The Gaming Den

I have pretty geeky taste in music, which I listen to at work. I also hit up this forum occasionally during work (shhhh). So I'm going to spread the wealth and, in the spirit of discovery, I urge all of you to plug your favorite geek-culture music too. I’m gonna start with this song by Jonathan Coulton which is actually very applicable to the recent transhumanism posts in this forum.

For anyone who doesn't know, Jonathan Coulton is a singer-songwriter of very varied and often geeky talent. He tried an experiment to write and record a new song every week for a year and the results were quite good.

Other geeky Coulton songs of note are Code Monkey, Mandelbrot Set and De-Evolving.

Additionally, the band Hard 'n Phirm (not porn, I swear) produced a really good album with Horses and Grasses. You can sample some of their music here.

My wife is a huge Harry Potter buff and absolutely loves the group Harry and the Potters, who are accredited with creating Wizard Rock. You can listen to some of their songs here. We went to one of their concerts (at a local, public library) and it was a blast. They're crazy energetic and my inner nine-year-old got a kick out of being loud in a library. She also likes Draco and the Malfoy's who happen to be touring with HatP's right now.

This site is awesome and has filled about a third of my playlist at work. Here talented people upload their remixes, technos and re-inspirings of video game music. Metroid and Legend of Zelda alone have in excess of 110 songs and everything is free and legal to download. You can even search by console in case you want songs from Virtual Boy or Sega Saturn games. My favorite is the Toejam and Earl redo.

They Might Be Giants are certainly worth mentioning. Their website, which is normally quite awesome, seems to be having difficulties so I guess I can only link to this nice video version of one of their songs. In truth I prefer Weird Al's "Bob" to TMBG's "I Palindrome I" because Weird Al's song is actually comprised of palindromes. Also, Weird Al's White and Nerdy needs to be included for reasons too numerous to mention.

If you have an ear for classical composition than PDQ Bach is a real hit. The artist Peter Schickele pretends to be a historian who keeps uncovering works by J. S. Bach's forgotten son P.D.Q., which are either direct parodies of classical pieces (such as The Short-Tempered Clavier, Preludes and Fugues in all the Major and Minor Keys Except for the Really Hard Ones) or zany style-parodies (Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion). Wikipedia describes him as "the INTERCAL of Baroque music."Sadly, I couldn't find anywhere to preview the music.

I'm fond of Roy Zimmerman, but his forte is political satire. I will say that he does a masterfull job of weaving pointed criticisms into really solid music. You can sample his music here.


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Shatner at [unixtime wrote:1183996289[/unixtime]]Additionally, the band Hard 'n Phirm (not porn, I swear) produced a really good album with Horses and Grasses.

I remember hearing them sing American Dinosaur on a radio show. It's this subversive, satirical patriotic ballad about dinosaurs being unsung heroes of American pride. Apparently it's not unsusual for some or most of the audience not to immediately get the satire and up very perplexed when the song's over.

Personally, my favourite geek/nerd would have to be The Aquabats, veterans of the 90s ska trend combining ska, "surfer" music, and character mythology inspired by live-action Japanese superheroes*. One particularly interesting aspect of thier songs is that they manage to keep fans interested without including profanity or singing about topics like sex, drugs, or real-life violence. Instead thier songs feature bizarre comedy adventures, monsters showing up trying to ruin the party, or deliberately/comically sappy romance.

Apparently they had a successful run at Knotts Berry Farm for a couple years as a "kid friendly" ska/punk band, but eventually they weren't able to go back because of the pyrotechnics (tiki torches) in thier act. I also remember watching the acrobatic lead-singer accidently drive his foot through a stage at a local venue. They got energy, have to give them that.

*The lead singer is a big fan of Ultraman and other live-action Kaiju adventures.

Aside from that the only other band I immediately think of when I hear about geek/nerd music is Rush. Many of thier songs have strong sc-fi elements, but in particular Subdivions has always been one of the most evocative examples of Gibson-era cyberpunk I've ever heard.

There's also E.L.O.'s Time (love the song Twilight), but I'd have a hard time singling that album out as particularly geeky/nerdy. Not because it isn't, it's a melancholy, nostalgic concept album based on a time-travel story. The problem is I enjoy individual songs from the album so much (especially Twilight) that I usually overlook the time-travel pretense anyway. I can't really analyze it as a part of geek/nerd culture in an objective way. Did I mention the song Twilight was a particular favourite?