Some Media Songs
And now, a handful of songs about movies, TV shows, and video games. Most of these songs have been on my website for a while, but I haven't yet gotten around to discussing them here.
Droids, Clones (mp3) is a parody of "Hey Ho" by Dave Carter, about Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Surprisingly little has to be changed, since both songs are about war as a fiction that is manufactured and sold to the public in order to benefit hidden masterminds. The second verse, in particular, is nearly intact. I also like the phrase "dread and darling boy" as referring to Anakin Skywalker. There are some other dread and darling boys out there in the science fiction stacks... Ender Wiggin would also seem to fit the theme remarkably well.
Shadow of the Colossus (mp3), about the video game of the same name, is another Dave Carter parody, this time of "Shadows of Evangeline". I chose that original melody not just for the phrase "shadow(s) of", although that was a factor, but also for the suggestion of the temptation of forbidden mysteries perhaps best left forgotten, which is a major theme of the game. The "instrumental" break (that's me humming, a fiddle would be better) is one of the more memorable melodies from the game's epic soundtrack.
Virginia Taylor's "Thornberry Wine" (sadly, not on the internet) is a haunting song about the temptation and ultimate cost of becoming a vampire. I, on the other hand, can't hear the word "thornberry" without thinking of The Wild Thornberries, a Nickelodeon cartoon series about a girl who can talk to animals. Her gift, too, is not without its own soul-wrenching cost, a sense I tried to capture in Thornberry Child (mp3).
Much of The Legend of Zelda III: A Link to the Past takes place in a sort of alternate dimension, the "dark world". The music that plays as you explore the dark world is quite catchy, and in The Dark World (mp3) I've added lyrics to that melody which explain the world's origin and fate, from the point of view of one of its inhabitants, many of whom have been turned into talking trees. Be careful - not all of those talking trees are as helpful as this one.
A Wanderer Still (mp3) sets lyrics to "Still Another Wanderer", one of the musical themes from Battle for Wesnoth, an excellent open source turn-based strategy war game with a fantasy theme. Here, I mostly just loved the tune so much I had to do something with it, hence filling in the middle of the lyrics with an enumeration of playable races and terrain types. That's the key information about a strategy war game, anyway, right?
Coroutine Declaration (mp3) is a song about Tron, sort of. The melody comes from the original Tron movie, while the plot is something of a mix of the original and Tron: Legacy, with the father and son characters collapsed into one. (The POV is Quorra's.) The computer science puns are all mine, on the other hand. A coroutine is a piece of computer code that's designed to work in close partnership with another piece of computer code.
Droids, Clones (mp3) is a parody of "Hey Ho" by Dave Carter, about Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Surprisingly little has to be changed, since both songs are about war as a fiction that is manufactured and sold to the public in order to benefit hidden masterminds. The second verse, in particular, is nearly intact. I also like the phrase "dread and darling boy" as referring to Anakin Skywalker. There are some other dread and darling boys out there in the science fiction stacks... Ender Wiggin would also seem to fit the theme remarkably well.
Shadow of the Colossus (mp3), about the video game of the same name, is another Dave Carter parody, this time of "Shadows of Evangeline". I chose that original melody not just for the phrase "shadow(s) of", although that was a factor, but also for the suggestion of the temptation of forbidden mysteries perhaps best left forgotten, which is a major theme of the game. The "instrumental" break (that's me humming, a fiddle would be better) is one of the more memorable melodies from the game's epic soundtrack.
Virginia Taylor's "Thornberry Wine" (sadly, not on the internet) is a haunting song about the temptation and ultimate cost of becoming a vampire. I, on the other hand, can't hear the word "thornberry" without thinking of The Wild Thornberries, a Nickelodeon cartoon series about a girl who can talk to animals. Her gift, too, is not without its own soul-wrenching cost, a sense I tried to capture in Thornberry Child (mp3).
Much of The Legend of Zelda III: A Link to the Past takes place in a sort of alternate dimension, the "dark world". The music that plays as you explore the dark world is quite catchy, and in The Dark World (mp3) I've added lyrics to that melody which explain the world's origin and fate, from the point of view of one of its inhabitants, many of whom have been turned into talking trees. Be careful - not all of those talking trees are as helpful as this one.
A Wanderer Still (mp3) sets lyrics to "Still Another Wanderer", one of the musical themes from Battle for Wesnoth, an excellent open source turn-based strategy war game with a fantasy theme. Here, I mostly just loved the tune so much I had to do something with it, hence filling in the middle of the lyrics with an enumeration of playable races and terrain types. That's the key information about a strategy war game, anyway, right?
Coroutine Declaration (mp3) is a song about Tron, sort of. The melody comes from the original Tron movie, while the plot is something of a mix of the original and Tron: Legacy, with the father and son characters collapsed into one. (The POV is Quorra's.) The computer science puns are all mine, on the other hand. A coroutine is a piece of computer code that's designed to work in close partnership with another piece of computer code.