Sorry for the lousy and uninspiring title, but in this little blogupdate I want to talk about Songs from Movies, games and the like(not sure if there is more to it though).
but first! I would like to claim that Somewhere this weekend I’ll take some pictures from my LARP outfit and tell something about things to come. Also, I am listening to the Imperial March as I type this, therefore i cannot be held accountable for anything I type and/or promise.

Now then, back to the songs and the like. I’ll kick off with one described before and one all of you will know(save if you really lived under a rock for a few decades); The Imperial March!
Composed in 1980, John Williams made this song for Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back, it’s a classic almost anyone will recognise(and a lot will like it):

Along the same lines, also from Star Wars, I’d like to present to you: The Chalmun’s Cantina. While very few would actually know this song if you mention it, quite a few(I think) will recognize it, and if not, they will like the song all the same. Composed by John Williams for Star Wars IV: A New Hope:

Next up: a gamesong! one of the oldest I know, but one that does memory relive and is still awesome to listen to. Composed by Frank Klepacki for Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn(the first game) in 1995:

After last one, I can only mention one more gamesong from the same author(but composed in 1998 for C&C: Red Alert): Hell’s March!:

Now, by now most of you will feel where this will be going(what can I say, I like rock/metal) but I will try to steer a bit ofcourse with the next one. While there aren’t many songs that keep stuck in my head that I would actually remember as beautiful from a game or movie(or it must be promoted VERY upfront) I still remember this old beaut:
Amazing Grace from the movie Braveheart(where I heard it first) However, seeing not all of you would like the bagpipes featured in it and because all I could find was the bagpipes only versione(while there is actual singing in the movie version) I decided to settle on an awesome version of it sang A Capella in the 70s by Judy Collins and a Choir. Composed by John Newton around 1772:

With the next one I will probably flabbergast the lot of you, as I am a rather big claimer I would never listen to such music….there are always exceptions though, and this is one of them.
Lil’ John and Eastside Boyz – Get Low;

From the same game I bring a song which would sound a lot more familiar to me, Black Betty by Spiderbait(not sure if I featured it before, but who cares)(and ofcourse I can only post some crap version of the song because Universal want to pretend it’s butt has all the rights to everything related….ugh):

From NFS: Underground 2: Riders on the Storm – Snoop Dogg vs the Doors, a dub by the Dee Oo double G over the original track, which I like(my hand still goes to the shift button to shift gears when i hear it):

Back to moviethemes I say, now with a theme that is as legendary as the actual movie itself, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly: Composed by Ennio Morricone in 1966:

I’m starting to see that there is no recent movie in the line-up, then again, I find most of the music of recent movies doubtfull at best, but, as always, there are exceptions, and luckily Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen changes that, with a nice, gruff, rough, hard song by Nickelback(PLEASE forget their lousy soft popsongs and expect good hard rock):

lastly, the song that started this post, it’s from a game I just completed and I just can’t get enough of this song. It’s the main theme to Divinity II: Ego Draconis and it’s composed by Kirill Pokrovsky somewhere last year:

and that’s that as far as i’m concerned, but I’ll throw in one teaser, it’s a nice one I promise:

Righto, another year’s past since the last EFF and some of you may remember I posted a picture of me, my shield and shoulders(+gorget) back then.
I also claimed more of my costume would follow sometime, but that the beginning was there.

The beginning of this year was about marked by a LARP event we(me and my mate Steven) attended.
on that event I had an awesome picture moment
The only downside of that picture, it’s my old costume you partially see there.
What has changed/not visible then?
– The cuirass is now adepted so I can actually sit down, and it looks BAD ASS!
– The length of the straps on my greaves are extended, so I can wear them(hooray! they won’t go for my shins so fast now!)
– The shoulder you lot see is replaced by a leather one
– I have a new belt which is a _lot_ longer(1.75M(5.7 feet))
– I actually have 2 short swords, one you can see in my hand, the other one peeks from behind my shield.
– The swords vary greatly in weight and lenght, the one I’m holding is the lightest and has a very easy swing. The one sheated is a very crude and heavy sword I use a backup should I be disarmed
– I have a proper IC pouch now for all the IC coin we make(I hoard the coin of my mate as well )
– The pouch is filled with various precious looking stones and some IC coin
– A warrior’s pouch, mostly filled by OoC stuff
– There is now a band with the clan logo(a wolf) added to my leg
– My shield now has a strap so I can hang it on my back(I had to walk the whole event with that shield in hand(very annoying for certain situations))

Seeing the next event is next week, I’ll try if i can get a picture of it and upload it here.

Other then that, the first event we attended, the Dwaler 9(the Stray 9) was pretty much EPIC.
The event is based around a tavern somewhere in the Schwarzwald in Mythic Europe. Yes, MYTHIC Europe, meaning it’s Europe as you know it, but with Mythical elements. That is basically with Magic, Elves, Drow, Vampires, Orcs and so on and so on.
When we(Pascal(me) and Keidas(my mate)) arrived on a late friday night we did the introduction and wandered through the woods afterwards and decided to go home when it was real dark.
The next day we walked to the main camp and stood there for a while, and it was not very long until a pointy-ear(Elf) approached us with the question whether or not we were for hire.
Seeing we both play Mercs that wasn’t the problem, as long as they paid up(my exact quote, just add a rawish voice and a money-hungry grin). And so it came to be we were part of the Militia.
That day was filled with various battles as well as numerous word exchanges between us and some random other player, a whole group was even denied for a few hours by the Jarl(Viking king/leader), a player whose group decided they would lead the whole camp. I must say, they became rather creative after a while.
The short version of it: We got promoted to Guardmasters and we gained the privilege to kick various other smalltime members around in the Militia, something my character enjoys doing so, and I am hinting to the literal kicking.
Sunday we were asked to join a Vampire hunt by the Vikings. Our weapons were blessed by a ritual, as well as ourselves.
With about 15 men we hiked to the Vampire camp to supposedly eradicate them once and for all, so we conquered their camp and chased them off, by that time only 10 of us were left, and we marched back to the village.
We where halted by a ritual we joined the fray and closed that same fray about an hour later. Then we finally marched back to the village only to have the most unpleasant surprise, the whole village was waiting for us, and I don’t mean the nice variant of the said waiting, with the slaughtered Vampires up front(bearing a wide grin of course)
So, at that point we looked at each other and shouted ‘For Odin'(our warcry) one last time and stormed into the waiting players.
Seeing we were outnumbered 5 to 1 I don’t have to mention the outcome.
Somehow my character managed to survive(hooray for the ‘It’s nothing personal, I was just paid to slaughter you’-card the Mercenary can play) and as such we were reinstated as the watchmasters we were(save for a few minor conditions).
and with that my major roleplay ended that day, there was of course a traditional(or so I was told) end fight(the ~30 Players versus about 50 NPCs) which I also managed to survive by standing behind them all(no armour or health after the first wave with a boss).

and next weekend we are going to see how it goes on a different event.
My character there, Pascal, will be opting for a Paladin(but not a holy goody-goody, the Merc kind) along with a set up clan(don’t know all the details, but Merc afaik)
I’ll see if I can let you lot know more about it. For now, till next time

An eleborate title I hear you think, well, let me explain it.

I have chosen this title and it’s fault is a new album from a female Dutch(hey, it ain’t much if it ain’t dutch 😉 ) singer under the name of Caro Emerald.
Her sound is described as ‘a mix of 1950’s inspired ballroom jazz, cinematic tangoes, groovin’ jazz tracks, infectious mambo’s and banging beats’ and I must say, they are really spot on.
I’m listening to it as we speak, and I must confess that to the tunes of ‘That Man’ and ‘Just One Dance’ I couldn’t help but moving and snapping my fingers to the catchy beat.
And then you go to some nice relaxing tunes of ‘Riviera Life’ and swing slowly back into the catchiness with ‘Back It Up’.
The last one also happened to be her first single out here in the low lands, sometime last summer, to which I met her sound… and I loved it, but as always, lazy old me forgot whom she was(never caught her name on the radio on the work, always something coming up between it) and as the single got played less and less I slowly forgot about her, but enjoyed it when the track boomed through the ether.

and then, this year, her second song was released. And following closely was her album ‘Deleted Scenes From The Cutting Room Floor’, which I ordered, the first real(as in touchable, not digital) album for me in YEARS. though it will be gathering dust on my shelf as my harddrive is getting to play the songs to dust I still feel it’s worth it. I just came to song number 5 and only for the first four songs I’d buy it, and her current hitsingle has still to come… it’s just that good.

I don’t know if the album is available outside the nethies, but for your sake I really hope it is, you’ll be craving for it when you hear the selected songs below(and belive me when I say i had a hard time picking the best songs out of it *cough-also-I-picked-it-for-the-title-cough*)
as for the music, I now have moved on to number 6, ‘Absolutely Me’, leaving behind ‘The Other Women’. ‘Absolutely Me’ so far is the most ‘heavy’ mixed song on the album. It’s followed by a very classic(save for the beat) sounding ‘You Don’t Love Me’
I am also very biased to pick this song as the best on the album, but that’s mostly because it sports heavy trumpet use… about my absolute music weakness. Yeah that’s right, I like _almost_ every song with a trumpet in it (a real one, not those fake digital ones 🙁 ) it is my Achilles’ Heel I say!

And Oh eM Gee! ‘Dr. Wanna Do’ is awesome sounding with more trumpets and a louis Armstrong voice in it shouting doo-ba-doo!  just love it 😀 I just picked my 4th song to show to you! by the way, for those who didn’t notice it: I am typing this as I hear the full album for the first time so I might sound somewhat incoherent, it’s the music!

and the Doctor is followed by a very up beat ‘Stuck’ which, as most songs on the album, is making me rock my chair while only stopping me this close from singing along out loud(what’s stopping me is the fact I don’t know the text, but that’ll be fixed in a few days 😀 )
After the happy ‘Stuck’ is a more gravely/French sounding ‘I Know That He’s Mine’… well, not really gravely and not really french either 😛 it has just one of those accordions and it’s really slow compared to ‘Stuck’, then again, everything on the album is rather slow compared to that. but what I mean is that it’s a more serious sounding song, both in the text and the music. Nonetheless it is still a song that feels right in place on the album, a nice change of the pace so to say.
What follows this song is her current hit, which I carefully, but not on purpose(or did I?), avoided to name so far. it is called ‘On a Night Like This’ and it just makes me want to dance to it… that or get a girl to dance cheek to cheek, this one is also sported below.

and unfortunately, the last song on the album (seriously, put more of this epicness on the next one!), ‘The Lipstick On His Collar’ is sounding somewhat serious and cool, not as serious as ‘I Know He’s Mine’, but more along the way of the other song I really love(it was the one popping up a few seconds after the first tunes), Tom Jones – Sex Bomb. I just place her right up there with this song.

to conclude something that doesn’t need/want (strike through which is not applicable) a conclusion; this album is made of Pure Epicness with a good spoon of Awesomeness and coated with Pure Gold.
Should Caro or one of her staff ever stumble across this blog and read through all of my rambling to this very line, I’d like to say: Go worldwide and kick some butt! You really rock with this album! WOOH!

and now for the forementioned songs I promised you lot:

First off; ‘That Man’

followed by ‘Backing It Up’

And here you go for ‘On A Night Like This’

and lastly closed by ‘You Don’t Love Me’

oh alright, and a teaser in the form of Tom Jones – Sex Bomb:

Tha-tha-that’s All Folks!