28. Too pooped to party

You are listening to the Ericade Radio Network. Time for another episode of Amiga Flashback, the show that takes you back to the 80s and 90s. Yeah, and today I can tell you this much. I have been fighting with the machines. I've been fighting with the gods of technology. And I am kinda tired. So today it's gonna be just the new music that's entering the station, the best things that I could find on the internet.and some stories and all of that. So time for another station update I guess.

Twilight and Doc H of Absolut and song is called Cream. Well this Saturday, today I have fought with the gods of technology. As I said, it's been one hell of a ride. It started out with me thinking we need better audios. I have used a whole week to set up better compression and I have replaced some software which should give us better strength in the sounds. I mean...Yeah, if you're sitting in a car you should be able to hear it breaking through any kind of engine noise or whatever. And it turned out, if you start messing around with technology, especially software, it's like rattling a hornet's nest because something will break. But finally everything seems to be working. Well, knock on wood I guess. So I hope you enjoy the better sound and louder music.

Travolta of Spaceballs with Supernatural and do you know who Travolta is? No, not him. I actually mean the demo guy. He is actually the guy behind State of the Art, the music for State of the Art, which is one of the most famous demos ever created. Yeah, you must know it. And here is his Supernatural. It kind of sounds like something you would get from State of the Art, but it also sounds a bit like Aceman, anotherdemo provider so to speak. And when we're talking about Swedish demo artists, well, let's go with Fredrik Strollberg, The Way to Heaven.

So I have to admit something here. I kinda didn't know just how bad VLC and Audacity could be of decoding modules. I used those tools to create the music so you can hear it on the radio and most of the time it works fine. But newer and more advanced modules kinda get some pitch bends and stuff wrong. So I have actually written a script around a program called XMP which is very good at decoding.Amiga modules and stuff. So yeah, I actually will make sure that we get better sounding modules on the station. So that is what's going on.

That would be Gaidara with Photon Cannon. Do you know about Sturgeon? Yeah, Sturgeon was a science fiction writer back in the day and he's famous for his Sturgeon's Law, which states that 90 % of everything is crap. Okay, that's a bit harsh I guess, but not all modules, not all impulse tracker, noise tracker, whatever tracker modules are good.So when I look into my list of modules, the ones that I really selected on ratings or that I like them and stuff, they are all written by a very small group of people when you can look at the vast number of modules we actually have here on the station, 1300 actually. So you can see names like Travolta of course, we see names like Gaidora coming back and Lizard King and Dr. Awesome and stuff.But that's how it is, isn't it?

Motion and the song is called Satellite One. It's a remix. It was originally by Purple Motion but the remixing was done by Siren. Ok, I don't know if thought about it but there is an old proverb saying that a fool and his money shall soon part.And the fool must be us who spend so much into our amigas. And even if you're not into amigas, you probably spend a lot of money on other kinds of retro stuff. Because it's a thing with us retro nerds. And you can kind of sink to thousands and thousands of...Swedish Kronastan, guess that's like hundreds and hundreds of American dollars, but that's still a lot of money into kinda getting that Amiga 3000 back running again and all the things you need to connect modern stuff to it. And all you could have done for that money is getting a very decent Macintosh or a modern PC and it would have run circles around that old wreck that you kinda painted up. So yeah, I know Amiga is kinda like putting lipstick on a pig, but hey,I wouldn't want to have it any other way. Love my Amiga.

Poison with waterfall. So next up is To the Jazz and Go Luigi. I finally found a way to say it without sounding like a bloody fool. The song is called Gift Shop.

So when we're speaking about the retro stuff, doesn't necessarily have to do with computers and Amigas and Ataris and other stuff. No, actually, sometimes you can be retro or even go vintage, which is a longer time ago actually, over stuff like audio equipment. And I actually installed a number of softwares that tries to emulate old tubeworms.You know, some of the equipment that was around in the 50s and 60s has a very nice warm sound to it. So I don't know if you can hear it, but my voice is being processed by a very vintage device called a Telekronix leveling amplifier, which kind of gives it a bit of a softer, warmer touch. I don't know, kind of when it comes to people that are into vintage and nerdery and stuff like that, everyone else who listens to them say they must be nuts. Nobody else would care about that.But if you're like that, if you're like me, then I can understand why you like the Amiga.

Lizard King with art of Chrome. yeah, not the web browser, that was many years later. Maybe it's a bit unfortunate, because we sometimes look back into the days that were and kinda liked everything we saw and don't like it so much today, but I guess a lot of things, most of the things probably got better. So, that is how it is, being old and vintage and ancient and all that. Going on with Ross and game me.

Shinobi and Pleasant Dreams. Yeah, I gotta tell you something. I had hoped that this Amiga flashback episode would have covered the revision demo party last week, but as you know, I have been fighting with the technology instead of doing anything good and creative. So I hope that I will be able to collect some of the best highlights of the tracker competition and give them to you next week.So here is a promise which I hope I can really deliver on, going on with PH and the White Tiger from 1991.

The instrumentalist asks, have you seen a white tiger? I have not, I think Roy and the Sigrun Roy are actually not around anymore. I don't know if the tiger is even alive. And here's a little bit of a sad story when it comes to tigers and those big cats and stuff. Most of them are in captivity in the United States actually. There are more of them alive there than in the wild. But that is humanity for you, isn't it?

Man Vs Zandz and Rotagilla. When I read titles or modules that I do not know what they mean I sometimes wonder if they expected that. So they kinda set really really nasty names of things. I know there's a lot of Swedish names that are built this way so people should say those things and yeah they get to laugh at us not understanding that you say something that's really really nasty.So I'm gonna say I don't know what the Rotoguilla means and I don't think I wanna google for it.

Talking about naughty names that you don't really know that they are. Well, a few years ago, in end of the 90s, there was a very nice site called Tharm Saft Font Factory. It's still around, I checked it out. They actually have a number of really useful fonts that you can put into Windows or Mac or Linux and use in your favorite word processing package. They're actually well done, many of them.and the problem is tarmsoft in swedish because it's a swedish site actually means like gut juice or something or colon juice or whatever i don't know really why and the fonts are all called really nasty things that it's in swedish so you don't know exactly what you're saying when you say yeah i'm using this font which is i don't know i think words like chakluder and stuff was around and i don't really want to translate that but that's aThat is a prostitute using drugs and a very... Ah yeah, but the fonts looks nice and many Maviga modules have this as well. As I said, nice sound, but really don't read it out loud.

so we saved the really heavy weights for you. That was Xerxes, picture of her, Norwegian artist Xerxes, and talking about Scandinavia delivering, Jogair Liljedal, the wanderer too, and Jogair has made a number of commercial games and also really really famous Amiga modules and other tracks. So here we go.

27 other episodes of this podcast you can listen to, because this one is ending for today, I have to go home or whatever. Anyway, I checked out this Rottergiller thing, it's obviously something that is quite benign. I'm just saying, this is DJ Daemon saying bye bye now and well, in a week we shall meet again.