#oneaday Day 766: Light Musical Entertainment Involving Tigers, Tents and Poo

I can vividly recall the first few times I heard the Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band. I was introduced to it by a combination of my partner in crime on teacher training and a good friend from my university days, and the sheer bizarreness of the music I heard has stuck with me ever since.

It’s not that it’s bad music. Quite the opposite, in fact, in many cases — many of the pieces by the Bonzo Dog Band are, in fact, very memorable and catchy, which is where part of their enduring appeal stems from. It’s just that I’d never heard anyone sing a song about having a shit, or extolling the virtues of spending time in a tent, or a song which featured a trouser press solo.

I thought I’d share a few of their greatest hits with you tonight, in the form of YouTube videos so everyone can enjoy them.

First up, Tent. I have always found this song inexplicably hilarious. I think it’s simply because he sounds so passionate about his tent. Also, there is a break partway through where people just shout “Tent! Tent!” as well as the most hideously inappropriate saxophone solo I think I’ve ever heard. In a brilliant way. PARP.

The Strain is a song about having a poo. No two ways about it. There’s no double entendre here, no attempt to hide the fact that yes, this is a song about having a particularly difficult poo. Why difficult? Well, listen to the “chorus”, which simply consists of screams of agony and coughing over the top of some entertainingly funky guitar and sax backing. And the backing to the second part which makes use of the saxophone to sound like one of those squeaky farts that it’s a bit of an effort to push out for fear of the fact you might shit yourself.

Jazz Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold is the perfect piece with which to mock anyone who enjoys the chaotic sound of trad jazz. A self-referential piece parodying the band’s trad jazz roots, the track features some of the most spectacular deliberate terrible playing ever, including a clarinet solo that is truly magnificent in its ineptitude.

Trouser Press makes a mockery of the various songs in the late 60s and early 70s that took the form of “Do The [insert random noun here]”. It is the only piece of commercially-available music that I am aware of that features a solo on a genuine trouser press fitted with a pickup.

And finally for now, this performance of Hunting Tigers Out In Indiah [sic] was seen on the pre-Monty Python TV show Do Not Adjust Your Set. The song itself is actually a cover of a 1920s/30s piece by Hal Swain And His Band. The original version was non-ironically super-British, whereas the Bonzos version played this angle up to an absurd degree.

I hope these few pieces of ludicrous musical entertainment have brightened your day somewhat.

#oneaday Day 738: Diversifying

In a recent blog post, one Ben Goldacre described Spotify’s auto-sharing behaviour as “creepy” and called for greater transparency in opt-out procedures. While I don’t disagree that users should have the option of whether or not to share what it is that they’re doing, I do disagree with the good Doctor’s assertion that showing off your tastes to others is somehow “creepy” or “wrong”.

The reason I don’t find it either of those things is because of discovery. Spotify is built in such a manner that it’s easy to check out an artist or album you’re unfamiliar with in a risk-free environment. You don’t drop any money on the album directly, so if you wind up hating it, you haven’t lost out. And if you end up loving it, you can whack it in a playlist or star it for future reference.

Combine this ease of trying things outside of your usual comfort zone with social features and you get a powerful tool to expand your own tastes. Because music is an ever-present part of society these days — silence, it seems, is frowned upon by most people, particularly those of more tender years — conversations about what artists are awesome are less common than they once were in the age of buying CDs (and, heaven forbid, cassettes). Music is just there for many people — a disposable thing that people may well have a strong connection to but perhaps don’t always think to actually discuss,

What Spotify’s sharing feature does is allow you to see what friends have been listening to and, if it takes your fancy, jump right in there and have a listen yourself. I’ve discovered more than a few new favourites this way, and I’m certain other people will have been curious about some of my tastes too. I don’t have any objection to people seeing what I’ve been listening to and I’m certainly not ashamed of it. The same is true for Netflix, newly launched in the UK and nicely integrated with Facebook to allow you to share what you’re watching. On the whole, I’m much more inclined to pay attention to new releases if my friends are enjoying them rather than if they’re simply “critically acclaimed”. See: The Squadron of Shame

Goldacre suggests that people will make judgements based on what you have been listening to, and your playlists which, if you weren’t already aware, are made public by default. And perhaps people will — but the attitude I have always taken with personal taste is that it is just that: personal. If you’re the sort of person who ridicules someone else just because of what music they listen to, how they dress, or their appearance… I probably don’t really want to know you. Everyone is free to make their own choices with regard to what entertains them (unless, you know, if you’re into something fucked up and illegal) and so people should not feel ashamed or embarrassed to share what it is that they have been enjoying.

In fairness, it’s entirely possible that there is the scope for cyber-bullying among schoolkids based on what they might have been listening to with Spotify, or the content of their playlists. But there’s the scope for cyber-bullying based on their photos, their status updates, all the other stuff that’s on Facebook, too. This isn’t excusing it. However, it does mean that Spotify itself isn’t some sort of creepy bully-magnet. As with all forms of social media and teens interacting with others on the Web, it’s important for parents to be involved and aware of what their offspring are up to. If it looks like causing a problem, they should be familiar with the options that are there to protect people — and Spotify has those options if, for whatever reason, sharing things does become a problem. But someone’s listening habits are public by default — and why shouldn’t they be? There’s nothing to be ashamed of there.

Perhaps I have a naïve view of social media and sharing information on the Web. But I just don’t see how sharing your entertainment consumption is particularly harmful. Sharing deeply personal information, yes. But the fact that you listened to the Lazy Town soundtrack today? For me, that’s the start of an interesting conversation, not something creepy.

#oneaday Day 723: The Escapist

Escapism is cool, and an important and valid method of keeping yourself sane.

There are, of course, many means of escapism, and different ones are more or less effective for different people.

There’s the escapism of a child giving life to the inanimate lumps of plastic they own. Without a child, they’re just potential, models, things to be looked at, without life. Add a child (or, more specifically, someone still in possession of their childish imagination) and something magical happens — those objects come alive, engaging in battles to save the galaxy; heroic adventures; or even just a normal day in a normal street.

Then there’s the escapism of a good book. Good readers also have one of the most important qualities of a good creative writer: that active imagination again. But it’s partly also down to the writer to create a convincing world, compelling characters and a reason for the reader to commit part of their life to staring at tiny print on paper, e-ink or an LCD display. You know a writer’s done their job properly if you can hear the characters’ voices, see the places they’re in, picture the things they’re doing. And as a reader, your interpretation and mental imagery might not be the same as the writer (or indeed the person who designed the book’s cover) — but that doesn’t make it any less valid.

There’s the escapism of interactive entertainment. Instead of passively observing an unfolding story, you become a part of it. It doesn’t have to be an explicit narrative as such — a long game of Civilization tells a story just as much as a chapter of Heavy Rain. The meaning the player chooses to assign to the experience is what makes interactive entertainment special.

There’s the escapism of film. Increasingly designed as memorable spectacles these days, a good movie plunges its audience into darkness before casting them into a whole new world. It could be a world of giant robots; of CIA agents; of lads on a pulling holiday. For those couple of hours, though, the outside world ceases to matter.

There’s the escapism of a good TV show. When you find a show that resonates with you, you want to stick with those characters, to find out what makes them tick, what they want, what they find challenging. You cheer for their successes, feel bad when they encounter adversity. And given the amount of time you spend with the cast of a TV show over an average run of a moderately successful show these days, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the cast might feel like “friends” by the time you’re through.

And there’s the escapism of music. Music is a powerful imaginative stimulus, but again it means different things to different people. For one person it might stir up dormant memories. For another it might encourage them to close their eyes and picture themselves in a whole new situation. For yet another it might have an emotional impact that reflects the things that are weighing on their mind at that moment in time. And for others still it might inspire them to push forward, to do their best, to power on through and do that extra set at the gym, or put in that extra bit of effort at homework.

All this isn’t even getting into what it means to be a creator as opposed to a consumer of all the above media, either.

The fact is, the world can be, at times, a bit of a sucky place. Having something comforting to escape into, whatever form that escapism might take, is important. No-one likes to feel trapped, so even if it’s only for a short while, escape into something awesome and return to the real world refreshed, invigorated and ready to tackle any challenges it might want to throw at you.

And if you don’t have anything like that? Then you need to have more fun.

#oneaday Day 721: We’re Gonna Live Forever, We’re Gonna Sleep Together

I have a confession to make. I enjoy musicals and, by extension, musical episodes of TV shows.

No, whatever social stereotypes might have you believe, this is not a euphemistic way of coming out as a homosexual. It is simply a statement of a fact: I appreciate musicals, in all their gloriously cheesy, camp glory.

After watching the entire series of Community, I realised that I had enjoyed the various musical numbers that pepper the series on both ironic “haha, musical” and non-ironic “hey, I’m actually genuinely enjoying this” levels simultaneously. Come on, you can’t say that this isn’t one of the catchiest songs you’ve ever heard.

I had a similar experience with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode, which is, to date, one of my favourite episodes of any TV show, ever. And a YouTube comment just reminded me that it’s ten years old. Jesus. Anyway:

And this isn’t even getting into South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, which is both a brilliant parody and a genuinely brilliant musical at the same time. Here’s my personal highlight from it, clear evidence that Trey Parker and Matt Stone have watched and enjoyed Les Miserables at some point in their lives:

After some consideration of all this, I figured that it was about time I checked out Glee. My only experience of Glee to date has been hearing the songs on the radio and, the first time I heard what they’d done to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’, wanting to kill them all, as tends to happen when I hear cover versions that really aren’t a patch on the original.

Having watched a few episodes of the show now, though, I get it. Glee‘s music isn’t intended to be listened to in isolation. Its overly-processed, super-cheesy, unconvincingly mimed numbers are meant to be watched as much as listened to, with intricate dance routines, cheesy montages and, in some cases, comically overwrought facial expressions. And when watching one of these numbers, it would take a hard-hearted soul to not crack at least a fragment of a smile.

Why, though?

It’ll likely be different for different people, but from my perspective, here’s what I’ve enjoyed so far — about both Glee and musicals in general.

I find them a satisfying experience to watch and to listen to. It’s difficult to pin down exactly what I mean by that, but let me attempt to explain. It’s to do with a sense of “fullness”, or all your senses being bombarded with something that is infused with emotion, however false it might be. In some senses, the exaggerated, stylised nature of musicals means that they’re a very “pure” art form — they’re light on the subtlety and heavy on the audience cues for how they should be feeling. It’s the exact opposite of the sort of movie where everyone mumbles and no-one moves their facial muscles more than the absolute minimum required to form words.

This “fullness” extends to the sound of the music, too. Autotune is, generally speaking, a great evil, particularly when overused, but when used effectively it can add a degree of richness and otherworldly “perfection” to a voice — particularly if said voice is then harmonised to high heaven. If you want to know what I’m talking about and own an iPhone, then go download the free Glee Karaoke app and sing the Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star tutorial song when no-one else is around. Then tell me that hearing yourself harmonised in that beautifully rich, inhumanly perfect manner isn’t at least a little bit satisfying. It sounds artificial, sure, but the very nature of musicals is that they should be stylised. It’s not just visuals which can be stylised, after all — there’s nothing to say you can’t make a human voice sound somewhat… well… inhuman.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t me turning my back on “real”, “gritty” or “authentic” music. I’ve always had something of a soft spot for cheesy music, and music from musicals scratches that itch very effectively. Seeing as how Glee combines both cheesy music with one of my favourite “guilty pleasures” in TV and movies — high school drama — I’ll be giving the series a bit more of a chance. Coming to it with “beginners’ mind” and without the media hysteria that seemed to accompany it when it first burst onto the scene, I feel like I can enjoy it somewhat objectively. It won’t appeal to everyone, for sure, but it’s certainly providing me with some pleasing entertainment for the immediate future.

#oneaday Day 705: Jingle All the Way

Having just endured the annual musical ordeal that is Top of the Pops 2, I feel it would be remiss of me to not mention the phenomenon of the Christmas single.

They’re… Well, they’re not very good, really, are they? Even the well known ones. In fact, especially the well known ones.

Or perhaps they aren’t. After all, everybody knows the offerings from Slade, Wizzard, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, The Pogues and Mariah Carey. The songs are certainly memorable. But does that make them “good”?

I’m not sure it’s possible to really judge any more. Modern TV and radio exposes us to these songs on such a regular basis every year around the holiday period that it’s difficult not to feel jaded by hearing them so often. And it’s not as if they’re the only Christmas songs around, either; in recent years we’ve had a spectacularly depressing offering from Coldplay; a monstrous collaboration between Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber; and an actually quite good (if self-consciously ridiculous) piece by The Darkness. So why don’t we hear these other ones more often?

I’m not sure I have a definitive answer, save for the fact that it’s a vicious cycle. Slade, Wizzard, Lennon, Carey et al are all regarded as the canonical “classic” Christmas songs, so they’re the ones that get trotted out every year. In some cases, of course, these songs have been around for years, so they have something of a head start on more recent offerings.

This means it’s entirely possible that in twenty years’ time we’ll be hearing nothing but Chris Martin’s maudlin caterwauling and Carey and Bieber’s horrifyingly creepy collaboration at work Christmas dos.

That’s a frightening thought. Perhaps the dull droning of Christian hymns and carols isn’t so bad after all.

Merry Christmas everybody. 🙂

#oneaday Day 652: Music of Terrible Origin

Man. There is some shit music around at the moment. I feel like I’ve been pointing this out for some time — perhaps I’m just too jaded to enjoy mainstream entertainment. But man. There is some shit music around at the moment.

I feel bad — due to Society’s Rules — pointing it out, but a hell of a lot of it is from black artists. To quote your average Daily Mail reader, I’m not being racist, but… it’s true. At the gym tonight I ran out of podcast and Spotify had inexplicably decided to delete all my offline playlists, so I was forced to listen to the monstrosity that is “Kinetica TV” and watch what passes for music videos these days.

My conclusions? Man. There is some shit music around at the moment.

As for my “black artists” comment, I know it’s not a universally “black” problem, but certainly the white artists who also make shit music are almost without exception producing music inspired by typically “black” styles — or, to put it another way, the kind of music that gets celebrated at the MOBO (Music Of Black Origin — yes, that is a thing) awards each year. Common features include a minimalist backing that includes a repetitive but irregular drumbeat and a bassline, very occasionally accompanied by some repetitive synth or strings stings. Singers are typically autotuned up the arse and sing about girls, money or money and girls. Unless they’re a girl, in which case they use the word “choo” too much and sing about how empowered they are. Alternatively, N-Dubz happens, and that’s never pretty.

Naturally I’m well aware that there are plenty of talented musical artists out there — from all ethnicities — but the popular charts make for depressing viewing, and it’s from those that Kinetica TV draws its material. Like so many things — TV, video games, movies — the most popular music appeals to the lowest common denominator, and therefore is carefully crafted to not overtax simple minds too much. This perhaps explains why the songs in question are so repetitive and boring.

But is the British public as dumb as their apparent musical tastes suggest? From the ’80s backwards, the popular charts sounded markedly different — and both “black” and “white” music had considerably more in the way of imagination and originality. We had rock ‘n’ roll, R&B (in its original, more accurate, better form), funk, soul, jazz, fusion and all manner of other auditory experiences to treat our lugholes to. Now, we get Jason Derulo mashing up Robin S and the Banana Boat song.

I shit you not. Check it out:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CGF_Z3yZAo]

You’re just not even trying any more, Derulo, you huge fuckwit.

There is no excuse for this kind of laziness, and all you bellends out there who keep encouraging massive cocks like Jason Derulo to keep making music are contributing to the world’s image that the British public are a bunch of twats with no taste whatsoever. So cut it out. Do your part. Buy a good album today and stop encouraging these fetid pissflaps to make more monstrous music.

Oh, and stop encouraging The X-Factor to exist.

Sigh. An ultimately fruitless gesture. Perhaps I should just embrace it, download the I Am T-Pain app for my iPhone and make a banging choon that will be heard up and down the nation through the windows of Ford Fiestas with lowered suspension.

#oneaday Day 625: Communal Listening

I’ve seen a fair bit of negativity floating around surrounding Spotify’s new (optional) integration with Facebook — for those unfamiliar with the changes, Facebook now has a new Music dashboard which broadcasts the details of what you’re listening to from services such as Spotify in real time and provides links for other people to go and listen for themselves.

I’ve seen several people on several social networks decry this as some sort of gross invasion of privacy, but I can’t help feeling they’re missing the point in a number of different areas.

Firstly, the whole “Facebook privacy” concern thing is something of a moot point when you consider the point of the site — it’s a social network designed to let people connect with each other and share things, whether that’s a banal status update, what album they’re listening to or the fact they unlocked an achievement in The Binding of Isaac. What you share on there is, ultimately, up to you, and if you’re worried about your details being online then — there’s no simpler way to say this — don’t put them online. Facebook doesn’t belong to you. It’s never claimed to be a private network and, in many ways, locking yourself in a walled garden when using a social network defeats the object somewhat — if you just want to use it with close friends and family then you might as well just use email.

Taking the music thing specifically, Facebook integration is an excellent idea. Consider how we used to consume music in the pre-Internet days. We’d listen to the radio, watch Top of the Pops, talk with our friends. We might have friends over and listen to a particular band’s latest album together — we’d certainly talk about it the following day at school, in the office, wherever you happened to be spending most of your time. Buying a new album was an event — these days, music is just “there”, it’s just something to have on in the background and people don’t think twice about buying a track here, a track there without any thought of its context as part of a larger album. As part of this evolution, the whole real-world social aspect of music has been somewhat diminished.

Which is why embracing online socialisation is a good thing. Your personal musical tastes — key word personal — are your own individual thing, and there’s very little reason why you shouldn’t want to share them with fellow listeners. In fact, Spotify has always been set up to encourage the discovery and sharing of new tracks thanks to its Spotify URLs and ability to share on Facebook, Twitter and other services. The automatic broadcasting of what you’re listening to right now is simply an evolution and automation of the process. And, if you’re embarrassed about your musical tastes, then you can always turn the facility off.

Facebook is guilty of many things — pointless interface redesigns, a bizarre definition of what “Top News” is, fiddling around with settings behind your back without telling you and gradually building up a near-monopoly on the social Web — but one thing it has always done over the years is do exactly what it set out to do — provide an online social network with which you can communicate and share with your friends. The precise definition of what you can (and what is worth) sharing has changed and grown over the years — but why shouldn’t music be a key part of that? And why, if the infrastructure’s already there to do so, shouldn’t that process be automatic?

You’re very welcome to look at my Music page — here it is.

#oneaday Day 607: Musical Memories

In the last couple of places I lived, I didn’t have my CDs out, largely due to space issues. They sat quietly in boxes in cupboards waiting to be set free once again. Occasionally I had a sudden urge to rip some to my computer, then once I started the process I realised it took quite a long time, so often gave up rather quickly.

In my new place, though, I’ve got all my CDs out again. There’s some among the collection that I’m not sure I’ll ever listen to again, but it’s nice to revisit some albums that I’ve had for many, many years now — particularly those which I got back when I was at school, as these are often the ones that have the strongest memories attached to them.

They’re not even specific memories as such — simply memories of a time and a place, not any particularly special events. But I can remember when I got many of these albums and why — in some cases it was a simple matter of buying something that was popular at the time (and in some cases struggling to understand why it was so popular — see: The Verve, Urban Hymns, one of the most tedious albums I’ve ever listened to), others it was a case of thinking the lead singer was hot, others still it was songs I’d listened to on the radio so many times I was curious to hear what other stuff the artist had come out with and others still beyond that simply just because I was curious.

I wouldn’t say that as far as popular music goes I’m particularly “well-read” or whatever the popular music equivalent is. But my CD collection demonstrates an interesting cross-section of mid to late 90s music coupled with a few bits and pieces from the early 21st century — though around this point is when iTunes started to take over, leading to a decline in the number of physical products on the shelf.

In some ways, I can see the point that those people who prefer to still buy CDs have. The digitalisation of music has given it a more “disposable” quality, leading to people putting it on just so they have some noise in the background, not necessarily to appreciate what it is. Putting on a CD, though, kind of implies that you’re going to invest some time into listening to the whole thing — even if you’re doing something else at the time. This is because, as everyone knows, changing CDs is a massive faff to the lazy person of the 21st century, who wants everything at their fingertips and, preferably, controlled by their mobile phone.

If you’ve still got a CD collection, though, it’s worth taking a moment to dig it out and investigate the treasures it holds within. Sure, there may be some embarrassing things in there, but even those had a part to play in your past. Take a moment, dig out a random pick from your collection, sit down and listen to it. All of it. You might just be surprised at the complexity and thinking that goes into a complete album — or, then again, you might just find yourself wondering why on Earth you own two Spice Girls albums.

#oneaday Day 546: Spot the Music

Hi, Americans. I hope you’re enjoying Spotify. As you may be aware, we lucky Brits have had it for some time and have been enjoying its considerable charms. It’s great to see you lot get the chance now, too.

Of course, you’ve had plenty of services like that already available, such as Grooveshark and RDIO. You also get to play with Turntable.fm while we don’t, which is a bit of a shame. As such, though, this means that Spotify is having to work a bit harder to impress you — it’s working in some cases, others not.

I have a Spotify Premium account — £10 a month for ad-free unlimited playback plus the ability to use the mobile app to stream over 3G (risky given the patchy coverage in most of the UK) and/or download playlists directly to the app for offline listening (much better). Since signing up for it, I don’t think I’ve bought a single thing from iTunes. I haven’t needed to. Most of the stuff I’d want to listen to — and plenty I don’t — is freely available for me to grab, stick in playlists and listen to at my leisure. There’s plenty of music to keep a continuous soundtrack spinning while I do my day’s work, and more than enough to set up some decent driving playlists for long journeys.

The service and its software isn’t without one or two flaws, of course — you can’t search playlists on the mobile apps and the interface is inexplicably the opposite way around to the native iPod app on iOS, meaning you’ll find yourself bringing up track information a lot when you actually mean to just close the player screen and get back to the menus. The desktop client’s habit of just disappearing and updating itself without telling you it’s updating is a little unnerving, too, but at least it keeps itself up to date. (I say that — it’s currently attempting to download the latest updater manually and claims that a 5MB file is going to take 16 hours to download.)

But all that aside, what Spotify provides for me has many benefits. Firstly, it’s a means of listening to music that I know and love without having to root through iTunes libraries or — in many cases — stacks of CDs that are buried in a cardboard box somewhere. Secondly, it’s a means of discovering new music — having listened to an album I like, taking a journey through the “Similar Artists” links is often quite eye-opening. Thirdly, and I can’t emphasise how nice this is, it makes having to manually sync an iOS device almost unnecessary, software updates notwithstanding. iOS syncs have a habit of taking at least three times as long as you think they will, particularly if you really need to be somewhere and you suddenly realise you don’t have any music on your iPod/have the “wrong” music on your iPod. Spotify’s offline sync system isn’t the quickest in the world, admittedly, but at least you can do it wirelessly without having to faff around with cables and USB ports and computers. Which is nice.

Spotify, then, is very much a Good Thing. And I’m delighted that I can now share links to tracks and albums with my friends in the US, as well as allow people to subscribe to my playlists. I already noticed that my “dungeon crawling” playlist where I just dumped a whole bunch of metal without really paying much attention to what it is has picked up a subscriber in the form of the fine Chris Whittington — guess I better be careful about what I publish from now on if people are watching! (Damn, no more Lazy Town?)

#oneaday Day 534: Who’s Buying the Crap?

I’m pretty sure I already knew this some time ago, but I’ve come to the not-so-startling conclusion recently that I’m the one buying the crap games and listening to terrible music and enjoying awful films. It’s not a conscious decision to be contrary, but I do find myself more willing than some to give creative works that have been somewhat maligned the benefit of the doubt — and more often than not actually end up enjoying them.

The first time I recall this happening was one summer when I was home from university. I got very bored and decided that I was going to go to the cinema by myself, just pick a movie that happened to be on, sit down, watch it and attempt to enjoy it. It was partly borne from a desire to prove wrong the unwritten rule that going to the cinema by yourself is somehow shameful (if it is, why is watching a DVD by yourself OK?) and partly just out of a desire to get out of the house.

The movie I went to see? 2 Fast 2 Furious. It was terrible, of course, but I enjoyed it a great deal. And the reason for this was the fact that I didn’t feel “accountable” to anyone — there was no-one with me judging my tastes or making me believe that I should feel a certain way about this piece of entertainment that was bombarding me with nonsense. (“Wow, bro, it’s like a ho-asis in here!”) Judged entirely on its own merits and on whether or not it performed the function I wanted it to at that specific moment in time — to entertain me without making me have to think too much — it succeeded admirably.

More recently, I found similar joy in Duke Nukem Forever. The thing that annoyed me most about the vitriolic reviews scattered around the web was the fact that all the critics seemed to feel somehow “responsible” for their audience, like they had a moral obligation to dislike it because of its more questionable elements or its rough edges. I played it and enjoyed it — genuinely — and was surprised there weren’t a few more people willing to stand up and be counted, saying “look, yes, it is crass, it is rude, it is inappropriate, but for fuck’s sake lighten up.” But that’s by the by — if you found it objectionable, that’s your business, but it doesn’t make me wrong either.

Most recently, the recent Steam sale encouraged me to pick up Alpha Protocol, a game I’ve been curious about for some time. Roundly panned on its release for poor AI, questionable game mechanics and outdated graphics, most people seemed to think it was one to pass by. But for three quid I wasn’t about to let that happen. So far I’ve enjoyed it greatly. I don’t mind that the shooting and the AI isn’t great because I’m not very good at shooters or stealth games. What Alpha Protocol has provided for me so far is a 24-esque espionage plot with action sequences where I at least feel like I’m a badass spy, even if the execution means it’s quite difficult to mess things up, from what I can tell. The key thing about the game is its story, and for that, I’m willing to forgive its flaws — some may say too forgiving.

This is a pattern I’ve continued for as long as I remembered. Back when I bought CDs (oh so many years ago) I tended to purchase music on something of a whim rather than with the charts or peer reactions in mind. I bought things out of curiosity, because I liked the cover art, because I thought the singer was hot. And there’s very few of those decisions I regretted, because it gave me the opportunity to experience some things that many other people might never have been exposed to.

I’m cool with that. It gives me interesting things to talk about when people want to know about obscure games, cheesy music or crap films. Everyone knows Halo and Call of Duty are good. But how many people can vouch for the awesomeness of Doom: The Roguelike?