GrooveLily

You brought your nintendo, I brought my guitar

courtesy of wikipedia

When I was in high school, it became clear to me that I needed to get my hands on a Nintendo Entertainment System. It had the best games available, games that played pretty much exactly the same as they did in the arcades. I finally saved up and bought one, and many hours were wasted thereby.

When I went off to grad school, I put it into a box and didn’t think about it again until twenty years later, when I read about people using Nintendo Gameboys, Commodore 64′s and NES’s as musical instruments, making a new genre of music called “chiptunes.” A bit more digging in my (cough) copious spare time led me to a band from Chicago called “I Fight Dragons” and their terrific cover version of Jonathan Coulton’s “The Future Soon.” I Fight Dragons’ choice to place the Nintendo front and center in their mix seems wildly appropriate to the content of Coulton’s song–cyborgs, unrequited love, and nerds with crazy power fantasies.

Well, all of this was percolating around my head when it became time to start writing pop songs for Warner/Chappell, in the Katy Perry/Kelly Clarkson vein. I started hearing a song in my head about a teenage boy and a girl playing video games together…and lo and behold, a wonderful free instrument rained down from the internet upon my head: the “magical 8-bit plug” which sounds startlingly like a Nintendo Entertainment System.

I hatched this idea, but once again Val brought it to the finish line with lyrics, vocal, and editing out my not-so-great ideas. [Note from Val: As a person who is truly, spectacularly awful at playing video games, I had a wonderful time inventing a female character who beats the pants off the boys in this traditionally male arena.] Tune in next week for another one, and please let us know what you think in the comments below!