Stevie Wonder – Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours (1970)

James Brown – Turn It Up or Turn It Loose (1969)

Take his advice kids.

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The catchiest eff you in the history of music me thinks.

At The Drive In – “One Armed Scissor” (2000)

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When I was 14, I loved watching WWF.  Hulk Hogan caving Jake The Snake Roberts face in.  Macho Man Randy Savage’s ongoing saga with Miss Elizabeth.  The Undertaker locking Ultimate Warrior in an airtight coffin and suffocating him.   All high points and all, along with the fights themselves, 100% real despite my father telling me otherwise.  Now of course, plenty of years later, I know that it’s just big sweaty men, play acting and in a word bollocks. I probably owe my father an apology.  So, with this in mind, I’m approaching this game tentatively.  Modern day “wrestling is wank” Sull is going to have to take a back seat for the time being to 14 year old “wrestling is ace” Sull…

There are two high score on the Twin Galaxies scoreboard for 3 Bout Count, one of which is for the two player Tag Team Mode, and the other single player being Most Money Earned.  Already this seems like a record for records sake.  Something to have to register it on the scoreboard but I’ll have a go at it nonetheless.  The present record is held by Rodrigo Lopes with a score of $662,900.00.  Considering second place is $49,200.00 I may have some way to go.

The enforced settings are as follows;

Romset: 3CountB
Play Time: 3 Min 0 Sec
VS Time: 3 Min 0 Sec
Tag Time: 5 Min 0 Sec
Continue: WITHOUT
Difficulty: LEVEL 4
Demo Sounds: ON
Credit Disp.: WITH
Level Disp.: WITH
Language: English

Special Rules: This is a Single Player ONLY Variation! Continues are NOT allowed!

When starting you have a choice of 10 different wrestlers whose only differences, on the face of it, are either being lean or fat. Typically corny names such as in force such as Terry Rodgers and Big Bomberder to STD sounding The Gandhara. I chose Terry Rodgers on account of him being the first in the list.

According to the pre game demo, A is punch, B is kick, C is jump, D is go for the count.

On the first attempt I score $4600 whilst being defeated spectacularly but Gandhara. It’s not a fair fight though. He breathes fire and I’m shit.

It turns out that when you go into a grapple you have to tap A as quick as possible to increase a sliding energy bar.  If you have the higher energy when told to stop, you can then perform wrestling moves.   Throw your opponent out the ring, piledrive them, suplex etc.  Nice idea but it all happens so quick that you’re hardly given more than a couple of seconds to win the right to perform the aforementioned move.  So with this in mind I choose a new fighter.  Sod it, if Gonnarhea or whatever he’s called can fire smoke I’m picking Leo Bradley.  That mother fights with chains.  I progress to past the first level with ease, pass the second, which is a street fight,  and return to the ring to then lose to a wrestler whose name I can’t remember but judging by the difficulty he was probably called steep learning curve or something.  I manage to muster up a score of $42,000.  Not brilliant but neither is this game to be honest.

I’m sure there are fans of this game who will defend it’s playability and enduring quality to the very end.  Ricardo Lopes must be one of those to achieve such a commendable world record but to be honest, it’s pretty weak.   The controls are clunky, the grapple system is flawed, and fuckers cheat with fire. All it’s serve to do is re-inforce my adult opinion of wrestingl.  Dogshit.   And with that I begin my final attempt.

I manage to make it through to the 3rd fight with certain ease (perhaps I’m getting the hang of this and may grow to like it?) and I’m yet again defeated.  Oh well,  I manage a score of $48,100 which is a bit shit really.  Never mind. It’s getting submitted anyway.

Next up: 4 en Raya

Liquid Liquid – “Cavern” (1983)

Heard the bassline somewhere before? Yup. Of course you have.

After a fueling up with a dessicated cheeseburger over the road in The Library we peregrinated to the Faversham for final local lads, New Vinyl.  Things didn’t start too great with Danny having to work his way through close to 25 microphones before finally finding one which worked for the entire set to be plagued by sound gremlins.  I blame the sound engineer.  He was ginger.  Anyway, the lads soldiered on nonetheless and even with feedback which would kill a cow it’s hard to suppress songs like Stephanie.  A quick walk down to Leeds Uni Refectory to catch The Bronx meant we caught part of self proclaimed “riff-bastards” These Monsters, who quite rightly were fucked off at having to perform in front of an Hadouken banner despite them not being on until after 4 bands and in 5hrs time.  Anyway, Hadouken don’t have to balls to combine saxophone, metal riffs and screaming like These Monsters did so they can knackers.  The Bronx followed with a full on hardcore punk attack which blew my brothers mind to smithereens.  Play them to your Gran.  Trust me, she’ll love them.

The next intended band were Egyptian Hip Hop at The Cockpit but one them had the squits or somesuch so instead we watched the first few from Shakinouts.  Despite the wanky name they weren’t half bad albeit in a typical british indie band kind of way.  Faint praise?  Make your own mind up eh.  Then it was on to Manchester’s Everything Everything.  Already tipped as one of the sounds of 2010 in the BBC’s annual poll these guys do seem to be trying something other than the aforementioned typical cookie cutter indie band.  The falsetto vocals, syncopated beats, electro tinged, art school nods might be a bit much for some, pretentious perhaps, but you can’t argue they’re different.  Now we’re nearly ten sheets to the wind, and the final surreal twist in an impressive day comes in the form of Hurts.  Not that they themselves are particularly surreal.  Take Ultravox, Heaven 17 and Gary Numan as your primary influences, shove them down a morose Berlin catwalk and you’re more than halfway there.  Then throw that into the surroundings of Holy Trinity Church, add beer and proceed to dance on the pews and you have a genius neon-Gothic Blade opening sequence.  The venue really complemented their sound and unless I get to see them in a church again, I’m not sure I’ll bother.  The night ended with a few swift flagons of mead in A Nation Of Shopkeepers where I managed to hear Frankie and The Heartstrings performing through a wall somewhere in there.  All in all a brilliant day out with much kudos to the promoters for what must have been a logistical nightmare to arrange.  Same thing next year?  Yes please.

Human Resource – Dominator (1991)

Afraid?  Yeah.  Me too.  Well get ready as he promises “I WILL UPLOAD MORE BASS PLAYING VIDEOS.”   More??? There’s no bass in this video!  Crikey.  Only in Japan…