This is a forty five minute remix of Queen music that just blows me away.
Prodigy in Wonderland XIII
The death yesterday of Keith Flint left many shocked and reaching for their CD collections but I remembered that one of their songs was featured in a Commodore 64 demo.
Censor Design sampled Prodigy’s “Smack my Bitch Up” and used it as the sound track to the final part of their excellent demo Wonderland XIII. Click play on the video above to see it in action. It’s really amazing!
It’s worth watching the whole video but if the embedded version above doesn’t load at 7:33 then load it from here instead or here’s another video of the music played back by two SID chips which IMO sounds even better!
For those at the back who don’t know, the C64 was released in the early 80s but developers made it work magic and do things thought impossible, such as in this case playing sampled sound!
Edit (2019-03-22): Here’s a version of Voodoo People from Bad Boy by Samar Productions. Amazing what the SID can do!
From Rio to Waterfalls
Follow along from “I Go To Rio” to “Ritmo De La Noche” to “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall” by Coldplay. I had no idea Ritmo De La Noche had such a history!
Of course there’s a C64 version! Maduplec of BUDS/NATO/Crest fame created a SID version of Ritmo De La Noche for his 1992 Glober demo. Every time I hear that song I think of that demo. I couldn’t find it on Youtube so you’ll just have to fire up an emulator to watch the spinning globe but here’s the SID tune!
Bo-Meme-Ean Rhapsody (Queen Fan Video)
OK, this is just wonderful. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen in memes. Article 13 would have a field day. I don’t expect this video to stay up for very long so watch it as soon as you can!
The Firm: Serious Fun
The FIrm are “a novelty band” according to their Wikipedia page. They released fun, mostly silly songs in the eighties.
In the late eighties they released an album called “Serious Fun” which included a song most people who grew up in the eighties will recognise, Star Trekkin’.
My parents bought that album and I remember dancing around to that song so long ago. 🙂
There’s a bunch of other songs on the album too but unfortunately the album itself appears to be very rare and only a few of the following songs can be found online:
- Star Trekkin’
- Girls Got Feelings Too
- Arthur Daley (E’s Alright)
- Snookered
- Heavy Metal Robot
- Start Wrekkin’
- Superheroes
- Strawberry Ice Cream, Jelly and Cake
- Monster Rap
- Cash in Hand
- Summertime on 42nd Street
- Pop Stars
Lucky you, I tracked down most of them!
Your life is now complete.
Jedininja
Sometimes you accidentally dive down a rabbit hole of your own making.
I came across the Retro Computer Scene search engine a few days ago and accidentally clicked on a link to a Commodore 64 disk image. Those files are small at 175KB so I decided to keep it and look at it later.
This morning I did and found Noice Driver v3.0a, a music disk for the Commodore 64 released in 1993. There are some great tunes on there but the name JEDININJA leapt out at me. It’s a good tune too!
The filename of the disk image is sb130978-1fbef9.d64 so I guessed it might have something to do with Scene Base. I downloaded their metadata list and found it there in the c64disk set!
You can find JEDININJA on csdb and a later version of the music disk there too: Noice Driver V3.8c.
It’s quite amazing the amount of digital history that’s out there. I’m only scratching the surface.
Bohemian Rhapsody Overload
Hyped for this. Don’t be bad. Don’t be bad. Don’t mess it up.
It’s kinda odd to think of Elliot from Mr. Robot as Freddie Mercury but this trailer is promising, unless you’re going to pick holes in every little bit of it.
I enjoyed this interview with Rami Malek on The Late Show, and here’s a video produced by the band Bulsara and His Queenies called ‘A Sheer Homage’. Wow.
If you still haven’t had enough of Queen, (and who can?) the official Queen Youtube Channel has a number of 1 hour long compilations.
Finally, and this is the coolest thing ever, User cmi on the QueenZone forum has made an expanded collection of Queen albums. You’ll probably find bits and pieces there that you’ve never heard.
Canyon – music brings us together
Thank you James for sharing this lovely short video. I remember reading somewhere that the music that defines us, or that we "really get" is the music we hear in our twenties. This leads to disenchantment in later years because everything's changed, and it's not the same "as the good ol' days".
The thing is, you're not the only one who loves that music, and that's a wonderful bonding experience. A recent episode of First Dates Ireland (yes, yes, I'll watch it sometimes) featured a couple who bonded over music, only as friends but they now had someone to go to gigs with. Unfortunately this clip doesn't show any of their banter about music, but it's the only one I could find of them!
And this is the only time you'll read about First Dates Ireland on this blog, I promise!
Queen – We Will Rock You (Raw Sessions Version)
In 1977 Queen released “News of the World”, and this year a 40th Anniversary Edition has been released with outtakes, alternative versions of the whole album and more. Here’s the trailer:
I found a playlist on Youtube and it’s great to hear slightly different versions of tracks I know so well but it reminds me that 2 days from now is the anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s death and that makes me sad.
Don’t Stop Me Now
An amazing cover of the Queen song, “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Peter Bence. (Thanks Ken Collins for sharing)
When you’ve listened to that, watch these two videos by Valentina Lisitsa and marvel at how fast her fingers move.
