How to listen to jazz, part 2

Welcome back friends. In the previous blog I talked about how my friend Blaine said that he hated jazz music. I mentioned that I thought the same way for years, and years. This was even as I played jazz music in school band. I then gave an introduction to my music education, and how an accordion player taught me to set aside my own biases, and preconceived notions when listening to new music. I highlighted a non-traditional jazz quartet called Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. This group was made up of a harmonica player (Howard Levy), a bass player (Victor Wooten), a banjo player (Béla Fleck), and a midi-drumitar player (Roy "Future Man" Wooten).

Their sound couldn’t be further removed from traditional jazz instrumentation like trumpets, saxophones, clarinets, trombones, and pianos. They were an example of how far jazz had evolved by the end of the 20th century. The song I asked you to listen to was called the Sinister Minister. I asked you to figure out how it worked, and why. To me the answer was fairly straightforward. The Flecktones made the genre accessible to non-jazz fans by breaking it down. They highlighted the fact that jazz was not one type of music, but many different styles. It was this concept that I could use to help explain the genre to Blaine. We were both fans of heavy metal music, but let’s say he did not like heavy metal music. Then how could I describe its best elements? How would I explain its appeal when it seemed too loud, too aggressive, too angry, or too chaotic? How would I explain the different kinds of metal? After all there was death metal, thrash metal, rap metal, black metal, nu metal, funk metal, etc. How would I explain that American bands like Metallica, and Slipknot were under the same umbrella that gave us the Mongolian folk metal band The Hu, and the Japanese pop metal band Baby Metal? 

It would be hard to find a point of entry to get him listening to the music. I could share with Blaine the excellent documentary Metal: A Headbangers Journey by Sam Dunn. I could then give him a list of essential songs, or albums to try and let him listen for its appeal. But I wanted to try a different approach. I wanted to share with you how I started listening to and enjoying jazz music. But first I had to recognize my own bias against jazz. I mainly didn’t like it because I didn’t understand it. It was music that didn’t necessarily have melodies, or harmonies that were easy to follow. Jazz was often filled with lots of contrast, there would be constant chord changes, chord progressions, and what I assumed were Prima donna musicians just noodling around until they felt like ending the song. Since I didn’t understand how it was structured, I assumed that it had no structure.

My preconceptions about jazz reminded me of an old cartoon by Ad Reinhardt. His classic cartoon about looking at abstract art featured a painting reacting to a viewer, rather than the other way around. When I pointed out the things I did not like about jazz what I was really doing was stating the things I did not understand. I recognized jazz was an art form, it had a long history, and it had value. I just didn’t “get” it, and that was entirely on me. I thought about why the Béla Fleck and the Flecktones music worked for me when other bands couldn’t get through. It wasn’t the instrumentation as much as it was the structure. Every type of music had a structure that fans could follow. For the most part Western music had a similar format, a sort of beginning, middle, and end. It was a melody, a variation on that melody (the solo), and then the bridge, or return to the original idea. Blues, country, rock, metal, and pop used a similar structure. They just had different instrumentations, or levels of aggression. Jazz was odd to me because I could not identify its structure. 

What the Flecktones did was give jazz a template that was easier for me to understand. In the Sinister Minister it was very obvious. Victor Wooten the bass player started with an idea. The harmonica / piano player Howard Levy then added a melody. This melody was then repeated by Béla Fleck, and his banjo with a few flourishes. Victor then went absolutely crazy in his solo, before he came back to the original idea, and melody. The song went full circle and thus had a structure that I could figure out. The Sinister Minister was my gateway song, but it wouldn’t help me understand the century of jazz that came before it. I needed to figure more about how the format worked before I could appreciate it. I got all of the Flecktones albums so that I could understand what they were doing musically. After immersing myself in their catalog it was the third album UFO TOFU that gave me a breakthrough moment. A literal “EUREKA I HAVE FOUND IT!” Jazz finally started coming into focus. This discovery would help me explain it to Blaine, or anyone else reading this blog.

You were probably familiar with the old saying that “jazz wasn’t about the notes that were played, but rather the notes that weren’t played.” It sounded deep, and mysterious. I believe that statement was plainly stupid. Not playing notes did not make jazz unique. Every form of music was filled with notes not played. That didn’t make all music a form of jazz. Instead I would explain that jazz was the first form of music that purposefully broke the human ability to recognize patterns. It did so in colorful, chaotic, and creative ways. Over hundreds of thousands of years, and countless generations the human brain had evolved to become the best pattern recognition engine in nature. Our ancestors needed to see, smell, and listen for things that were safe, as well as things that seemed dangerous, or even slightly off. Whether it was staring across a grassy plain looking for a meal, listening for the sound of water, the smell of fire, or scanning the jungle for predators. Recognizing patterns was crucial for our very survival. We eventually evolved to form cultures, and societies, however our brains retained that core ability to recognize, and distill patterns.

Creatives throughout history were able to build works of art that played with our ability to recognize patterns. In music this was something that great composers, and performers were able to do frequently. During the classical era people clamored for the next original symphony from Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven. The thing was these composers were also able to create an infinite number of variations to existing pieces as well. Sometimes they would do this in the middle of a piano duel. These variations were a sort of ancestor to jazz. It was an exercise in pattern recognition that even modern composition students could use. In music class they might be tasked to write a variation of a song in the style of a classical composer. This wasn’t limited to nursery songs as even the Super Mario theme could be lent to classical interpretation. Pattern recognition was not limited solely to visual clues. Recognizing an audio style was a form of pattern recognition as well.

In modern music, specifically in hard rock, and heavy metal there were groups that had an unmistakable sound. Van Halen, Metallica, Megadeth, and Pantera each played fast and loud, but fans could easily tell them apart. Their lead guitarists had a signature way of playing. It was their audio fingerprint. When a new song dropped fans could recognize the guitarists because of their style. As great as these men were it was possible to imitate them, and to do it well enough to fool diehard fans. For example here was a solo using the most common techniques of Eddie Van Halen. If you closed your eyes you could swear that it was actually Eddie playing. The ability to copy an audio style was not limited to individual players. The sound of an entire group could be poached. In the mid 1970’s Klaatu was the band that everyone thought was The Beatles because their instrumentation, key signatures, lyrics, and sound was eerily similar. Klaatu demonstrated that our ability to recognize audio patterns could be tricked. Yet this was not necessarily the same thing that jazz did.

I wanted you to think about the structure of jazz, and compare it to your favorite form of popular music. There were patterns that we all recognized. The beginning, middle, and end that I mentioned earlier. What jazz did more than any other genre was break up the western structure of music in unique ways. In the album UFO TOFU there was a piece called True North. I would like you to listen to it, and then read this next part about its structure.

True North had essentially the same setup as the Sinister Minister. Instead of a harmonica it was the flute that we heard first. It gave us a simple melody that we could follow. It then repeated the phrase once more just to make sure we caught it. Then the banjo came in and played the same melody. Our brains now expected the pattern to keep going. The two instruments had painted a clear picture for the listener. It was pretty but it was lacking color. Repeating the idea again would not have made it jazz. That was what the third voice contributed to the song. The piano came in, and completely broke apart the pattern. We could not guess what was coming next. Instead we got constantly changing phrases. We heard chord progressions that complimented everything the flute, and banjo had just played without ever sounding dissonant. It took the listener on a journey, exploring every corner of the painting, and filling it in with color. The bass then brought us back to the melody. By returning to the original pattern our brains got a resolution.

In the piece Howard Levy gave us a master class on improvisation. This was the actual heart of jazz music. From a musician standpoint he didn’t play anything that was too difficult. The solo was neither too fast, or too complex to follow. If it was transcribed a student with a little experience could have played it. What made it stand out was where it was placed. It broke the patterns that we had just heard, but it did not break the structure of the song. He danced around the tempo, dropped new ideas, and used complimentary chords. But he never “painted” outside of the frame. The Flecktones taught me how to listen to the genre because many of their songs were so clean and straightforward. The easiest songs to follow were essentially jazz for babies. They wrote songs with more complexity, odd time signatures, and solos that I didn’t understand at first. The more I learned about the format the more I picked up. I discovered that sometimes two or more musicians would play contrasting solos at the same time. They made the pattern sound even more chaotic, and harder to listen to. Eventually I was able to appreciate what they did. Their modern jazz pieces started to make sense to me as well.

It turned out that jazz was more complex than “the notes that weren’t played.” Jazz was about remixing musical patterns in real time. The best improvisators could take a series of random turns each time they played a solo, and yet somehow end up back home. They could even trade ideas back and forth in a sort of musical conversation. It was nothing short of musical trickery, audio sleight of hand. As a classically trained cellist I could play just about every song placed in front of me. I spent a lifetime reading the story exactly as it was written, and I was very good at it. However when I played bass in the jazz band the story was much more open to interpretation. I was sometimes given chord progressions instead of notes. I was being told to just make things up as I went along, and I could not do it. It was a humbling experience. Breaking, and reassembling musical patterns was something that jazz did better than any other genre. As the format grew in popularity it also evolved. The core of remixing musical patterns remained, and got more complex as the decades passed. Eventually a musician composed a jazz piece so revolutionary that even great musicians were scared of it. Vox explained why Giant Steps was the most feared jazz song by John Coltrane.

 

Mr. Coltrane was an icon of bebop, hard bop, and pioneer of freeform jazz. These were the types of jazz that I thought were too artsy-fartsy. They were too heady for me, and probably were the types of jazz that my friend Blaine couldn’t stand. Thankfully they weren’t the types of jazz featured in Cuphead. I would like to explore my favorite pieces, which I consider to be the most important songs in the game on my next blog. I hope to see you back for that. Did this blog help you understand jazz a little bit better? Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

How to listen to jazz, part 1

I first met Blaine online on the 1UP community site about 20 years ago, we’ve never met in person, but I considered him a friend. Thankfully he, and many of my 1UP friends were still in touch thanks to social media. A long time ago he said that he couldn’t stand jazz music. Blaine, and I were both were fans of heavy metal. That’s how I knew he had good taste in music. I told him that I used to think the same way, even when I played jazz music in the school band. Then I learned how to listen to jazz, and everything changed. I said that there were jazz songs that he might enjoy, and someday I would write a blog explaining how to listen to them. I didn’t think it would take so long to get here.

This blog was more than a decade in the making. Not because I didn’t know how to approach the topic, but rather because I wanted to make Cuphead illustrations to go along with it. It took me a long time to get motivated to complete the handful of drawings that I did. They weren’t as good as what I wanted, but they got the message across. Cuphead, and jazz music went hand-in-hand. The 2017 video game by StudioMDHR was a love letter to the golden age of American animation, and the jazz music from that period. It was a way that I could communicate the different types of jazz to my friend, but also help share its history to anybody visiting this blog. Before I talked about specifics I wanted to give a big picture view of the movement.

You might know that jazz was considered the premier American art form. To put it succinctly jazz music was born as a post Civil War response to popular music. It was the first time that the Black experience, and African-Americans were driving the musical direction in the country. Yet jazz had more meaning than that. It was a movement that started at the end of the 1800’s and shaped American culture through the early 1900’s. Jazz was not just a musical style, but it helped frame the rapidly evolving nation. It was the soundtrack to industrialization, the growth of cities, and the boom in income inequality. It scored the changes in fashion, dance, art, and architecture. It was also the type of music that was used for the earliest black, and white cartoon stars like Felix the Cat, Coco the Clown, Betty Boop, and Popeye the Sailor. They were the templates that Cuphead drew from. Musical formats often went hand-in-hand with changes in society. Jazz was a way of explaining the birth of the 20th Century because it represented so many things all at once.

The thing that I never agreed with from many of my teachers, and art critics was that jazz was the only original American art form. When I was in college I argued that Hip Hop was the second cultural art form that came exclusively from the USA. Some believed that rock and roll was also an original American art form, yet that wasn’t entirely true. Rock had cross-pollinated with British music thanks to both US, and UK kids listening to American blues records. Hip Hop was a different beast entirely. It was born exclusively in New York City in the early ‘70s by combining a shared language from the boroughs. It was a response to the unequal reality that whites, and colored people experienced post WWII.

Hip Hop rose from the broken promises of the civil rights movement, just as jazz grew out of the broken promises of reconstruction. If Art Deco was the visual style that framed jazz, then graffiti was the visual language of Hip Hop. The b-boys, b-girls, introduced a new form of “break” dance. The emcee replaced the band leader, or singer. They had a new rhyming song style called rap. The DJ, and their records replaced traditional instruments as the source of music. All four of these elements combined were the foundation of Hip Hop. As far as video games went I argued that Jet Set Radio was the greatest Hip Hop game ever made. It captured all four elements better than any other title. But I digress…

I didn’t enjoy jazz for most of my early years because it didn’t sound like music to me. It sounded instead like a bunch of musicians noodling around with their instruments. As if they couldn’t agree with the tempo, the chords, or the style that they were performing. It lacked the structure of rock, funk, soul, country, metal, ska, or even classical music. These were formats that made sense if I randomly turned to those stations on the radio. I could understand liking or not liking these types of music. Jazz was just highbrow “artsy-fartsy” music as far as I was concerned. I didn’t follow it for the longest time, and didn’t have interest in learning why. It was a bias that I had for most of my musical education. I was in elementary school when I started playing music. I joined the school orchestra around the age of eight. I started off playing cello, and quickly progressed. The instructors saw my ability, and they got me private lessons. I was adept in playing in the full orchestra, as well as in the smaller chamber groups, and even quartets. In high school the jazz band needed a bass player, and our orchestra director asked if I could fill in. That was when I started playing jazz.

I played in orchestras for Long Beach, Cerritos, and Cypress colleges. I would play in the Long Beach City College jazz groups on, and off, depending on if the director needed a bass player. I didn’t necessarily like playing some jazz songs. They were musically unlike everything I had been taught. I was exceptionally good at reading notes. This helped me sight read pieces in orchestra for either instrument. Jazz music however would sometimes have few notes, and instead be nothing but chord changes. This baffled me, it also baffled the director. He would ask why I was great at some pieces, and not others. I told him I could read music, but letters meant nothing to me. I never studied musical theory in school. I knew nothing about chords, chord progressions, or what went into major or minor keys. I just read the notes. After more than a decade playing in the orchestra I knew what I was good at, and it certainly wasn’t jazz. I became very snooty about my tastes in music. Then one day I was humbled by an accordion player.

In college orchestra we were sometimes asked to be accompanists for recitals. This was often at the end of the semester. We were supporting the music majors leaving our school to pursue their degree as composers or professional musicians. I had the great fortune of playing with dozens of talented musicians that did become professionals in orchestras, studio groups, and their own bands. Some became teachers, some worked in the entertainment industry for companies like Disney, and Universal. At least one person that I knew became a national advisor to the arts, and worked in DC for many years. I respected all of these people. Then one day we had a soloist that was going to play the accordion. I couldn't care less about the instrument, or the music that was about to be played. All my life I was taught that the accordion was a joke instrument. It didn’t have the pedigree of a classical instrument. The violin, viola, cello, and bass were highbrow to me. The accordion did not have that same reputation. In pop culture it was often used as a punchline. Weird Al Yankovic, and Judy Tenuta both used the accordion to great comedic effect.

The soloist for our chamber recital explained that she was a composer, and a piano major. For her recital she decided to instead play the accordion. She explained that the vast majority of accordion music was mainly transcribed from piano arrangements. Actual music composed for the accordion was rare, but could have as much depth, and complexity as any orchestra piece. I scoffed at the idea. She said she would be performing a movement from a composer named Eugene Ettore. He had created several original pieces for the accordion. The selection from the Manhattan Concerto would be featured that afternoon. Since we were not performing with her I was already mentally checked out. I sat with the orchestra, and closed my eyes. I waited for the torture to begin. A second later I sat up, and paid rapt attention. The recital hall was filled with sounds that I never could have imagined. There were tones, overtones, melodies, and harmonies playing in unison from her instrument. It was a wave of sounds that was hard to describe. A wonderful type of music that I had never thought possible. The closest I could describe the sound that the soloist achieved was somewhere between an organ, and choir. The accordion sounded like a living instrument that took deep breaths, and sang with many voices all at once. At that very moment I realized that I knew even less about music than I thought.

After 15 years of playing all over Southern California I had plenty more left to learn. This was true for the music, instruments, and formats that I didn’t understand. It saddened me that there was not a recording of that recital that I could play for you. I was convinced that it would make for a phenomenal soundtrack to a video game. I searched online to see if the Manhattan Concerto in its entirety had ever been recorded. I could find no evidence of it, aside from sheet music, and reports of performances on the east coast. I did eventually track down recordings of other Ettore songs from Rita Barnea. She was one of Ettore's students, and had become an accordion instructor as well. In this clip she talked about Eugene Ettore, and played the first movement of Manhattan Concerto. The thing that I discovered was that the accordion was very difficult to record, and mix correctly. Even on Mrs. Barnea’s recordings you only got a fraction of the tones that the instrument produced. The video itself did not do justice to the depth of sound that I heard in orchestra some 30 years ago. If I was wrong about the accordion, then I was certainly wrong about jazz music. The problem was I didn’t know where, or how to begin. Surprisingly the answer would come to me in the form of a banjo.

If the accordion was at the bottom of the respectable music pyramid, then the banjo was right next to it. Comedian Steve Martin often used it in his early days as a stand up. The banjo was synonymous with inbred hillbillies, no part in thanks to the 1972 film Deliverance. It had been used as a punchline in jokes for decades. Yet at the same time there were musicians introducing it into modern progressive jazz. My old neighbor was a latin, and jazz musician. He knew I was a bass player. He recorded years of jazz specials on his VCR (ask your grandparents). In the mid-‘90s and lent me a tape of the 1991 Jacksonville Jazz fest. He said there was a bass player named Victor Wooten that would blow my mind. I had grown up listening to Bootsy Collins (the James Brown band), Paul McCartney (the Beatles), John Entwistle (The Who), Chris Squire (Yes), Geddy Lee (Rush), Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead), Cliff Burton (Metallica), Robert Trujillo (Suicidal Tendencies), Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), and Les Claypool (Primus). I assumed that I had heard the best of the best. Again it turned out I was terribly ignorant.

The particular group my neighbor wanted me to listen to was Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. I found out later that it was band that was not supposed to exist. It featured the best musicians from their own respective genres. Béla Fleck was arguably the best modern bluegrass musician. His skills on the banjo were amazing. He was known for his virtuoso playing not only in traditional bluegrass music, but also classical. He was experimenting with new sounds, and created an electric banjo. Howard Levy was known in blues circles as the “man with two brains.” He could play piano, and harmonica equally well. The contrasting melodies, and harmonies he performed simultaneously sounded like they came from two different people. The drummer of the group was a time traveler named Future Man. He had converted a midi guitar into a a drum kit with dozens of other sound effects. His birth name was Roy Wilfred Wooten, his little brother Victor was considered the best progressive electric bass player in the 20th century. These musicians crossed paths one day, and played a show together. It was supposed to be a one time thing only to realized that they complimented each other very well.

These talented musicians decided to form a band. The sound they created hit like a tsunami at the Jacksonville Jazz fest in 1991. Their breakout jazz tune the Sinister Minister featured one of the greatest bass solos of all time. This band would be the one to get me interested in learning more about jazz. I’d like you to listen to the song, and try to figure out what made it unique. Then in the next blog I’d like to explore why jazz was different from other forms of early 20th century music, and my tips on how to listen to it. I hope to see you back for that. Were there any genres of music that you didn’t understand at first? Or some song that grew on you over time? Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Bookmark This Page; The Return of Virtua Fighter

Not every deep dive on a game series is very long. If you want to learn how Sega got back to Virtua Fighter then Bookmark This Page.

The Return of Virtua Fighter, part 1…

The Return of Virtua Fighter, part 2…

The Return of Virtua Fighter, final part

Were you a fan of any game in the Virtua Fighter series, or a specific character? Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Drawing my second favorite He-Man character

Hello friends, I hope you were doing well. I was surprised at how well my previous illustration turned out. It made me think of drawing my second favorite He-Man character. This would be the Fisto, the master of hand-to-hand combat.

This character was only in a few episodes of the cartoon series. I loved the massive armored gauntlet that he would pummel his opponents with. The Nemean Cestus in God of War III was similar to the armor. It made me wonder if this is how Fisto would have handled in a 3D brawler. If you never played with the He-Man characters let me explain the appeal to you. They were bigger than G.I. Joe figures, and insanely muscular. The embodiment of power was part of the attraction to kids. The other thing was the gimmick. Almost every figure had some sort of gimmick. Some were flocked with red or green fur. Some changed color, shot water, kicked, or spun around. Fisto had a spring loaded torso which allowed him to throw punches when he twisted. It allowed me to knock over any other figure during our play battles. 

I had Ram Man on my cabinet, but Fisto was still in the garage somewhere. I would be sure to bring him inside once I located the box he was stored in. In the meantime I now had both figures side-by-side in illustration form. 

I was glad to start breaking out of my art drought. Every sketch in my book was helping me reconnect to a part of me that had been turned off for years, and years. Chances were that these were the only He-Man characters I would draw. But only time would tell if I'd get to the villains. Did you have a favorite toy or action figure that you did art of? Tell me about them in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Drawing my favorite He-Man character

Hello friends, I hope you were doing well. This year was filled with lots of changes, a few bad things, but the vast majority for the better. I hoped that things were going well on your side of the internet. There was something that I wanted to share with you. I liked drawing. I was terrible at starting if I wanted to be honest with you,. Honestly I was my own worst critic when it came to drawing. If an illustration didn’t come out the way I imagined it then I would beat myself up. This was especially true for pencil, or ink drawings. Those were even harder to start on. In order to get back into the habit of drawing I started changing my surroundings. This would help put me at ease, and give me a comfortable environment where I could explore art.

Around my work desk I started putting in many of my collectables. I had a cabinet filled with Incredible Hulk comics, and action figures. I had some new, and plenty of old toys on the shelves. I’m sure I would be sharing the details of the cabinet in a future blog. Today I wanted to look at one of the figures that inspired me to make a new drawing. Like many of you I played with tons of action figures growing up. My brothers, and I had Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joes, Transformers, Hot Wheels, all of the classics that you could imagine. We also had plenty of He-Man figures. My favorite character was Ram Man.

If you weren’t familiar with the toy, and cartoon series. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was a mix of sci-fi, and fantasy. The main character was Prince Adam, a young man that could wield a magical sword that allowed him to turn into the adult He-Man. This was not unlike the way Marvel treated the mythology, and powers of Thor, as well as the society of Asgard. The male characters in the series were all super strong, with bodybuilder physiques. Even as a kid I could tell that most of the molds for the figures were the same with different heads, and details. I liked Ram Man for a few reasons. He didn’t feature the same body as other figures, he had cool armor, and most important he had spring-loaded legs. An action figure that was a human battering ram was just too cool.

My sketch showed how rusty I was drawing with a pencil, however I knew that I would be able to turn it into a nice illustration. Thankfully I was right. It made me think that I should try to draw my other He-Man characters. But that might take me months to get around to. For now I was happy to get out of my drawing slump, even if it was only with one character. That was at least one more than nothing. I hoped that if you were creating art that you would keep on going. I definitely needed to work harder at it. Did you have a favorite toy or action figure that you did art of? Tell me about them in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

My favorite unfinished Pac-Man game

Heya friends I hope you are doing well. Are there any video games that were never published that you wish we had gotten? Today I wanted to vent about an arcade game we never got simply because it would have been the arcade successor to my favorite Pac-Man game. Mind you that I am not a fan of maze games, and I was never any good at Namco’s iconic Pac-Man. That said however I was a huge fan of the Bally Midway game Baby Pac-Man. The US developers expanded on the canon of the Pac universe, and helped influence the direction of Namco in Japan. For example Ms. Pac-Man was designed by General Computer Corporation, and published by Bally Midway in early 1982. This game started life as an illegal rom hack of Pac-Man. The same team developed Jr. Pac-Man a year later, and further expanded the Pac family. One of the most unique contributions to the Pac family was developed by Dave Nutting Associates. They created a hybrid arcade game that was part video game, and part pinball game. Baby Pac-Man came out in 1982, and there was nothing remotely like it before or since.

I was never good at the maze side of the game, but I was really good at the pinball side of it. It made sense to me that the Pac characters lent themselves to pinball. If only there was a way to create yellow steel balls to further the effect. Anyhow the game was also super rare. I only saw it at a few arcades out of the dozens that I visited. So whenever I saw one in the wild I knew I had to get a few plays in. It turned out that there was going to be a successor to Baby Pac-Man with the maze, and pinball mechanic that would have been even more ambitious. The cancelled Count Pacula game by Bally Midway would have actually featured multi-level screens for a vampire version of Pac-Man to explore. Instead of a nebulous series of neon maps Count Pacula would be going up, and down stairs in a haunted house / castle. Imagine how much more interesting the game would have looked with this sort of mechanic! The only thing that arcade fans would see was a design document, and a sketch of one of the maze floors.

The concept of a Dracula version of Pac-Man would be revisited in animation. Both the Hanna-Barbera Pac-Man show from the 1982, and the Ghostly Adventures of Pac-Man from 2013 had a story featuring the monster. As clever as those shows were fans still wanted to play a version of the proposed game. The closest we ever got was when Sk8rcow released a ROM hack of the NES game Devil World and turned it into a fan version of Count Pacula. The programmer added all sorts of animations, and variations of the classic Pac characters and ghosts to fit into the classic horror theme. It was a fun game that gave us a taste of how the video game portion would have turned out.

I think however that there was another game that audiences could have tried to get the horror maze feel. Back in 1982 Sega released their own maze game called Monster Bash. A later version for the Sega Master System home console called Ghost House was even more fleshed out. I remember my older brother being exceptionally good at Monster Bash. In it you would navigate through a maze filled with all sorts of monsters. The maps were labeled the Dracula House, Frankenstein Castle, and Chameleon Man Graveyard. You would gather portions of a magical sword which you could then use to hunt down the monsters.

The Sega game was considered one of the first arcade horror games, specifically inspired by the classic Universal Studios monsters. It was certainly one of the titles that I felt deserved a sequel. Fans would have to settle for Ghost House on their 8-bit console. With all that said more than 40 years later I still lamented the fact that we were never given a proper Count Pacula arcade cabinet. It’s one of those things that I’d like to design, and build if I had more talent, and a lot more money. At the very least I could honor the game that almost was by designing a poster for it. There’s something about classic horror, and iconic game characters that I think works very well together.

I hope you, and yours have a safe, and happy Halloween weekend. I’d like to know if you had a favorite horror game, or if there was a cancelled game project that you wish had been released. Tell me about it in the comments section. If you enjoy this blog there are several ways you can support me. You can sponsor me directly on Patreon. Or like and subscribe to my videos on YouTube. You can even subscribe to the Pink Monorail Podcast featuring my wife, and myself. 

 

An evening with Disney royalty for a good cause

Hello friends, I hope that you are doing well. Things are moving along over here. Doing some writing, and trying to make more time for art. I did want to talk a little bit about a great event that I took the missus to at the start of October 2026. We don’t make tons of money, but we still like to support various charities, and fundraisers for our friends, and their kids. One of the organizations we’ve been supporting for decades is The Carolwood Society, and Carolwood Foundation. We don’t give them a lot of money, but we do donate our time on some of their fundraisers. In some cases our kid also volunteers time to help. The organizers are great people, and always kind to the volunteers, and staff. If you’re not familiar with them they work with the Disney Family, and the Disney Company to restore, and preserve the trains that Walt Disney owned, or operated at Disneyland.

In October they were in the process of restoring one of the four trains that used to operate at the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland. For the past 40 years it was left outside in the elements as part of a set decoration in Frontierland. This was the attraction that my wife wrote about in a MiceChat history article. It was a nine-minute trip around a makeshift wilderness that included a mountain, desert, and cave scene filled with animatronic animals. It was closed down in 1977, and where Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, and Big Thunder Mountain now currently reside. The event was hosted by Garner Holt Productions, and the Garner Holt Foundation.

The fundraiser featured both a silent auction, and live auction, dinner, and presentations by various people. The first person to talk about the attraction was Bob Gurr. Mr. Gurr was one of the few people that worked for Walt Disney that is still with us. He built just about everything with wheels at Disneyland. His recall on the Mine Train was amazing considering that Mr. Gurr was almost 95-years-old when he spoke. I hope to be as energetic, and sharp if I get to that age. The next group to talk were three of the actual ride operators from the attraction. They formed a club called the Red Handkerchief Society. It started with over 200 members, and there were still about 70 alive to share their stories.

The highlight of the event was a sit down with Joanna Miller, the daughter of Diane Disney Miller, and the granddaughter of Walt Disney. She talked about what it was like visiting the park with her grandfather, and what a blessed experience knowing that people cared enough to restore the train. She thought it was a lost cause considering how far the company had let the train deteriorate. She was certain that it would have to be scrapped. Then she saw the progress from Garner, and his team. She almost cried when she saw the transformation. It was hard to believe that he salvaged both the engine, and the ride vehicles. The train still had a way to go. The wheels, and cab were still being restored. The project would be finished around Feb / March of 2027.

The fundraiser was a wonderful event, but you had to have deep pockets if you hoped to walk away with anything from the auctions. The icing on the cake for use theme park fans was a chance to tour Garner’s actual company. The missus and I had actually visited it twice before when it was at its old location, just down the street. This was our first visit to his new location which must have been four times bigger. Plus the buildings he owned across the street where he hosted STEM workshops for students. The event happened in the middle of a heat wave. It was 109 degrees when we arrived and in the mid-90s when we left late at night. Garner Holt was a very kind man, and one of those people that could be ranked among the theme park greats alongside Walt Disney himself. He was bitten by the theme park bug as a kid when he visited Disneyland with his family. He dedicated his life to creating animatronics in his family garage. His mom let him turn the garage into a haunted house with his makeshift robots, which became better, and more popular every year. 

Garner dropped out of school to build full time. He then created a small company. The industry knew he was a force to be reckoned with when Wendell the animatronic unicyclist made his debut in 1989. The people at Disney said that they had been spending millions developing the greatest animatronics in the world, but they conceded that he spent a fraction of that creating an even more impressive animatronic. Garner’s small company eventually became a huge company that built animatronics all around the world for Disney, Universal Studios, and countless other parks. 

Garner never lost his love for all things Disney. He revered the imagineers, and sought out advice from Bob Gurr for many of his builds. Even those that were no longer with us he honored in one way or another. One of the things that stuck out to me was the impressive bust in his reception room of Leota Toombs. She was an artist that worked for Walt Disney Imagineering decades ago. She was known better as the original Madame Leota from the Haunted Mansion. Her daughter Kim Irvine reprised the role when the company redid the crystal ball effects for a Haunted Mansion refresh. Anyhow, I was amazed at how great the sculptors at the studio were in creating the busts of Toombs, Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, and Abe Lincoln.

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures of most of his creative factory. There were tons of trade secrets, as well as projects for various theme parks that were still in the building stages. I’m sure that rival studios would have killed to get access to his technology, and techniques. As a lifelong theme park fan you could imagine how hard it was to play it cool as I walked past bins of fiberglass molds for items labeled Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Mystic Manor, and more. It I could have cracked off a piece of theme park history I would have, unfortunately there was a security guard walking behind the group making sure that we kept out hands to ourselves, and that our phones remained in our pockets.

We were allowed to take pictures of his companies ride collection. He had an assortment of actual ride vehicles, animatronics, and set pieces from Disneyland. Some that he built, and some that he acquired directly from the company. In some cases he was simply gifted these items, the only catch was that he was responsible to pick it up, and transport it from the Disney warehouses. Which sounded easy but he said covering up just one of the items cost $3000. Disney does not allow anything to be identifiable when en route to a new location. So if it doesn’t fit inside of a transport, then it has to be completely covered. I am not at liberty to say what one of his most recent scores was until the “heat” dies down. I will say it was an impressive score. 

After our tour we got a chance to ask him all sorts of questions. Again he was very generous with his time despite it getting close to midnight. His foundation helped raise thousands just in auction items, not including how much the dinner tickets raised. We said our goodbyes, and drove back home in the heat as some happy theme park fans. I’d like to know if you’d ever attended a fundraiser for one of your interests. Tell me about it in the comments section. If you enjoy this blog there are several ways you can support me. You can sponsor me directly on Patreon. Or like and subscribe to my videos on YouTube. You can even subscribe to the Pink Monorail Podcast featuring my wife, and myself.