Posts tagged “Mega Ran”

On Monday Google did one of my favorite of recent Google Doodles, this one based on Little Nemo, the old-timey comic strip created by Windsor McCay. You should click this image and enjoy, then come back here for more info:

If you don’t know about Little Nemo, you really should take it upon yourself to get some educamation about him. Here’s some primers:

The Comic Strip:
Little Nemo began as a comic strip at the turn of the 20th century, in which Nemo has a series of short adventures in Slumberland that always end with him waking up in his bed. You can read a whole bunch of these amazingly-drawn strips at the Comic Strip Library here. Here’s an example of one, the famous “Walking Bed” sequence:

Little Nemo: The Walking Bed, 1908

The Animé:
In 1989 there was an animé version of the charachter, Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland. It unfortunately is not exactly stellar entertainment. There’s some excellent animation, but the screenplay went through too many hands. Eventually the screenplay was co-credited to Chris Columbus, of The Goonies, Home Alone, and Harry Potter fame. The whole movie is actually on YouTube right now, but due to the dubious legality of it, you might not be able to watch it for long:

The Video Game
There was also an excellent and quite difficult NES video game that was released around the time of the movie, called “Little Nemo: The Dream Master.” In it you throw candy into various animals and then climb into them and wear them like pajamas, each one giving you a different ability (frog lets you jump high, mole lets you dig, bee lets you fly, etc.). It’s really a classic of the NES, and you can play it online at NESCafe (again, of dubious legality) right here.

The Songs:
The “Little Nemo: The Dream Master” video game, of course, inspired the opening line of The Crazy Boy Floyds song “Scrambled TV Super.” Wot’s that? You ain’t never heard that song? Well, take a listen:

Yes, that’s right: “Sometimes you crawl into a frog, and wear it like pajamas as you hop along your log.” Pretty sweet, I know.*

And then, of course, rapper Mega Ran wrote a song about the video game that samples the 8-bit music from the game! Take a listen:

It all just keeps going! Little Nemo forevah!

*Full disclosure: I wrote the music for the “Scrambled TV Super” song, so I might be a bit biased.

Random (who as Mega Ran has my current “Album of the Month”) has just put out a new music video. A former English teacher, Random has an ambitious project he calls Language Arts, wherein he has a song called “Buggin'” that breaks down Kafka’s famous short story “The Metamorphosis.”

This is everything I love about music and music videos: it’s smart, literate (literally), funny, and catchy. The video matches the lyrics. And I love the black-and-white German aesthetics, the delightfully low-tech special effects, and the wacky antics:

Language Arts Vol 2 is out tomorrow. In the meantime you can pick up Vol 1 at Amazon or Bandcamp.

Link of the Month:
Creator’s Edge Press
Creator’s Edge Press is a truly independent comic book company. They help independent comic book book creators print and publish their comics and get them in front of as many people as possible (including digitally). They’re a young company but they’ve already got an impressive collection of back-issues. Check ’em out (I especially recommend “Jeff“). Support some indie artists.

Album of the Month:
Mega Ran (5th Anniversary Special Edition) by Random
Random AKA Mega Ran has a fascinating story, which I cover in-depth here. This is a re-mastered re-issue of his original Mega Man songs. They’re a fun and funny group that include songs about falling for Dr. Cossack’s daughter Kalinka, fighting Metal Man, and more, all with the actual music from the Mega Man games backing him up.

TV Show of the Month:
Adventure Time: Complete First Season
Easily one of the best cartoons of the past ten years, Adventure Time finally gets the respect it deserves from Cartoon Network and gets a full season 1 release on DVD (though not on Blu-Ray, oddly) instead of the weird collections of random episodes that they’d been putting out until now. If you’re not a fan of the show, well, you should be. It is funny and weird and childish and absurd and subversive. I love it to death. So can you!

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As you may have gathered from a previous post, Carrie & I went up to Seattle on Wednesday to see a hippity-hop show!

The big surprise for me was my introduction to the man known as Mega Ran. He has a fascinating story. He originally called himself Random. Then few years ago he started taking background music from the Mega Man series of video games, mixing it up a little bit, adding a bigger beat, and making raps over the top of that. He gained some notoriety from it.

Then one day he gets a phone call. From Capcom of America. And they basically say, “So… we understand that you’re making songs with our copyrighted music.”

“No, that wasn’t me, uh, that was that other guy!”

“No, no, no, we listen to it all the time here at the office! We love it! We want you to come on down to Comic-Con and hang out with us in the booth. And also, we want to officially license you to use Capcom music in your songs.”

So now (changing his name to Mega Ran) he has Capcom’s official permission to use their music. On the back of his CDs is the Capcom logo. Pretty frikkin’ cool. And also he’s terrifically entertaining! He has a ton of energy and is really funny. He also did an improv game where he had people in the audience hold up props and he did a freestyle that incorporated the props into the lyrics.

He had so much energy, though, that my crappy cell phone camera couldn’t take a good photo of him. Here’s the best I got:

Mega Ran!

If you look close at that photo, you might notice that his left hand has been replaced by Mega Man’s Mega Buster. That happened!

Open Mike Eagle was the headliner, and his set was awexome as always. I again tried to get some shots with my crappy cell phone camera, and here’s the best I came up with:

Open Mike Eagle!

Mike Eagle Gots Them Scary Eyes!

So, yeah, really good show. We unfortunately missed Three Ninja’s set, but it was good to see some friends in the audience. I just wish Mike would (A) come through Seattle more often and (B) play a show on a Friday so we don’t have to worry about being out late on a school night. Carrie & I were pretty much exhausted the whole next day (we’re old).

Thanks, Mike! And it was great to meet you, Mega Ran!