Game Designer's Notebook - the birth of Breaking Away

Keeping It Simple - advice on games design from James Ernest of Cheapass Games

GCSE Graphics Course: Producing A Board Game

Tunnels & Trolls: 1984 interview with the designer.

Music To My Eras - musings on musical fashions

Mind Your Language - a rant about people who mangle the English language 

Music To My Eras

Track 5: The Rolling Stones

Whatever happened to these guys? Of all the pretenders to the Beatles' throne, this lot should be most galled by the continuing use of the Fab Four as the rock & roll benchmark. As compensation they have been granted the honorary title of "Greatest rock and roll band in the world". Whilst the Beatles were the good guys, these were the bad guys, appealing more to the boys and the older girls who wanted a man who wanted more than just to "hold your hand". Marketed as fierce rivals and polar opposites to the Fab Four, in truth they were probably sharing girl friends and calling each other every month to make sure they never released a single at the same time.
	One of the crucial things for a band's long term success seems to be the presence of more than one charismatic member (cf. Wham). In the early days, the focus was on Brian Jones and Mick Jagger, and by the time Jones left, Keef was coming out of his shell. The rest of the band were "extras", but surly extras with a strong image. As songwriters, Jagger and Richards are the equal of Lennon and McCartney, and I don't think they get the respect they deserve in comparison with them. Again, Shirley Bassey and Des O'Connor have not covered many Stones songs, although I reckon Des could make a better fist of "Angie" than Jagger (he really is an appalling singer - Jagger, that is; Des is quite good).
That probably explains why Jagger & Richards are not mentioned in the same breath as Chuck Berry, Leiber & Stoller, Lennon & McCartney, Bacharach & David, Goffin & King and Chas & Dave, but up and down the country to this day there are any number of bar bands cranking out Stones covers and going down a storm because of it. As Jagger once said, "it's easy to write a rock song, but bloody hard to write a great one." The Stones have done it time and time again; Satisfaction, Brown Sugar, Jumping Jack Flash, Honky Tonk Women. Unfortunately they haven't done so for a good 10 years now. Had they jacked it in circa 1976, maybe, just maybe, people would be saying "Nirvana? Yeah, pretty good rock band; the best, maybe, since the Stones." Instead, they have become the Peter Shilton of the rock world.
	By 1967, popular music was already fragmenting. Pop and rock went their separate ways, and rock continued to sub-divide into ever smaller niches making it more unlikely than ever that a band would come along that appealed to a broad cross-section of society. America reasserted itself as music capital of the world, although for a further 10 years (until the dawn of Abba), Britain and America had the global market pretty much to themselves. In general, whilst Britain's rock bands - Cream, the Yardbirds, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin - continued to have world-wide success, the pop bands - the Love Affair, Amen Corner, Slade, T. Rex - tended to remain national phenomena. Those that tried to crack America usually failed and came back to Britain to find somebody sleeping in their bed.
America's pop superstars were successfully exported to Britain however, helped by TV coverage - and what a revoltin' development that was ..... Next issue I'll cast an eye over the contenders from the seventies.
	(Hmmm... wonder if I can find the issue of TTYF! that had the seventies in it? - Ed.)

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