Computer games and computer game hardware had as much importance in my youth and formative years as any amount of music. The game labels, games and the people who made and reviewed them took on the same mystique, fanatic devotion; belief and philosophical answers than anything I managed to dredge out of the radio and records that where available at the time.
It's said that music is seen as more vital and real to the young mostly because they are going through a lot of change, a year at the age of 14 is as long as five years when you are in your mid thirties.
Its a time your confused, in search of answers and feel alienated. And its at that time that music seems to talk to your soul, that bands are writing and playing about things that effect you directly.
Everything that is wrapped up in the music becomes important, if you gravitate towards a music scene then you obsess on that, and if you pick a band from that scene then they become very important indeed. The album reviews are critical, each single is purchased and any interview is gobbled up. You get to know the names of the people behind the band and you wonder if anyone out there understands what you are going through.
And in the late sixties and early seventies the person who managed to find a voice was a guy called Lester Bangs. He was basically an uber music geek, he loved music and had a great turn of phrase, he was important, very important. Yet like most things the very vital nature of Lester Bangs now has a nostalgic feel, if you look back at what he has written, out of context, out of the time it smacks of ham fisted writing with a juvenile edge. That's because it was, and the juveniles he was talking to where ones born of that age. In short his writings are a curiosity, they explain more about the time than about how to review music.
When I look back at my early years I find a lot of things about my obsession with computer games seem the same, I was interested in one particular scene, the Spectrum 48k, a great home computer, that was the scene I was wedded to. There where others, the Amstrad (for posh kids) and the commodore 64 (for kids who didn't want to code and who also had more money.) And within the spectrum scene I was into a label called Imagine and some guys called ultimate, these where the equivalent of bands. I read anything and everything I could, I knew the names of people in the business, and I bought every game on release. And we had our own magazines, I read Crash, the great spectrum magazine, there where other magazines but frankly I had no interest in them.
And within the pages of Crash I always turned to the writings and ranting of Gary Penn.
EDIT: Actually by the time I discovered Mr Penn my humble Speccy had blown up and I had been bought a C64, so actually it was the pages of Zap!64. Quite rightly people spotted this blunder and hence the edit and explaination.. on with the tale.. EDIT ENDS
He had fight, opinion and a tone that spoke volumes to me. His reviews where more like critiques, he would point out areas of the game that he enjoyed and ways he felt it could be improved. He was open about his likes and dislikes and he would quickly cut through the crap to get at the main point. Now I am not sure if what I just wrote is true, when I say he was great what I mean is, at the time I was reading the, with the state of mind I had and with my recollection now I am convinced he was right. His style and tone spoke directly to me at that period of my life.
And yet like all great rock and roll stories it ends badly. The game scene moves on, Penn grew frustrated by the industry, the labels I loved collapsed (which happened to imagine) or ran out of ideas (as happened to Ultimate) and the scene changed beyond recognition as consoles arrived and back bed room coding was seen as the last thing anyone cool would do. New machines like the Amiga and the Atari ST came around and I got older.
Gary Penn went on to find new frustrations within the games industry, the last article of his that I read appeared in Edge where he eloquently explained the personal journey he had been on, the love, frustration, anger and disappointment that life in the games world can bring.
It was a very personal piece and by an uncanny twist of fate its as much about life and love affairs as it is about the cmputer games world. It ended in a somewhat sour note, I am not there yet and hopefully can avoid that final pit fall. But it was good to hear that my Lester Bangs could still produce the goods.
I guess in the modern gaming age its people like the web-tv reviewers and (hopefully) the guys at Rock paper shotgun that tell it like it is. That the current scene is as vibrant and interesting, it's just different. I recently met up with Kieron from www.Rockpapershotgun.com at a pub in London and it was the closest I will ever get to living the life I read about in Crash/Zap!64 magazine.
Here I was sharing a pint with one of the strong voices in the UK computer game scene. He writes for lot of a magazines but really RPS is the modern form of Crash and Zap!64. It was fun and nostalgic and interesting and warming all at the same time. Oh and we drank beer which is always good.
It was an interview via a time machine into my own rose tinted view of my early years, I liked doing it a lot.