Mr. and Mrs. Mutt and March 18th

Mutt Lange

(Unabridged Post from my Music blog)

I wrote earlier that I was surprised that the "ACDC" sound was established in Powerage instead of Highway to Hell.  It may have sounded like I did not give Mutt Lange enough credit for the work he did with the band.  This can not be further from the truth.  Listening to the albums he did with them(Highway to Hell, Back in Black, For Those About to Rock) has given me a lot of insight.

In Highway to Hell I hear Mutt's influence in many places.  While the band seemed to learn how to play together in Powerage.  The lyrics are tighter, and there are backing vocals used in the background.  The songs seem to take on a less nebulous structure.   The reason why I know this is Mutt's influence?  Because of Def Leppard.  You see, after his stint with ACDC, Mutt was hired to work for Def Leppard.  Their most important 3 albums were done by Mutt.  That backing vocal track is on every major Def Leppard song you can probably think of.  Song structure, recording techniques, you can hear it across all these albums.


By the way, I know I have some good ole country folk in my social circles, I don't know if readin' this is your thing, but Mutt Lange is THAT Mutt Lange that married Shania Twain, and produced her biggest albums.

March 18th

There are few things on this planet I despise more than Skim Milk.

Anyway, played a couple of hours in Grandia and got to a good stopping point.  That game is just... sooo slow.  The story just isn't there, and I just don't care about the characters no matter how good the designs and art are.  They artifificially inflate the time played by making you backtrack through already explored dungeons.  I'm already not a huge fan of big dungeons, and I'm even less inclined to like them the 2nd and 3rd time through, especially because there's nothing "new" to discover with them.  Longest 34 hours in a game I've ever played and I'm only on disc 2. 

Final Fantasy X HD got released, which means I'm watching the movie cutscenes in HD for the first time and enjoying that.  I enjoyed the cutscenes more than the actual game.  I'm not a huge fan of FFX, though the ending was really really good.  Auron is also on my top list of badasses, right there with Shadow and T. G. Cid.  Will I ever go through FFX HD?  Ehhh, I got a lot of games I'd play before it.  Seeing this did make me think I need to re-evaluate my favorites list for FF characters, as its probably been 10 years since I thought about it, and I've grown into a different person, and I have FF13(which I loved) to add in there.  I wish I had gotten around to playing and finishing FF3(Japanese 3), which is still the only core FF I haven't played through.  I could only play the remake of that though, which changes and adds to the game, so I'm not sure it would count.

So coming up... A few top 5's and a Game Ranking.