Discuss it in Talkback!

PGC: Could you please introduce yourselves.

John: We’re the NESkimos. We’re here. It’s about 2:36 at Perkins here in Gainesville [FL].

Danny: My name’s Mario.

John: His name’s not Mario, it’s Danny.

Danny: Oh, right. My name’s Danny. I’m the drummer.

John: I’m John. I play guitar.

Dan: I’m Dan. I also play guitar.

Ross: I’m Ross. I play bass guitar.

PGC: Alright, I guess my first question is: how did you guys decide to start playing video game music?

John: You might want to talk to the original members of the band for that.

PGC: Alright, so which of you guys are the original members of the band?

John: Uh, these three guys here. Ross, Danny, and Dan.

Dan: Uh, how did we start?

Danny: I was watching a John Travolta movie, in the summer of ’84, and I remember it very well.

Dan: Yeah, what was it about?

Danny: Urban Cowboy, and he was playing Donkey Kong before he was gonna ride the bull, and I knew then.

Dan: Are you for real dude?

Danny: No, I was four years old!

Ross: Dan started showing me, in general. That’s where it started for me. They had this brilliant idea years before that though, right?

Dan: I had the idea first in 90… no, 2000 I guess, likely ’99 at FSU [Florida State University]. It was pretty much the emulator scene that first got me on the idea. I got NESticle.

PGC: So was it all the emulators or just the music ones?

Dan: The game emulators. I think everyone went through that phase where they got NESticle and went through the whole cycle all the games they had played.

John: At that point it was a largely untapped resource of really good music that everybody knows and everybody likes.

Dan: Oh yes, much like Star Trek.

John: And it’s really easy to play. Theoretically.

PGC: Theoretically?

Ross: When practiced.

PGC: So what’s the inspiration behind playing Nintendo music?

Dan: It’s something that binds our generation together.

PGC: Awesome answer.

Danny: John Travolta.

Dan: And John Travolta.

PGC: So you guys are also into the hard rock stuff, is that why you play in that style?

Dan: I’m actually not all that into hard rock. Danny is.

Danny: I’m into metal.

Ross: Originally it was just to keep it with the whole 80’s theme. Like, 80’s music with 80’s style.

Dan: Yeah, we failed. Our original idea was to be an 80’s style metal band.

PGC: You’ve gotta ditch the ties and put some headbands on.

Danny: I think we were going less hair, and more Iron Maidenish, with the shred style, but that didn’t quite catch.

Ross: We ended up doing surf rock songs.

PGC: What’s your favorite song to play?

Dan: I’d like to say that after tonight I like Castlevania: Vampire Killer because it’s far too easy for us to mess up, ever. No matter what a bad night we’re having we can always play that song.

John: I think for me it would be Punch Out, even though it is obviously not too easy to mess up. It always builds very dramatically. It’s a story.

PGC: Have you guys heard the band Game Over? They tell a story. They play Punch Out and they made up words.

Ross: Dude we were totally gonna do that back in the day!

PGC: It’s all about how hard Mr. Dream, or Mike Tyson, is.

Dan: We wanted to do a rock opera, but we didn’t know how. Danny, what’s your favorite song to play?

Danny: Any Contra song. I love all the Contra songs. The suite of Contra songs.

John: How “suite” it is.

Ross: I’ll just pretty much have to go with Bionic Commando then, ‘cause that’s just, I don’t know. It’s probably just because it’s so ridiculously long. There’s probably like three or four individual songs in there, so I can just kinda cheat [with that answer]. So I’m gonna go with Kirby.

PGC: My favorite is the Dr. Wily level from Mega Man 2.

Ross: Which one?

PGC: The first half.

Dan: We haven’t played that song in like years.

Ross: Yeah, we’ve been missing the Mega Man the last couple shows.

PGC: Do you guys play videogames now? What are you guys playing right now?

John: A lot of the first person shooters that are coming out. I’m a PC gamer myself.

Dan: Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, from way back.

Ross: Zork was awesome.

Dan: And Return of Zork.

Danny: Commander Keen. I’m about to beat the original Duke Nukem. I’m playing no videogames right now. I’ll go download some Pac-Man on my phone, that’s about it.

Ross: My friends got me into the World of Warcraft, so I’ve been trying that.

PGC: Oh, World of Warcraft is an addiction.

Ross: I like it because I can actually play it for twenty minutes and then stop.

John: I played the beta, and it was cool because you could play one six hour session and be level 12.

Ross: I was given the new Vampire game, I got that but I haven’t tried it yet, but I heard that was really good.

PGC: Vampire the Masquerade? I heard that game was pretty good.

Ross: Half-Life, I’m sure you’ve played Half-Life 2 right?

PGC: Actually no, because I use a Mac.

John: Oh… this interview is over. No, I’m just kidding.

Ross: You should definitely, like the physics in Half Life 2 are enough to make you cry.

John: I got really into Wind Waker for awhile, I think that was the last game I got really into.

PGC: I’m playing Republic Commando right now, but it’s so short. I’ll probably beat it when I go home tonight.

Ross: That’s one of the big things. It just seems like it takes less and less and less time to beat a game. We were talking about Red Dead Revolver, I think I beat that in under ten hours. That’s just not right.

Friend of the NESkimos: Part of it has to do with these games are so much more involved now. You know what I’m saying, yeah it took weeks but we were in high school. A lot of that game time was school time, homework time. All the shit you had to keep your parents from bitchin’ at you from trying to devote time to Double Dragon. Now I’m 30, I’m on the phone “Mom I can’t talk right now. Diego, I have to fight Diego. I got the cannon […] Momma, now’s not the time.”

PGC: How do you guys figure out the music? Are there tabs somewhere on the internet or do you just play it all by ear?

John: Dan’s mostly the guy that figures that out.

Dan: Don’t use tabs, tabs are wrong.

Ross: The emulators allow me to isolate the music tracks.

John: That’s a big help, but it’s pretty much Dan’s ear that figures out all that stuff.

PGC: So when you figure it out do you write it down or do you just keep it in your head?

Dan: I probably should write it down.

Ross: He’s got that whole perfect pitch thing, which is really annoying if you don’t have it. Like, he can hear a car horn and tell you exactly what note it is.

Dan: Not really.

Ross: Yeah you can! You’ve done it before.

Dan: Car horns are generally two tones.

PGC: What’s the hardest song to play?

Ross: The hardest song or the one that fucks with us the most?

PGC: Let’s go with both.

Ross: Mario fucks with us the most. It has since the beginning.

John: Mario’s kind of a beast.

Ross: Well back in the day when we practicing in this little shed, like the first time we were trying it, Danny called Mario a bitch, and since then it’s haunted us for 3 years now.

PGC: Alright. So what’s the hardest technically?

Dan: That’s a really hard question. I think probably the hardest song to play technically is Bionic Commando but we seem to be doing it really pretty flawlessly.

Ross: That’s really technically difficult because it’s so long.

John: Yeah it’s mostly memory that’s difficult there. Although there are a few parts that are rhythmically difficult.

Danny: Well, F-Zero for you guys.

John: F-Zero! F-Zero is the untamed dragon.

Dan: The dude that recorded the solo is no longer with us.

Danny: He has a scholarship to Berklee, music school.

Dan: And that’s just not fair. We arranged a slower version of it, but we never got around to playing it.

PGC: Yeah but it’s not as good unless you blasted it super fast.

Dan: I think it sounded pretty good actually. One of these days we’ll do it. We’ll do it full speed.

Ross: Aren’t you guys like only twenty beats per minute off right now?

John: He’s [Dan’s] twenty I’m twelve. There’s this one difficult run in big blue.

Dan: Pretty much that’s the only thing that keeps us from doing it.

John: Yeah. Dan and I sat down with a metronome one night and just saw how fast we could play it. And I forget, who could play it faster? Who was it?

Dan: Shut up, you didn’t forget who can play it faster.

John: Who could play it faster by eight beats per minute? I forget.

PGC: So you guys only play like, you have F-Zero that’s an N64 song. And you do the Sigma level from Megaman X, that’s an SNES song. But it’s mostly Nintendo music. Are you guys ever gonna expand out to Genesis or anything?

All: No.

Danny: From day one, we haven’t been the Segamos.

John: Well we had a big debate. Dan and I really wanna do some PC games. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Dan really wants to do Monkey Island - the whole Monkey Island suite. Yeah, we could go from metal to Caribbean.

Danny: In a heartbeat.

Ross: Dude, we can get drums no problem.

Danny: That’s one of the things we’ve been trying to do, to see how many genres we can do. So far we’ve got bossanova, surf rock, black metal, death metal…

Dan: mos def skills.

Danny: We’re not doing ska ‘cause that just sucks.

PGC: Oh man you did not just say that!

Danny: No I did, I said it and I’ll say it again. Ska’s kinda lame.

John: There’s the jazzy intro to [Star Wars] Cantina.

Danny: We’re working on Mario 3 and we did reggae.

Ross: Punk.

John: If we put them together we’d have ska.

Danny: Ouch!

John: Interesting…

Danny: but what I’m saying is, we’re trying not to be committed to genres. It’s more fun that way.

PGC: I guess you could say your genre is videogame music so it doesn’t really matter how you play it.

Danny: Good call.

PGC: Alright, well that’s everything I’ve got. Thanks a lot guys.

NESkimos: No problem.