Author Archives: Tim Hall

From the Men In Black.

Posted on June 18, 2003 by Tim Hall

According to this well known publication, a central asian power has been relieved of a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Warning. If you read this, they may have to kill you.

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Please, no Val Doonican!

Posted on June 18, 2003 by Tim Hall

BBC NEWS | England | Kent | Oxfam bans Max Bygraves

A charity shop in Kent is asking for records and CDs to sell – as long as they are not by Max Bygraves or Val Doonican.

The Oxfam shop in Canterbury has a sign outside saying it does not want any more records by the two veteran crooners – because it has so many already.

The manager says it is not meant as an insult, and says the large number of albums by the singers show how successful they have been.

Max Bygraves told the BBC there were so many of his records in charity shops because lots of people who bought them originally had died.

In forty years time, will the same shops be refusing copies of “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Led Zeppelin IV”?

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Blue Öyster Cult, Manchester Academy

Posted on June 15, 2003 by Tim Hall

Concert review, Blue Öyster Cult, Manchester Life Cafe, 11 Jun 2003

Last year, after playing little more that a few one-off shows over more than a decade, BÖC played an extensive UK tour of smaller clubs. The reception was so good that they returned, after just a year, to play another ten-date tour. Last time I saw them at the Astoria Theatre in London, this time I saw them up north, in the Life Cafe in Manchester.

The present-day lineup still includes three of the original members, guitarist and frontman Eric Bloom, who’s sadly lost his Jeff Lynne style-perm, lead guitarist and vocalist Buck Dharma, who now looks like a middle-aged accountant rather than a yuppie accountant, and keyboardist and guitarist Allen Lanier, who I’m half-convinced is now some kind of vampire. The replacements for the original rhythm section of Albert and Joe Bouchard are Danny Miranda on bass, and one time Rainbow and Black Sabbath drummer Bobby Rondinelli.

There’s something about seeing an established band in an intimate small venue with an audience made up mostly of hardcode fans. I met several people that had been to every gig on the tour, even to Aberdeen, and the band clearly fed off the enthusiasm of the audience.

They decided to vary the setlist a lot on this tour, resting several of the usual standards and dusting off some less well-known numbers that they haven’t played for years. I was told that they’d played 37 different songs on the tour so far, and attempted to play one or two others that got abandoned when Buck Dharma realised Eric Bloom had forgotten the chords! Some of the surprises were “Tattoo Vampire”, “Unknown Tongue” and the funky “Shooting Shark”. We even got two songs from the often-reviled 1979 album “Mirrors”, although I found the atmospheric epic “The Vigil”, a song about a whacko flying saucer cult, one of the highlights of the show.

All in all, a great show from a band that prove they can still cut it live, 32 years after their first album. Just about the only fault in the whole show was that they didn’t play what I think is their best song, “Astronomy”.

Setlist

Dr Music
OD’d on Life Itself
Pocket
Flaming Telepaths
Unknown Tongue
Tattoo Vampire
Shooting Shark
Divine Wind
The Vigil
Lips in the Hills
And Then Came the Last Days of May
Godzilla
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper

encores

Burning for You
Cities on Flame
The Golden Age of Leather

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Game Wish 51

Posted on June 15, 2003 by Tim Hall

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 51: New Genres

What are three genres that you’ve had limited exposure to as a gamer that you’d like to try or play more of?

First, an Alternate Earths/Parallel Universes game. I love the parallel worlds defined in GURPS Alternate Earths, and a campaign using those worlds as the setting is one of the games I want to run ‘someday’. I’m not totally sold of the Homeline/Centrum conflict as the theme of the game, and I’ve thought about using something along the lines of Luther Arkwright’s Disruptors as the bad guys. A convention-style one-shot at a future Gypsycon or Hatcon cannot be ruled out.

Second, a realistic hard-SF Game, either Traveller or GURPS:Transhuman Space. I did play in a Traveller PBMB on the CompuServe RPGAMES forum called HST which ran rather slowly for a couple of years before fizzling out, and played in a Transhuman Space demo game at last year’s GenCon UK, but it’s still a genre I haven’t played nearly enough of. Transhuman space comes over to me as a setting very rich in adventuring possibilities, especially in the lawless deep beyond; the outer fringes of the 22nd-century Solar System.

I also haven’t played nearly enough Call of Cthulhu. CoC is still the Gold Standard for horror games, even if some people can’t grasp the concept of a game when the point of the game isn’t to gain XPs and go up levels, but merely to defeat the monster, and that character survival is a bonus.

Finally (I know we were only supposed to list three), In Nomine, SJG’s Angels and Demons game, the ultimate Good vs. Evil struggle. The original French game (which I haven’t played) was essentially a satire on French Catholicism, while SJGs translation is a rather different beast. It’s able to be played in many different styles, not all of which are in any way irreverent or sacrilegious. While the whole concept is going to upset those fundamentalist twits who were burning D&D a decade or so ago, it can be played as a deeply religious game with a strong sense of morality. Sadly it’s probably going to be eclipsed by White Wolf’s Demon:The Fallen, which I suspect is full of typical White Wolf angst and pretentiousness.

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Dodgy Masking Tape?

Posted on June 15, 2003 by Tim Hall

Ever resprayed a model locomotive, and used dodgy masking tape that pulls the paint off? By the look of this, the same thing happens to full-sized trains as well….

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Beeching II?

Posted on June 15, 2003 by Tim Hall

A posting in the SWRG mailing list led me to this article in last week’s Sunday Mirror

ALASTAIR Darling has ordered a “summer summit” to pave the way for the biggest reductions in rail services since the infamous Beeching cuts of the 1960s.

The Transport Secretary is poised to close dozens of branch lines to fund a new rail “super-highway” connecting major cities.

The plan is to be discussed this week, prior to a crisis conference in July when Mr Darling will ask experts to prepare a radical overhaul of the system.

I’m sure I’m not the only person that believes that the financial crisis facing Britain’s railways isn’t because of loss-making rural branches, but the total inability to control the costs of large-scale projects on busy main lines, a consequence of John Major’s hopelessly botched ‘privofragmentisation’, and New Labour’s perpertual failure to recognise just how broken the structure is.

The Sunday Mirror lists the lines ‘under threat’

SCOTLAND

Inverness to Kyle

Inverness to Wick

Helensburgh to Fort William

Helensburgh to Mallaig

Aberdeen to Inverness

WALES

Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth

Shrewsbury to Pwllheli

Heart of Wales line between Swansea and Shrewsbury

Whitland to Pembroke

NORTH OF ENGLAND

Carlise to Carnforth via Whitehaven

Middlesbrough to Whitby

Settle to Carlisle

EAST ANGLIA

Norwich to Cromer

Norwich to Great Yarmouth

Norwich to Lowestoft

Ipswich to Lowestoft

SOUTH OF ENGLAND

Ryde to Shanklin (Isle of Wight)

DEVON AND CORNWALL

Exeter to Branstaple

Exeter to Exmouth

Newton Abbot to Torquay

Liskeard to Looe

Par to Newquay

Truro to Falmouth

St Erth to St Ives

Note that I don’t believe for one minute that the list comes from any official document; my guess it’s the product of Mirror hacks looking at a map. I notice there’s no mention of any branches in the Home Counties.

While I don’t believe every last branch line deserves to exist in perpetuity, and some, like Par-Newquay or the Central Wales line really do need to justify their existance, it should not be for some London-based bureaucrat to decide their fate. That should be up to the people of Cornwall or Wales.

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Braaaaaaap!

Posted on June 13, 2003 by Tim Hall

I suspect Bigwig might be going to go to Hell for this.

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It’s carnival time again!

Posted on June 12, 2003 by Tim Hall

Nobody Expects the Carnival of the Vanities!! Bring up the Comfy Chair and read!

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Final word of the Baghdad museum

Posted on June 10, 2003 by Tim Hall

Now the dust has settled and we finally know something approaching the truth of what happened. David Aaronovich in The Guardian writes on how the director of the museum himself exaggerated and lied to the much of the world’s media, and was widely believed. Not just by us outraged liberals, but by the philistine freeperoids too.

The right wing of the Blogosphere will probably use this as an excuse to crow, and indulge in yet another spiteful orgy of liberal bashing. But the right wing of the Blogosphere doesn’t really come out of this with any credit. After all, they too fell for exactly the same lies.

In their posts and and-hominem attacks in the comments sections on some liberal blogs they showed us just how philistine, viscious and mean-spirited some of these guys really are.

Update: Making Light has plenty more to say, and says it much better than I even could.

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Anglo-Saxon Scouts

Posted on June 10, 2003 by Tim Hall

I didn’t think Boy Scouts were allowed to use words like this.

Photo from the Internation Scout Centre, Kandersteg, Switzerland.

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