RE-VGM

Muhahah! It’s BAAA-aaack… This year, Friday the 13th appears twice, in January and in October. While most may think this is already looking like a bad year, I’d like to think that this will be most interesting 2023. If some of you listeners may remember, I like to consider myself a paraskevidekatriaphile. This week’s episode, we’ll be talking about some of the superst...

Everyone knows the Lakers, the Celtics, the Suns, or the Nicks. You may even know the Bruins, the Blue Devils, or the Aggies. However, have you ever heard of… the Harlem Globetrotters? They are an exhibition basketball team known for their on-court antics. Once you hear their theme song, you’ll remember their warm-up routines with their red-white-and-blue basketball: passing and bumpin...

2022 will be history in a couple of days. The parties will be dripping in style, decorated to the nines, and loaded with food and drinks. New York will be filled as the crowd gathers to watch the ball drop during the final seconds of the year. The world will see sun set and the moon rise for the new day as 2023 arrives. For this week’s episode, we’ll be playing some video games tracks...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! This week’s episode is the culmination of the 25 Days of Holiday VGM covers and remixes that were featured on Instagram and Twitter. We’ll be playing all 25 tracks in order, starting with Day One. These tracks were from Overclocked Remix, an organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of video game music as an art form. They are...

Okay, so perhaps you’re tired of celebrating Christmas. You know, because of how much more commercialized it has become, how few understand the real meaning of the holidays, and why so many people feel burned out after the 25th of December. How about celebrating a non-traditional holiday known as Festivus! This week’s episode will attempt to match video game music related to parts of t...

Christmas is less than two weeks away, but I’ve decided to celebrate it early. This week, I’ll be gifting several podcast hosts with some tracks, along with covers and remixes. It’ll be a long episode as I talk about several podcasts in particular: Rhythm & Pixels, VGMporium, Very Good Music: A VGM Podcast, A VGM Journey, and Shujin Academy VGM Club. Hopefully, I’ve pic...

Put on your best dance outfit, gather your friends together, and break out the lightsticks! December the ninth of Friday, according to DaysoftheYear, is known as World Techno Day. It is a day to celebrate two things: the genre of techno and dance music, and the birthday of a musician (Juan Atkins) who founded and promote techno. Four on the floor and running at 120 to 150 beats per minute, techno...

See you next year, November. Hello, December… As the last of the leaves fall from the barren trees, and the last of the migrating flocks of birds make their way to warmer areas, the winds blow cold and crisp on your face, nipping your nose and shivering your skin. The sidewalks are getting covered in sporadic wet piles of fallen ice, much to the consternation of workers furiously scrapping t...

Thanksgiving is here, and that means every family member and their friends are gathered together at home. The dining table is decorated with the colors of brown and yellow, from the table cloth, to the name placard. Each seating place has their plate and silverware, set upon a table cloth and highlighted with a tall wine glass. The food table is dressed up with a variety of dishes: a tray of gravy...

This month’s special episode of “On Stage Now” goes across the ocean to Europe, where we feature a delightful and folksy musician who calls herself Alina Gingertail. She plays a variety of instruments, most of them that are traditional and a few that are modern. In addition, she displays a lovely voice that serenades with sweet lullabies and chorus. It’s not enough for me t...

Raise those fists and scream your face into melted madness, headbangers! There’s an important event that we’re celebrating, called “National Metal Day”! If you’re a fan of the movie This is Spinal Tap , then you know that any heavy metal music sounds awesome at eleven. Thanks to VH1 Classic, National Metal Day is celebrated on November 11, the eleventh day of the elev...

It’s a new month, and November is known for more than just Thanksgiving. It’s a special time of the year called National Novel Writing Month, when writers around the world attempt to write a novel of their own creation of at least 50,000 words. It doesn’t matter your level of experience (beginner or professional), your amount of education (self-taught or formally educated), or yo...

Okay, I confess that I have played some scary video games. This includes mobs I encountered that were inhuman: mutated by some genetic experiment, infected by a widespread disease, or conjured by the imagination of the main character. These mobs may jump out of nowhere, ready to hurt with sheer strength or surround in great numbers. The settings of these games are often dark and obscure, with hint...

Yes, October is meant to be a scary month but how about we do something that’s not so scary. I mean, I get scared of seeing people getting severely cut or eaten. I shiver when I hear strange sounds of empty footsteps, creaking doors, and tapping windows. I get freaked out when something gross appears in front of me without warning. So, yes, I’m a wimp when it comes to scary things. So,...

Time for another monthly episode of “On Stage Now”, a special podcast episode in which I feature the work of a musician’s covers and remixes. Our guest for this month is Super MadNES, a tribute band from Southern California that plays covers of video game music in the style of 80s heavy metal. Consisting of four members (Nico Saavedra, Ryan Iyengar, Ryan Bradley, and Josh Seguin)...

Ah, can you feel that in the air? The cold winds are blowing, the air smells crisp and clear, and the leaves are turning brown and covering the ground. Oh, and that pumpkin spice smell from the local coffee store. That could only mean one thing: Fall is here. It’s the changing of seasons as the hot summer become into brisk, chilly autumn. Instead of suffering for a cold glass of water, you c...

Most people today take podcasts for granted: open your favorite streaming service or podcast app, view the plethora of shows, choose an episode based on your moment and mood, and press play. It’s become a part of the regular routine in life, whether it’s working on a deadline, running an errand, cleaning the room or house, or just sitting back with a cup of your favorite drink. For som...

This week’s episode became more that I had bargained for… I was originally going to talk about one composer’s birthday but then I realized “What if there are other composers born in September?” After sending a question out through social media and Discord, I found out there were several more composers born this month. So I decided to extend this episode to include the...

Welcome to our monthly episode of ‘On Stage Now’, in which I feature artists and bands and play their covers and remixes. This month, I present to you the “Keytar Kween of VGM”, Lacey Johnson. Classically trained in music, her main instrument is the keytar, a keyboard played as a guitar. She also plays a variety of other instruments, allowing her to arrange, perform, and pr...

The party is still going on this month, as I talk about one of my favorite genres of video games: role-playing games. These were games in which to you take on the role of a character, based on a certain class using several traits or stats, and go on an adventure that sees you grow from a meager novice to an awesome master of skill. You may encounter many NPCs (non-player characters) to do quests o...

Birthdays, that “important” day of celebration when your mom birthed you into the world under usual, and sometimes unusual, circumstances. It may have been at a hospital after your mom was driven in haste after the water broke, or at a home because it was too late to reach the hospital. Maybe you were born on the same day as one of your relatives, for better or worse. Perhaps you were...

There was a time when video game music (VGM) was considered a niche, something most gamers appreciated but a handful of people enjoyed wholeheartedly. In the last ten years or so, VGM has enjoyed a certain level of popularity; covers, remixes, and VGM-inspired medlies are appearing online (YouTube, Twitch, Spotify, etc) and in the public venues. There are a bevy of musicians releasing albums of th...

Welcome to one of many featured episodes for the podcast, and one I hope to develop as a monthly mainstay. This week, we are featuring works from an artist who does club covers and remixes of video game music.  His name is Theology, an artist who’s been doing production and DJ since 16. He’s done several collaborations with many artists, such as Profetik, Jerry Tebbs of Table 18, and E...

Music has been played and stored on various analog and digital media. While most are recorded and played from streaming services, hard drives, and CDs, there has been a recent interest in older technologies such as cassettes and vinyl. Some may say that having music on MP3 or FLAC makes it more portable and accessible, but there are some who hold their hearts close to magnetic tapes and vinyl disc...

If you remember watching a commercial on TV about two kids looking dreadful as their father gleefully fills the shopping cart with pencils, notebooks, and calculators, then you know that summer is about to end and that school is about to start. The campuses will be filled with students brandishing their best backpack holding their books, papers, pens, and maybe a handheld game system with some gam...