Didn’t want to spam that other thread. Just wanted to point out there used to be a band around here that only played covers of video game music.
Back in the early 2000s, I remember the Minibosses had a real following at MIT, especially at Senior House, we came up with some inventive ways to find funding to bring them back to Cambridge to play the dormitory courtyard for some different parties.
Their wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minibosses
It’s funny, I hadn’t thought of them in a while. I was more into Angry Johnny and the Killbillies at the time, just because I just thought they were so truly strange and interesting.
But looking around the crowd of undergrads and grad students that night just going wild for a band playing fantastic video game covers, I was sold. People just absolutely loved the experience.
I found the poster that my friend who did the heavy lifting for the event made, which was also projected as an advertisement before films at the Lecture Series Committee (ie the student 35mm film projection and lecture series club). This is the theater slide - I think it holds up pretty well! That would have been Sept. 14, 2002. Time certainly flies.
Tool and Die is a reference to the local slang of ‘tooling’ which meant working really hard on something, as well as a play on the mechanical engineering ‘tool and die’ makers.
I don’t fully remember who Treachery was, I think they were a student band, maybe led by a vietnamese guitarist who was really into black metal, but my memory is hazy, I might be mixing that up with a different event that I helped book.
But anyway, The Minibosses! Another video game cover band, I saw people go absolutely wild for them, it was very fun : )
(Also, Angry Johnny was really well-enjoyed by the crowd, which made me happy, but they were doing something more like heartfelt twisted gothic country songs.)
The Advantage sound awesome! What a great name too. It’s really nice to see people working on these musical projects out of so much love for the musical material and all the time that people have spent with it. I’m surprised it hasn’t become more of a thing. Maybe it will gradually become more normal.
I also seem to remember a brilliant Nine Inch Nails remix that used a ton of Mario sounds.
Anyway, great idea for a thread!
Good point!
When I saw the title ‘The Nintendo-fication of Jazz’ it made me shudder. I should not have worried. This is great, a thoughtful and fun demonstration of this phenomenon. I do think, however, the title should have been ‘The Jazzification of Nintendo’
I want to cry now… When I was on Fecesbook I had contact with some C=64 composers like Rob Hubbard and others I don’t remember (I quit FB years 2 years ago but my memory is not working properly, unfortunately) and I am absolutely sure that some of them still play gigs doing covers of C=64 games.
I was searching for Paul Norman, one of my most beloved composer ever (Forbidden Forest, Aztec Challenge, Super Huey just to name some few) but I am not sure he is doing gig nowadays.
If I will find the name of the bands I will update the post here!