2016.07.21 Push Me Into Watershallow Before I Get Too Waterdeep

3-Players: K, Si, W
Game: Lords of Waterdeep with Undermountain expansion

Location: K

Choice: Si



Game One:

Player	Points
W	207
Si	190
K	177

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

• 
  

Music Notes:


Pet Shop Boys: Very, (1993)

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_(Pet_Shop_Boys_album) :
Very is the fifth studio album by English electronic duo Pet Shop Boys. It was released in September 1993, nearly two and a half years after the duo's previous studio album, Behaviour, and the compilation album Discography: The Complete Singles Collection. Very exhibits one of many turning points the Pet Shop Boys would make to their music, shifting from the subdued electronic pop of Behaviour to richly-instrumented dance arrangements. The content and lyrics led to Very being called their "coming-out" album, since it was during this time that Neil Tennant had publicly discussed his long-rumoured homosexuality.

Very has sold more than five million copies worldwide, and contains five UK singles.


Rolling Stones: 40 Licks (Greatest Hits), Disc 1 & 2

2016-07-13 The Keeng Returns 2

4-Players: K, W, G & Z
Game: Terra Mystica: Fire & Ice Expansion
Location: K
Choice:  Si


Game One:


Player	Points	Starting Race	Faction Bid
K	117	Halflings	0
Z	116	Chaos Magicians	8
G	112	Alchemists	3
W	100	Dragon Lords	7




Board at game end

Final Tally:

• K was declared this week's winner!

Cult Track at game end

Game Notes:

• Bid for factions at start for the first time
• Si bailed at last minute because of jet lag

Music Notes:

Medeski, Martin, Scofied & Wood: Live at Terminal 5, New York (Bootleg - Recorded 2014-12-11)
Eric Clapton: Time Pieces, Vol. 2, Live in the Seventies (1983)

 

2016.06.02 Si chooses, Si loses

5-Players: W, G, Si, Z & K
Game: Imperial
Location: W
Choice: Si


Game One:


Player	Points
Z	131
G	128
W	108
K	105
Si	79

Final Tally:

• Z was declared this week's winner!

Country scores at the end of game

Game Notes:

• Starting influence was decided by bidding
• First time Z didn't start in control of Austria
• Russia was the first country to get to Credit x 5 and end the game
• Si and W were both able to name another song by Procol Harem besides Lighter Shade of Pale but nobody could name a band member

Music Notes:

Sly and the Family Stone: There's a Riot Goin On (1971)
Gov't Mule: Dub Side of the Mule (2015, Recorded New Year's 2006)
  Featuring some groovy cover tunes (including She Said, She said and Tomorrow Never Knows from the Beatles and Lighter Shade of Pale by Procol Harem and also featuring special guests Gordie Johnson from Big Sugar and Toots Hibbert from Toots and the Maytals.

2016.02.18 Return of the Keeng

4-Players: W, Si, K & G
Game: Imperial


Location: W
Choice: Si


Game One:

Player	Points
W	106
K	104
Si	94
G	90

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

• We played upstairs. Classy!
• G was dealt Germany as his starting country. His pleas for a re-deal fell on deaf ears and he was forced to play with the handicap.

Music Notes:

M8trix: Mix 96, Get Yourself Together (2015)

Great mixtape posted on bmbx.com. Get it yourself and get yourself together.

Liquid Soul: Revolutions (2013)

Fairport Convention: Liege & Lief (1969)

Augustus Pablo: East of the Nile (1977)

2016.01.21 Imperial: Meady Beady Big and Bouncy

4-Players: W, K, Si, G
Game: Imperial
Location: W
Choice: Si

Game One:

Player	Points
G	95
W	81
Si	69
K	60

Final Tally:

G was declared this week's winner.

Music Notes:

Circles Around the Sun: Interludes for the Dead (2015)

Former Black Crowes and CRB members jam on the key of GD. This double-cd was commissioned by the film-makers responsible for the video/still montage that aired before and during the intermissions for the Grateful Dead's Fare Thee Well shows this past summer. We only listened to the first two jams before popular opinion forced a change in music. This was unfortunate because we didn't hear either of the two best songs from the set: Kasey's Bones and Farewell Franklins. Neal Casal, the guitarist said this of the latter song: "That song is a tip of the hat to the 'Eyes of the World' vibe; not exactly like the song, but just as a feeling, the breezy feeling about 'Eyes of the World' that was always an important pillar in their catalog," Casal explains. The quartet had originally finished the song at about 13 minutes, but MacDougall kept playing after the other three put their instruments down. "He developed this new, simple theme he was playing over and over again. We all just stood there silently watching and listening to him do this and realized he was not finished yet, so we put our instruments back on and started another theme and developed the second movement of the song. It happened on the spot and we went on for another 10 minutes into an entirely different feeling and sound and ended up with a 25-minute piece of music out of just trying to give Grateful Dead fans a little taste of 'The Eyes of the World.'" Don't fear, dear reader, one day soon this song will find it's way to the air some game night for all to enjoy.


Kamasi Washington: The Epic (2015)

Favourite jazz album of the year. This triple cd treasure trove is the debut for this artist who gained some notoriety for collaborating with Kendrick Lamar on his popular album To Pimp a Butterfly. Just give a listen to the heavy fusion reminiscent of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew line-up: Re Run Home. We listened to discs two and three.

2015-11-19 Cities of Wonder

6 Players: G, J, K, M, Si, W
Game: 7 Wonders: Cities expansion
Location: Si
Choice: Si

Game One:

Player	Points
J	59
W	58
G	58
Si	56
K	50
M	48

Game Two:

Player	Points
K	73
Si	59
M	57
G	55
J	54
W	46

Final Tally:

Player	Points
K	123
Si	115
J	113
G	113
M	105
W	104

Game Notes:

• W & Si were red-shirted ensigns tweedledee and tweedledum
• Much discussion of Malawi (where is it, exactly? for example)
• Every player had their own tiny bag of chips.
• Music programmed by Si and was all vinyl.
• Si offered a prize to the first person to identify the band playing on tonight's first LP.
• G immediately and correctly named Tangerine Dream.
• There was no prize given.

Music Notes:

Tangerine Dream: Ricochet (1975)

First live album by the seminal electro-ambient band, recorded during a 1975 European tour if you can believe that.

Yes: Tormato (1978)

[relayer.com] The album is named after Yes Tor (tor meaning mountain) in Devon, UK The story goes that the band, when first presented with the proposed album cover, didn't like it and someone through a tomato at the artwork. The result went down well and was used, with the album name changing too.

[ultimateclassicrock]Quarrels between Yes members were nothing new, and members came and went on a regular basis, but things seemed particularly stormy during this period. Singer Jon Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman both exited in the following months. Wakeman’s displeasure became particularly evident during an infamous incident when he hurled a tomato at the artwork for the record, which was then titled Yes Tor, after a geological formation in southern England.
“We had paid a fortune for the artwork – which, when we were shown it, we all agreed we had been ripped off,” he later recalled. “It was a pile of brown smelly stuff. I picked up a tomato and threw it at it. … [The title] was hastily changed to Tormato.”

David Bowie: Lodger (1979)

This was terrible.

[AllMusic] On the surface, Lodger is the most accessible of the three Berlin-era records David Bowie made with Brian Eno, simply because there are no instrumentals and there are a handful of concise pop songs. Nevertheless, Lodger is still gnarled and twisted avant pop; what makes it different is how it incorporates such experimental tendencies into genuine songs, something that Low and Heroes purposely avoided. "D.J.," "Look Back in Anger," and "Boys Keep Swinging" have strong melodic hooks that are subverted and strengthened by the layered, dissonant productions, while the remainder of the record is divided between similarly effective avant pop and ambient instrumentals. Lodger has an edgier, more minimalistic bent than its two predecessors, which makes it more accessible for rock fans, as well as giving it a more immediate, emotional impact. It might not stretch the boundaries of rock like Low and Heroes, but it arguably utilizes those ideas in a more effective fashion.

Fleetwood Mac: Greatest Hits (1971)

First compilation released by this band. Later re-released as The Best of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. Before their rise to fame in the cocaine-fueled 1970's, FMac was a dynamite blues band in the electrified Chicago style so popular in the late 1960's.

G correctly identified Elmore James as the originator of Shake Your Moneymaker which is covered very nicely on this album. On the other hand, G was unaware that Black Magic Woman was Peter Green's song and is featured nicely on this album.

2015.06.11 How do you know he's a king?

Board at end of game

5 Players: W, K, Si, M, G
Game: El Grande: Intrigue & The King
Location: W
Choice: Si



 

Round One:

K(35pts), G(33pts), W(32pts), M(24pts) & Si(21pts)

 

 

 

 

 Round Two:

G(68pts), Si(60pts), K(59pts), W(56pts) & M(55pts)

 

 

 

 

Round Three:

G(89pts), Si(83pts), M(81pts), W(79pts) &  K(76pts) 

 

 

 

 

Final Tally:

G was declared victor for this week.

 

Notes:

• W presented tonight's music
• Later start than normal thanks to fun fair lag
• Game cube is recommended for future sessions of EG 

 

Music Features

 

 

Moby: Play (1999)

[Notes from AllMusic.com] ... another leap back toward the electronica base that had passed him by during the mid-'90s. The first two tracks, "Honey" and "Find My Baby," weave short blues or gospel vocal samples around rather disinterested breakbeat techno. ... Surprisingly, many of Moby's vocal tracks are highlights; he has an unerring sense of how to frame his fragile vocals with sympathetic productions... Moby shows himself back in the groove after a long hiatus, balancing his sublime early sound with the breakbeat techno evolution of the '90s.

 

 

 

<<rinôçérôse>>: Music Kills Me (2002)

 

[Notes from SlantMagazine.com] Somewhere near the southern French metropolitan home of Daft Punk, Air, and Mirwais, a little band of academic psychologists-cum-rockers dreamt of becoming guitar gods. The band, Rinocerose, released their deep-house-meets-rock-riffs debut in 1999 and rode a wave of French techno buzz to critical acclaim. Rinocerose's Jean-Philippe likens his band's second full-length effort, Music Kills Me, to Andy Warhol's "Catastrophes"; it's a neo-disco concept album that might have sounded a bit more relevant in the decadent days of Studio 54. Yes, Music Kills Me is about "death"—or at least that's what the album's song titles will have you believe. But for all its references to suicide, funerals and paths to heaven, Music Kills Me is a rather upbeat record. The first single, "Le Summer Rock" ("Rock Is Dying"), is a synth-laden disco-funk workout with a bright, albeit lyricless, hook. The title track fuses a "Hungry Like the Wolf" guitar riff with AC/DC-inspired power chords while the sleazy house track "Dead Flowers" pays multi-layered homage to the Stones. Live flutes float above the bubbly house excursions "It's Time to Go Now!" and "Resurrection D'Une Idole Pop," which features sampled vocals by the late Steve Marriot of the Small Faces fame. The songs are scrumptious morsels but the album as a whole is quite redundant, stuffed with P-Funk-lite dressed up in showy French techno.

 

St-Germain: Tourist (2000)

 

[Notes from AllMusic.com] Since the advent of acid jazz in the mid-'80s, the many electronic-jazz hybrids to come down the pipe have steadily grown more mature, closer to a balanced fusion that borrows the spontaneity and emphasis on group interaction of classic jazz while still emphasizing the groove and elastic sound of electronic music. For his second album, French producer Ludovic Navarre expanded the possibilities of his template for jazzy house by recruiting a sextet of musicians to solo over his earthy productions. The opener "Rose Rouge" is an immediate highlight, as an understated Marlena Shaw vocal sample ("I want you to get together/put your hands together one time"), trance-state piano lines, and a ride-on-the-rhythm drum program frames solos by trumpeter Pascal Ohse and baritone Claudio de Qeiroz. For "Montego Bay Spleen," Navarre pairs an angular guitar solo by Ernest Ranglin with a deep-groove dub track, complete with phased effects and echoey percussion. "Land Of..." moves from a Hammond- and horn-led soul-jazz stomp into Caribbean territory, marked by more hints of dub and the expressive Latin percussion of Carneiro. ... if another step on the way to a perfect blend of jazz and electronic, then Tourist is an excellent one.

 

Kruder & Dorfmeister: DJ Kicks (1996)

 

[Wikipedia]

DJ-Kicks started out in 1995 as a compilation of electronic DJ club-style mixes in the techno or house genres, with the then-novel twist of being targeted to a home listening audience... As of September 2014^[update], there are 49 releases in the series, with a release rate of roughly two to three new ones each year. Some of the DJ-Kicks mixes are very popular and counted among the regular albums of the compiler, most notably the one by Kruder & Dorfmeister. The DJ-Kicks series has been called "the most important DJ-mix series ever" by Mixmag.

[Notes from AllMusic.com] Beginning with downbeat trip-hop including Herbaliser, Statik Sound System, and Thievery Corporation, Kruder & Dorfmeister flow through jazzy drum'n'bass (with Aquasky and JMJ & Flytronix) and techno (with Hardfloor and Showroom Recordings).