Nerdy Show

My fellow Nerds, a crisis is upon us. As some of you may have heard, a recent high court ruling in the UK has greatly jeopardized the future of the Chiptunes movement. The hardware integral to creating music from current and retro gaming systems is now illegal. This aggression will not stand, man – and we won’t sit by idly while our bothers and sister across the pond cannot pick up their Gameboys and bleep bloop in public. …Did that come out wrong? NEVERMIND.

In response to this ruling, Nerdy Show has created Fight the Power, an organization and movement dedicated to fighting for the rights of nerd musicians and the right to make nerd music of all kinds. Read the Fight the Power Manifesto, join the Facebook Page and find out what you can do to join in the fight.

In this episode we elaborate on the plight in the UK and talk with British chiptune musician, Pixelh8 about his feelings on the ruling, what he’s doing to turn the tide, his upcoming projects, and how BBC America butchers British television. We’re also joined by chiptune beatsmith: DJ RoboRob, calling all the way from Iraq, and yo-yo master and chiptunes rapper: Doctor Popular. All that plus a surplus of cool video game news, Mike gets weirdly (and disturbingly) political, and crackpot Russian conspiracy theories – oh boy!

As though we needed to further emphasize their relevance Chiptunes just recently got its own showcase at PAX Prime!! We also want to give a shout-out to a handful of WPRK DJs who are taking up the Fight the Power cause and dedicating their radio shows to Chiptunes awareness: Flying High in the Mushroom Kingdom, Marc with a C‘s radio show, the Real Congregation and the Freaking Geek Show are doing a combo show for five hours of pixelated political partying! You can catch Flying High in the Mushroom Kingdom in the taint of this Friday night/Saturday morning at 1 AM – 3 AM, and the Freaking Geek and Real Congregation mashup next Monday night/Tuesday morning from 1 AM – 6 AM. These are, of course, Eastern time, so plan accordingly!

This won’t be the last you see of Fight the Power! We have big plans including not just for fighting hate on the chip community, but also fighting big corp wherever they stick their head in the nerd’s world.

 

 Episdoe 29 :: Fight the Power Button [133:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tracks:

1. Aurora (Meet Me In the Strars) :: Anamanaguchi
2. OutBrk :: Sabrepulse
3. Computability Love :: Pixelh8
4. Spiral :: Pixelh8 *NERDY SHOW EXCLUSIVE*
5. Before I Go.. :: .:ikanetik:.
6. The End :: Firebrand Boy
7. Harder, faster, Stronger, Better (DJRoboRob) :: Daft Punk
8. So Say We All :: DjRoboRob
9. SysOp :: ComputeHer
10. Artificial Ocean :: Plain Flavored
11. Crimson Dreams (ft. Doc Pop & Beefy) :: crashfaster Purchase Album
12. Hassle the Dorkening (Doc Pop Rare Demo) :: MC Frontalot *NERDY SHOW EXCLUSIVE*
13. Bedbugs (ft. YTCracker) :: Doc Pop

Contest:

Show Willrow Hood fanlove WIN Star Wars prizes!

Links:

• Read the Fight the Power Manifesto
• The Fight the Power! Facebook Page
• Pixelh8 on E24, BBC News
• Pixelh8 on BBC Look East, BBC Radio 1
• Pixelh8 BBC Look East, Obsolete? at The National Museum of Computing
• Pixelh8 BBC Look East, Obsolete? PART 2
• The BBC article on the court ruling
• Wired‘s Geekdad article on the court ruling, “Death Knell for Chiptunes”
• Check out Doc Pop’s Mighty Boosh App
• Watch the BioShock Infinite trailer
• VGChartz’s article on what the US Military thinks of playing as the Taliban in Metal of Honor
• Crazy Russian conspiracist
• A picture of the “Pixelh8 One 128k”‘s control board
• Real life Koopa skeleton
• Brian’s art for Captain America: The Fighting Avenger
• Homebrew game, Colors, now a legit App
• The Colors gallery
• Lisa Frank parody art

As some of you may be aware, there was a recent UK high court ruling which very well may negatively impact the future of the Chiptunes movement. We at Nerdy Show are staunch supporters of all forms of nerd music, and Chiptunes is definitely no exception.

We will be devoting next week’s episode to talking about the state of affairs but also about a new project we’re working on called, Fight the Power! You can read more about it on that page. You can also get more updates over on our Fight the Power! Facebook Page, where we’ll be posting some educational links building up to the episode’s release next week.

Thanks for the support, and help us Fight the Power!

For the last month we’ve been raving about 8-bit artist and musician, Doctor Octoroc‘s NES-styled rendition of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.  With his massively popular project recently concluded, the good Doctor has had some spare time to breathe and decided to spend an evening with Nerdy Show.  This episode is rife (rife I say) with talk of fan-love projects from Octoroc’s latest concoctions, to a recent assortment of video game fan films – so be sure to thoroughly investigate our links section.  You always do, right?

This episode also marks the biggest comics week of 2010.  There’s a lot of awesomeness afoot,  but the biggest whammy of them all is the conclusion of Norman Osborn’s Dark Reign and the blockbuster Marvel event: Siege.  To commemorate the occasion we talk to all-star Marvel inker Mark Morales, who along with Olivier Coipel does the art for Siege and Thor and who brought us the slick inks of Secret Invasion in the not-too-distant past. Not only do we talk about that whole “tracer” stigma, but he shares with us graphic design secrets of the VHS porn industry.  Aw yeah.  We also interview musical sensation and internet darling, Amanda Palmer and her cohort Jason Webley who talk about their new musical project Evelyn Evelyn – soon to be a comic book!

And as though that  smorgasbord of info-tainment wasn’t enough we also pick apart the science of Iron Man 2 – strengths, flaws, no-prizes and all.  Stay in school.

 

 Episode 16 :: Dr. Octoroc Under SIEGE [140:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tracks

1. 99 Problems Can’t Stop :: Brand-X
2. The 2-2 Blues :: brentalfloss
3. Respectable Girl (I Used to be Such a) :: Diabeats
4. A Campaign of Shock and Awe :: Evelyn Evelyn
5. A Man’s Gotta Do (Doctor Octoroc 8-Bit Rendition) :: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long-Blog
6. Thundercats :: Doctor Octoroc
7. Heads Up, Hearts Down (Acoustic) :: I Fight Dragons
8. Little Future :: The Epic Mounters (Shael Riley & Level 99)
9. Boss Battle Metalman (The Megas) :: Mega Ran
10. Dream Master :: Mega Ran & K-Murdock
11. Mom’s Hometown :: Katana Swordfish
12. Rainbow Road :: The OneUps

Links

• 8-Bit Dr. Horrible
• Teaser Map to Doctor Octoroc’s new big project
• Evelyn Evelyn’s website
• Cynthia Von Buhler – artist of the Evelyn Evelyn comic
• Mark Morales’ art
• Cap’s Warioware D.I.Y. Game
• Amazing short film – Patrick Jean’s PIXELS
• LOLA- the autonomous, walking robot
• DARPA’s “Big Dog” pack mule robot
• The Autumn Society of Philadelphia – Fun Nerdy Art Scene
• Wikipedia article for 80′s cop show Sledge Hammer!
• Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” music video
• The latest on Thmas Dolby’s new album
• FB group for “Yelling ‘SCIENCE!’ into the P.A. system”

Fan Film Links

• Street Fighter: Legacy
• Street Fighter: Beginnings End
• Street Fighter 2: The Later Years
  
• Mega-Man feature-length fan film
• There Will Be Brawl
• Earthbound fan film, EB Saga

Also…  Ask Triforce Mike anything!

Celebrating the chiptunes genre/movement (whichever you prefer to call it), the Nerdy Show team invites British chiptunes maestro, Pixelh8, on the show to give us his take on it. We also have the amazing return of the incomparable Brian Clevinger! We missed him so much!!

 

 Episode 12 :: Blips & Chips [165:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

1. Love Foolosophy (live at Blipfest 2007) :: virt
2. FXLP :: Mr. Spastic
3. Showdown in the Disco :: Pixelh8
4. THEN GOTO 1980 :: Pixelh8
5. You Were Born to Save the World :: Pixelh8
6. Winter Death :: Fighter X
7. Chuck Norristendo :: Superpowerless
8. *7 :: 8 Bit Bandit
9. Running in the 90′s :: Sabrepulse
10. Island in the Sun (Belmont’s Revisal) :: VideoGame Orchestra
11. The Price Is Right :: Doctor Octoroc
12. Hipster Hoax :: Shael Riley & the Double Ice Backfire
13. Heads Up, Hearts Down :: I Fight Dragons
14. Spacetime Before Suppertime :: Jay Tholen
15. Hexadecimal Genome :: Bit Shifter
16. Itty Bitty Pigeons :: Supercommuter
17. Helix Nebula :: Anamanaguchi

Links we discussed:

Halloween Make Article with crazy flame shooters
Esquire Magazine Augmented Reality Article
Secret of Monkey Island Deleted Extended Scenes
Hugo Chavez is a fucker