Another realy big problem: 7) There are zero players...I haven't seen an opponent since the end of 2018

The name of this song is Dao (Star in English). The band, Pause, was a university band. The singer was a real talent and had this very clean effortless first tenor voice. Sadly he killed himself not long after this album was released...tragic and a big loss for Thai pop music. Like many artists that leave us, he is revered in Thailand and sorely missed. The first minute of the song is a build to the beautiful chorus, so be sure to listen to at least a couple of minutes. I love the melody in this song and the drama generated in Jo's voice. Actually this is one of my favorite songs ever, not just from Thailand but across many decades as a pop music fan.

Yeah, it sort of bottoms out and loses its momentum doesn't it. Too bad. But...with repetitive listening, my guess is that the oddness and seemingly out-of-place-ness of that segment will grow on me. Even the "I am" sung too many times will become acceptable and even pleasurable. The dropped drop does make a nice transitioning vehicle for his dynamic voice on the verse. Overall I liked it even first time through...thanks for the post :)

Chicago Transit Authority (Chicago's original name) was one of my very favorite albums of the late 60s, then they changed their name to just Chicago and came out with the sliver album (2) ...a little more commercial and mainstream friendly, but still an absolute musical masterpiece. Chicago 3 was pretty good, but honesty I was disappointed...I just passed it off as too hard to improve upon their brilliant first two albums. The subsequent bazillion albums they released were all bland and insipid even though the latter albums generated most of their fame, I found the new direction of their music boring. Chicago holds my personal record for being letdown by a band. That being said, all the tunes on Chicago 2 are great....25 or 6 to 4....great. Here is one more from the sliver album. The beginning is Make me Smile then transitions into other stuff. Make Me Smile starts to come back in at 9:59. The record company tied these two segments together to make the Make Me Smile single. The build to the restatement of Make Me Smile that starts at 9:59 is a brilliant brass ensemble segment and follows a lovely and haunting ear worm flute passage..hot rocks stuff. You know the Chicago sounds a bit dated but the Hendrix seems as powerful, exciting, and dramatic as the day it was released...perfect music. Interestingly, Hendrix thought the guitar player from Chicago (Terry Kath) was great...He even insinuated that Kath was a better guitarist than him. I think time has cast it's vote for Hendrix no matter how accomplished Kath was. I think you made a wise choice for your first investment in 45s :)

Namewee is from Malaysia. His music is not even close to traditional Malaysian but this song is really funny, especially if you have ever traveled in Japan. This guy got famous for making the Malaysian National Anthem into a satirical rap song...naughty. Anyway, this song tickles my funny bone. To really get it you probably need to turn on the closed captioning (click the "CC" at the bottom of the embedded YouTube thingie) because the lyrics run by quickly and the Japanglish is kinda hard to grasp (just like in real life).

My ears are bleeding. This is a little too frenetic for me...yikes. I would use this if I ever needed to break a lease. :) I like some of the guitar work, and loved the beginning, but it is a very difficult piece to hear with all that is going on in it. I admire the verve and artistry that went into making it, but it just gets too overwhelming for me to actually enjoy as it moves into it's resolution. I guess I'm just not ready for it yet. Thanks for the introduction to it though. I never thought of this as a song about Nam...live and learn I guess. Interesting how they pulled out the vocal tracks with some sort of audio wizardry. It sounds way more modern as a sparse vocal. The Letter was one of my fav songs from '67...I played the 45 (it was a 7" vinyl record) so may times that I wore it out and had to buy a new one. I opted for the full album on the second go-around. Just for grins and reference, the unaltered version is in the spoiler CooperO posted: Sorry, I messed up the multi-quote trying to put in spoilers. Anyway I really like this. So effective with the words/messages in front of you and his music as more background...clever. This also seems very sincere and is very touching. I look forward to following this guy on his walk...promises to be interesting...the YouTube and techno world opens a little wider as artists like this guy find new ways of expression using media and tecnology. We live in a glorious age. Thanks for posting this.

I'm kinda shocked that no one liked the Mongolian stuff...really? I think it is truly fine and certainly far away from the cookie-cutter re-hash of auto-tune blandness that is churned out of the music factories of today. Please give this post a listen...at the very least The Hu Band...it's worth a try, really: http://en.tankiforum.com/index.php?showtopic=23324&page=400&do=findComment&comment=6664602 Moving south out of Mongolia a bit to China and a more traditional Western sound, Faye Wong. She started out in the 90s and is hugely popular in the Chinese speaking countries. She has a crystal clear clean soprano voice. Lots of her stuff, especially her work in the 2010s, leaves me cold as it seems kind of tepid and more TV Special or lounge-ish. But much of her earlier stuff has more pizzazz. This is my fav song from her...it has a kind of Swing Out Sister feel to it. At any rate it is a far cry from the Khoomei I posted last. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YatmzSlxBgg ratz...I can't get it to link directly from the forum. I guess the poster monetized his YouTube acct so stopped hot-linking and wants you to watch and listen from YouTube itself....just click the underlined "Watch this video on YouTube" link within the footprint of the dialog box and that zips you to YouTube itself.

A little Asia...a little Khoomei ...a bit more folkish and traditional but quite good and this tune introduces more modern instrumentation as it builds to the end...awesome if you give it a chance...if you don't have patience, at least try it from 2:50; brilliant chord progression The Who...wait, I mean The Hu, yeah Asia stlye. These guys are pretty badass. Darkfin, check it out... More Hu...love these guys...

Great song from Deep Purple. I think Deep Purple gets kind of overshadowed by themselves and their super iconic rock anthem "Smoke on the Water" and it's gloriously simple guitar riff with heavy bass underlay. They really put out a ton of great tunes, but Smoke is just so well known much of the rest of their work kind of flies under todays radar...but we sure bopped to it back in the 70s. This song, "My Woman From Tokyo" and "Hush" are two of my favorites from them. Now my nostalgia pump is primed. So, in the vein of just one more...one more primo piece of dino-rock from around the same time frame. This song was a mantra of mine for many years as I was "Dazed and Confused" for sure...one phrase in particular stood out for me...: I'm just a jet-age gypsy, Looking for a gypsy queen, I sometimes think I'm on the brink Of knowing what I mean...

DUDE! I love this song. You know, I don't really wish I could go back to those good 'ole days, but I do wish I could somehow demonstrate to folks now-a-days just how mind boggling and awe inspiring the music of yester-year was to us of the 60s and 70s. It was so very very new and fresh...nothing like it had ever been around before. There is a tonnage of great music around today...arguably more and even better than in the 60s and 70s, but, no matter how wonderful it is, it isn't as innovative as what came before it in the post war 50s, 60s and 70s. I am so thankful to have been exposed to this 50-60-70 innovative pop music at the time it was created and put before the public...and in the time context of it's creation (what the world was like). Now if we could just hurry up and get to the Singularity so the benevolent AIs could get to work on immortality, Bob would be my uncle.

I like the "menual x spaceouters - going home"

I was always astounded at the Jekyll and Hyde metamorphosis of Fleetwood Mac. I remember one of my favorite tricks back in the day was to say to friends that I was gong to put on some Fleetwood Mac. Then put Fleetwood Mac's Mr. Wonderful album on the turntable. Invariably it was, "Hey, I thought you were going to play some Fleetwood Mac"....Me, "Well, I did and this is Fleetwood Mac" Usually people just couldn't believe. One of my early favs from the more recognizable version of Fleetwood Mac... I used this video because it has better fidelity than any of the others on YouTube. These two guys whipped up the vid and while I admire the work that went into it, I don't much care for the video itself...it kind of detracts from the song in my opinion. What we sacrifice for fidelity...gosh.

What a lovely and clever arangement this choir does...thanks for the post. This is my favorite Rammstein cover...significantly sillier, but still musically quite good for it's genre. Two of my favorite Rammstein songs/videos are "Sonne" and "Keine Lust". If you haven't heard or seen them, they are truly worth your attention. The official videos are easy to find on YouTube...good crunchy music and very well produced imagery. Top shelf stuff. ...OK, I know,,,I'm done for today...sorry if I'm being a thread hog.

How can you not love a heavy metal didgeridoo? ;)

Wow, posted YouTube :) There is a lot of material here...to be honest, I haven't listened to it all...I'm only through a little over half of the first spoiler. It is going to take quite awhile to get through it all. I did want to acknowledge how much work you put in on this post. I appreciate your effort.

Yeah, two in a row, but I really feel they deserve to be separate. I'm undecided about this song. It seems a bit contrived, but it's still pretty good in it's blatant shock antipodean stylings. She doesn't pull off the metal portion with great verve, but the glam costumes kind of mitigate the lack of legitimate crunch...not as full-on musically as Baby Metal, but the campyness of it just puts it over the edge into "good" territory. If I had created it I would be hella proud, so, yeah, I like it...I think...time will tell. One thing for sure it is interesting. It's pop music. Opinions? Comments? I love the delivery of her first line from 0:02 to 0:05 as he steps into the follow-spot..."Uuuuuu, Heavy!" ...perfect; what a total screech :)

A very cool bass line, lots of movement in each phrase building to pay-off transitions...and even whistling!

(just a pic, not a link) On one of my first motorcycle adventures, I blew into Chicago and had some beers at a folk bar called The Earl of Old Town (I think). The only other patron in the late afternoon was a good looking lady sitting at a table by her lonesome. We were drinking alone together, so why not drink together while we waited for the evening and that night's musical offering? And she was really cute....sooooo... I took my current beer and walked over to her table and said, "Hi" (...yeah, I was always clever with smooth talk and flashy one liners). I asked if she knew when the band was going to start and she said. "No band tonight, just me". "Really", I said. (Like I said before, I was a real wizard of a conversationalist.) She said she could play me a couple if songs if liked as long as she didn't have to get up and could keep on drinking. In flashing and, dare I say, witty repartee, I replied, "Cool." She picked up her guitar (we were close to the stage area) and started to sing blues in this perfectly clear and clean voice. Her guitar work was perfect. She played these mean ass rough and tough blues riffs on her acoustic guitar. Her voice was perfect (it wasn't all the beers I had either). She was perfect...I was stunned. She went on to tell me that she was here for a week and I should bring some friends in to listen to her show. With a little pride showing she said she was almost finished recording her first album and it would be released pretty soon...like the end of the year. ..I was in groupie love. Who was this goddess of the guitar? Yep, Bonnie Raitt. PS If I hadn't hadn't have been so "I'm not worthy" and stumbling all over myself trying to tell her how fantastic she was, I'm pretty sure would have kissed me...like make-out kissed me. Looking back on it, the vibe was there, but at the time I was just too overwhelmed by her monster talent. One of the blues songs she played for me :) See why I was blown away by her guitar playing?

Alison Krauss put me on the trail of bluegrass...there is some amazing musicianship in this genre. While cruising YouTube, I stumbled upon my favorite rendition of Rocky Top from a TV special many years ago. There are lots of great versions of this nifty little ditty out there but I think this particular rendition by Crystal Gayle nails it as the definitive version. Clear clean voice, great instrumentals but not overstated, good mix balance. tight harmony, and a pleasant relaxed setting for the video. Her easy and clean alto voice is perfect for the song...effortlessly art (at least she makes it seem effortless :))

No AutoTune (not a link) Both of these songs were featured in a really fun movie, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Worth a watch and listen for sure.

Merry Christmas everyone. This is from Messiah by G.F. Handel and is probably my favorite segment of the work. There are dozens of recordings out there in YouTube Land, but I chose this one because they got the tempo right (IMHO). Most choirs drag this portion of the piece. Big choirs really drag it because it is so hard to keep it clean at tempo with many many voices...smaller choirs have an easier job. I've had the pleasure of singing this in several different choirs and each director has sacrificed tempo for clarity....probably the better choice if it is one or the other. In the Honolulu Symphony Choir we practiced it at even faster than this YouTube version, but in concert the director wimped out and we went from about 120bmp in practice to somewhere around 105bmp in concert...bummer, but very articulate. These guys are at 114bmp but still pretty clean and tight.

Heard this at the end of a Weeds episode...cool song.

Usually I'm critical of Tanki since they just can't seem to o anything right, but I think they did an overall good job on this whole "Challenges". In terms of marketing it is pretty brilliant since it is retroactive. All players accrue level rewards. Much later in the course of the time period, players are going to see what they already won and for buying the battle pass, they will get 3X their current hoard of rewards...going to moyivate a lot of player to buy the pass in the last couple of weeks I think...good marketing Tanki. It seems to be pretty well structured and the quest for stars isn't causing as many problems with game-play as the "Stars Weeks" did. All players will get ome nice prizes since the time frame is so long. An players may be motivated to play more since that tasty next level prize is only a few star away. This "Challenges" is a welcome addition to the game...good work Tanki. Now clean up the myriad of idiotic updates and toxic changes to the game and Bob's your uncle.

I agree that the threshold should be lowered. What you say here is completely true. I have done several full battles and not gotten 100 points because my teammates are constantly vanishing and the opposition is slaughtering. I've also had it had games where my team is winning and by such a margin that there aren't enough targets still alive to make the 100 core. It i annoying to play a full battle an get hosed out of at least one star.