Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Seven Wishes

Friday, October 28th, 2005

I am now listening to another song, Seven Wishes, by Night Ranger — best band name ever, by the way — and I am convinced the song is about nethack. Even the name Night Ranger is sort of nethackesque.

To analyze the chorus:

Rise to the sun with seven wishes
Will you turn into stone with seven wishes
And your eyes on the run with seven wishes
Seven wishes

First of all, seven is the number of wishes you get from a fully charged wand of wishing (3 to start, 3 from a blessed scroll of charging, and 1 last wish that turns the wand to dust.) The phrase “rise to the sun” is a clear reference to ascension. A somewhat popular choice for a wish in nethack is wishing for a blessed cockatrice corpse, and the inherent dangers of doing so clearly correspond to the question “Will you turn into stone with seven wishes”. I think “eyes on the run” might refer to the “run” back up the dungeon from the bottom once you have the Amulet of Yendor, always keeping an eye out for the Wizard of Yendor showing up to piss you off.

The song was released in 1985. The first version of nethack was released in 1984. Coincidence? I think not! The band members must have been addicted to the game while they were working on their latest album.

I don’t really believe any of this.

Switchblade Serenade

Friday, October 28th, 2005

I was doing a search on the internet today to try to find lyrics to the song Switchblade Serenade by the band Spread Eagle. With numerous sites like lyrics.com, lyricsworld.com, lyricsfreak.com, azlyrics.com… (etc)… you’d think someone would have the lyrics to this song on their website. You can probably see where this is going. Suffice to say, these lyrics do not exist anywhere on the entire internet.

This is not an obscure song. If I recall correctly, it was released in 1990 and the band made a music video for it shortly after.

I did manage to find chunks of the song in one location. [ http://adultfan.nexcess.net/aff/story.php?no=544183567 ] (Update: Link broken) Yes, adult fan fiction. I didn’t really read any of the story itself, but scattered in bold throughout it, for some reason, are some of the lyrics from Switchblade Serenade. This is the best the internet had to offer.

In case you’re interested, I have the song available for download here.
( WARNING: TOTALLY AWESOME HAIR METAL )