Category: Music

Whether it’s my long running “Blog Series” called “Music Lyric Monday” or a good song that I came across on YouTube, you will find it here!

  • [The JukeBox] #99 – Oingo Boingo – Who Do You Want To Be?

    [The JukeBox] #99 – Oingo Boingo – Who Do You Want To Be?

    Recently the remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 was announced and I was reminiscing about the other games in the series and the music that was included.

    The Tony Hawk series has been known to showcase a lot of great music across it’s 10 main line games.

    For this JukeBox, we head back to 2005 and the time where my main device for playing games with the original ‘Phat’ Nintendo DS and I bought myself a copy of Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land. On PlayStation 2, Xbox, Gamecube and PC, it was titled American Wasteland, but changed for Nintendo DS and the Game Boy Advance.

    It was still the first year of the original Nintendo DS’ life so a lot of new titles were making use of the touch screen. This game used it to perform certain tricks that earned you more points, but you never needed to use them, the entire game can be played via the D-Pad and face buttons.

    The TL;DR of American Sk8land is that you are tasked to help Tony Hawk fund the purchasing of an old skatepark and to help Mindy start a comic book based on skating. It is your job to go around California, complete jobs and earn money. These ‘jobs’ would involve you skating, performing tricks, collecting items or helping to retrieve things out of reach.

    The game comes packed with various punk rock tunes from some bands that you may know such as Green Day and Dead Kennedys. On the Game Boy Advance version, they had Filthy/Gorgeous by Scissor Sisters.

    Being the Nintendo DS, the music was compressed. Sounds great in the video below but coming out of a mono speaker was a different experience.

    Video should start at 3:41.

    But the song that I really liked in this game was Oingo Boingo’s Who Do You Want To Be?

    It mixes punk rock with a bit of Ska, it’s repeating lyrics makes it easy to learn so you can sing along with it by the end of the song.

    From Wiki, Oingo Boingo is a new wave band formed in 1979 created from the street theatre group The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo

    Who Do You Want To Be? was the first track on Oingo Boingo’s 3rd studio album ‘Good for Your Soul’ which released in 1983.

    The version that is in Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land / Wasteland is their re-recording that they did in their 1988 “Alive” album.

    YouTube – Live version

    YouTube – Alive version

    Spotify

    Lyrics

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Do you want to be just like someone on TV?

    Oh boredom is so terrible
    It’s like a dread disease
    Nothing could be worse than
    When there’s nothing on TV
    I’d rather be a cowboy
    Than to stare blank at the walls
    I’ve been reborn so many times
    I can’t remember them all and I say

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Do you want to be just like someone on TV?
    Just like somebody on TV

    I think I’ll be a teddy boy
    I think I’ll be a hunk
    I think I’ll be a tough guy
    And I think I’ll be a punk
    I might just be a fashion star
    All dressed in frilly rags
    Or perhaps I’ll cross the other side
    And walk around in drag

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Do you want to be just like someone on TV?
    Just like somebody on TV

    Oh yeah

    Do you like live just like a rock
    In the middle of the sea?
    Do you want to suffer by yourself
    In a pool of blissful misery?
    Do you feel like a saint in artist’s clothes
    With a rosary in your hand?
    Do you want to be crazy like Van Gogh?
    Like a stranger in a strange strange land?
    Would you rather push the buttons
    And be feared by all humanity?
    Or perhaps you’d like to be a bum
    Do you wanna be stupid, just like me?

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Do you want to be just like someone on TV?
    Just like somebody on TV

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be today?

    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?
    Who do you want to be today?
    Who do you want to be?

  • Spotify 2025 Playlist is live!

    Spotify 2025 Playlist is live!

    Quick post to say that my 2025 Spotify Playlist has been created. There is nothing on there right now, but you can follow it and check on it throughout the year for new music that I add to it:

    I have a list of all the yearly Spotify playlists that I have created since 2017 over on the Spotify Playlists page.

  • Earworm: Harder Hart by Colin Young ft. Emma Boster

    Earworm: Harder Hart by Colin Young ft. Emma Boster

    This has been my earworm for the last few days. So bloody good.

    This is the theme for the AEW wrestler, Julia Hart. This is her singles theme, as she is normally accompanying the other members of The House of Black.

  • Spotify Playlists Update

    Spotify Playlists Update

    It is that time of year once more where I let you all know that my 2023 Spotify playlist has been completed.

    I discovered a good few artists this year, and I have gone back to listen to them more often than not.

    New albums from BABYMETAL, Q-Rabbit, HANABIE, Superflat and Sparkly Night.

    Some classics mixed in there too.

    Enjoy!

    And you can listen back to all the playlists that I have made since 2017 here:

    Spotify Playlists

    Follow me on the Fediverse – @padraig@mastodon.ie

  • Follow-up – Choosing my next music streaming service

    Follow-up – Choosing my next music streaming service

    Back in January, I looked at each of Spotify’s competitors to see what could potentially become the next streaming service that I was going to subscribe to.

    For a couple of months, I had been using Deezer almost exclusively but now I seem to be back on Spotify with absolutely no reason for me to use it over the other.

    The track selection has been good, the UI is neat but how and never, I always feel drawn back to Spotify. The high fidelity audio option is a really nice touch and worth it on it’s own.

    Discoverability is somewhat lacking. Deezer seems to have a look at it’s close circle of artists that you listen to and gives a small list of artists outside before roping you back to square one.

    Most of the artists that I would be listening to are from Japan and they would be putting their music on Spotify over Deezer and any promotions either point them to Spotify, YouTube or LINE (LINE is only available within Japan)

    I seem to be at a crossroads when it comes to finding city pop / future funk music. So my attention turned to Bandcamp and this opened a massive can of worms.

    Bandcamp doesn’t have an official desktop client. There is a 3rd party one that is literally just the website in PWA with keyboard shortcuts. The music discoverability appears to be better on the one hand and the fact that I can subscribe to a LABEL rather than just the artist is very nice.

    Bandcamp’s search is good too as it’s able to show new music in a particular genre or by a label.

    I wasn’t sure if this was the best way to ‘support’ or ‘listen’ to an artist or whether something like Spotify/SoundCloud/YouTube was the way to go:

    One thing I do like about Bandcamp is the ability to support artists by buying their album or a set price or you can contribute more.

    Some artists/labels have the ability to purchase full discographies which you can download and listen to offline is a really nice touch.

    (Source: https://music.businesscasual.biz/ – I have already purchased this for $5 but it’s nice that their entire collection can be bought for just $1! )

    Overall, I have decided to go back to Spotify for most of my listening but from time-to-time, Bandcamp.

    I expect big things to come from Bandcamp in the future as the platform was acquired back in March by Epic Games.

  • Music Bot for Nologam

    So, a couple of nights ago, I introduced a new bot into my TeamSpeak known as the ‘Nologam Music Bot’

    It sits in the channel and plays music…whether it is from a radio stream, a YouTube link or uploaded file, it can do it.

    At the moment, it is playing a old radio station from Belfast known as Energy 106 which I grew up with and still love the music that they air today!

    What type of music do you like? Send me some YouTube, Spotify links via Twitter: @PadraigFahy