When one first listens to this song, it might seem that Marina and the Diamonds (her stage name) seems like just another shallow disco queen, but it couldn't be farther from the truth. When the entire body of her work is looked at, I think she stands out as one of the most creative and insightful artists of the 10s and although she is kinda famous, I feel she is still underrated. Especially, since much of her work has gone virtually unnoticed. Catchy tunes, unique chord progressions. poignant and insightful lyrics, great production, flash videos...she is a brilliant artist of our modern times.

Yeah, I'm quoting myself, but I'd like to add. I've thought about this for another couple of days and I really think this is the best possible band-aid on the MM problem. Reduce the rank brackets...this just can't be that hard to do in the coding. Give priority to equivalent ranks that are in the queue...in other words, if there is a battle with mostly rank 20s, give priority to the rank 20s waiting in queue...not the guy that was in queue first. Keep rank brackets tighter and you get more balanced battles. If someone wants to dominate, let them buy equipment and micro-upgrades. It is not fair to put players that are eight ranks above another player in the same battle...the M4 vs M2 situation is just terrible. If players get into more balanced battles by rank, they will tend to stay even on the losing side because there will be more of a chance for a come back or at least there won't be as much unmitigated slaughter by players that have had almost twice as much time to buy and upgrade equipment...M4 vs M2.

Thank you for your response. Might it be possible to bring it to their attention once again? Maybe a light prod could jog their memory or bump up this issue higher in the queue.

The clips are the 10th Doctor and Rose Tyler. This is not really very good fidelity, but the official video posted on YTube is so horribly compressed it almost sounds like a different song. The 10th Doctor and Rose was the best incarnation anyway :)

Great song...great artist...he is missed. With a myriad of lyric interpretations, here is mine (which seems patently obvious to me...but, art and all...) In the villa of Ormen, in the villa of Ormen Stands a solitary candle, ah-ah, ah-ah In the centre of it all, in the centre of it all Your eyes In the house of Men, there is a single life/flame in the center of everything/universe (ah-ah ooooo) and that is you seeing through your eyes. As a kid I called this phenomenon "looking out through your eyes". Now I just call it "perspective", or central-perspective. I refer to it many times in my writing. In the spolier is a poem from TS Elliot that I think Bowie was refering to with the crucified scarecrows. The super famous lines from this poem are: This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.

I love these guys. Funny, crunchy, insightful...clever lads and great videos.

Replace the bonus column in the end-of-game screen The War is over...please replace the bonus column in the final read-out. Right now it is very difficult to figure out why someone is getting very high rewards versus other players. The red Premium badge is not showing up much anymore, but the rewards seem very out of proportion so it is difficult to determine why some players make such outrageous rewards for almost equivalent scores. If space must be saved, get rid of D/L (K/D) ratio since that is much easier to calculate in your head. Looking at the rewards and not knowing the why of the reward system is frustrating enough already even when the bonus column was present, but at least it was a bit more transparent. Also get rid of the nuclear sign on maps or tell us what it is going to be used for. On several maps it has replaced valuable box drops locations that have not been replaced elsewhere...Tribute for one lost one of it's two repair kits for this seemingly pointless sign.

Please fix the "My Content" section from our profile menu. It got stuck sometime last February and now only shows the current days posts. Yesterday or the previous weeks posts do not show...only today and pre-February posts are available. It makes it very difficult to follow a thread without this feature...especially when the thread is moving fast. I know this has been mentioned before, but it would be nice to remind the "fixers" to get on it again...please? Also could you acknowledge that you (the mod) will pass this on to the proper section of the repair crew?

Diaraby is a traditional West African tune. I originally became familiar with it when Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Touré did a great rendition of it on their Talking Timbuktu album. And, while their version is tremendous, I think I am liking this simpler version better... This may not grab you in the first two seconds you listen to it, but if you listen and relax with it you may find yourself being transported to elswhere...it's really quite good, but takes a bit of time investement. If you like this type of music (I find it very relaxing), Talking Timbuktu is a great album and is on YouTube FREE! Ali Farka Toure & Ry Cooder - Talking Timbuktu (Full Album) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) Look what I just got in a container! :) ...I found a song to go with it :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

From their 3rd album around 1990. Very tight harmony, twinkling acoustic guitar sound, and a catchy tune.

crunchy, crunchy, crunchy I like this a lot. It's going into my monthly rotation...I just hope I can avoid doing evil when it plays :) This is perfect theme music for an M4 Twins/Viking with the Stable Plasma alteration that MatchMaking has put into a battle on Massacre with all rank 1 to 4 M0 players...all using Wasps.

Other than your font and colors, you sound like me in all the points you talk about :) ...a bit funnier perhaps. ;) They won't get rid of the atrocity called MatchMaking...we are stuck with this inferior system, but maybe Tanki will try to address some of it's glaring problems. The problem of mass exoduses from the losing side and too much time waiting in queue just to be put into the last few minutes of a battle could be greatly reduced if the rank brackets were tighter. Who wants to fight someone six, seven, or eight ranks above them? Reduce the rank brackets, give priority to equivalent ranks in queue, and the amount of quitters will lessen.

I wish we never had to lose them. One of my favorite scenes from The Blues Brothers:

It is frustrating to see gigantic scores and crystal pay-outs for players that have under-performed you. Please bring back the "bonus" column to make scoring/rewards more clear. Why not get rid of K/D...it serves zero function where the bonus column was useful. Also get rid of the nuclear symbol or tell it what it is going to be used for. It has tanke the place of some drop boxes on certain maps...Tribute is the only one tht I can think of right off the top of my head, but it has removed one repair kit drop...bad trade...for a pointless symbol. Yes, I agree....gotta get the font to normal size please...use large or color for emphasis. It is a shame to have to try to fix a system that is inferior, only because Tanki spent 18 months generating a poor system. There is no advantage that MM has brought to the table that the Battle Button didn't already employ...and almost no one used the Battle Button because they preferred "choice". MM is inferior, but it is what Tanki has decided on so we are stuck with it and like any physical disability, it can be worked around. One of the first issues is the waiting time. (I love how they changes the bogus "average waiting time" to a matter of a few seconds now...so pathetic.) Anyway we have several computers in our home and me and my kids all got on a separate computer. We all had equal rank accounts with about the same equipment and efficiency ratings. One of us would intentionally pull out of a battle while the other two were waiting in queue. Another would stay in the battle to monitor the number of players. In every single trial, MM never sent anyone to the battle where the was an appropriate vacancy....NEVER! We saw battles go for several minutes with no players being replaced, but we had two appropriate players waiting in queue! When someone was replaced it was usually with a much lower rank. The algorithm does not work very well or anywhere nearly as well as advertised by the Tanki spin doctors. The next issue for me is that rank brackets are much too wide. Our experiment showed that equivalent ranks are not given priority...it's anyone in queue which makes for some very lopsided battles. The problem of mass exoduses from the losing side and too much time waiting in queue just to be put into the last few minutes of a battle could be greatly reduced if the rank brackets were tighter. Who wants to fight someone six, seven, or eight ranks above them? Reduce the rank brackets, give priority to equivalent ranks in queue, and the amount of quitters will lessen. There are other issues with MM, but these are thee three worst for me. If they could be resolved or implemented, I would be OK with MM...now it is something to be endured.

nothing? Powers that be....please read this and pass it on...you might even acknowledge that you have seen this.

Holy crap, this is badass...very clean and very tasty. Articulation is superb...it's like drummers that play guitar. It reminds me of a new and improved Dixie Dregs. Thanks for the enlightenment.

been trying for almost an hour to get into garage...no luck...hard to take advantage of a sale when you can't access the garage

Ry Cooder - The Very Thing That Makes Her Rich (Will Make You Poor) I love this song...the lyrics are spot on. This is also a great of example of compression on YouTube and what it does to sound. Even if you don't care for the song, listen to how much more you can hear when dynamics are present. The tonal coloring is so much more vibrant and elaborate in the less compressed version. They almost sound like different songs. Compression makes the file smaller but squishes up all the dynamics into a homogeneous sonic goo. Probably the least amount of compression you can get from YouTube A normal amount of compression between CD and uploading to YouTube Ry Cooder Bonus for lucky spoiler openers...don't touch this spoiler if you don't like the blues.

Wow, this was much harder to do than I thought it would be. Between remembering songs and hunting the best copy on YouTube this is about eight hours labor...and I haven't written anything yet! Anyway, it was my idea to post some of the music that ushered in an era. As kids we called this music "Heavy or Hard Rock or even Acid Rock". There was a lot of Psychedelic Rock (we called it Acid Rock too) floating around during that period but much of it didn't have the crunchy bass line which was the initial defining difference between the two genres. The Doors could very arguably be in that Psychedelic genre but they were starting to get heavier. In 1968 Iron Butterfly did In A Gadda Da Vida and it hit everyone's Heavy earbuds even though it eventually became kind of looked down on as being a bit cheesy. It had the heavy bass fuzz sound that kids were searching for. Grand Funk came up with the next real offering of the heavy sound with Paranoid. Hendrix and others were playing Heavy Rock, but it tended to emphasis guitars instead of that badass bass line. Led Zeppelin brought Heavy Rock into the pop limelight in 1969 with their smash hit Whole Lotta Love...Heavy Metal had been born, was in the Mainstream, and was ready to rumble. Black Sabbath came along and terrified all the Christians, which made their music even more appealing. Then, during the early 70's, the deluge of Hard Rock/Heavy Metal began. It got so common it morphed into the somewhat embarrassing Glam Rock of the late 70's early 80's and there were hundreds of clone bands everywhere. Obviously this is not a definitive list, just some of my ideas from that period. The Doors - Break On Through ( To The Other Side ) (1967) Cream - Sunshine Of Your Love (1967) Vanilla Fudge - You Keep Me Hanging On (1967) Cream - White Room (1968) The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Foxey Lady (1968) The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower (1968) Iron Butterfly - In a Gadda Da Vida (1968) Blue Cheer - Summertime Blues (1968) Deep Purple - Hush (1968) Grand Funk Railroad - Paranoid (1969) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdcs7F-MWhA Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love (1969) King Crimson - 21st Century Schizoid Man (1969) Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath (1970) To get the gist of the song jump to 3:48 Black Sabbath - Iron Man (1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aQRq9hhekA

SCORE! While looking at early Rock & Roll, I saw the name of an artist I knew very well as one of the contenders for the first Rock & Roll song...Wynonie Harris with his 1948 release of "Good Rockin' Tonight". I'd never heard this song but I have always loved Wynonie's song "Blood Shot Eyes" from 1951 and in fact I've been looking for a cover version of it by a very obscure band from 1971 called Lucifer. I've done dozens of internet searches of over the years and have never come up with anything other than text referances and a couple of jpgs of the album cover. I had the album as a kid and really liked it...Blood Shot Eyes being by far my favorite song on the whole album. Just for grins, I tried a YouTube search for "Bloodshot Eyes Lucifer" and there it was!!!!!!! It's even an acceptable recording! I am so stoked...I've been trying to find this song for almost 40 years!!!! ...And I found it just a few minutes ago! So here is another contender for the first Rock & Roll song: Wynonie Harris - Good Rockin' Tonight (1948) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHebMwznM5c Here is Wynonie Harris singing Blood Shot Eyes from 1951. Actually I'm so used to this version that I may like it better than the Lucifer cover that I've searched for so long. And here it is...drum roll please!...a pursuit of 40 years, culminating in one lucky search today. YEAH! Lucifer - Bloodshot Eyes (1971) Check out the Glenn Miller medley mash up around 2:15 and again at 4:15. It's a goofy song, but hey, I was a kid :) ...just a pic of the album cover

I guess Tanki figures they made enough money on new Freezes with MUs and Freeze modules with MUs. How absolutely predictable these greed mongers are. i guess this means Striker will get a major buff in the near future. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Your post got me wondering what was the very first Rock & Roll song? I've always liked the big bands of the 40's Swing era. A very great number of these big band tunes are Rock & Roll (IMHO) even though they seldom are called Rock & Roll. The World War II guys were Rockin' before the post-war 50's when the established birth of Rock & Roll is usually designated in most peoples minds. Even back in the 20's and probably earlier I think Rock was around. I had an original pressing of Louis Armstrong doing West End Blues which was the first improvisational blues ever recorded. It is definitely a blues piece but you can hear lots of Proto-Rock elements in it. It's kinda hard to tell what went on before the 20s since there were no recordings and only sheet music, but blues, gospel, country and western, and even folk music all had Proto-Rock elements. Even back into the early 1800s lots of sea shanties had a distinct rock-ish sound. To me though, the Mother (and Father) of Rock & Roll is Boogie-Woogie which goes all the way back into the 1870s. Early 1900's Boogie-Woogie sounds totally like Rock & Roll. The earliest recording I could find on YouTube is from Pinetop Smith in 1928 and by sound alone, this is certainly Rock & Roll. There is another incredible video posted of a collection of Boogie-Woogie recordings from 1922 to 1935. Are they Rock & Roll?...pretty much, from my point of view anyway. I digress. So, what was the first real Rock & Roll song? It's all kind of fuzzy for a solid definition, but to me the first R&R song that can't be denied is from 1935...Henry Allen And His Orchestra - Get Rhythm In Your Feet. Part of the lyrics say (1:26), "If Satan starts to hound you, Commence to rock and roll / Get rhythm in your feet..." Listening to the song, it is very very easy to imagine an updated version fitting in on YouTube or being looped by some clever young aspiring rock star. It's Rock and Roll for sure. There is another earlier contender that also fits the bill from 1934 and is titled "Rock And Roll" performed by The Boswell Sisters and is complete with a dance number. They use the term as a double entendra. One meaning is the original nautical origin of the phrase...like the ocean rolling and rocking you as boat would pitch and yaw...the other meaning might very well refer to the horizontal bop done in bedrooms around the world where you rock and roll with your sweetie (wink wink, nudge nudge). Louis Armstrong - West End Blues (1928) To me though, the Mother (and Father) of Rock & Roll is Boogie-Woogie which goes all the way back into the 1870s. Early 1900's Boogie-Woogie sounds totally like Rock & Roll. The earliest recording I could find on YouTube is from Pinetop Smith in 1928 and by sound alone, this is certainly Rock & Roll. There is another incredible video posted of a collection of Boogie-Woogie recordings from 1922 to 1935. Are they Rock & Roll?...pretty much, from my point of view anyway. Pinetop Smith - Pinetop's Boogie Woogie (1928) ...Tell me this isn't Rock & Roll The Greatest Boogie Woogie Songs of All Time - part one (1922-1935) List of the very short clips: I digress. So, what was the first real Rock & Roll song? It's all kind of fuzzy for a solid deffinition, but to me the first R&R song that can't be denide is from 1935...Henry Allen And His Orchestra - Get Rhythm In Your Feet. Part of the lyrics say (1:26), "If Satan starts to hound you, Commence to rock and roll / Get rhythm in your feet..." Listening to the song, it is very very easy to imagine an updated version fitting in on YouTube or being looped by some clever young aspiring rock star. It's Rock and Roll for sure. Henry Allen And His Orchestra - Get Rhythm In Your Feet (1935) There is another earlier contender that also fits the bill from 1934 and is titled "Rock And Roll" performed by The Boswell Sisters and is complete with a dance number. They use the term as a double entendre. One meaning is the original nautical origin of the phrase...like the ocean rolling and rocking you as boat would pitch and yaw...the other meaning might very well refer to the horizontal bop done in bedrooms around the world where you rock and roll with your sweetie (wink wink, nudge nudge). The Boswell Sisters - Rock And Roll (1934) (movie clip with dance number...check the seasick chics..cute) The Boswell Sisters - Rock And Roll This is a much cleaner audio file with music only (the scat intro is easier to hear) So in conclusion, I'm gonna choose Pinetop Smith - Pinetop's Boogie Woogie (1928) as the first recorded Rock & Roll tune. What do you think?

Now that the War is over, please bring back the "bonus" column in the end readout screen. And, get rid of the nuclear signs on every map and replace them with their normal supply drop (usually a repair kit).

Tanki, have another war very soon...at least one more this year...two would even be better! This one was over too quickly.