Wow. Just wow. Brilliant game. I’d type more now but it’s 3AM and I need to sleep.
Having a big Cure listen through at the minute as I often do. The brilliant Join The Dots contains some hidden gems, one of them being Home.
Every time I try to tell you how I feel inside
I always make the same mistake
Tie myself in knots
Sometimes even make you cry
When all I ever want to say
Is “nobody else in the whole wide world
Makes me feel this way..
Nobody else in the whole wide world
Takes my breath away”
Makes me feel so strange inside
Dazed, confused and starry-eyed
I couldn’t love you more
Makes me feel the wrong-way round
Inside out and upside down
I couldn’t love you more
And every time I try to tell you what I really mean
Nothing seems to come out right
And I end up murmuring foolishly it makes me want to scream
How I get so stupified
There’s nobody else in the whole wide world
Makes me feel this way
There’s nobody else in the whole wide world
Takes my breath away
Makes me feel so strange inside
Open-mouthed and mystified
I couldn’t love you more
Makes me feel so upside down
But you’re headed round and round
I couldn’t love you more
Makes me feel so strange inside
Dazed, confused and starry-eyed
I couldn’t love you more
Makes me feel the wrong-way round
Inside out and upside down
Oh I couldn’t love you more.
Such an brilliantly beautiful song.
Quite a leap from The Cure, no? Both are equally brilliant though. Coheed are probably the ‘youngest’ band that’ll appear in these little features of mine, and they’re also the band I’ve known about for the shortest amount of time, yet, according to my last.fm, are up amongst my most listened to bands. Make of that what you will…
Even though the first album was released back in 2002, I only got introduced to Coheed in November 2007. I like my rhythm action video games. I’m all over stuff like Guitar Hero, Ouendan and Amplitude so I just had to import Rock Band. Fantastic game and it included the quite frankly epic, Welcome Home. I’d never heard it before, but I just couldn’t stop playing/listening to it. One of the most intriguing things about the song, was the voice. So with my interest piqued, I tore myself away from Rock Band and headed to Youtube to see and hear more…
Two hours later and I’m still trawling Youtube watching numerous live performances and just generally being amazed at how good they are live, and wondering how the hell I’d not heard of them until now. The next day I went out and bought all four albums, and I didn’t listen to much else for quite a long time.
At first, I just took the songs at face value and that’s fine, you know? You don’t always have to read into the lyrics, but to not do so to Coheed, is doing them a massive disservice. Not because the lyrics are deep and meaningful, or because they portray human emotion so well (that’s not to say some songs don’t), but because across the albums, you’re being told the story of The Armory Wars, written by lead singer Claudio Sanchez. This itself may not sound too interesting, but when you factor in his brilliant vocals, the amazing guitar work and the fantastic drumming, it all gels together to make it all ground breaking stuff. It certainly beats an audio book.
I don’t want to go too much into the story here as that’s not the point of the post, so I’ll just point you over to Wikipedia and Cobalt and Calcium if you want to read deeper into the story.
So, four albums. My personal favourite is the 2nd, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3. The title track is beyond epic. I remember watching live footage of it on Youtube and getting a shiver down my spine when that guitar riff kicks back in. I can happily say it felt just as good hearing it live for real a couple of weeks later. I’m finding it hard to put into words why I love the song. It’s the whole thing, the instruments, the shouts of “Man your own jackhammer!” the crescendo when you think the song is finished, the “Waiting for you to say… I love you too” line. It perfectly captures everything brilliant about Coheed and Cambria and condenses it all into one 8 minutes and 12 seconds epic track.
It also goes to show just how flexible they are too. It’s not all heavy guitars, shouting and progressive rock. Another personal favourite for me, from the 3rd album, is Wake Up. If it wasn’t for his instantly recognisable voice, you’d probably think it was a different band altogether. I could listen to it over and over and never get tired. Certain lines are just stupidly touching and tug at the heart strings.
“I’ll do anything for you
Kill anyone for you
So leave yourself intact
‘Cause I will be coming back
In a phrase to cut these lips
I love you”
It’s the way he delivers the ‘I love you’ line too, in fact all of the lines, it’s just so believable and listenable. See, I’m wanting to go into the back story now to explain the point of view that Claudio wrote the song from but I’m resisting, just. I just find it stunning how he can write it out to fit around the fictional characters yet people can still glean meaning from it themselves.
Devil In Jersey Cityand Everything Evil are two stand out tracks from Second Stage Turbine Blade, the 1st album. They follow each other and the story they both tell is rather twisted, but just goes to show the depth that Claudio and Co can write and perform at. I’ve resisted long enough, I’m going to delve into the story of Everything Evil (and ever so slightly into Devil In Jersey City).
If you listen to the beginning of the song, you can hear someone walking across a wooden porch, opening the door, and closing it behind them. This would be Josephine entering the Kilgannon home.
When she enters the house, she runs and throws up in the kitchen sink (after all, she just got raped, so she’s probably not doing so well). Her mother, Cambria, comes in and the two hug. Now Coheed (also not doing so well since he just killed his youngest children) enters, beckons for Josephine, and, when she approaches him, hits her on the head with a hammer. Now, Josephine’s fiancee, Patrick, follows Josephine in and witnesses this, and immediately retaliates back to his car and drives away. (Patrick and Josephine are the people in Devil In Jersey City).
Now, the Red Army (I realize that, by now, if you don’t know a thing about the story, you will be quite befuddled) invades the Kilgannon residence, and Mayo, the leader, tells Coheed that he has not completed his work since Claudio is not home (he’s been fooling around with his girlfriend, Newo, and quite lost track of time since he was supposed to be home be 2 a.m. and it is now past that time). Coheed asks what Mayo will do to Claud, and Mayo tells him to ask Cambria, who pretty much figures out Mayo’s entire plot, and she and Coheed wig out and kill a few soldiers before they’re shot by tranquilizers and hauled off.
Some members of the Red Army stay behind to drench the house in gasoline, and it is now that an Onstantine Priest enters the house and kills them before they can light the house on fire.
Claudio comes home, much too late, and finds Josephine’s body on the kitchen floor in a pool of her own blood. As he kneels beside her, his Crowing powers or whatever bring her back to life momentarily, and she explains her being raped, but not her death since she doesn’t really know she’s dead. Then, she tells Claudio to run and he sees the reflection of the Priest in her eyes, and she dies again (saying “Claudio… dear Claudio… you’ll make it if you believe). Claudio fights the Priest, then discovers he can walk through walls and can become invisible and gets the hell out of there.
Confused? I was. You don’t need to know all that, you can still listen to the song and enjoy it, but for me, part of the appeal is listening to the lyrics and being told the story. It’s not all laid out for you, some of it involves reading between the lines and filling in gaps but that’s great. It means each and every Coheed and Cambria fan will have little parts of the story individual to them. I far from know the full Armory Warsplot line, but maybe that’s why they have such an appeal to me? Each time I listen to them I’m learning more of the universe Claudio imagined. I’m involved in someone elses thoughts, and I’m able to interpret small parts of the story myself. It’s all involving and all encompassing.
I wish god damn it we’ll make it if you believe…
Ah, here I am again with my ‘dream’ of becoming a writer. I’m actually up writing this post at such a late hour due to being unable to sleep. I have ideas running through my head, which as a budding writer, should be fantastic. It is, I guess. I just need to use Hemingway’s rule.
“The first draft of anything is shit.”
So right now, I’m just writing and writing some more. It’ll come together in the 2nd, or 3rd or maybe even 4th draft!
Such a classic game. Personally, one of my top five of all time. I remember playing the demo (which was limited to 15 or so minutes) over and over and over again, and then eagerly awaiting the full games release. Once I got it, that was it. It kick started a fascination with all things theme park related. I loved roller coasters before then, but I’d never gotten that appreciation or slight knowledge of what it takes to make something so wondrous.
At first I just played the game normally, working through each scenario but at some point I discovered the joy of taking an empty ‘sandbox’ map and letting my imagination run wild. My first park even got selected as a hidden spotlight park on the then popular ‘Danimation’ website. Looking at the spotlight parks their, really showed me just what you could do if you put your mind to it. Some of them were incredible to look at it and they just pushed me further to try and create something like that of my own. I don’t think I ever reached that level of workmanship, my closest effort was probably a SLC I created in a friend’s park (Twisted Confusion was the coaster, Grovelands Bay was the park). I’d totally forgotten the name of the park and the coaster itself but thanks to the wonders of the internet, I found it again and still to this day, I can load that map up and watch my creation zoom around the track and be impressed. I can totally picture it being a real coaster somewhere, it just…works.
Not really sure where this post is going, just a bit of reminiscing really! I have started to play RCT again, although I’m not quite sure if I should stick with my RCT+Loopy Landscape approach (something about it is just better than RCT2) or should I try and pick up RCT2 skills? I’ve a feeling I’ll stick with RCTLL. We’ll see.
In the meantime, if you have RCTLL, feel free to drop me a comment or email and I can provide you my old parks if you’d like to see them!
Yet another Coheed and Cambria post by me. If you know the band, you’ll know all about the four Neverender shows they did, playing each of the four albums in their entirety over four nights in New York, LA, Chicago and London. Me and my fiancée were pretty upset we couldn’t really afford to travel to any of the shows as we’re huge fans, but luckily they recorded the New York shows and have just recently released the DVD/CD!
Unfortunately, with Sweden being the slow place it is, and the fact the Coheed website to pre-order off (which was offering signed copies too!) didn’t ship here, we haven’t yet bought the boxset. I’ve downloaded the MP3′s and I’ve pretty much been listening to them constantly, I just can’t stop. Cycling to school, I have it on my iPod. Sitting at home browsing the net, I’m listening. It sounds like it was an excellent few nights and really makes me wish they’d do some more EU shows, after seeing them last year in Copenhagen, I need more!
All that said, I was browsing the net today and decided to have a look for sites that are selling the boxset and are able to ship it to Sweden, and surprisingly, I found a Swedish site selling it for 1099 Kr, which isn’t too expensive (well, it is for a poor student like me, but needs must). It’s ordered now, just to wait for it to turn up, and then me and my fiancée can have our own Neverender at home!
Oh, and I’m 99.9% certain I want to get the Keywork tatooed on my wrist. Not something I’ve just thought about, had it in my head for ages, just didn’t want to get it the instant I thought of it. Nothing worse than regretting a tattoo, I’d imagine.
Keywork
Just a quick plug about my newly set up blog, The Altaholic. Before you start having a panic attack, don’t worry, this blog is still going to be here and used! The Altaholic will be used for my musings on MMO gaming, mostly WoW, and this place will still be used for my more personal mumblings. I’m thinking about setting up a third blog too, which I intend to use as my base for brushing up my html and css skills, content being focused on more general gaming. Mostly as an outlet for me to practice my writing, jotting down basic reviews, opinions and the like. We’ll see.
Anyway, if you play or have played WoW or any other MMO, the content on http://thealtaholic.wordpress.com might be fun for you to read!
Well, as you can see my posts are slowly becoming ever more frequent. This is a concerted effort on my behalf. I want to get back into writing often, even if it’s just something as basic as a blog post. Be it about what I’ve done recently, future plans, a ‘review’ of a game or my current musical inclinations.
I’ve been jotting down some ideas for a story I’ve had floating around my head for ages now. I first thought of it, lets see…six years ago. My grandmother was in hospital with cancer and I was visiting her. She was in a new ward of the hospital, which was connected to the old building via a glass corridor. It was perfectly clean and you could hardly tell that glass was stopping things from the outside getting in. It was then that I pictured a scene, with zombies. It could work with some other form of imaginary being, but I think zombies would work best, especially in the setting I may take it. I envisioned somebody caught, alone in the hospital. No noticable signs of life. Said character stumbles along this corridor in the middle of night with only a flickering light motioning the way forward. Without saying too much, character thinks a horde of zombies are going to get to him, but the glass stops them. Not sure how it would work on paper, but if I picture the scene in my head it would work really well on film.
Of course, that’s only a page or two from a book. I’d need a lot more than that, but I have the starting point and if I actually sit down and get into my writing again, it’ll come!
Maybe now would be a good time to get stuck into the excellent ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King?
Been looking into higher education again recently, it’s something I thought I’d want to do after college but for various reasons didn’t. I think the main one was due to finance. It can be insanely expensive to study at university in the UK. Sure, you can get loans and all that but it just didn’t appeal to me. Secondly, I’d been in secondary school, and then college and I wanted a break. That break turned into a few years working and now here I am, in a different country, which luckily has education offered in English. My Swedish isn’t quite good enough yet to manage at university level.
That said, my college grades aren’t the best (unlucky timing of family deaths meaning I didn’t study half as much as I should of), but I’m determined. Even if I have to do a adult course here to get me the grades I need, I’m prepared to do that. I really want to better myself and hopefully get myself a good job at the end of it all!
I’ve been looking recently at different courses and one that stands out to me is English Studies. An Englishman, in Sweden, studying English. I realise the irony. (I’m currently studying Swedish by the way, I’m not the sort of person who expects everyone to speak and understand English no matter where I am in the world).
English Studies is a programme designed for students interested in language, literature, and culture. Focusing on the study of the English language in various forms and media, the programme incorporates linguistics, literary studies, and cultural studies.
In the programme you will learn to analyse a wide range of cultural, literary, and linguistic phenomena. From a linguistic perspective, we examine the ways in which language is structured and used for different purposes in a wide range of contexts. From a literary perspective, we study not only the traditional genres of fiction, poetry, and drama, but also film and song. From a cultural studies perspective, we investigate how different cultural texts and media are part of how we construct the world. In this programme, an emphasis is placed on developing your communicative skills in English, both written and oral. The programme is centered on both critical and creative thinking, and you will have the opportunity to take courses in creative writing and theatre alongside your more theoretical studies.
English Studies students gain skills that are applicable to a broad range of career opportunities, including teaching, media (editing, publishing, journalism, advertising, TV, radio, film, etc.), as well as business and administration. The programme also provides a suitable foundation for graduate studies in English, creative writing, teaching, and other fields, both in Europe and worldwide.
Sounds interesting, no? I can apply in March anyway, but I’m not going to hedge my hopes on that single course. I’ll apply for a couple of others, maybe some part time ones and see how it all goes.
I’ll be crossing my fingers!
So I finished reading it this morning and I loved it. I must say when I read it back at school I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have, but that’s just a typical school boy for you. Now, matured and in love myself the story had a whole new slant for me. It’s a wholy romantic, amusing, yet tragic tale which I’m not going to go into great depth because let’s be honest, who doesn’t know the story of Romeo and Juliet?
What has surprised me most is the way Shakespeare portrays Romeo and Juliet’s love for each other. Sure, you get that gist from their actions but when they say such beautifully eloquent things like;
‘Romeo – Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes.
To twinkle in their speheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven.
Would through the airy region stream so bright.
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
My personal favourite part from the whole play;
‘Juliet – I will not fail.
‘Tis twenty years till then.
I have forgot why I did call thee back.
Romeo – Let me stand here till thou remember it.
Juliet – I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,
Remembering how I love thy company.
Romeo – And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget,
Forgetting any other home but this.’
Utterly beautiful, seriously.
