Woody's Place

Me & Mom

Once Upon A Time...

...while two families vacationed together, a boy named Chris introduced another boy named Woody to a magical world called Dungeons & Dragons, inadvertently birthing a life long obsession.

That's me on the left, and Chris Koon on the right, and what I believe to be a Dungeons & Dragons book or magazine on the table in front if us.  "Keep On The Borderlands" perhaps?

I still have my first character sheet and all the tattered copies of Dragon magazine that he gave me... although my collection has grown a bit since then.

Good times. 

P.S. Why do ten year old boys always make goofy faces when they get their picture taken?

I Miss My Big Wheel

Manahmanah

Def Leppard "Photograph"

I was in eighth grade when this record came out.  I can still remember seeing the video on TV at my friend Gary's house early one morning as we were getting ready to walk over to school.  It was mind blowing.  A great pop song with a hard rock attitude and... and, well damn those dudes were just so frickin' COOL! 

For the next year or two I simply wanted to BE Def Leppard's lead guitarist Phil Collen.  I wanted to wear those clothes, be that cool, play that sweet black guitar and rock that hard.  Was there another album released in 1983?  If so I must have missed it.  This was THE album of the year for me, without a doubt. 

Just-Ice "Cold Gettin' Dumb"

Here's one of my favorite old school hip hop tracks from "back in tha day".  Listen for the awesome break twenty seven seconds in.

Back when this record was released I was finishing up high school, and living in "tha hood".  I wasn't a fan of Just-Ice so much as I was a fan of his producer Mantronix's complex beats and chopped up electro style. 

Good tunes, good times. 

Depeche Mode "Black Celebration"

One of my all time favorite albums is Depeche Mode's 1986 masterpiece "Black Celebration".  I was in high school and already a big fan of the band, but when I heard that album it was so much richer than anything they'd done before that I became forever hooked on their sound. 

I've been posting YouTube clips of some of my favorite songs, but I couldn't find a good video of this one anywhere, so I quickly put together my own little clip using Microsoft PhotoStory and the various pictures and icons featured on the album cover.  Nothing too artistic, but it conveys the mood of the album and the aesthetic of the time I guess, and the main thing I wanted to share was just the music anyways. 

Then of course the upload was rejected by YouTube due to their copyright policy, which explains why I couldn't find any clips already available I suppose.  This quick little project was becoming a pain in the butt, but since the clip was already done I decided to just host the file right here on the blog.  This is the first time I've tried to host & embed a multimedia clip on Typepad, so apologies if it's buggy or slow to load.

UPDATE: Embedding the video was causing some browsers to crash, so I changed it to just a link.

Depeche Mode - Black Celebration 320.wmv 

Great album, great tune, great band.  At least that's my opinion.  What do you think? 

P.S. While I had the pictures up I decided to go ahead and whip out a video for "Here Is The House", which was my second favorite song from the album and also has no good representation on YouTube. 

Depeche Mode - Here Is The House 320.wmv