Salsatic Vibrato VII

"The Devil in Your Eye"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Last volume was the first of my mixes to debut a 6th volume, and Salsatic Vibrato stays in the lead by now being the first seventh volume.  It’s taken over three years for me to decide the volume was sufficiently complete and that I was ready to return to this brassy, upbeat territory, but I’ve been satisfied with it for a while now—I just didn’t want to skimp on my other musical tastes.  Which is not to say that there’s anything inferior about this volume: of the 14 artists (and one soundtrack) that have 4 or more tracks on a volume in this mix,¹ all but two are represented here, and for those who have 5 or more, the coverage is 100%.  So this one is representative of all that have come before, but there are plenty of returning favorites who have been MIA for a while, and, most excitingly, some brand new finds to spice up the mix.  Let’s dive in.

The volume bursts into being with 3 of the top 5 artists for this mix, which means they’re 3 of my favorites.  First, it’s back to the best offering from the Brian Setzer Orchestra, The Dirty Boogie, with the title track from that great album.  Then straight to Cherry Poppin’ Daddies’ swing compilation Zoot Suit Riot (which is probably their best) for “Dr. Bones.” Finally, it wouldn’t be Salsatic Vibrato without Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, so here they are.  I never thought This Beautiful Life, their second proper album,² was as good as the ultra-classic Americana Deluxe, but there are some gems, including the opener of that album, “Big and Bad,” which here not only provides a strong finish for the power trio opening, but also our volume title.³  A sublime start.

But where are those other two of the top 5 artists, you may ask?  Well, the Squirrel Nut Zippers are not far behind with a track from their next-album-after-their-best-album-which-is-not-quite-as-good-but-still-pretty-damned-rockin’, Perennial Favorites, “Fat Cat Keeps Getting Fatter.” Like the other tunes we’ve heard from that album,⁴ this one has a touch of surrealism mixed with an experimental take on retro-hot-jazz.  And Lou Bega is also back: I’m still milking his best album (A Little Bit of Mambo), because honestly his later ablums are not “still pretty rockin’.” Many people accuse Bega of only knowing one song, which is almost true ... he actually knows 3 or 4.  “Tricky Tricky” will never be mistaken for anyone but Bega, but on the other hand it has just a touch of hip-hop flair that sets it apart from most of his other offerings.

Other returning favorites include the Atomic Fireballs, who provide our closer for the third time in this mix, Royal Crown Revue, back for the third time with their ode to the long-gone LA streetcar line, “Watts Local,” and the Swing soundtrack, with another great Lisa Stansfield remake of an almost forgotten tune from the big band era: “Blitzkrieg Baby.”⁵  But I think the real news here is the long overdue return of Joe Jackson’s Jummpin’ Jive, which was so important to volumes I and II.  “How Long Must I Wait for You” is one of those tunes that you might dismiss on first listen, but it really grows on you over time, and I thought it was high time it earned its place here.  Contrariwise, the often-goofy-but-never-bland Lee Press-On and the Nails have only been missing for one volume, but I’m still happy to have them back; “Hat Back Boogie” is fairly silly lyrically, but its sound is exactly what this mix is all about.

We’ve got more ska too: Save Ferris also hasn’t been seen since volume II, and they too are way overdue.  “Spam” is a fun little ditty—not as goofy as LPN, but I felt that it flowed very naturally after that track, and of course sets up beautifully for our other dependable ska stars, Reel Big Fish, who made their return to the mix last volume.  This time around, RBF would like you to know that “it’s not so bad bein’ trendy,” because, you know: “everyone who looks like me is my friend.” A great ska “party”-style tune with some great lyrics to boot.

But the real musical style on display here is electro-swing, which I started experimenting with back on volume III.  And we do have a few returning artists in this area, like Caro Emerald, with her peppy “Stuck,” and Caravan Palace, with their practically frenetic “Suzy.” But this volume marks the point where I really went on an active musical search to see what was out there that I had just never found before.  And, boy, did I come up with some real winners.  Like most electro-swing, it’s mostly European in origin: Tape Five is German, and their “Bad Boy Good Man” is absolutely infectious, plus it has an amazing video, which you should go watch right now; Parvo Stelar (who, to be fair, appeared on one earlier volume) is an Austrian producer who likes to put together modern tunes that sound like they’re being played on a scratchy record player (and “Booty Swing” is the best of these, in my opinion); Shazalakazoo is from Serbia, and their style ranges from electro-swing to something called folk-step to something reminiscent of the Balkan trip-hop-rap-ragga of Poland’s Psio Crew⁶—but of course here I’m interested in the first of those, and “Sunny Side of the Street” is a highly electronic remix-remake of the old jazz standard “On the Sunny Side of the Street” (originally done by everyone from Louis Armstrong to Benny Goodman to Count Basie), barely recognizable here, but so addictively poppy that I defy you not to move your body when you hear it.

But the two finds that I’m most excited about are the Electric Swing Circus and Swing Republic.  The former is an amazing (and underrated, from what I can tell on the Internet) six-piece from Birminghan in the UK.  They have a number of amazing tracks (and, in fact we already saw one on Bleeding Salvador II), but probably the best is “Bella Belle,” who is, apparently, “soft and smooth like caramel.” This is just an amazing song, combining traditional swing brass with electronic beats and undercurrents, and vocals that trip and flow with dizzying proficiency.  Definitely check it out.  But I don’t want to sell short the other find here, Swing Republic, who I was so impressed with that they’re the only band who got 2 songs on the volume.  They meet my criteria for a moderately obscure band,⁷ and yet they’ve been around for nearly 10 years—that is to say, about as long as electro-swing itself.  They’re based in Denmark, but sing in English, with primarily female vocals, sprinkled with a few tracks which are essentially instrumental, although they often feature highly processed non-verbal voices.  Here I’ve given you one of each: “Mama” is an absolutely amazing tune which I use to introduce the electro-swing backbone of the volume, and “High Hat” is a more laid-back instrumental(ish) track which I used to close it out.  Following that there’s a short sax break from the Mighty Blue Kings, who we met last volume, then it’s back to the more traditional retro-swing for the closing block.

Salsatic Vibrato VII
[ The Devil in Your Eye ]

“The Dirty Boogie” by the Brian Setzer Orchestra, off The Dirty Boogie
“Dr. Bones” by Cherry Poppin' Daddies, off Zoot Suit Riot [Compilation]
“Big and Bad” by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, off This Beautiful Life
“Warriors” by Too Many Zooz, off Subway Gawdz
“Watts Local” by Royal Crown Revue, off Walk on Fire
“Fat Cat Keeps Getting Fatter” by Squirrel Nut Zippers, off Perennial Favorites
“Hat Back Boogie” by Lee Press-On and the Nails, off Swing Is Dead
“Spam” by Save Ferris, off It Means Everything
“Trendy” by Reel Big Fish, off Turn the Radio Off
“Quarter to Three” by Gary "U.S." Bonds [Single]
“Tricky, Tricky” by Lou Bega, off A Little Bit of Mambo
“Mama” by Swing Republic, off Midnight Calling
“Wizard Wheezes” by Nicholas Hooper, off Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [Soundtrack]
“Bad Boy Good Man” by Tape Five, off Tonight Josephine!
“Booty Swing” by Parov Stelar, off The Princess
“Suzy” by Caravan Palace, off Caravan Palace
“Bella Belle” by the Electric Swing Circus, off The Electric Swing Circus
“Sunny Side of the Street” by Shazalakazoo [Single]
“Stuck” by Caro Emerald, off Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor
“High Hat” by Swing Republic, off Midnight Calling
“Tenor Madness” by Mighty Blue Kings, off Meet Me in Uptown
“How Long Must I Wait for You” by Joe Jackson, off Jumpin' Jive
“Blitzkrieg Baby” by Lisa Stansfield, off Swing [Soundtrack]
“Mata Hari” by the Atomic Fireballs, off Torch This Place

Total:  24 tracks,  78:02

And that just leaves us with 3 tracks in the “possibly unexpected” category.  I’ve used music from the Harry Potter movies in some interesting (but mostly expected) places so far, like Mystical Memoriam, Phantasma Chorale, and even on Classical Plasma, but I bet you never expected any to show up here, eh?  Well, “Wizard Wheezes” is from one of the later movies (specifically, Half-Blood Prince), composed by Nicholas Hooper, and it’s bright, and brassy, and a journey, and I couldn’t resist using it as a bridge.  The other two need a bit more examination.

Too Many Zooz started out playing in the subways of New York, until some videos of them went viral on YouTube.  They’re a trio: a trumpeter, a saxophonist, and a drummer ... but that doesn’t really begin to describe these guys.  The trumpet can hit soaring high notes that will send shivers down your spine, the sax is a baritone, a seldom heard instrument that gives us some fantastic low notes, and the “drummer” is one of those amazing percussionists who seems capable of keeping a beat on practically anything.  If you watch their videos,⁸ you’ll see that they also provide a contrast in motion: Doe and his trumpet hardly move at all, Leo P, even with the heavy baritone sax, seems like he can’t stop himself from dancing while playing, and King of Sludge, with his complicated drum rig, just bobs and flows in place, undulating his body as he keeps the beat.  They used Kickstarter to fund their first album, Subway Godz, which contains several tracks with hip-hop vocals, none of which speak to me, but, true to their busking roots, is mostly composed of instrumental tracks, some of which are just stunning.  “Warriors” is, I think, the best of these, starting with 5 staccato notes on the trumpet and sax, punctuated by silence, repeated a couple of times, then snapping fingers provides the initial beat while the notes start to flow together into a melody, then the whole thing just explodes into a full-throated euphonious fanfare.  It’s an experience, I promise.

Finally, a throwback to my childhood.  My father was a record collector, you see, specializing in early rock-n-roll from the fifties and sixties.  Although not a favorite, my dad always liked Gary “U.S.” Bonds, because he grew up not far from where we lived: he was the closest thing to a “local boy made good” for my father’s musical generation and geographical location.  His biggest hit was “Quarter to Three,” #1 in 1961, and listed among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s “Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.” It was essentially Bonds slapping some vocals onto an instrumental by the Church Street Five, which was the backing band put together by sax player “Daddy G” Barge.  You can hear both Daddy G and the Church Street Five called out specifically in the song (another fun fact: the band is named after the street that ran behind the Safeway in my hometown; I rode my bike down Church Street many a time).  The song was intentionally recorded “rough,” meaning with low production values so that it sounded like a bootleg of some guys just jamming out back behind the studio.  This was part of its charm, and, as the ultimate “party” song, I felt it was a beautiful follow-up to “Trendy.”⁹  But mainly it’s here because Daddy G’s sax is so smooth, and this is one of the earliest songs I can remember that taught me what brass can bring to a rock song.

Next time, we’ll travel out West (musically speaking).

⇐ Salsatic Vibrato VI

Salsatic Vibrato VIII ⇒

__________

1 So far.  Natch.

2 By which I mean I don’t count their first (of many) Christmas albums.

3 The other really good songs from that ablum we’ve already seen here: “I Wanna Be Like You” from Salsatic Vibrato IV and “I’m Not Sleepin’” from Salsatic Vibrato V.

4 E.g. “Suits are Picking Up the Bill” from Salsatic Vibrato II, but most especially “Ghost of Stephen Foster” from Salsatic Vibrato IV.

5 It was originally done by Una Mae Carlisle, who is a person I did not know existed until I researched this post, in 1940.  Or 1941—Internet sources differ, as Internet sources often do.

6 We first met the Psio Crew on Apparently World.

7 AllMusic knows they exist, but not much more, and Wikipedia is completely stumped.

8 This one is one of the best, in my opinion.

9 For more details on the origin of the song, check out this article from what was once one of the only two newspapers you could get regularly in the town where I grew up.

Isolation Report, Week #43

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, there’s been a little bit of $work (mostly catching up on some stuff I never seem to have time for under normal circumstances), and way too many videogames (primarily Portal Knights, except not on the PlayStation any more, because: fuck Sony), and there was a New Year’s Eve celebration in there somewhere.  We watched The Iron Giant, which I’ve always said is one of the greatest kids movies of all time, because a) it’s not a musical, b) it has some pretty great animation (being the first cinematic directorial effort from Brad Bird, who would go on to do The Incredibles), c) it proves, as fas as I’m concerned, that Vin Diesel (who voices the giant) is capable of complex characterization no matter what people think, d) plus a surprisingly great performance from Harry Connick Jr (as a beatnik-turned-scrap-dealer) and a dependably hateable villain from Christopher McDonald (whose Kent Mansley—“works for the government”—has an oily despicableness exceeded only by his Shooter McGavin), e) it has an equal number of very funny moments and very emotional moments (it makes nearly all of us in our family tear up at least once, and often more than once), and f) it has an amazing message, which I once used as the centerpiece of a blog post on individuality.  But mainly it’s not a muscial, a virtue I appreciate more and more as the years go on.  After that, the smallies and I played some Trine 4 until 11pm, when we gathered everyone up to celebrate the arrival of 2021 in Denver (because I didn’t really expect the Smaller Animal—who, to be fair, is now mere inches away from being the biggest person in the house—to make it to midnight), and then we played a bit more, and then it really was midnight, so we celebrated again, albeit on a smaller scale, and then everyone went to bed except for me, and I sat up and fucked around trying to finish the giant bottle of pink “champagne” I had bought at Trader Joe’s.  I did have both The Mother and the eldest helping me out this time, but no one really likes sparkling wine but me (and, honestly, I’m a bit “meh” on it myself), so I wasn’t able to polish it off.  But then the next night I did, on account of a giant bottle of sparkling wine always has less in it than you think, partially because a lot of it disappears into bubbles, and partially because most of the weight of the bottle is in the glass.  (Pro tip: sparkling wine will not survive until the next day unless you have some wine stoppers, which I finally bought some of this year.)

And that’s our New Year’s for 2021.  It’s only been a few days, but so far it’s seemed pleasant enough.  It certainly feels like 2020 was a low point, but I will not tempt fate by trying to claim that it couldn’t get worse.  Rather I shall just point out that we have a few early indicators that 2021 could be better—such as a new President and a couple of new corona vaccines—and, while neither of those things are going to be perfect, at least they’re positive signs, and I will choose to take them as such.  I wish a better 2021 to all of you, to all of us, and pretty much to all of the world.  I think we sort of kind of deserve it.

Pandemic Holiday Report

Well, no time for a full post this week, but I don’t want to blow you off entirely.  What can I talk about?  Hmmm ... how about some reports on how our holidays are going?

• For our weekly family gaming session, my eldest ran a Christmas one-shot: we all played elves (no, not those kinds of elves; those kinds of elves), and we had to rescue Santa, who had been captured by a demon and taken to Hell.  At first, Santa was under the demon’s spell, and we actually had to fight him, but we managed to break him out of his charmed state through a combination of non-lethal attacks and appealing to his better nature.  I played a mostly-monk (I took one level of fighter, mainly for the fighting style) who used a candy cane as a mace and also punched things.  My middle child played a warlock (whose patron, naturally, was Santa) with a celestial bent (so he could heal and flame strike), and my youngest child played a druid who turned into things like arctic hares (for speed) and polar bears (for sheer mauling power).  We were 10th level, and we all had complicated backstories of what toymaking department we used to work in before joining Santa’s personal guard, based on which artisan’s tools we were proficient in (for the record, I was leatherworking, the Smaller Animal was glassblowing—for ornaments, natch—and the sprite was a carpenter ... you know, for making blocks and Lincoln logs and whatnot).  Best line of the night: Santa pulls a holy avenger out of his sack (my eldest actually rolled that randomly on a magic item table) and runs the demon through; my youngest pronounces “damn ... Santa is gruesome.”

• The super-creepy surveillance elf is gone for another year, thank <insert deity of choice>.  We actually tried to avoid having that thing back this year, but our youngest actually started asking about her back in October or so.  So, you know ... Santa does what is necessary to please the children.  No matter how creepy, apparently.

• We watched one of those old Rankin-Bass Christmas specials on Christmas Eve.  We sort of wanted to watch “the one with Snow Miser and Heat Miser in it,” but that’s one of the few that isn’t in our DVD box set.  As a next best thing, we watched “the one that tells Santa Claus’ origin story,” because the Winter Warlock is sorta-kinda-the-same-as Snow Miser.  Besides: I had just said something about Burgermeister Meisterburger to the Smallies the other day and they both looked at me like I was crazy.  So, you know ... they needed the education.  I probably hadn’t seen it in a decade or so, but it holds up moderately well.

• My youngest got a stuffed narwhal which is actually a bit larger than she is, when measured from tip (of horn) to tail, and enough Littlest Pet Shop buildings to create her own LPS compound.  My middlest got a giant Nerf Fortnite dart (shot)gun and the new Spider-Man game for the PS/4 (the one with Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker).  My eldest got a new bedframe (as the old one is falling apart) and a promissory note for a new office chair (we didn’t want to buy one without them testing it out first), or, as they described it when talking to the grandparents: “nothing much, just a couple pairs of headphones and a toothbrush for my dogs.” Being an adult sucks, apparently.

Although the pandemic has meant fewer trips out to visit friends, we were never going to travel for the holidays, and it’s rare that anyone comes to stay with us.  Or even to join us for Christmas (Eve) dinner ... my brother has come over a couple of years in the past, and I think we hosted my best friend and his wife at $lastjob once, but that’s about it.  My brother has moved on from wife-with-family-in-LA to wife-number-three, and my friend moved back to Florida to be near his family, so we’re used to spending the holidays “alone.” I put “alone” in quotes, though, because there are 5 of us humans here—not to mention the two dogs, three cats, and various aquarium denizens, including Jeffo, the immortal dwarf African frog—so it can actually get rather crowded at times.  So “alone” is not really the proper term ... perhaps “isolated,” on occasion, but at least we have each other for the holidays, and a few new toys to play with, and plenty of videogames and movies to play and watch, and loud-ass cats who need to yowl around the house for a few hours before they snuggle up beside you in bed, and dogs with horribly stinky breath who love you unconditionally and often inconveniently, and people to do things with.  Christmas Eve I read The Velveteen Rabbit to my youngest; Christmas day the older two made Oreo truffles together.  The Mother and the youngest did all the tree decorating, and worked on several art projects to create cards or ornamants or other holiday frippery.  Last night I spent an hour playing a videogame with my middle child that no one else really likes to play but us.  So we can’t complain, and we know that many folks are having a worse time than we are right now.  We’re pretty lucky, overall, and we’re pretty happy about it.  We’ll be glad when we can go out again, when things return to some semblance of normal—or as close as we’ll get to that, I suppose—but, for now, this is good.

We hope you all had a very happy holiday, whichever holiday it happened to be, and we wish you all the promise of a better year to come.

Isolation Report, Week #41

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Happy pandemic holidays!  And if you’re pissed off that I didn’t say “merry pandemic Christmas,” I will refer you to my (now classic) happy whatever post.  And, also: suck my left nut.  Not the right one—I’m not rude or anything.  Just the left.

Also, it’s worth noting that that very post contains my first volume of Christmas music that I ever shared with you guys.  Back in those days—nine years ago now—I considered trying to share my mixes via some sort of Internet playlist ... Pandora, Rhapsody, what-have-you.  But the only decent option that would be free for everyone was YouTube, and, while there was a lot of music on YouTube, there was also a lot of music not on YouTube.  And, especially given my eclectic tastes, there was just too much that wasn’t already out there.  But much has changed: YouTube handles licensing for songs you upload differently nowadays, resulting in way more songs being uploaded, and it’s also easy to upload them yourself.  So there really is no excuse any more.

Thus, here you go: my inaugural holidy mix, as a YouTube playlist:

Yuletidal Pools I [featuring Michael Buble]

You’ve still got 5 days or so to listen to it.  And it’s quite peppy, and it’ll put you in the holiday spirit.  You know, unless you’re all grinchy.  Actually, there’s a few songs in there for the grinches out there as well.  Fun for the whole family.

Actually, I don’t know why I said that: there are quite a number of F-bombs in those songs.  So, you know: share with children at your own risk.  In my house, I just listened to my 8-year-old tell a mother on television who had just said “Language!” to her daughter “oh, just let her say ‘fuck’ ...” But, hey: I’m not in charge of your kids.  Probably you should be happy about that.

But, speaking of my kids, they’re all getting ready for Christmas, as they do, and (mostly) not letting the pandemic put a crimp in their holiday spirit.  We’ve been buying our gifts nearly 100% online for years anyhow, and we never travel for Christmas ... when you’re trying to organize 5 humans, 2 dogs, and 3 cats (and even more various animals in years past), the idea of traveling is pretty insane.  We just figure, if our families want to see us, they can drag their asses to our house.  We’ve got more room, and all our furniture is pre-chewed.  So far, not too many takers.  But we don’t mind.  Sometimes just having each other is enough.  This year, of course, we’re mostly sick of each other ... but I think we’ll be okay.

Hopefully.

Anyhow, you’re very unlikely to get any sort of substantial post next week, as it’s that fallow time between Christmas and New Year’s.  So I’ll avail myself of this oppotrunity to wish you merry christmahannukwanzaakah,^* and here’s hoping next year will be better.  I think it probably will be, but I don’t want to be too confident.  Don’t want to jinx it.  But, for your sake as well as ours, I’m definitely wishing it.  For us, for you, and for everyone around the world.  Just a little bit better ... doesn’t have to be a lot.  I’m not greedy.

__________

* Again and as always, ™ previous co-worker Jon Sime.

Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply

Our power company thoughtfully turned off our power this week for 30 hours because it was windy.  They claim this was to prevent fires, but of course every time they do it, they turn the power back on and something blows and it starts a fire.  (This year was no exception, although the fire wasn’t anywhere near us this time at least.)  Personally, I think they’re doing it because of the Camp Fire, which nearly destroyed the town of Paradise (there’s actually a new documentary about it on Netflix, although I haven’t watched it).  Anyway, a judge held the power company responsible for starting the fire and it cost them a bunch of money, so ever since then they turn off the power when it’s windy ... but only to the primarly residential areas, so as to piss off the consumers and have them complain to their local governments in the hopes that they’ll finally get sick of it and pass some law or other that the power company can’t be held responsible for keeping the power on.  Notably, most of the primarily business areas (where the power company presumably makes the most money) are not turned off at these times—this week, there was about a 10-block-square chunk right in the center of our city which had power the whole time, which was sort of like adding insult to injury, even though it did make it nice to be able to drive about 2 minutes to someplace that had power.  Still, annoying to have a corporation thumb their noses at us so blatantly.

Of course, I have no proof of any of this, so you could accuse me of peddling a conspiracy theory.  I would counter, though, that it doesn’t take much of a “conspiracy”: just 4 or 5 folks at the power company who care more about the bottom line than than whether all my frozen fish food is turning into disgusting goop in my freezer.  And, honestly, if you don’t believe there are way more than that number of people with that attitude running the power companies in our country, then I have nothing more to say to you.  Well, except for this lovely bridge I’ve got to sell you.

Anyhow, it’s sort of put a crimp into my whole week, and I never really caught up.  This should be a “long post” week for me, but as last week’s “short post” was, in fact, quite long, I think I’ll just skip this week, except for the obligatory ranting above.  Which you’ve already suffered through enough, I’m sure.

Back next week for another virus isolation report.

Isolation Report, Week #39

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

So, lately all the pandemic talk has been focussed on the vaccine(s).  I have to say, I’m a bit irked at the media’s coverage of the vaccines: we seem to have breezed past any discussion of safety and started arguing about who “gets to” get the vaccine first.  I mean, I’m pretty much always irked at the media’s coverage of vaccines, and in particular their attitude that anyone that dares to have any reservations about any vaccine is therefore a crazy person.  But this particular round of vaccine coverage has a whole ‘nother dimension to it that really saddens me.

You see, when Trump was promising a vaccine “very soon now,” the media was very quick to point out that you can’t really rush a vaccine.  The entire concept of vaccination is to infect you with something that will hopefully “fool” your body into thinking it’s sick without actually getting sick, so that it therefore produces antibodies that will protect against the infection before you ever even get infected.  This is actually a very clever idea, and, when it works, it’s pretty amazing.  Unfortunately, when it doesn’t work, it can be pretty devastating: early implementation of the polio managed to cause 40,000 new cases of polio.  That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the idea of vaccinating against polio, although I’m sure that some people interpret it that way.  No, the problem was simply a manufacturing error ... if we can describe a situation involving tens of thousands of infections of a paralytic and in some cases fatal disease as being “simply an error.” So taking time to study the vaccines carefully and make sure they’re being developed with all due rigor is pretty damned important.  Before the election, the media seemed to know that.  They considered it quite reasonable that some people—many people, even—would not want to take a vaccine which had been rushed to market to make Trump look good and was certified as “safe” by a government with a vested interest in doing just that.

But, somehow, now that the election is over and Trump has lost, now we’re back to statements like “some people may not want to take the vaccine, because of crazy conspiracy theories or whatever.” Look: I’m obviously no fan of Trump.  The fact that he even exists—that a person can be considered “rich” without demonstrating any actual monetary value, that a person can commit crime after crime without ever facing any consequences, that a person could demonstrate such a flagrant disregard for the truth and even for human life—the fact that there’s anyone like that on the planet, much less in the White House, that offends me on a fundamental level.  I’m also, contrary to the opinions of some, not opposed to vaccines in general.  There are many vaccines—including that for polio, despite the tragedies associated with its initial rollout—which I believe are medically essential for us humans to continue to endure.  But that doesn’t mean that I believe that anything that has the word “vaccine” printed on the side of it is therefore safe and necessary.

Concerns about these vaccines, which were very much rushed, are not crazy, and they’re not a result of believing in conspiracy theories.  Well, perhaps for some they are.  But the media made lots of good points before Trump was defeated, and those points are still valid.  There were very good reasons for rushing these vaccines—I’m not disputing that—but that doesn’t make them any less rushed.  Each one has had a single study done on them, and, despite the fact that those studies appear, by all reports, to be pretty damned thorough studies, a single study can’t conclusively prove anything.  Moreover, the studies were focussed on efficacy (which, again, is perfectly understandable and appopriate, given the circumstances), not on safety.  There simply hasn’t been enough time to figure out if the vaccine is fully safe.  Now, there could be situations where the threat of a disease was so dire, and the consequences so heinous, that the risk of not fully knowing the safety factor of a vaccine would be outweighed by the risk of contracting the disease.  But I believe that this disease doesn’t meet that standard.

Reasonable people can disagree.  After all, death rates are rising, people will point out, and for the first time in recent memory—possibly for the first time in living memory—we experienced a week where heart disease was not the number one cause of death in the United States: it was COVID.  But, let’s be realistic: our death rate isn’t so high because this disease is so dangerous.  Our death rate is so high because we’ve been remarkably stupid in handling it.  People refuse to wear masks.  People were explicitly told not to travel for the holidays, but they did it anyway.  This week we’ve heard about a rash of politicians telling their constituents to stay home and avoid gatherings while they themselves were doing the opposite, including the remarkable case of the mayor of Austin telling people to avoid travel from his hotel room in Mexico.  It’s silly to imagine that these things aren’t all connected.  And, anyway, the proof is simple: while the whole world may be experiencing a resurgence of the disease, only our country has numbers like this.

And I’m certainly not saying that staying home and wearing masks guarantees that you won’t get the disease.  Recently I received the unpleasant news that one of my coworkers, who by all descriptions was far more paranoid about being exposed to the disease than I or my family have been, contracted it.  It sounds like he and his girlfriend are going to recover, but it’s still a chilling reminder that nothing is 100%.  Of course, the vaccines are not 100% either.  If the initial efficacy numbers hold water, you’ve still got a 5% chance of catching COVID after you’ve been vaccinated with one of the current candidates, and we simply don’t know what the chances of any potential side-effects are yet.  Given that, and given how good our chances are for not catching the disease by simply continuing to observe the same best practices that we’ve all been doing for close to year now, it still makes sense to me to wait a bit and see how these vaccine fare in the real world before committing to anything.  Oh, I will be getting this vaccine eventually.  But I’m not in a hurry.

The thing that disturbs the most about the media coverage, though, is the hypocrisy.  When it was “Trump’s vaccine,” we shouldn’t trust it.  Now that Trump is on the way out, mistrusting a vaccine is a crazy conspiracy theory.  I’m sorry, but there’s no conspiracy theory, nor any sort of crazy, required.  The media made some great points about the dangers of a rushed vaccine, and Trump being defeated doesn’t change any of those points.  There are essentially two options here for what’s going on.  The first is that the media was just saying that we should be suspicious of a vaccine produced under Trump, for political expediency.  But that’s exactly what Trump was accusing them of: remember how he claimed that, once the election was over, we’d never hear about COVID again?  Obviously that was crazy, and also stupid.  But somewhow we immediately stopped hearing about the possibility that the vaccine might not be all rainbows and sunshine.  That means that Trump was essentially right—in the abstract, if not in the details—and that possibility makes me really sad.  Also the concept of Trump being right about anything upsets my grasp on reality.

But the other possible explanation isn’t any more comforting: that, rather than being insincere in their claims then, they’re insincere in their claims now.  That they know perfectly well that there could be consequences and ramifications to just shoving this vaccine into everyone’s veins ... and they just don’t care.  Or, to be more generous, that they believe that the number of people who will be hurt or maybe even killed will be low enough not to matter.  But, here again: that’s been the attitude of the Trump camp.  I don’t want to see that blossoming on the other side of the political divide as well.

One more particularly relevant analogy that I’ll give.  Last month, “Dr.” Scott Atlas, a “medical” advisor to Trump, was ridiculed extensively for talking about “herd immunity.” In one example story, ABC called herd immunity “a concept lambasted by public health experts as ‘dangerous’ and called ‘ridiculous’ by the federal government’s foremost infectious disease official, Dr. Anthony Fauci.” I specifically remember thinking at the time, “man, they better be careful how they disparage herd immunity, because that’s central precept of vaccination policy.” I was really curious to see how they’d handle it when it was time to actually push for herd immunity using the newly created vaccines.

And now the time has come, and, you know what?  They just all pretend like they never said that.  Now herd immunity is all good, and we all need to be concerned about whether we can achieve it, becauase of all those crazy conspiracy theory nutjobs, you know.  They’re essentially saying exactly the opposite of what they said before and not acknowledging that anything is different.  But, here’s the thing: that’s what Trump does. And, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t make it okay when it’s “my side” doing it.  It’s still wrong, and vaguely nauseating.  Have we had to turn into Trump in order to defeat him?

Let’s hope not.  Because that’s not okay.

Eldritch Ætherium II

"Welcome to the Lost Road across the Empire of the Daggers of the Dead"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

One thing I mentioned back on volume I of this mix was that most of the music there came from just a few sources: those first albums I discovered which were specifically designed for D&D or other TTRPG gaming.  Another thing I mentioned was that gaming music is much easier to find these days, primarily due to the explosion of actual play D&D shows.  I still have a great fondness for the journey I put together on volume I, but in many ways volume II is the better set just because I had so much more variety to draw from.

Of course, many things are the same: Midnight Syndicate and the Shards of Eberron album are back, as are zero-project and Nox Arcana, and there’s a Renn-Faire-sounding bridge from Dead Can Dance.  Still nothing with any real vocals to speak of, so we’ve got another volume title cobbled together out of song titles, and once again I’ve tried to arrange the tracks so as to suggest an adventurous journey.  But there are differences as well: we stray from Midnight Syndicate’s Dungeons & Dragons album for the firs time, for instance, and Shards and zero-project give us one fewer track each.  And no V Shane this time around: oh, I’m sure we’ll see him again eventually, but there were just many better options this time around.

Part of that is because I discovered shows like The Adventure Zone and Critical Role.  The former mostly features music composed by Griffin McElroy, a lot of which is synthy and yet still works in a fantasy setting.  However, it is Australian musician (and also a fan of the show) Rachel Rose Mitchell who provides our TAZ track here: it’s the iconic “Voidfish (Plural),” where she takes a relatively simple tune from Griffin and elevates it to something ethereal and wondrous.  But it was really CR that gave me the biggest push musically: “Welcome to Wildemount,” an utterly amazing track by Irish PhD student (in music composition) Colm McGuinness is the song they play during their breaks, and “Elmshore” (from the videogame Pillars of Eternity) is one of Matt Mercer’s favorite tracks to play during quiet moments of the game.  And, once I started searching for music related to Critical Role, I found more tracks by Colm McGuinness, as well as some by Ian Peter Fisher.  McGuinness is one of those artists who plays all the instruments himself and then mixes them all together to form tracks that sound like they were produced by a full orchestra.  Fisher is a bit of a traditional electronic composer, and I suspect that he’s merely renamed some of his compositions to use Critial Role placenames,¹ which no doubt increased his visibility; still, that doesn’t mean the tracks aren’t fantastic.  The explosion of popularity for D&D also means that even more people are explicitly writing music to game to, such as Adrian von Ziegler, whose Bandcamp page contains hundreds of such tracks.  V Shane has a lot of competition these days.

I was also inspired to branch out into other cinematic music.  I’ve included here selections from The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and the televison show Grimm.  Howard Shore’s score for the first of these has a tendency to slide into the operatic,² but there are some good choices; the score for the last of these (by moderately well known composer Richard Marvin³) has just a very few gems among a plethora of decidedly average television background pieces.  On the other hand, the problem with Ramin Djawadi’s excellent Game of Thrones music is just that it’s too iconic: I’m taking a risk here with the main GoT theme (as I’m doing with the main Grimm theme, and the well-known-to-CR-fans “Welcome to Wildemount”) that listeners will be jarred out of this journey and into other worlds, if they’re at all familiar with the originating shows.  But I’m hoping that I’ve managed to recontextualize the tracks, at least partially; you, the listener, will have to be the judge.

For other cinematic choices, I’ve picked a track from Epic Soul Factory as well as another pick from the orchestral remix of Legend of Zelda songs.  We last saw ESF on Mystical Memoriam, where I discussed their cinematic music as possibly being a portfolio for soundtrack composing; this track (“The Lost World”) is an obvious nod to Jurassic Park.  As for the 25th anniversay Legend of Zelda CD, there’s something about giving the full orchestral treatment to a Ninentendo soundtrack that just gives it a depth that is nearly breathtaking.

The journey here is titled in a similarly whimsical fashion to our first volume; this title didn’t come out to be quite as long, but you can expect future volumes to get longer and longer to the point of silliness.  Or even more sillierness, as the case may be.  I’ve always loved the way “Welcome to Wildemount” just explodes into being, so it was the natural choice for an opener, unrolling the promise of fantastical vistas before our eyes.  From there, we begin traveling to “The Lost World,” perhaps camping overnight where friendly natives play us the local folk tune “Kecharitomene.” Then, early in the predawn light, we set off on “The Road to Zadash,” arriving finally on the quiet and mystical “Elmshore,” where something wondrous seems just around the corner.  After another fiddle-laced interlude (“Mephisto”), we cautiously enter into an expedition “Across the Talenta Plains,” a tense and exotic affair where danger seems imminent even as we marvel at outposts with many strange wares.

Then we get to our first real battle, providing us with some “Alternative Therapy.” Then a quiet, restful moment (“Kamimukae”) bridges the conflict with the arrival at “The Age of the Empire,” which seeks to impress us with its military might.  But we move on from there to “The Blooming Grove,” an enchanted place which is merely a “Prelude” to the barren, wintry “Structure.” But this is where we learn “How to Kill an Ogre,” which starts out soft and slow and eventually builds to a confrontation with the “Orc Hunters of the Shadow Marches.” Of course, that just leads to a stealthy flight and explosive encounter “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony.” But then, from the darkness, a light appears: the kaleidoscopic pulsing of “Voidfish (Plural)” that lead us “Aboard the Stormcrow,” where the dark, echoey strains signal an uncomfortable journey into more danger, which is brief but explosive (Grimm’s “Main Title”).

The cello-fueled calm “Before the Storm” is dramatic and uplifting, but then the celloes turn dark and take us across more sweeping vistas (Game of Throne’s “Main Title).  But it’s the martial march across “The Devil’s Daggers” to fight an “Army of the Dead” that is the true climax of our adventure.  After some quiet reflection on “The Final Battle,” the “Ballad of the Goddess” provides an uplifting and emotional release, until our next adventure.

Eldritch Ætherium II
[ Welcome to the Lost Road across the Empire of the Daggers of the Dead ]

“Welcome to Wildemount” by Colm McGuinness [Single]
“The Lost World” by Epic Soul Factory, off Xpansion Edition
“Kecharitomene” by Loreena McKennitt, off An Ancient Muse
“The Road to Zadash” by Ian Peter Fisher [Single]
“Elmshore” by Justin Bell, off Pillars of Eternity [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Mephisto” by Dead Can Dance, off Aion
“Across the Talenta Plains” by David P. Davidson, off Shards of Eberron [RPG Soundtrack]
“Alternative Therapy” by Midnight Syndicate, off Gates of Delirium
“Kamimukae” by Faith and the Muse, off :ankoku butoh:
“The Age of the Empire” by zero-project, off Fairytale 2
“The Blooming Grove” by Ian Peter Fisher [Single]
“Prelude” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“Structure” by Love Is Colder Than Death, off Teignmouth
“Game Ogre: How to Kill an Ogre” by Richard Marvin, off Grimm: Seasons 1 & 2 [Soundtrack]
“Orc Hunters of the Shadow Marches” by David P. Davidson, off Shards of Eberron [RPG Soundtrack]
“At the Sign of the Prancing Pony” by Howard Shore, off The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [Soundtrack]
“Voidfish (Plural)” by Rachel Rose Mitchell [Single]
“Aboard the Stormcrow” by Adrian von Ziegler, off Fable
“GRIMM: Main Title (Season 2)” by Richard Marvin, off Grimm: Seasons 1 & 2 [Soundtrack]
“Before the Storm” by Colm McGuinness [Single]
“Main Title” by Ramin Djawadi, off Game of Thrones: Music from the HBO Series [Soundtrack]
“The Devil's Daggers” by Nox Arcana, off Carnival of Lost Souls
“Army of the Dead” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“The Final Battle” by Dark Sanctuary, off Royaume Mélancolique
“Ballad of the Goddess from Skyward Sword” by Koji Kondo [Single]

Total:  25 tracks,  79:31

(Note that there a number of links to YouTube videos this time around; there’s just several tracks here where that’s the only place you can find them.)

As far as the unlikely candidates go, I was very pleased to find quite a few tracks that, while not designed for use in gaming or as cinematic backdrops at all, they just seemed to work perfectly here.  The dark neoclassical songs of Dark Sanctuary⁴ are a natural fit, and “The Final Battle” provides just enough Renaissance feel to work well here.  Goth masters Faith and the Muse often provide useful little bridges, such as the one I used on Fulminant Cadenza I,⁵ and “Kamimukae” is no exception: it’s a contemplative, string-driven piece that abuts perfectly up against the more expansive selection from zero-project.  Love Is Colder Than Death is a German darkwave band (named after a German film) who, just as their name suggests, produce wintry, goth-infused ambient and ethereal; “Structure” is one of the tunes that most epitomizes their sound.

But the real find here was realizing that when Canadian dreampop virtuoso Loreena McKennitt produces an instrumental track, it inevitably sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack of a fantasy film.  My first pick of hers, “Kecharitomene” is a mostly string-based track (Discogs tells me that it’s actually not a fiddle, but rather a hurdy-gurdy), with some tablas for percussion, and some sort of piping.  The combination is half Romany, half Arabic, and half Celtic.  Best yet, it starts out very sedately, but each round gets a bit louder and more dramatic, until the penultimate one, which easily conjures images of frenzied dancing around a campfire, and then slides effortlessly back into the original slow burn, which are now the dying embers.  It’s a beautfiul track that fits gorgeously between the opening dramatics of “Welcome to Wildemount” and “The Lost World” and the mystical beauty of “The Road to Zadash” and “Elmshore.” I suspect we’ll see a selection from McKennitt on every volume of this mix from here on out.

Next time, it’s time to get to back that upbeat brass that kicks so much ass.

⇐ Eldritch Ætherium I

Eldritch Ætherium III ⇒

__________

1 For instance, you might find the same song of his with two different names, one of which contains the CR reference, and the other of which has a generic name such as “Fantasty Travel Theme.”

2 Specifically, that Carmina Burana/The Da Vinci Code territory that we talked about last time.

3 Marvin also scored Six Feet Under, one of the early triumphs of showrunner Alan Ball.

4 First encountered on Shadowfall Equinox II.

5 For a full-length demonstration of their prowess, see Penumbral Phosphorescence.

Isolation Report, Week #37

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

This week (I think—time is still a bit mushy here in quarantine land) Biden said he wouldn’t personally pursue prosecuting Trump’s crimes (to be fair, he did graciously allow that others might do so).  I 100% expected this, of course, but it still pisses me off.  Democrats always do this.  They try to take the high ground, and the Republicans eat their lunch.

There are two very important reasons which this more than a terrible decision: it’s just plain dumb.  The first reason is a strategic one.  The Republicans control over half of many of our government institutions, even though they represent far less than half the population.  In fact, the Republican party is now in third place, behind both Democrats and independents.  Part of that is because the Democrats suck, of course.  But the point is, being less than 30% of the country doesn’t keep them from controlling at least half of everything.  Why?  Well, they’re smarter than the Decmocrats, and they’re far more ruthless.  To have proof of crimes committed by a political opponent and not pursue prosecution for them?  There’s no universe in which Republicans would do this ... hell, they don’t even really need proof to pursue prosecution against opponents.  They sort of do it on principle.  And the problem is this: even if the Democrats decide that they don’t want to be as ruthless as the Repubs (although, counterpoint: how’s that working out for ya, Dems?), they at least have to be as smart.  Letting Trump leave the White House and doing nothing to address the many illegal acts he’s perpetrated is basically rolling over and showing your belly to the Republican party.  Do you imagine that they’re going to feel bad and just leave you alone?  ‘Cause, I’m here to tell you, they’re just going to disembowel you and leave you to rot.

But above and beyond the stupidity, there’s a bigger moral issue here.  Trump is a man who has never faced any consequences in his life.  Susan Collins of Maine (who managed to win her re-election bid despite this amazing bit of doublespeak) said that Trump’s impeachment taught him “a pretty big lesson”: yeah, and that lesson was, do whatever the fuck you want.  There are no consequences.  There were no consequences when you were mean to people, there were no consequences when you cheated people, there were no consequences when you dodged your military service, there were no consequences when you siphoned so much money off your businesses that even your casinos failed, and, now that you’ve taken graft and corruption and nepotism to a national scale, you know what?  Still no consequences.  But once you leave office ... then there will be no consequences, apparently.  Because that’s the American Way: petty criminals get locked up for years; really big criminals get supported by politicians using phrases like “too big to fail” and “we just want to move on.” Democrats, think carefully: is this really the message you want to send to people?  Do whatever you want, we don’t care, we just want to move on?

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve fully predicted this from the beginning.  Trump will never spend a single day in jail, and probably not even a single day in court (nearly an exact quote from a previous virus isolation report).  Still, this is one of those times when I’d be overjoyed to be proven wrong.  Prove me wrong, Dems.  I’m begging you.

Meanwhile, the virus is not still raging: it’s actually getting worse.  I envy you people that are experiencing a second or third wave: for us here it’s all one big wave ... we haven’t left the house for anything significant for the better part of a year, and I would be absolutely stunned if there is not a “virus isolation report week 52” in my not-too-distant future.  Oh, sure: there’s vaccines out there, but even the folks on television who are normally all about letting big pharma inject them with anything at all as long as it has the “V” word stamped on it are saying that maybe it would be a good idea to wait for some larger trials, for some studies for side effects, for some independent verification.  Because, you know, as deadly as this virus is, it isn’t the most deadly thing you could have in your body: it is still possible for the cure to be worse than the disease.  As much as I hate being stuck inside, I think I’ll personally wait for a pretty wide concensus on safety for anything I want to inject into my children.  And, unfortunately, that just takes time.  There’s only some much you can rush it before you just end up with untrustworthy results and you’re back where you started.  So, while multiple vaccines are certainly welcome news, it’s the beginning of the next phase of waiting, not the end.

So, we soldier on, isolated for Thanksgiving, isolated for Christmas, isolated for New Year’s—although, to be fair, we typically spend those holidays by ourselves anyway.  There are 5 of us (counting only the humans), and we’re plenty capable of generating sufficient family drama without inviting extended family to help with that.  There are some parties that we would normally attend that we likely won’t get to (unless perhaps there are some smaller versions within our personal social bubble), but not a whole lot will change.  But, I gotta tell you, I miss going to out to sit down in a restaurant.  I miss going to work and seeing my coworkers.  I miss playing hooky from work and sneaking off with my family to the occasional museum or zoo or aquarium.  I miss going to the comic book and gaming stores, and to the movies, as rare as that was for us even before the pandemic.  When I do go out, I look at the retail locations that have closed, and I realize that even once things are “back to normal,” they won’t be normal.  And I’m bummed.

But surviving.

D&D and Me: Part 8 (Resurgence of the Game)

[This is the eighth post in a new series.  You may want to begin at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

[Last time, I talked about playing with my children in the long years between D&D 3e and its newest edition: 5e.]

Dungeons and Dragons is currently undergoing an explosion of popularity that, to many of us old-school D&D nerds, is nigh on incomprehensible.  There are many competing theories on why that is, but (as befits a believer in balance and paradox) I naturally believe that they’re all true at once.  That is, it’s not any one reason, but rather the confluence of all the factors that are fortuitously aligning right now.  And there’s a whole of reasons that people are putting out there, but I think we can discard some of the minor ones, and group all the rest into 3 broad categories.

When D&D was fresh and new, parents didn’t understand it, so they did what parents do with everything that their children start to become obsessed with: they blamed it for all their kids’ troubles.  Before it was D&D, it was heavy metal music, and before that it was television, and before that it was rock-and-roll, and before that it was comic books, and before that it was cars and motorcycles, and before that it was books.  After D&D’s time under the magnifying glass was done, parents moved on to blaming videogames and then just screens in general.  Of course most of us are smart enough to know that eventually there will come a time when parents will beg their kids to spend time with screens, just like we now beg our children to spend more time with the same books that our however-many-great-grandparents were told to “put that down and get your butt outside to play!” Much is made of the period of D&D history that, in retrospect, we refer to as “the Satanic Panic,” but honestly it was no different from anything else kids get obsessed with.

But the main thing to note here is that, while the parents were decrying the game and claiming it was a gateway to real witchcraft and demon worship, their kids were loving it, and finding that it opened the doorways into more imaginative worlds than anything else they’d experienced before.  And while perhaps only a small percentage of those children would grow up to become authors, and movie makers, and television show creators, enough kids were playing D&D that even a small percentage was significant.  Big reason #1 why D&D is enjoying this amazing resurgence of popularity right now is simply that right now is when the generation raised on D&D is hitting its creative peak.  They are producing The Big Bang Theory and Community and The Dresden Files and, most significantly, Stranger Things.  Even in shows where D&D just gets a casual mention (say, iZombie, where one episode has detective Babineaux going undercover into a D&D group to solve a murder, hating every second of being immersed in “this nerd shit”), these days that mention is almost always positive (e.g. Babineaux eventually finds himself addicted to the game and ends up playing it in several later episodes).  Major celebrities (like Vin Diesel and Stephen Colbert) have come out as fans, while some slightly lesser known folks (like Deborah Ann Woll and Matthew Lillard) are out-and-out starting to refocus their careers onto D&D playing and/or merchandising.  And this happened fairly quickly: less than 20 years ago, “playing D&D” was included on lists in women’s magazines of things to watch out for in a prospective mate.  But, over the past decade, D&D has begun to instill a measure of nerd cred that is hard to come by otherwise, and being a nerd—of any gender—is suddenly cool.  Why?  Primarily because the media portrayals of nerd-dom have changed, and that’s primarily because the nerds are now in charge of those media portrayals.

But let’s not overlook the impact of D&D 5e either.  4e was a failure: although neither Wizards of the Coast (owners of D&D) nor their parent company Hasbro, nor Paizo (publishers of Pathfinder) ever officially released sales numbers, it was an open secret, going by sales numbers that could be tracked (e.g. on Amazon) that Pathfinder was eating 4e’s lunch.  For the first time, even if only briefly, D&D was not the best selling TTRPG.  And Wizards knew it, and they knew they had to fix it, and they were not shy about it.  They completely stole Paizo’s idea of having a public playtest, and they set out to research what were the best parts of all the previous editions so they could Frankenstein them into one game.  Critics will say they succeeded, producing what many refer to “everyone’s second favorite edition of D&D.” But fans, on the other hand, will say they succeeded: D&D 5e is “just the best bits” from all the other editions (yes, even 4e), with all the annoying crap left behind.

Now, mostly when people talk about this, they’re talking about the rules.  And, sure: every edition has had some good rules, and plenty of stinkers, and having a ruleset that is only the best bits is pretty frigging awesome.  But there’s way more than just rules going on here.  First off, 4e was the first time that anyone producing a new D&D had tried to appeal to non-RPG players.  See, 2e was for all the people who liked 1e but thought it could be better, and 3e was for all the people who liked 2e but thought it could be better.  But producing a product that appeals to only that subsegment of your market that thinks your product could use some improvement will, by defintion, produce a smaller and smaller market segment for each edition.  At some point you gotta figure out how to bring in new players.  3e tried to do that, a little, by using the Open Gaming License to get all the former competitors to D&D to make content for D&D, and that worked, a bit.  4e tried to do it by incorporating many of the lessons that MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft—who, let’s be honest, pretty much owed their existence to D&D in the first place—were innovating on, such as roles within the party (tank, striker, controller, leader), balancing factors such as DPS¹ and healing, etc.  This was far bolder, but it had significant downsides: the existing players who didn’t care for MMORPGs certainly weren’t attracted, and D&D was never going to be a better MMORPG than an actual MMORPG, so even the MMORPG fans were limited in their enthusiasm.  But 5e took a different approach: stop trying to make D&D something different ... just make it friggin’ easier to learn.  The biggest barrier to starting to play D&D is not what the game is: what the game is is a fantasy world where you are the hero and you can do (or at least attempt) any action you can imagine.  That pretty much sells itself.  No, the barrier to starting to play D&D is the baroque ruleset.  Oh, sure: it’s complex for very good reasons—it’s attempting to model all of a reality, and it’s a reality that has to include magic and dragons and all sorts of stuff physics can just ignore—but the D&D newbie doesn’t care about all that.  They just care that trying to figure out how to play this stupid game involves reading hundreds of pages of rules and more math than they’ve had to deal with since high school.  5e made all that much simpler.  Now, don’t get me wrong: 5e is not a simple game, by any means ... compared to sitting down to learn the rules of Sorry! or even Monopoly, D&D requires way more mental load.  But it’s much simpler than ever before, and that’s significant.

And one more really important thing about the new edition of D&D: for the first time, there was an openly gay man in the lead designer spot.  And, in my opinion, that’s the main reason that D&D has become so much more inclusive.  Gone are the chainmail bikinis and outright topless female monsters.  Gone are assumptions that all PCs will be male, or even either male or female.  NPCs are protrayed as male, female, non-binary, straight, gay, trans, bi, and asexual.  Racial representation has come a long way as well, although certainly there’s still more progress to be made there.  But for the first time a new edition of D&D didn’t just welcome in straight white dudes: it welcomed everyone.

The final big reason that D&D has become a cultural phenomenon in recent years—and many would argue the most important one—is the rise of Internet streaming.  YouTube, Twitch, podcasts ... suddenly it’s easier than ever for anyone to put out some sort of media of them doing things they like and other people with similar interests can find them.  More importantly, people can now discover new interests by watching or listening to things online.  This has led to an explosion of all sorts of things: my little girl doesn’t dig the idea of wearing make-up because anyone in her family taught her about make-up: she’s fascinated by it because she watches make-up tutorials on YouTube.  Do you want to watch videos of people making up weird dances?  You can do that.  Do you want to watch videos of people making bad “puppet” shows by just moving their stuffed animals around and making them talk?  No problem.  And, if you want to watch videos of people playing games, you have an amazing plethora of choices.

Now, I have to admit that I’ve always felt that watching other people have fun playing games was kind of stupid.  Why would I watch someone play a videogame, let’s say, when I could just play the damned game myself?  But of course, by that logic, the entire sports industry becomes meaningless: there’s literally a multi-billion-dollar business in having people play games so other people will watch them.  But I think the sports analogy is actually kind of instructive here: sure, watching an NBA game can be pretty damned exciting, but that doesn’t mean that watching any random game of people playing basketball will be fun.  There are many factors to consider: the talent of the players, the production value of the presentation, the knowledge of the commentators, and so on.  And so, eventually, I came to realize that I didn’t actually not like watching all people play videogames, I just didn’t like watching most people play videogames.  And the person who changed it all for me was Jacksepticeye.  I happened to wander through the room when one of my kids was watching him play ... hell, I don’t even remember what game it was, but the guy was hilarious.  He wasn’t trying to make me love the game, he wasn’t trying to make fun of the game, he wasn’t trying to do some artsy or clever commentary on the game: he was just playing the game, and having fun, and being damned entertaining while doing it.  Since then, I’ve found a few other “let’s play”² YouTubers who are pretty good, though I suspect Jacksepticeye may still be the best.

And, at some point, it naturally occurred to me that, if I could enjoy watching someone else play a videogame, when I don’t even like videogames all that much, surely I could enjoy watching someone play D&D, which I absolutely adore.  And, as it happens, there are a lot of choices out there, just like there are a lot of choices for the videogame genre.  In fact, the whole streaming thing (both for D&D and every other topic) has a major downside of making it so easy for people to create content that, at this point, it can be very difficult to pick out the gems from all the dross.  But there really are some gems out there, let me tell you.  For best all around video production plus some amazing acting, I think the prize has to go to Relics and Rarities; if you prefer your streaming in podcast form, it’s really tough to beat the OG Adventure Zone.  But of course the elephant in the room is Critical Role.

If you’re not familiar with Crtical Role, it’s a bit difficult to describe just how big it is.  It’s natural for us to think that, if we’ve never heard of a thing before, it can’t be but so big ... right?  Let me see if I can illustrate why you’re wrong about that with 2 little anecdotes.

D&D has become so popular lately that it’s very common for the D&D Player’s Handbook³ to be Amazon’s #1 best seller in not only the “fantay roleplaying books” category, but even in the entire “fantasy books” category, at least for short stints.  And this has happened several times through the past few years.  Well, just before the pandemic really got under way this year, the D&D folks and the Critical Role folks got together to produce what’s called a “campaign setting” for the current season of Critical Role.⁴  For some period of time earlier this year, the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount was not the best selling book in fantasy roleplaying, nor even the best selling book in fantasy: it was the best selling book on all of Amazon.  Period.  Before it was even released.  How can that be, you wonder?  How can there be more people buying Critical Role D&D books than buying D&D itself?  Because Critial Role has gained an appeal far beyond just D&D players, and even far beyond just this country.  The CR cast members have done conventions, with or without live shows, in LA, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, Austin, San Diego, the UK, Australia, Sweden, and many more, and everywhere they go, they draw a huge crowd.

Okay, last little Critical Role story.  The first season of Critical Role ended when everyone’s character got all the way to 20th level; they’d been playing for about 5 years at that point (the last half of that online) and were ready to start over with new characters.  But they thought they still had more stories to tell about their original characters: after all, what about those first 2½ years before the stream started?  Surely fans would love to hear some of those stories.  Since the CR cast is composed entirely of professional voice actors, it only seemed natural to do it in animated form: they’d hire an animation studio, voice all their own characters, maybe hire some of their other voice actor friends to chip in too ... it would be amazing.  But no studio was interested in such a thing: make a show out of your home D&D game?  Crazy talk!  So CR did what all creators in that situation do these days: they went to Kickstarter.  Just to fund a one hour special, they figured they needed $750K—animation is expensive!—and they figured it was a big ask, but, hey: if things went well, maybe they could do a sequel.  So they notified all their fans to be ready and they put up a 45-day Kickstarter campaign to raise ¾ of a million dollars.  They hit their goal in under 45 minutes.  They blew through every stretch goal they’d thought of ahead of time in the first 24 hours.  The one-shot special turned into a 12-episode series, which would eventually be picked up by Amazon and is already greenlit for season 2.  Because, you see, by the time the 45 days were over, they had raised over eleven million dollars, making them then (and still, I believe) the highest-grossing campgaign in Kickstarter history for the entertainment category.⁵  Suddenly this little D&D-based company was being interviewed not just by Wired and Syfy, but by Forbes and Fortune.  This is what streaming has done for the hobby.

And all these things helped reignite my personal spark as well: I was excited to try out the new edition, I was encouraged by all the new postive media portrayals, and I got really sucked in to a number of these streaming D&D shows, including all the ones I mentioned above, plus several others.  They’re not all great, by any means, but the ones that are great are just astounding.  I have always believed that roleplaying is storytelling, and here’s a huge crop of people playing a new edition of the game who all believe it too ... and better yet, are using the hobby as a brand new medium to tell some exciting new stories.

Next time we’ll examine the origins and inspirations of the Family Campaign, which will take us right up to the present day.

__________

1 That’s “damage per second,” if you don’t speak MMORPG.

2 For some reason, videos where you watch other people play games, especially videogames, are called “let’s play” videos.  Still not sure what the origin of this curious phrase is.

3 That’s the most important rulebook—the one that every player needs.  Most of the other books only the DM needs.

4 A campaign setting is a description of a fantasy world so that you can set your D&D games in that world.  Most D&D campaign settings are worlds original to D&D, but it’s not unheard of to take an existing property and turn it into a D&D setting.  For instance, Lankhmar.

5 Which record they took from the MST3K reboot, who in turn took it from the Veronica Mars movie.