TITLE: "Make Any Vows"
ARTIST: Game Theory
ALBUM: Big Shot Chronicles
RELEASE DATE: 1986
Again, I usually like to have some grand design for posting music here, but my only impetus for putting this song up today is that Spring hath sprung. I first heard Game Theory in my sophomore year of college, wherein a gaggle of significantly hipper friends of mine strove to pull me out of my none-more-black phase of listening exclusively to vitriolic hardcore, vintage punk, slack-jawed metal and histrionic goth rock. Along with bands like The Feelies, The Plimsouls, The Dream Syndicate, The Three O'Clock, The Smithereens, The Hoodoo Gurus, Let's Active, The Lime Spiders, Pylon, Guadalcanal Diary and a host of others, Game Theory showed me that there was indeed life beyond the skull-cracking resonance of the almighty power chord. This was back when they called this brand of jangle-heavy, paisley underground fare "college rock". And yea verily, it was good.
There's assuredly nothing duller than listening to some forty-year-old, midlife-crisis-suffering windbag wax nostalgic about the music of his college days. I used to groan and grimace when I heard my own father bust into impromptu and entirely unsolicited a capella renditions of hits by the Young Rascals and Credence Clearwater. I imagine my own children will similarly blanche when I spontaneously air guitar to old nuggets by the Circle Jerks and Motorhead. But in all candor, "Make Any Vows" by Game Theory -- especially its seamlessly simple guitar hook -- takes me right back to a series of maddeningly beautiful Spring days spent out on the sprawling quadrangles of grass around the Denison University campus, watching my friends play hackey sack (a skill I never mastered, much less aspired to master) and attempting to divine the perfect way to ask that girl in Sociology/Anthropology 101 out on a proper date (which never transpired, alas).
Turn it up. Blow off class. Get outside.
Well, everybody else is talking about it so I might as well too. It came to my attention recently that a new version of "The Taking of Pelham 123" -- one of my abso-fave films of all goddamn time -- is in the works. So many of my favorite movies have been similarly shamed and butchered in this fashion, notably "Planet of The Apes", "The Wicker Man" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to name but an especially putrid few. Why someone has seen fit to tarnish a film that is already beyond perfect completely astounds me. Now, don't get me wrong -- I have nothing against Denzel Washington. He's done some fine work. But evidently Robert Shaw's inimitable character -- that being "Mr. Blue" -- is to be played by John Travolta?? 
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