songs you don’t know: “Black No. 1”, Type O Negative

Type O Negative were pretty much a goth metal band, along the lines of Danzig.  And like Danzig, they had a wicked sense of humor.   I mean, you don’t get anywhere in this business if your dark, heavy music really is all “death and dark and my eternal sooooooul….”  You’ve gotta laugh at yourself, is what I’m saying.  Type O were a goth/metal band that covered Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” for heaven’s sake.

I almost posted that video, because their cover is my personal favorite Type O tune, but the video is bad.  I mean, rrrreal bad.  It’s like Roadrunner Records clipped together a bunch of footage of the band playing other songs, mixed it with some oh-so-alternative shots of PEOPLE MOSHING HOLY SH#T, and… I mean, it smacks of fake.  Ah, Roadrunner.

So, instead, we post this one: it’s “Black No. 1”, which is basically a song about a goth girl and how totally into her Peter is.  The bridge/main hook is “Loving you is like loving the dead.”  That’s all you need to know.
Anyway, Peter Steele, the growling, Brooklyn-accented frontman of Type O Negative, died yesterday.  The music world mourns his loss, and quite a few souls just got a little bit darker.

This song takes me back to junior year of college like few other things.   We used to sing “LOVIN’ YOU IS LIKE LOOOVIN’ TED!” to my friend Ted Chernesky.  Ah, memories.

 

Hey, Let’s Review Doctor Who!: “The Beast Below”

The Beast Below

written by Steven Moffat, directed by Andrew Gunn, originally broadcast 4.10.10

Review below.  Spoilers.

 

Hey, Let’s Review Doctor Who: Free Video Games from the BBC!

This is…. well, I mean, this is amazing.   There have been Doctor Who video games before, from Dalek Attack (imagine the first Duke Nukem game, starring Sylvester McCoy) to Destiny of the Doctors (imagine Myst, but awful and with Anthony Ainley laughing at you a lot)  to a myriad of text adventures that were mostly available in England (i.e. “your sword sonic screwdriver is glowing with a faint blue glow.”)   No one’s attempted to make a Doctor Who game based on the new series, however, which is surprising, given its popularity.  That is…. UNTIL NOW!

Also, the games will be free, which is pretty amazing considering the obvious quality of the graphics.  The BBC, as a publically funded UK institution, has a policy of not authorizing supplemental material that one would have to buy in order to follow the plot of their shows (which is why, for instance, no one could ever publish a book about the Time War, or make a cinematically released movie that people would have to pay to see in order to explain certain plot points – in other words, the BBC could never have made The X Files movie.)  As these games are being presented to us as episodes in their own right, and are at least supplemental to the season as a whole, they’re being released free of charge.

I’m looking forward to playing them, provided the sad little graphics chip on my sad little laptop can handle the strain – I can play Portal, for instance, but the ground disappears sometimes and some levels are all flashy and weird (blah blah blah shading blah blah rendering blah).   Ooh, and hey look there’s Cybermen!

They’re presenting these to us as “interactive episodes”, so yeah, I’m going to try and review them as they come out.  We should expect the first one in June.

 

Hey, Let’s Review Doctor Who!: “The Eleventh Hour”

I’ve often thought about doing this, and with a new season, a new Doctor, and a whole new production style, I figured, what the hell – let’s do this thing.   Doctor Who is THE BEST SHOW EVER, and… you know what, it still is, even after all them thar changes and a Doctor who is, apparently, twelve.   Review on the other side of the cut.  Big time spoilers ahead.

Wibbly wobbly.

Timey wimey.

You know the drill.

When I say run….

….run.

RUN!