Hm, what? No reason. Any day is a good day for Norwegian black metal.

I’ve had a fragment of a tune in my head for 16 years. It began with the intro to the PC game Syndicate, in 1993:

Later I learned where they stole it from:

Gustav Holst – Mars, Bringer of War, 1914-16

Turns out everybody’s stealing from Holst. Listening to The Planets is like listening to a modern movie soundtrack. Did you hear bits of Star Wars in there? This one is more blatant:

Hans Zimmer – Barbarian Horde, 2000

Hans Zimmer churns out all these aggressive and pompous soundtracks for aggressive and pompous Hollywood movies. I think I dislike him more than I like him, but it’s close, and anyone who steals this fragment from Mars has my approval. To me, it’ll always be that tune from Syndicate.

Btw, a musical challenge: Where did Therion steal the tune for Trul from? (Answer.)

Whenever I hear music like this ..

.. or this ..

.. I always feel a need to imitate this scene from Office Space:

It would be hilarious. It’s a strong urge. The only thing that stops me is that 1) I don’t know any lyrics, and 2) I don’t have a car, or a driver’s license.

Still, just imagining it is enough to crack me up.

Oh god, I had forgotten that this horrible horrible tune existed. You may have, too, but misery is better when shared.

Richard Clayderman – Ballade pour Adeline

This is one of the most idiotic, pretentious songs ever made. I hates it, I hates it, (and like it).

Gerry Rafferty – Baker Street

It’s not just this track, I hate everything about OK Computer, that truly great and truly awful album. To me, OK Computer stands for everything that’s wrong about people, in general. Whenever somebody says “well, people aren’t so bad”, I reply: “Then how do you explain OK Computer?” And that settles it. Among this album’s many crimes, it inspired Coldplay.

Radiohead – Fitter, Happier

To prove I don’t live entirely in the past, here’s a song I heard from a cellphone the other day. I play it here in the hope of preventing it from becoming some sort of monster hit that eats everything in its way.

Alexander Rybak – Fairytale (Cthulhu version via Dodofuglen.)

This touches my programmer’s heart. Kraftwerk – Die Roboter:

Justice – Stress

(Then watch the parody.)

Justice – Planisphere part 1

Justice – Planisphere part 2

Justice – Planisphere part 3

Justice – Planisphere final

If you take me apart, piece by piece, one of the corner stones is the 1990 album Beyond Belief by the Christian group Petra. For one thing, it introduced me to rock music.

You see, I’m not from around here. I’m a cultural immigrant. The Christian subculture is far stranger than the secular majority realizes. A paralell society. To me, this isn’t just good music, it is the best of the world I left behind when I abandoned the faith. A memory from the Old Country.

In 1990 I expected Jesus to return within the decade. I misheard the title of the next song as the “Last Days“, and it was one of my favourites. The choice was appropriate: The song is about believers who lose their way in the fog, and “never return to the fold”. People like myself.

When I have returned to Petra since, it is partly for nostalgic reasons, but also because their songs were genuinely good, exploring an area of music that was closed to the nonbelievers. I have no nostalgic memories of their earlier material, but it too is good.

This is the world I lived in, and left:

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Gonna ride down from heaven from where they’ve been
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Gonna put this world back together again