The Story I Made Up

Remember when I was doing that series, where I posted about all my EverQuest characters, or some of the older ones anyway? Probably about three or four people actually enjoyed those posts but they had the huge benefit for me of being something I could always drag out if I was completely stuck for ideas.

That hardly ever used to happen. I had more ideas for posts than I had time to write. Not any more. I've been at this for - what is it? - coming up for fifteen years now. Maybe I have finally said everything once, to quote David Byrne. 

Which reminds me. They - and by "they" I mean I have no idea who but probably someone in the band, maybe? - found an old demo tape of Talking Heads doing some numbers from the first album, before they were even a four-piece. I think it must have been Byrne, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz. Jerry Harrison would have come over from the Modern Lovers a little later, I imagine.

I don't why I'm guessing. I could just go read the news item where I heard about it, of which so far I've only glanced at the headline. Let me do that a sec, just so I know what I'm talking about...

Ah, that's reassuring. I got most of it right. It's cuts from the first two albums, though, not just 77. 

The first two Talking Heads albums are two of my favorite albums of all time, even if I haven't listened to either of them in twenty years. I am not good at going back and listening to old stuff, even old stuff that was very important to me once. 

I was talking to someone at work about that the other day. It's been three years since Lana del Rey last released an album and I find I'm listening to her less than I was. It takes that continual drip of new material to keep me engaged, apparently. Just sheer quality isn't enough. How shallow I am.

I bet those first two albums hold up, though. Talking Heads were unimpeachable for a while back then, until they turned into the New Wave's answer to Steely Dan. 

Not to denigrate the Dan. Does anyone call them that? "The Dan"? I very much doubt it. 

Mrs. Bhagpuss and I were talking about Steely Dan just the other day, which I would like to point out is not something we would normally be caught doing. 

We were watching an old edition of Pointless on YouTube, which very much is something we would normally be caught doing, especially at tea-time, and there was a question about the Beach Boys Top 40 hits in the UK. I remembered a few but there was one I thought might be a good bet for most people not to get, which was the one where they look back at their early days and get all nostalgic about them. 

I couldn't remember what it was called and I complained to Mrs, Bhagpuss that the main reason I couldn't was that I kept thinking of the Steely Dan song "Do It Again" and it was blocking me from the title of the Beach Boys song, which was something similar. And then the Beach Boys song came up, as a pointless answer, and it bloody was "Do It Again", so I had remembered it, even though I didn't know I'd done it. Bloody Steely Dan!

Anyway, that led to a discussion about how Steely Dan made two great singles, namely Do It Again and Reelin' In The Years, before they became so ultra-professional only other professional musicians could stand to listen to them. The same thing that happened to Talking Heads, give or take. 

No-one wants rough edges on a coffee table but on a band they're a feature. Or can be. Smoothing them all off is a mistake.

I wonder what those demos sound like. Shall we find out? Together.

Well, that was lovely. I wouldn't call it "raw punk minimalism" though, would you? Would anyone? Maybe they mean some of the other tracks on the 3CD set because that version of Psycho Killer sounds more like psych-folk than punk.

I saw Talking Heads in... when would it have been? Going to have to look it up...  May 1977, supporting the Ramones. I'd be lying if I said I remembered much about Talking Heads' set. I really only remember the Ramones for the bit when the power went out and they all stood there like puppets with the strings cut.

I really need to get on and write down all the gigs I went to before I lose the whole lot. Maybe that could be a feature. Bhagpuss name-checks gigs he went to half a century ago and tells everyone he remembers nothing about them. I can see that being very popular.

To quote David Byrne again, how did I get here? I sure didn't sit down intending to write about New York art-punk in the 1970s. Good example of how you always have something to write about even when you don't know what it's going to be, though, isn't it? Or maybe that should be I always do.

Ah! Now I remember! Back to the thing about my EverQuest characters and how handy it was to have that feature to fall back on, whenever I couldn't come up with anything better. If I ever needed a backstop like that, this is the time.

So, I've had this idea floating around for a while, now. Months. I thought I might go through all the zones in EverQuest II and reminisce about them. I thought of doing EverQuest but Wilhelm pretty much covered that for the 25th anniversary. I don't think anyone's done EQII though, or certainly not recently.

Obviously I wouldn't do all the zones. There must be a few hundred by now. Just the ones in the original game and maybe a few favorites from the early expansions. That should last me longer than than the rest of my life, given I'd probably only do a post every few weeks. Or more likely months. 

Today won't be the first because look! I've done a post already! I'm just putting the idea down in writing in the hope it might make it happen. 

Of course, it might help if I was actually playing EQII, like I was when I came up with the idea, but I imagine I'll be back in Norrath soon. Well, if I ever get to the end of Baldur's Gate 3. And if I don't go from there to Project: Gorgon, which I keep thinking I might.

There we have it, anyway. A potential new feature that will only appear when I can't come up with anything more interesting and which almost no-one is going to want to read. I bet that's sold it to you all!

Now all I have to do is come up with a snappy title...