Last weekend in Victoria was busy. There was the parade, the hordes of American band nerds, the cruise ships and holidayers, personally I had a wedding to attend and DJ and then there were the kids dressed as olden tyme Victorians crossed with Mad-Max. Steampunks.
Taking my grandparents for a stroll around Victoria I noticed some Goth looking kids all dolled up in frilly dresses and corsets. one person commented that it might grad attire for a local highschool and we left it at that.
Later that night I was DJing at the Veneto Lounge and Miss Rosie Bitts stopped in for a cocktail and bite after a gig. She had just performed at the Empress Hotel for Victoria’s first Steampunk Expo!
Wow, I wish I had heard of it earlier, seemed very cool. It might be hard for me to explain here, real nerd stuff, but check out the wikipedia on Steampunk if you are curious.
While trolling the world of steampunk I discovered a story about a robot named Boilerplate.
The idea of steampunk is that is a fantasy or alternate history type of story where the technologies of the Victorian and Edwardian age either live on or information technology is “invented” at an earlier time. Think a steam powered computer for example?
Boilerplate is the story of a robot build in 1893. History’s Mechanical Marvel, created to end human causalities during conflicts between nations!
Watch the trailer.
When Paul Guinan created Boilerplate as an online project back in 2000, it seemed so real that many people actually believed that some mad scientist invented Boilerplate!
Check out the website.
At the top of this post is a picture of Boilerplate from the album cover of Stars’ 2008 digital ep, Sad Robots.
Neat.
I wanted to know more about Steampunk music… but what I unearthed, was… well terrible.
Some group called Abney Park… oy vey. Super cheeseball and they seem more interested in selling brass goggles and t-shirts than crafting some unique music.
And yet the idea of what steampunk music might sound like to me is fairly intriguing. I might stew on that a bit to hear some elements that might soundtrack a Steampunk Space Exploration!
I am sure it will include this jump-point song.
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I do loves me some Tommy James and Shondells! Yesterday, god bless Pol Plastino and his lovely lady Hannah. Hannah works at Chapters and was able to track down a copy of Tommy James’ biography; Me, The Mob, and the Music.
So far so good. There will be lots of inspiration for a new playlist to develop for my lounge sets at The Veneto. This Wednesday night is the one year anniversary of the Rialto Hotel and the Veneto Lounge and I think I’ll base a set list on AM Top 40 radio of the early to mid-60s with some b-sides and interesting selections from Roulette Records. I’ll need to take some notes tonight and track down some songs to mix into my standard weekend fare of Motown, Atlantic Records, Standards and Northern Soul jams.
There is a lot going on with Roulette so it might take some time to suss out the gems.
Go with yourself.
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