Rockerboys: The True Cyberpunk Spirit

Rockerboys haven’t had much coverage on this blog so far. So you might not be surprised by the news that the Nine Inch Nails released their new album (“The Slip”) under the Creative Commons “attribution noncommercial share-alike” license. A note on the NIN site says:

“We encourage you to remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc.”

Thank you guys. That’s very clever, and makes me feel much better downloading the album.

Sure, I’m was never dumb enough to pay for DRM-Music. Microsoft just proved that you have to be brain-damaged to do so by removing support for the aptly named Playsforsure – now it won’t play as soon as you change to a new computer/mp3-player. They never supported Linux, anyway.

But Get Out Clause, a band I never heard of before, puts the NIN-guys to shame. Get Out Clause is from Manchester, UK. The UK has adoped a senseless but ambitious programme to videotape every second of the life of every single person living there. Yes senseless: They claim to do so to fight terrorism or crime, but just had to admit that it didn’t work. Guess whats the new plan: Right, more cameras. Anyway, GOC just performed in front of one of those cameras and then asked for the tape and then stitched the results together for their music video. That’s cyberpunk. Esp. the punk part! Rock on, guys!

[youtube 98u1HuqS7Nk]

Malte vom Spreeblick hat das ganze auf deutsch noch viel besser formuliert als ich das je könnte. Ich hoffe, dass er nicht böse ist, wenn ich seinen ganzen Post zitiere:

In England geschieht nichts unbeobachtet. Das ganze Land hat eine dermaßen hohe Überwachungskameradichte (die unter Sicherheitsaspekten nichts bringt und deshalb erhöht werden soll), dass – so erzählt man sich in Berlin – Wolfgang Schäuble nachts von Laterne zu Laterne fährt und Polaroidkameras installiert, wobei er “God save the Queen” singt und lauwarmes Bier trinkt. The Get out Clause, eine Band aus Manchester, die keinen Plattenvertrag hat, machte sich nun die vielen Kameras zunutze (nicht die Polaroids von Schäuble, die echten) und hat sich erst aufzeichnen lassen, dann die Aufnahmen unter Berufung auf den Freedom of Information Act zurück gefordert, bearbeitet und ein Video daraus produziert.

Cyberpunk Art 4

marc taro holmes is a great artist and fellow wordpress.com user. Always on the prowl for some pics to help find the right mood in a cyberpunk 2020 rpg session, here are some very useful (and beautiful) ones:

Faces This picture can be found at art theft as exercise and immediately inspired several NPCs and a character concept. Great work!
China Town SF Chinatown is a cool background for Triad action! Some more pictures (and this one) in greater resolution are to be found at 17th international sketchcrawl! Chinatown SF

Cyberpunk Band Names?

The AV Club has a list of the worst bandnames of 2007

its great fodder if you need to compile some kind of Top 10 list or being asked by your players whats on the radio. Also, remember that Boosters are music fans gone hooligan. So they need bands to adore, too. I selected my top names, but check out the original post for lots more.

Cyberpunk2020 group effort results in a radio station…

You can listen to the music the cpunks like on the last.fm Cyberpunk2020 group radio. It’s free and you don’t need any registration. And you won’t expect what other punks like… obviously we do have a soft side somewhere :)

Think that’s not the way a cpunks radio should sound? Join us and you taste will modify the result!

See: I need help with a Cyberpunk 2020 Soundtrack

I Need Help With A Cyberpunk 2020 Soundtrack!

I’m looking for some cyberpunkish music for a soundtrack to use while playing. A game soundtrack. For that I’m looking for tracks.

To make this a “Web 2.0” thing, I created a last.fm account under the beautiful nick “cyberpunk2020” and created a playlist with some tracks suggested on vfte. Here are the last 10 songs from that collection.

I would like you to suggest some music. If you have a (free) account on last.fm, please tag music you might use for a soundtrack with “cyberpunk2020”. You can listen to those tracks here.

Or you can use the comments to suggest artists or tracks.

You’re also very welcome to join the cyberpunk2020 group on last.fm.

Suggested links: vfte

Movie of a real live Cyberarm – Cyberpunk Tech 6

 

“The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic.”
— William Gibson, Neuromancer

Festo, a german corp, has a movie of a really cool hydraulic cyberarm on their site. Its so cool I want one. The movie indicates that the arm has enough tactile response to write on a touchscreen.

CYBERARM!

I found the link on lo-fi-samurai’s blog, which is very worth the time you spend there. He was the one I stole both the link and the quote from – I only added William Gibsons name and the title of the book.

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