Recommended Twitch musicians

If you're on lockdown and are hankering for some live music, well, you can get that on the internet nowadays. Here are some of my favourite musicians on Twitch:

• Plastic Josh
  https://www.twitch.tv/plasticjosh
  Songlist: https://www.streamersonglist.com/s/plasticjosh/songs
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6FfAxaRvMrikzkied5Kduv
  UK musician - guitar (both acoustic and electric) and piano, has a voice of gold. Wide range of music - if I said it was "the kind of music Q Magazine likes" would you know what I mean? Does a fantastic Gethsemane. Made me actually enjoy Radiohead songs outside of Creep. Especially look out for streams where his brother comes along to join him singing on duets. He has his own band "Plastic Sun" and their original songs are great (but a right bugger if you want to sing one in the shower)
• lara6683
  https://www.twitch.tv/lara6683
  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/lara6683
  Songlist: https://goo.gl/6AVr4n
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2v5wjWQZ9ViJUXAetTQcZ6
  Many years ago, maybe a decade by now, I enjoyed listening to some piano covers of video game songs by someone called Lara de Wit. Then about 2 years ago, YouTube decided I ought to listen to a "mega medley that was supposed to be 5 minutes" that goes on for about an hour and a half. By someone called lara6683. And she was just taking suggestions from chat and playing a seemingly endless medley out of it all. Just out of memory. Then after a while, I found out that Lara de Wit and lara6683 were the same person. Her thing is that she's really, really good at learning new songs by ear. If you pay her a bucket of money at the start of a stream, she is likely to live learn a song of your choosing. She's also very good at taking songs and mashing them together on the fly, her improvisational / arrangement skills are fantastic. She is very popular and often gets over 1000 concurrent viewers. Song requests are generally sub-only and at her discretion - so 100 people might request and she'll pick an hour and a half's worth of songs out of the list. 
• ortopilot
  https://www.twitch.tv/ortopilot
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3CckGnXzzJ9GARII95dDek
  Another UK musician, this one's a Northern English singer / songwriter who plays keyboard and guitar and is an absolute wizard with a looper, and makes some solid, funky music. His sound setup is studio quality. His streams are generally a good time.
• supershigi
  https://www.twitch.tv/supershigi
  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/supershigi
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2RnGA202UcoKq6KjzQCbNR
  Laura Shigihara is one of my favourite video game composers. When Plants vs Zombies came out, I loved the soundtrack so much I went and bought it separately and listened to it over and over. In the game To The Moon, her song Everything's Alright is the most perfectly fitting song within a game I think I've ever heard. So when she started streaming, it was like a goddess coming down to earth. She plays keyboard, has the sweetest, gentlest voice, and is generally a super nice person.
• Spence Elliot
  https://www.twitch.tv/spenceelliott
  This guy is seriously as though one of the Beach Boys was born 50 years too late, or something. Has a great voice, plays acoustic guitar and piano. He specialises in 1960s - 1970s music, mainly folk but also rock and stuff. All his song requests are paid. He's really, really good. And really welcoming and friendly too.
• Contracrostics
  https://www.twitch.tv/contracrostics
  Exceptional classical pianist named Matt, from the USA, who has an amazing antique grand piano right there in his house. When he plays, it's like a story. It's beautiful. He'll only play what he wants to, but he's got a ton of classical sheet music, and I've never disliked anything he's played. He doesn't always stream music though - sometimes he plays games. He's a really chill guy and it's nice to watch his gaming streams too.
• knumb the geek
  https://www.twitch.tv/knumbthegeek
  Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/knumbthegeek
  "Folk-punk" American musician named Kevin - amazing on fiddle, also plays guitar and mandolin. Often uses a looper. Sings enthusiastically, though he kinda sounds like Goofy (but, a smarter version). Has a really great, contemplative, wild, brutal, and sometimes funny set of songs on his playlist, some of which he's written himself. Oh and a bunch of American and Irish traditional tunes too.
• Mermaid Unicorn
  https://www.twitch.tv/mermaidunicorn
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6gfQSJ07CJAEvOwKz4sX2f
  Canadian musician Alanna Sterling is one of the greatest talents around at the moment, I'd say. I'm not going to list all the instruments they play, let's just say "all of them", because it basically is. Their song "Monsters Under My Bed" was probably the best original song I heard in the whole of 2019.
• Jonathan Ong
  https://www.twitch.tv/jonathanong
  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwbNxgXSHBjGBUjKHVZS7ZA
  Dr Ong is like a mad scientist of music, from Australia. He's an amazing, outstanding pianist. He also plays flute and saxophone and otamatone. His stream has "The Most Keyboards On Twitch" (TMKOT) - he has dozens of them, all doing different things - and he seems to have an unending desire to acquire more of them. He also has a baby grand in his room which he usually plays. He'll play intricate classical pieces just to warm up, before playing whatever pop / rock / video game music / memes people hurl at him to play for the next 5 hours or so. I especially love when he covers either Muse or Nier on piano. People often pay him to make loops of songs, he'll listen and create his own version, layering and layering and layering. He has really funny animations and overlays too.  I've seen him play a piano with 102 keys (and he broke it just through playing it, I don't think he's allowed back there anymore). I've seen him play for so many hours he literally stopped to go and superglue his fingers back together, and he came back giggling like a maniac. He's just started on some serious compositions too, which are really fine.
• Texasraw
  https://www.twitch.tv/texasraw
  Nice to see an older musician on Twitch. He's from Texas as the name suggests, and he plays hit rock songs from the previous century on electric guitar & kick drum. He's really good but I also feel like he's a bit underappreciated.
• Lemonagogo
  https://www.twitch.tv/lemonagogo
  Singer / guitarist from the US, has a really nice, soothing voice. Her knowledge of 80s pop music is pretty legendary. 
• Venusworld
  https://www.twitch.tv/venusworld
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4BQv8prfL0d4D0qR0q474d
  also Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4nuyPqafby01SAz10TFNU5
  Venus is a singer / songwriter from English, so posh she could play Mary Poppins without having to affect an accent. She writes some surprisingly dark songs, my favourite of hers is "Before You Go". Her community are really supportive and sing along in chat when she sings original songs. She previously recorded under the name Sophie Janes before settling on the name Venus, that's why she has two Spotify channels.

I'm listing nationalities mostly so you get an idea for the timezones they'll stream for. Though some just seem to be on at whatever time they feel like (e.g. Jonathan Ong, Contracrostics, Johnny Kuik). All the Germans speak perfect English because of course they do.

Also worth a mention: SavingMusicLive - this is where a lot of charity music streams are held, Gluecks (German, pianist), Johnny Kuik (UK keyboardist, plays along to a lot of anime music and East-Asian pop), pealeaf (Canadian, pianist), meriamber (Australian, songwriter - writes some hilarious songs), Dan Chapman (amazing vocalist, songwriter, guitar & keyboard), Andrew Telles (piano, keyboard), Tammy Blackmedia (singer-songwriter, guitar & keyboard), CallsignScarecrow (UK, vocals, guitar, large beard), Egglyberts (UK, pianist), Liz Singer (vocalist, covers musicals and pop music, heck of a belt), ka_klick (US, guitarist, sings nerdy songs he's written), Megan Lenius (US singer songwriter, her song Allison is brilliant), Umilele (Ukraine, ukelele), KristyKates (US, guitar, vocals, generally very nice person), theluckmusic (wow these voices! Guitar, keyboard), JadothMusic (German, singer / guitarist), pianoimproman (piano, keyboards), matthewkheafy (US metal musician Matt Heafy from the band Trivium), Luck Reunion (Willie Nelson, Paul Simon & co are going to do a live concert soonish)

And, I don't know if they're gone for good, because they haven't streamed in ages, but these folks are great: Kyle Landry (pianist), ihazabeard (vocals, guitar), BagelRabbit (violin improv)

I Drove All Night

This is one of those songs that I love but also rant about.

It's a great song. There are so many great versions; Cyndi Lauper, Roy Orbison, Celine Dion...  I really like the version by The Protomen too. It's like the Roy Orbison version, but ramped up and more epic.

BUT!

I just want to say to the two guys who wrote this song... "No, it's totally not alright".

Seriously, if I was dating a guy and I thought he was 200 miles away but he got horny and drove up, snuck and crept in to my bed and woke me up by [surprise sexy times] I'd wake up terrified assuming it's an intruder and lamp him. If it didn't end in fatality it would end in "We need to talk".

And you know! You know by listening to the song the guy knows he's doing something terrible, or he wouldn't have to ask "is that alright?" so much. No it's not alright!

And I don't know if this is just what I get out of it, but I feel like he thinks he's earned his sexy times just because he drove so far, and he's going to be mega pissed off and act like a pest if he gets home to "go away, I'm sleeping!". There's definitely a sense of entitlement I get out of these lyrics.

The fact it's sometimes covered by women doesn't make it better. It's still creepy.

And I know this was written before mobile phones so phoning to ask "is that alright" before driving all that way isn't that simple.

This song... I have so many problems with it and I don't think of it as romantic at all, but I still like it, and I really like the various artists who've performed it. I suppose that's a bit weird.

Perfect balance

I just looked up how many people there are in the world. There are 7.7 billion people. I also saw that in 1960, there were 3 billion. So if Thanos did his thing, he'd have to come back and do it every 40 years or so to really achieve "balance".

Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night is a really great game

I kickstarted Koji Igarashi's new super-not-a-Castlevania game "Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night" 4 years ago and got my copy last Tuesday. Played it *a lot*.

It really is a great game. I think it's possibly better than a IGA-era Castlevania game because there are so many weapons to use, leading to so many play-styles, and I do like variety. Other than that - same basics you would expect from an "Igavania". 2D platformer, explore a huge castle, fight some bosses, collect enemy drops and skills, use new skills to explore further... and yes there is a "backstep" button. :)

The story of the game is alchemy / anti-church / experimenting on children / post-apocalypse (hmm, that makes it sound like Bat Out Of Hell 2100. It's not anything like Bat 2100!), but you can happily ignore that if you like. There are both English and Japanese voice options. I played in Japanese (honestly I don't think the English dub for Symphony Of The Night is worth celebrating, I know it became a camp cult hit for its awfulness but I have no attachment to it).

You can also change the colour of blood in the options. I like that you can do that, and I turned blood purple. There are lots of little Easter Eggs too. And cool weird things like... enemies that look like giant heads of people's pets (I think this was a kickstarter reward!)

The only thing I didn't think was great in the design of the game was that with the art they used in the game (which is beautiful); sometimes it was hard to see what's foreground and background, but I got used to it after a few hours of playing.

I started the game pretty much as soon as I could, so I started playing on version 1.01 and a few hours later they released version 1.02, but I read that it messed up the save file so I decided to finish the game as soon as possible and not update until I was done. Well, I don't know if that was the best idea, because version 1.01 was patched because a few of the last boss fights in the game didn't show up on the in-game bestiary list.

So I updated the game with patch 1.02 and started a New Game+ and completed the entire game again. There were a few things changed with the patch. I think poison was nerfed, I beat a lot of the bosses first time round using poison and keeping my distance, but that seemed less potent in version 1.02. Also I thought the secret boss fight with the vampire librarian was much harder in version 1.02.

I got the platinum trophy on PSN for completing every trophy on Sunday night after 5 days and 5 hours of intense gaming (the time taken is logged on psnprofiles). I think it was a really great game.  It's updated to version 1.03 now so everything I said specific to patches is probably irrelevant now too, haha.

I didn't fight IGA because his secret boss fight (not very secret) wasn't patched in to the PS4 version yet. I'll have to return at some point!

Conclusion: well worth waiting 4 years for this game, even though I finished the whole thing twice within 5 days!

Dear world: Meat Loaf's name is Meat Loaf. It's that simple!

One thing that's really getting to irritate me a little more all the time, is how everyone who wants to talk about Meat Loaf is obsessed with either the "origin" of his name, or will insist on calling him Marvin Lee Aday.

If he's in interview, it's often one of the first thing they ask, or if it's an article, they'll be all "Oh but Marvin Lee Aday is his REAL name".

But I know a few different people who have had troubled backgrounds who decided to legally change their name, because they desperately want to be disassociated with that family name, they want to leave that behind, they want to be themselves, they want to be judged on their own merit.

And to dredge up the old name like that, it's a thing you don't do. It's just uncomfortable, rude.

The old name is dead. The new name, that's who they are.

With Meat Loaf, that's his name. His real name. It's also the name of his stage persona, but it's also his actual name. People who know him just call him "Meat" in his life. It's not the same as an actor who acts under a stage name.

Meat changed his name legally several times - he changed it to "Meat Loaf", but he said - he had trouble passing through customs (and for someone was was seemingly on endless world tours, this is a problem) - so he legally changed it to "Michael Lee Aday". The system is happier with this. But everyone on a personal level calls him Meat.

So every time I hear those same words from an interviewer "so the name Meat Loaf...", I cringe a little. No wonder he makes up a new "origin story" every time.

Is Steve Steinman related to Jim Steinman?

I see this question a lot. The answer is no, he is not.

In 1993, a Yorkshireman named Steve Murray was on the TV talent show "Stars In Their Eyes" as Meat Loaf. Later, to help promote his tribute act, Steve changed his stage name to Steve Steinman. Under companies house, his business "Steve Steinman Productions" names Steven Murray as the sole officer.

He has never worked with, or had any association with, Jim Steinman.

Steve has in fact said a few unkind things about Jim Steinman's Bat Out Of Hell in promotion of his own work.

The dream I just had

My brother told me to write down if I dream anything. And I hardly ever dream anymore. So... that was months ago, now. But I dreamed a little dream last night.

I was with a group of Egyptologists, and they'd discovered some ruins... there was a pattern of markings on the floor, moving out of a circle in the middle. In columns like the pattern on a dartboard, I suppose. Each set of markings was a concave etching of some food, with some characters etched deeper into each one. The Egyptologists had figured out the text and had created little trundling machines with arms at the front, sort of like crab claws, but on both sides?

So - we had to let them run over a wide circle, over a pile of rice, but needed to keep picking them up and pulling them back so they wouldn't go to the centre. So that's what we did.

Then something happened and we got called away! I don't remember what for. But we came back and the trundling machines had got to the centre, and had formed a kind of circular pyramid of rice together. Well, a cone shape, but I thought in my mind - round-based rice pyramid, with a smooth gradient. I picked one of the trundle bots up, and accidentally disturbed the pattern, rice spilling out. So I moved the trundle-bot back and put it down to "sweep up" this rice, hoping this would be alright.

And then! Drama! Up / behind us there was a lorry, broken through a barricade on the road above, it came hurtling down, across the sand, and smashed into a warehouse door, breaking through and disappearing. We ran, across the sand, keeping an eye on it. Out from the door of the warehouse, two men came out, carrying guns - one pointing at the other, and the other pointing at the crowd.

Suddenly I noticed I was on a beach with all these people, and I was backing off, trying to get out of the line of sight of this gunman. I noticed other people on the beach were raising their hands, so I joined in, still slowly backing off. Then I noticed one of the people on the beach with his hands raised was my dad, who was smiling and happy to see me. (My dad being on a beach is a very unlikely occurrence, let alone him smiling while being on a beach)

So I stayed by him, but suddenly I remembered the trundling machines, and needed to get back to them... but how to? With these crazy gunmen on the beach?

Then there was some banging, which sounded like someone knocking at the door at my mother's house, so I woke up... before realising I was in my own house, so the sound meant nothing.

Thoughts about senses

Quite often, I wonder about how other people perceive the world, on a really fundamental level. Like, some people are colourblind and some people can see extra colours most people can't. Some people don't seem to have working tastebuds, and other people have the burden of being supertasters. And some people don't care about flavour so much as they enjoy texture. Notably either Ben or Jerry - one of the two ice cream guys, decided to put chunks of things in because texture was far more important to him than flavour. And then there are such things as synaesthesia, which actually seems kind of like a super power if you're a musician. So what if all senses are like that and we just haven't noticed yet or invented language to describe it? And someone could live their whole life sensing things a little differently to everyone around them and they wouldn't know because it didn't come up in conversation, and people tend to assume everyone else is the same and usually have a general fear for not being normal. What if all these differences are actually fairly commonplace? Like, [A] can't distinguish red/green and [B] can't smell the difference between basil and coriander. And [C] can't taste the difference between sugar, aspartame and stevia. I don't know what I'm getting at other than - it's not useful to assume your perception of the world is 100% the same as another person's.

This year's Steam Awards nominations

This is how I voted. If it were possible, I would have voted POLYBIUS on PS4 for the "Mom's Spaghetti" award, because it's the only game this year to really fit the description of having a really intense subconscious physical reaction to a game. But, these are Steam awards. So I nominated Scoregasm since, well, that's a physical reaction too, right? Hahaha.

--

The “The World Is Grim Enough Let's Just All Get Along” Award
 - Zaccaria Pinball

The “Choices Matter” Award
 - West Of Loathing

The “Haunts My Dreams” Award
 - Chime Sharp

The “Mom’s Spaghetti” Award
 - Scoregasm

The “No Apologies” Award
 - Space Giraffe

The “Cry Havoc And Let Slip The Dogs Of War” Award
 - Saints Row : The Third

The “Suspension of Disbelief” Award
 - Roundabout

The “Soul Of Vitruvius” Award
 - Bayonetta

The “Defies Description” Award
 - Mu cartographer

The “Labor of Love” Award
 - Pizza Express

The “Whoooaaaaaaa, Dude! 2.0” Award
 - Mibibli's Quest

The “Even Better Than I Expected” Award
 - Enter The Gungeon

The “Nicest developer” Award
 - HEIANKYO ALIEN / 平安京エイリアン

Neverland Chronicles, June 2100 edition

Some fan material I wrote, in response to the Obsidian Times newspaper which is given away free at performances of Jim Steinman's Bat Out Of Hell The Musical. I think mostly I wrote it because I felt that the Obsidian Times contained information which didn't seem true to me (as a fan of the show) and wasn't funny enough, or contain enough references for fans.

I picture this incarnation of the Neverland Chronicles to be left-leaning, vaguely tolerant but distrusting of Falco, an underground publication that's at times gossip rag, other times vaguely high-brow, and never really taken seriously enough to get into real trouble.

Neverland Chronicles, June 2100 (PDF)