Flat Fields" by Bauhaus. I never used to enjoy this phase of Bauhaus' career, but now I see the joy. It's a weird album of chainsaw rhythm and guitar effects, held together by Peter Murphy's histrionics: exhausting, alienating, and -- apparently -- the beginning of Goth As We Know It.

"Trip the Light Fantastic" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Rarely does an album leave me so thrilled and happy! Perfect production, beautiful melodies, and Sophie's expressive voice; this is anything but a pop-by-numbers album and it baffles me that more people haven't heard it. You want to, right?!?

"Wild Young Hearts" by Noisettes. This is my most recent purchase so I haven't listened enough to give even a capsule review, but I'm liking it so far. Embarrassing fact: Delirium gal Annissa (her again!) told me about the Noisettes several months ago, and I brushed them off as manufactured entities ala VV Brown, then I forgot about them. This week I gushingly asked Annissa if she'd heard of the Noisettes, and she revealed to me my reactionary music snobbishness. Reality check!

Creepy Pedro Reviews "Airport"

Because we might die before or after we experience love, "Airport" says "Go for it, Mister! Beware the old lady!" These sentiments are even more important now, after The Terrorism, than they were 1000 years ago.

There was a tough-guy mechanic named Joe Patroni, constructed not of flesh or blood but of tightly-knitted quips, like the "Quip Golum" of old. How can one build a tougher man than Patroni, except perhaps with additional quips and sequels? Will he ever get the girl? Will she be compatible with his gruff? These are questions for the next time, my friend, in "Airport 2."

Patroni is in my favourite movie scene: the Snow Boss says "Get out of my way, Patroni!" and he shouts "NEVER!" and there is a mammoth clash of Patroni and the snow removal machine, and you wonder who's going to win until Patroni says "NeeeAHH!" and pushes one inch further and the Snow Boss loses the fight...UNTIL NEXT TIME.

Mayhem and suction, this is the weird world of Airport Management, which you wouldn't understand until you've actually seen it as your parents have. Do you want to apply to work in this job? No way, married men and women, this is not the placement for the likes of you! Gigalos and whores need apply, it says here, if you are cockpit licensed.

Xanadu and '80s Sexuality

I'm sitting here watching "Xanadu" and trying to define the elements of it which make me slightly queasy. It's not the music -- which I love -- or the clothes or hair -- which will look less and less ugly as time goes by -- or even the bad acting.

It's the ATTITUDE. It's the overdriven '80s sexuality.

This is hard for me to define because I grew up in that era. I also don't want to make any assumptions about the '80s without likewise analyzing OTHER eras. "Xanadu" is interesting because it encompasses some '40s elements as well, prompting the question "Why do I not see similar problems with the attitudes of the '20s? The '40s? The '60s? Today? Is it just because I cry whenever I see Gene Kelly dancing inside a giant pinball machine?"

Thanks to "Xanadu" I think I can finally define what makes me nervous about the late '70s and the '80s: a cocksure, unsubtle, party-all-night attitude combined with often sadistic misogyny. Every shot seems to communicate "We're havin' a three-day PARTY, everybody! And we're gonna have SEX WITH ALL THESE CHICKS! And the worst that'll happen is we'll get herpes and a bloody nose!"

Look at the musical numbers in "Xanadu" and compare them to a '40s musical, or compare "Solid Gold" with what you probably would have seen in a '50s nightclub. Sure the women would be objectified, and the men would pay overt sexual attention to the women, but while in -- for example -- a '50s nightclub they'd communicate "I really would like to have sex with her tonight," in "Xanadu" they're saying "I'm gonna f*ck her tonight, and her sister too, and it'll feel so GOOOOOD, LET'S GO!"

I can't prove this, I'm mostly just looking at facial expressions and body language. The sexuality is self-obsessed and dead-eyed and just a little creepy, if not simply lecherous. Leaving aside the number by The Tubes* for example (in which an moaning, orgiastic woman is strapped to a synthethiser by a simpering idiot) you've just got this feeling that it's ALL about the sex and the cocaine, nothing else, nada. It probably always HAS been about the sex and the Current Drug of Choice, but it was never quite as bare-faced and cocky.

I think things have changed. Men in the media still prowl around women like horny dogs, but there is no longer the same degree of entitlement and certainty and thrill-seeking. Even as outfits have become more sexual and revealing in the mainstream, women seem to have a BIT more power than they did in the '80s.

All that aside, however, Olivia Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra make the perfect combination. It's amazing the producers could afford such huge musicians after filling out their rotoscoping budget.

* When I think of cocky, aggressive, downright grotesque '80s sexuality I think of The Tubes. Do you?

Michael Moorcock's "A Cure for Cancer"

Michael Moorcock's novel "A Cure for Cancer" is broken up into small chapters, each one headed with a lurid tabloid-style headline which may or may not relate to the text. The chapters themselves are all of a single tone: laid-back and deadpan and absurdist, featuring dead-eyed characters who do random things to other dead-eyed characters within static sets; there are lots of vehicles and rooms that are an awful lot like the vehicles and rooms which came before.

While the tone remains the same, the direction of the story changes every few paragraphs. Characters will be contemplating something, and then suddenly there will be a bombing or a battle or maybe just the arrival of other characters, and then everybody moves to a vehicle, and then they're someplace else, all in the span of four or five paragraphs. Because of this lack of focus, you never know what's going to happen next; when people get into a vehicle you don't know where they're going until they arrive.

More importantly, even when they DO arrive, you don't know WHY, because the characters are all identical and none of them have any motivation. You cannot tell the hero -- Jerry Cornelius -- apart from anybody else. You have no idea what anybody wants, feels, or believes. The characters just ARE, and when they talk, they speak in a free-flowing semi-witty banter which has all the sense and purpose of two plastic balls rubbing together:

"And how did you leave Europe?" Captain Brunner unbuttoned his uniform jacket to show a yellow shirt of Sea Island Cotton.

"Much as I hope to find it." Jerry pushed his dinner away and took another sip of his Californian Riesling. "It's an uphill struggle."

"Perhaps it always will be, Jerry."

"One door opens. Another closes."

"Isn't that for the best?"

Jerry raised a jet black hand to a jet black face and rubbed his right eye. Captain Brunner smiled.

"The illusion of power," said Jerry. "It sometimes seems too sweet for words."

"Or actions, for that matter."

"Sure."

It's all f*cking like that.

Very few books annoy me to the point where I put them down after 100 pages, but "The Cure for Cancer" is one of them. It seems to me to be Michael Moorcock's great big joke; a combination of moddish flippancy and William S. Burroughs' disdain for linearity. Separately, those things are good enough when done well...but when put together it's like experiencing somebody's really boring dream.

I enjoyed (most of) Moorcock's Elric stories, and I liked his first Jerry Cornelius book well enough ("The Final Programme"), but "A Cure for Cancer" is so wanky and featureless that I fear I'm "off" Moorcock. There are so many great authors out there...do I really want to spend time and money on the guy who wrote this awful book?

Well, yes. Because I think I recognize what Moorcock was trying to do, and I suppose I respect him for at least trying. I'm also sure there are people out there who love "A Cure for Cancer," just as there are people who love William S. Burroughs.

So I'll give him another chance. But I'm warning you, Michael, that the next one had better be good...

Barth vs. Nabokov

Not long ago I read every single John Barth book in chronological order, and I didn't like what I discovered. My basic conclusion was that, after a certain point, he started using the same characters, style, and list of obsessions in every single book.

The worst aspects started happening with the publication of "Chimera" in 1972, which introduced the characters he'd beat to death over the next thirty years: a man and a woman, highly sexed and of above-average intelligence and education, engaging in cute and explicit discussions about their sex lives. These discussions are always goofy, alliterative, and full of puns. What's more, the Barth narrative style post-Chimera is almost exclusively expository, and usually the narrator is also the author.

These are perfectly good storytelling techniques in themselves, but my beef is that John Barth used them almost without exception. I found this SO distasteful that I've vowed never to buy another of his books.

This week I decided to re-read Vladimir Nabokov's "Ada or Ardor." I've only read it once before -- about fifteen years ago -- and I remember being totally in love with it...but it's driving me BONKERS.

Why? Because IT CONTAINS THOSE JOHN BARTH CHARACTERS! It is (among other things) the story of the relationship between Van and Ada, two highly-intelligent and highly-sexed individuals who talk endlessly about their sexual relationship in a cute, alliterative, pun-filled way. And it's written in an expository style in which the authors are...Van and Ada themselves.

Seriously, reading "Ada or Ardor" is like reading a long-lost John Barth novel, right down to the fact that the main characters say "et cetera" and "tant pis" (which Barth's characters also do, constantly, pointlessly, in every book).

I said at the beginning of this post that Barth started writing this way in 1972, with the publication of "Chimera." You won't be shocked to learn that "Ada or Ardor" was published three years previously...and that Barth is an acknowledged Nabakov fan.

Now, I don't have PROOF that John Barth enjoyed "Ada or Ardor" so much that he basically spent the rest of his life re-writing it...but it sure as hell seems that way. And do you know what the real shame is? That bastard has ruined this book for me. Every time I read a sentence like this--

Could he find the right words: not to hurt Ada, while making her bed-filly know he despised her for kindling a child, so dark-haired and pale, coal and coral, leggy and limp, whimpering at the melting peak?

--I want to scream and write a hateful letter to Nabakov, even though he did it FIRST. And he's dead.

I'd Buy Anything By...Stan Ridgway

As I'll mention when I write the "I.B.A.B. Wall of Voodoo" entry, I ran across Stan Ridgway mostly by accident. Before I discovered that he used to be in Wall of Voodoo, I knew him only from the goofy "Camouflage," which I'd previously ridiculed as total schlock.

Now I know that Ridgway is rarely saying what you think he's saying. He's been compared with Raymond Chandler, but I'd like to add a hint of Bob Dylan and Dorothy Parker in there, along with primitive New Wave sensibilities and the carnival keyboards of his wife (Pietra Wexstun). You might remember him best for "Don't Box Me In," a song he created with Stewart Copeland for the movie "Rumble Fish." And it's a damn good song.



In his long (and mostly obscure) solo career he has occasionally stumbled. Sometimes his rhymes are terrible. Sometimes his production sucks. Sometimes his extended live between-song rants are downright unfunny and dull. But for the most part his work is golden, eccentric, surprising, and uncompromising. He has a rabid cult following which is much deserved.

Over the years he has toyed with synthpop, adult-oriented rock, sample-heavy noise (in his side-project "Drywall"), and folk. Here he is this year, live and solo, in one of his frequent shows which never seem to cross the border (but I did get to meet his drummer Joe Berardi several years ago, which was a real treat).



Stan Ridgway just keeps going strong, and I keep following along.

Albums to buy: His debut "The Big Heat" (for the synthpop period) and "Black Diamond" (for the more Dylanesque sound). Albums to avoid: "Partyball" sounds like a poor commercial compromise but still has some good moments. For fans only: His album of children's songs, his album of '40s big-band standards, and his retrospective DVD "Showbusiness in my Life."

There Was a Time When I'd Buy Anything By...The Residents (But Now They Just Annoy Me)

So you're in highschool and you've just discovered musical alternatives -- life isn't just about Tom Petty and The Tragically Hip. Like many teenagers you decide you have to experience the weirdest, most extreme things you can find, especially if you have to search in the darkest corners of the music bin to find them.

You start watching "City Limits," the MuchMusic show devoted to alternative music, and though much of the program is devoted to the Manchester scene (which you're not interested in) and industrial music (which you've already dived headfirst into), you are mortally struck by this video: "Hello Skinny" by The Residents.



Grotesque! Scary! Self-referential! Drug-inspired! Simultaneously visceral and intelligent! Absurdist! A complex mythology involving anonymous guys who wear eyeballs on their heads! Seriously, The Residents were about as obscure and "out there" you could possibly get while still being available and (somewhat) accessible.

You begin to collect their music, spending vast sums of money on whatever you can find. Some of it you love -- and you very much enjoy the IDEA of the group -- but you soon realize that sometimes...well, The Residents SUCK.

Their early days of vim and verve were spectacular. They couldn't play their instruments, but that just forced them to innovate. They spent years making an incredible avant-garde video -- "Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?" -- which has never been finished (or shown altogether in one place).

Then they got better keyboards, and samplers, and maybe a sequencer or two, and they continued to do crazy stuff. Their concepts were alien and you could never quite believe in what you were hearing...what did they MEAN? Why did they DO that?

But somewhere along the line they discovered MIDI and they began to homogenize, and at the same time their concepts became less inspired. The keyboards got plinky and boring. The stories lost their focus. They put so much effort into their high-minded concepts that they somehow forgot about the MUSIC. At the same time they began to capitalize on their cult status, and by 1990 their CD packages were full of advertisements for watches and T-shirts. There's nothing worse than a cult band who runs around yelling "We're a cult band!" while their ideas and technique recede quickly into the past.

Eventually you give up and you stop buying their stuff. But you still remember what they used to be capable of...



Albums to buy: "Duck Stab" (for the "classic" sound) and "God In Three Persons" (for the "storyteller" sound). Albums to avoid: anything released after 1992. For fans only: their innovative (but kind of dull) CD ROM games, their comics, their watches, their T-shirts...

Dee-Yadda Diddy-Aoh Scat!

This weekend King Beckett loaned me his copy of "Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer." And though there's not much in the documentary that I didn't already know, it DID increase my respect for her jazz-stylings from "I don't know how to evaluate this vocal style" to "Holy cow, she was SPECTACULAR."

Do yourself a favour and watch her interpretation of "Sweet Georgia Brown" during the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. The director spends WAY too much time focusing on the audience, but persevere until she really gets going. It's more than worth it.

I'd Buy Anything By...Pink Floyd

I've already talked enough about Pink Floyd in this blog, and you already know enough about them.

Let's just say that I've been immersed in their music since I was (literally) an infant.

"Dark Side of the Moon" was on regular rotation in our house.

I spent countless hours listening to "Wish You Were Here" and staring at the red blowing scarf on the back cover. When I saw that Arabic numbers were used to designate each part of the title song, I was so in awe that I filled an entire three-ring notebook with all the Arabic numbers up to two thousand.

"Animals" scared me and I brought it to my grade three class so the other kids could listen. I trained myself to make my letters "g" and "a" exactly the way they were on the lyric sheet, a habit that persists to this day.

"The Wall" was the first album I consciously bought for myself. I remember the joy of discovering and deciphering the secret message.

Instead of having separate copies of "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and "A Saucer Full of Secrets," we owned the double-album combination called "A Nice Pair," complete with Doctor Fang's name and the censored breasts. I loved watching the psychedelic Harvest Records label spin around.

David Gilmour's feedback squeaks during "Echoes" used to give me nightmares, and when I asked my dad how the noises were made, he said "Probably by ghosts."

The cover of "Ummagumma" was more magical than "Alice Through the Looking Glass," partly because of the woodsy hippie tinge. I discovered if you slowed "Several Species of Small Furry Animals" down that most of the noises were coughs. I assumed that the wooden gnomes behind David Gilmour's head were the creatures that made those squeaky sounds during "Echoes." I marveled at the amount of time it must have taken to set all their equipment out for that photograph. I still marvel.

"The Final Cut" confused me and it took many years before I learned to love it. I had no idea who that "Maggie" person was. When I asked my dad what "nips" were, he said "Probably nipples."

I saw the "Delicate Sound of Thunder" tour twice when I was sixteen. The first time I went with my aunt Julie, a hard-rocking super-fox who -- when the joint was passed our way -- said "We don't need drugs to have fun!" Two enormous rednecks stole our seats, and they heckled Julie when she asked them to leave, so she said she'd throw them right the f*ck off the f*cking balcony if they didn't move their f*cking *sses, and if she couldn't do it herself she could easily find ten guys who'd be willing to, and they said "Okay, okay, lady, jeez!"

By the time of "The Division Bell" I'd already spent twenty-two years listening to Pink Floyd. It wasn't too bad an album, but nothing more. Pink Floyd will always be "Wish You Were Here" and "Animals" to me.

I'd Buy Anything By...Parliament / Funkadelic

It took me many years to finally understand "the funk." I think that my ideas about music were too rigid; I didn't think that a song should be "a party," or have any loose ends, or shun a strict verse/chorus structure.

When I started DJ'ing the '80s night at Club Renaissance in 2004 I bought a lot of "greatest hits" compilations, and when I listened to the one for Parliament I fell totally in love. The joy! The silliness! The virtuosity! The mythology! The songs that just repeated endlessly until the fade-out! Somehow the funk got into me and -- as we know -- "Funk gets stronger, just a silly millimeter longer."

It took me some time to get used to George Clinton's role in the band as sort of figurehead, MC, and center of gravity. Parliament was full of so many wonderful musicians but Clinton always stood in front of them, and his personality overshadowed their quiet contributions. The thing is, a band full of enthusiastic drugged-out geniuses probably NEEDED Clinton to keep them focused. But if you're looking to a man like Clinton for stability then you're probably in a lot of trouble, and they certainly were.

Eventually I branched out to all the Parliament side-projects and discovered that some of them are really awful. Drum machines and cheap keyboards seemed to really kill the funky sound during the '80s. Funkadelic remains my personal favourite spin-off, being the harder-edged and more experimental side of the group.

The videos on YouTube are mostly crappy and I'm still getting over my cold so I'm going to cut this entry short, but here's the usual ending:

Parliament albums you should buy: the classic three ("Up for the Down Stroke," "Chocolate City," and "Mothership Connection") are totally solid and avoid the excesses of the later albums. I also love "Osmium" but it's a mighty strange beast. Albums you should avoid: "Gloryhallastupid" is pretty bad in my opinion, though I'm sure there are worse out there in spin-off land. For fans only: any of a million live albums of dubious lineage, and the bizarre Ruth Copeland releases.

Funkadelic albums you should buy: They are ALL brilliant until "Uncle Jam Wants You," where they seem to lose their way and get tired.

I'd Buy (Almost) Anything By...Mike Oldfield

"Tubular Bells" was an album that I literally grew up with, one of those records that my mother played over and over again from my infanthood into childhood (at which time I was capable of playing it myself). My parents only had the first three "classic" Mike Oldfield records, but I listened to them endlessly (especially "Ommadawn," with a bit less emphasis on "Hergest Ridge").

In highschool I discovered that Oldfield had released a lot of OTHER albums as well, and I was surprised by his subsequent pop direction.

Urban myth has it that a very young Oldfield signed a terrible record contract with Virgin Records, requiring him to release twenty albums in twenty years. This may not be strictly true -- I'm too lazy to look it up right now -- but there is no doubt that Virgin controlled and directed Oldfield's career in a counterproductive way that he really hated.

They allowed him to release his "single song" concept albums for a few years, but when they began to decline in popularity they insisted on a pop song compromise: one traditional "long" composition on the first side, and five or six top 40 singles on the other.

Mike Oldfield cannot write a typical pop song, and any "exceptional" singles he produced during this period owe more to instrumentation and the performance of Maggie Reilly than his own songwriting ability. One of the best was 1984's "To France." This is a shamelessly lip-synced performance but it's actually more interesting than the real video clip. You can imagine that Oldfield is simultaneously saying "I HATE THIS!" and "I HATE VIRGIN" in his angry little head.



It's true, Oldfield DID hate Virgin, and he also grew into a real son of a bitch. Perhaps thanks to the primal therapy he underwent in the early '80s, Oldfield changed from a shy hippie into a sarcastic, bitter pop icon seemingly overnight. Accompanying this change was an increasing embrace of keyboards and sequencers (an Atari ST!) as opposed to virtuoso performance, making his music sound generic and dated.

After "Tubular Bells III" -- his "house music" album -- I stopped my knee-jerk buying of Oldfield's records. This was partly because I got annoyed by him recycling old themes and successes, but also because subsequent albums looked REALLY wanky and unpromising.

But even so, his LIVE productions continue to thrill me like nothing else, because no matter how uninspired the studio versions are it is still amazing to see two dozen brilliant performers reinterpreting (and often improving on) his songs.

Here's an example from the premiere of "Tubular Bells III" in 1999. It's the concluding two tracks off the album ("Secrets/Far Above the Clouds") and demonstrates his multiple-orgasm style of composing. As an added bonus, the brilliant "tribal drumming" section near the end (which was not part of the original song) is a nod to the iconic drumming segment I described last month in regards to "Ommadawn."



Oldfield's albums are a mixed bag and I can't vouch for the later ones, but if you want to hear his "classic" sound you need to get "Tubular Bells" (the ORIGINAL version, not the sequels or the remakes or the remasters or the orchestral one), "Hergest Ridge," and "Ommadawn." If you can find it you also need "Amarok," a sixty-minute "back to roots" song that Oldfield released as an unsubtle f*ck you to Virgin.

If you want some Oldfield pop, I recommend "Five Miles Out" and "Discovery."

Albums to avoid: the piss-poor stabs at chart success ("Heavens Open," "Islands," and "Earth Moving") and you should also stay away from "Songs of Distant Earth," which is Oldfield at his plinky-keyboard, new age worst.

For fans only: "Boxed," a boxed 4-album (vinyl) set full of quadraphonic mixes and rarities, including the infamous original ending to "Tubular Bells": Viv Stanshall lurching drunkenly around Oldfield's house, improvising a slurred monologue, with "The Sailor's Hornpipe" played in the background. Wow.