hrrundivbakshi

Lou Reed… As the Lightning Bolts Coming Out of His Eyes Were Meant to Fry You!

Nov 182010

Hey, gang!

What’s the most boring, frustrating video game in the world? Lou Reed knows!

What if someone made a game that required players to drive from Tucson, AZ to Las Vegas, NV in a bus? What if they had to make the 400 mile, 8 hour journey in real time, and what if the bus really, really needed an alignment—so you couldn’t just hold down the accelerator pedal with a piece of tape while you went to sleep?

And what if your reward for all of this arduous, tedious work was exactly one point? What the hell kind of game would that be? And why the hell would anyone play it?

Such a “game” does in fact exist. It’s a sub-chapter of a never-released video game designed by magicians Penn & Teller, which also (in a different, “impossible-level” chapter, seen above) features Lou Reed in full 1980s Jheri Curl glory.

A group of incredibly generous masochists at LoadingReadyRun have decided to donate many, many miserable hours of their time to playing this game—but only if sadistic “sponsors” step up and pay them to do it. Last year, the group raised more than $140,000 for Child’s Play, a groovy charity that helps kids have as much fun as possible when they’re stuck in the hospital.

The more (tax-deductible!) donations viewers make to Child’s Play through DesertBus.org, the longer LoadingReadyRun must drive the desert bus.

I’m posting this because it’s a cool cause that a company I consult for is sponsoring—and because you might want to head out to http://www.desertbus.org to offer up a few dollars in support of a worthy cause.

Just remember: Difficult is wining the Nobel Prize. Impossible is eating the sun.

Thank you for your time.

HVB

The Soundtrack to My Deodorant Running Out

Posted by hrrundivbakshi

Nov 102010

My deodorant ran out this morning. As I woefully pondered the empty plastic tube, Boyz 2 Men‘s “We’ve Come to the End Of the Road” started going through my head—which struck me as pretty funny, if I do say so myself. Thank you, subconscious!

The question is: Can you do any better? What should have been the soundtrack to my deodorant running out? Note: “That Smell” is taken.

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

Dramatic Re-enactment

RTH Travel Quizlet: Me & Mrs. Bakshi

Posted by hrrundivbakshi

Nov 052010

Greetings, fellow Townspeople!

As many of you know, I’ve been out of the country for the last few weeks, enjoying my, uh, well — my honeymoon!

Yes, I finally found a woman foolish enough to hitch her wagon to my sputtering star, and a happier man I could not be. She’s great, and I thank you in advance for all your kind thoughts and congratulations.

Anyhow: the missus and I actually spent our honeymoon in old blighty, traveling through the United Kingdom, from the Southwest to the far north — and in the course of the journey, I couldn’t help but get a few Olde Englande-related tunes running through my head. Your job is to READ MY MIND, and tell me what you think was on my mental soundtrack during our journey.

Here are the places and things we visited where a specific song got stuck in my head. Can you guess what songs they were?

While riding the train through the English countryside
Changing trains in Slough
Seeing the train platform sign for Swindon
Waterloo station
Piccadilly Circus
Driving around the traffic fixtures the English use instead of stoplights
London, broadly

I warn you: some of these are less obvious than you might think. In fact, I was kind of surprised by the un-obviousness of my mental soundtrack as we made our way through the country.

Lastly, however, a real stumper: in Glasgow, we visited a great museum which, in the interest of keeping this challenging, I won’t name. Upon exiting, I looked across the green and saw the following building. Out came the camera, in a photographic move of exceptional rock nerdiness. Can you identify this building, and tell us why I felt it was worth capturing on film?

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

The great Glasgow rock pictographic mystery!

Rock Town Hall KRAZY KAPTION KONTEST!

Posted by hrrundivbakshi

Oct 072010

We spend a lot of time and energy around here being ever-so-slightly cleverer than the rest of the rock blog world — and that’s usually a good thing. But sometimes you just want some editorial comfort food — something reasonably filling, and vaguely tasty. Something tried and true. Something like… a KRAZY KAPTION KONTEST!

Rules are simple enough: following is a selection of funny fotos from around the web. Your job is to assign a KRAZY KAPTION to as many of them as you please. Of course, as in all things RTH, your KRAZY KAPTION must reference the Rock. For extra credit:

Pick any three photos and give us captions that separately reference a song, an artist, and an album.
Create a narrative flow between any three photos using your captions.
Reference Bob Seger in any of your captions.

Winning captions will be chosen by Mr. Moderator, and proudly displayed on our front page for, oh, at least a day. Of course, all winners receive the coveted RTH No-Prize.

I look forward to your KRAZY KAPTIONS.

HVB

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NEWS FLASH: Huey Lewis & the News Didn’t Suck!

Posted by hrrundivbakshi

Oct 062010

I know some of you will pick up what I’m about to lay down here: Huey Lewis didn’t suck. In fact, I’d say he was, on the whole, quite good for American popular music, in the same savior-of-AM-radio kind of way that Hall & Oates were. Not sure his hits were quite on the same level, but — come on — does “Heart & Soul” suck? How about “This Is It”? Of course they don’t suck!

In fact, I’d go further to say that HL&tN had a run of pretty darn good singles, many of which did a good job breathing life — perhaps not stylistically “new” life, but real life — into some pretty moldy American music forms. Dude played songs like “This Is It” straight — and that’s why the song doesn’t suck. Compare to “Uptown Girl,” a similar kind of retro-vibed track by Billy Joel. In Joel’s hands, this kind of faux-’50s number really grates. But when Huey gets his hands on the stuff, he doesn’t play-act; he just sings.

I dunno, I guess I’ve entered a phase where some formerly overplayed pop music is starting to come around for me. I’ve come to realize that the reasons why we like songs eventually surpass the reasons why we grew sick of them — and Huey Lewis made some of that kind of music. I’m still not sure I’m ready to download Sports, or whatever that ’80s Everyman album of his was called — but I was sure happy to hear “Heart & Soul” coming through the speakers at the cheese store today.

Here’s to the simple pleasures of life. Here’s to Huey Lewis.

HVB

Lights… Camera… Wait a Minute — Who’s Got the Script?!

Posted by hrrundivbakshi

Sep 232010

With this post, we inaugurate a new series on Rock Town Hall — one in which we look to you, our closet D.W. Griffiths, our frustrated Eric Von Stroheims, our secret Spielbergs, to help explain what on Earth is going on in a featured “music video.”

I must admit, I came across this one by accident, in the “comments” section at the tail end of a very interesting music-related Gizmodo post, about which I’ll post separately. But as soon as I clapped my eyes on this video, I was smitten. Fascinated. Enthralled.

What the hell, I wondered, did it mean?

I’ve got some thoughts of my own, but I don’t want to influence your creative process. I really want to know what the story is behind this piece of film. Why the fire-breathing? Why the halloween party-store witch’s hat? Why the constant scurrying through the glades? And why, oh why is there so much…crouching?

It’s clear to me that what this video needs is a script of some sort — or at least an explanation. Can you provide one?

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

RTH Labs Investigates: Rick Buckler’s Crash Cymbal

Posted by hrrundivbakshi

Sep 072010

DOWNLOAD LINK: Rick Buckler Crash Cymbal Quotient Analysis, edited source material

I pass along a note I received today from RTH Labs’ Senior Music Engineer, Milo T. Frobisher:

MEMORANDUM

FROM: Milo T. Frobisher, Senior Music Engineer, RTH Labs
TO: Townsman Hrrundivbakshi, Senior RTH Labs Liaison
RE: Rick Buckler’ Crash Cymbal Quotient/Numerical Crash Analysis, “Away From the Numbers”

Townsman Hrrundivbakshi, I send this quick note to summarize our recent research findings in re: Rick Buckler’s Crash Cymbal Quotient (CCQ), as found in “Away From the Numbers,” by the Jam.

Our methodology was simple, though far from easy: over the full four minutes (exactly) of this song, our junior engineers counted the exact number of times Rick Buckler deployed his crash cymbal for rhythmic emphasis. Please note that we did not undertake the low-frequency extraction from his snare as you requested, nor a pattern analysis of his tom fills to determine their similarity to, or substantive difference from, those of KISS’ Peter Criss, aka “Cat Man.”

I should warn you that by listening to the edited source material above, in which we replaced each instance of Buckler hitting his crash cymbal with a spoken word marker, you run a significant risk of never being able to listen to this song in the same fashion again. I should specifically point out that my nephew, James Frobisher — an intern in RTH Labs — needed to physically remove himself from the Laboratory premises after being asked to do the CCQ analysis in the instrumental break in the middle of this song, so profound was its effect on his young mind. You have been warned.

The results of our investigation are startling. Over the course of this four-minute song, Rick Buckler hits the crash cymbal — importantly, he seems to hit the same cymbal every time — a total of 137 times. By our base-60 calculations, that amounts to, roughly, one cymbal crash every 1.8 seconds. We leave it to you and your more contextual thinkers in the Hall to determine the subjective value of this datum.

Thank you for your time in this matter. I look forward to working with you further in the future.

MTF

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