Every other Wednesday I share a playlist of songs tangentially related to a single game or series. Songs about alien sex for Mass Effect, songs about world leaders for Civilization, and so on. Searching for random terms on Spotify is a great way to discover new music and rediscover old classics.
This week, it's time for Fallout 3. One of my favorite memories of that game was finding a text adventure buried in the rubble of a comic-book-publisher's office. In fact, all of my favorite moments involved computer terminals -- the shooting was so-so, and the character animations wooden, but none of that mattered when I was exploring, listening to old jazz, and piecing together stories from before the bombs.
#1 - John Otway - Whoops Apocalypse
John Otway, a better lyricist than Bob Dylan, wrote this for cult '80s political-satire Whoops Apocalypse. He's mostly known as a novelty act, but that label suggests a lesser talent than his -- placing him above Dylan might be rash, but he really deserves more credit than he gets.
#2 - The Futureheads - Fallout
These guys took their name from an obscure Flaming Lips album, so they were instantly of interest to me. They come from "up north" (hence the funny accents, Americans). Considering descriptions of them include a lot of "post-"s and they list Philip Glass as an influence, they're a lot of fun to listen to.
#3 - Sun Ra - Nuclear War
Sun Ra used to look for hidden meanings by rearranging Bible verses, talked like L. Ron Hubbard, and claimed to be an angel from Saturn. No, really. As if that wasn't weird enough, his band had two bassists. Two!
#4 - The Flaming Lips - Everything's Exploding
The Flaming Lips are weird. But they used to be something else. In the '80s, they were a bunch of hippie-punks who didn't eat, or change their clothes on tour, and who set fire to their bassist's hair. This track comes from 1987's Oh My Gawd!!!... and is a decent pick from a spotty period of their back-catalog.
#5 - Everything Absent or Distorted (A Love Story) - Featherbeds in a Bomb Shelter
It's appropriate that Every... this band has a name long enough to force that subheading over two lines -- they also have a big sound. If the chamber pop pomp is too grandiose for you, the band collapsed, with Le Divorce -- a much more guitar-oriented band -- forming from the ashes in 2009.
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3 comments:
I'm impressed once again that your music library features so many perfectly relevant song titles to fit these games.
I'm playing Fallout 3 right now, actually. (Trying to anyways.) It's a bit tough because I kind of want it to be more like Oblivion, but instead it's just gray. I need further encouragement, I think, before I can go on. This blog might help.
He searches relevant terms to the games on Spotify, a site which isn't over here in the US yet, and then seeks out those songs on youtube for the playlists. But it would be awesome if he just happened to have all of these songs in his library already.
Yeah - I only rarely have tracks in mind for a playlist. It's interesting when a really obscure band comes up. I've been to some weird, old, and ugly sites researching these.
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