MAGFest 7: Jan. 1st - 4th, 2009

[BardicKnowledge]

Well, I'm still not home, but am taking a driving break at the parent's place for Monday.

The trip was excellent! I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet as many people as I did. I especially enjoyed random music just happening in and around the OCR group -- singing with Prophet and Escariot was cool too (we'd be amazing if we would get together when our voices are in shape!)

Looking forward to getting home -- it's another 10.5 hours on the road tomorrow

[Bahamut]

Well, I'm still not home, but am taking a driving break at the parent's place for Monday.

The trip was excellent! I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet as many people as I did. I especially enjoyed random music just happening in and around the OCR group -- singing with Prophet and Escariot was cool too (we'd be amazing if we would get together when our voices are in shape!)

Looking forward to getting home -- it's another 10.5 hours on the road tomorrow

It's 10.5 hours from St. Louis to Minneapolis?

[prophetik music]

Well, I'm still not home, but am taking a driving break at the parent's place for Monday.

The trip was excellent! I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet as many people as I did. I especially enjoyed random music just happening in and around the OCR group -- singing with Prophet and Escariot was cool too (we'd be amazing if we would get together when our voices are in shape!)

Looking forward to getting home -- it's another 10.5 hours on the road tomorrow

yeah, my voice is still a little scratchy =(

[Kroze]

Man, it was great seeing everyone again...

And yes, I finally did get some sleep on sunday morning and then slept for most of today..

The Doctor Horrible Sing Along with Hale, Escariot and his girl was just way too awesome and Xerol needs to put that shit up pronto!

[Level 99]

Who's got pictures? WHERE THE PICS AT?! I uploaded some to my facebook, but can only tag the peoples I'm friends with. Unfortunately, I also only have a few pictures outside of the OCR panel and the FFIV presentation therein. The picture outside of IHOP after breakfast turned out great, though, as did the one in the lobby of quite a few of us.

[audio fidelity]

wow...just got back from my drive. a big thanks to jimmy for letting me spend the night at his place.

i had the best time ever out there. to all the new friends i made, and you all know who you are, you all really made this a very special trip out for me. getting involved in this community has been one the best things ever for me. it has allowed me to meet some really amazing people and i hope to stay in touch with you all in the years to come.

to my fellow members of BTS (which we need to talk about that name...ha), you all did a fantastic job. i really hope we get the time to make something special happen for next mag and get on the mainstage. and i'll be giving brandon the push to debut his next ocr mix come next january.

to my roomies, you guys were awesome and I can't wait to do it again. we're gonna take ff4 to level 100!! hopefully with the help of sebastian next time.

vinne, really sorry to hear that about your leg. this poor guy was limping out of magfest. i hope you get better real soon.

i sure wish ocr had that photo gallery ready to let everyone know what they were missing out on!

well i'll be sure to see you all next year - thanks for the memories

[prophetik music]

it was all me, i know, jay.

[Level 99]

Okay, this is a relatively big pic file, so I'm only linking here. This is the picture from outside IHOP.

click it!

[Bahamut]

Don't forget to upload the pictures onto the facebook group!

[Harmony]

I was having way too much fun with everything else to get lots of photos, but I did snag a few. I'll put these up on the Facebook page too.

Pizza time

Pixietricks and Zircon rocking out at bLiNd's set

bLiNd = awesome

The one and only mazedude 'bout to bust a backflip

[Xerol Oplan]

Re: Jamspace/Concert videos:

I'm going to get up some kind of database with each track/set listed with who played, what they played, and approximately when they played, and if I don't know one or more of these (I'm terrible with remembering names and identifying VG tracks) I'll post stills from the video and short audio clips so other people can help identify.

Once that's up people can then just click a button next to each clip requesting it be uploaded. Once clips are uploaded there will be youtube/google/vimeo/whatever links next to them (still doing some testing as far as what encoding/quality to use on my side and what sites they work best with).

I'm not going to do individual videos for concert songs yet, instead just putting each set up in a single video on google video or some other site that allows long videos. Most sets were an hour or less.

I've got a small list of videos I want to get up first, which I'll take care of myself, and then sometime after the middle of the month we're going to have an in-person meeting to do a shitload of editing and get a lot up at once (most requests will be taken care of then). Off the top of my head the ones I'm putting up soon are mostly from the open mic concert, including Princeofdarkness, Shael, The Megas, and Taucer's group, and I have a couple other clips in mind too that I can't recall right now (but will find eventually).

[Harmony]

bustatunez bustin' movez

The crowd at bLiNd's set

[jmr]

youtube/google/vimeo/whatever

Any chance that you'll make the videos available for download, as a torrent or otherwise?

[Xerol Oplan]

Maybe. We can do bigger files then, but it would take a while to get a couple seeds ready. Remember it's probably going to be at least a month before we have a good chunk even edited, and then that needs to be encoded and uploaded. We're planning on doing actual DVDs of the concerts (probably 2-3 sets per disc) and the youtube thing is mostly to promote MAGFest, so I don't see a reason not to put up a torrent eventually, but it'll probably be lower priority.

[big giant circles]

Moar pics please.

Alright, so M7 was a blast. I definitely owe my attendance to Audio Fidelity who basically went out of his way to accomodate my schedule and pick me up. Thanks to Dave and Larry for sharing their room as well. The view from floor 28 was particularly nice, wish I had a picture of the city lights at night, and you could see the Washington Monument in the distance.

Some particular highlights are as follows:

Getting to meet more people I've not yet had the privilege to in person. It was fun getting to meet Mazedude especially, he's a super nice dude in person and he makes me want to learn Capoiera.

The live performance of Dragon Song was awesome, as was attempting to play Bonds of Sea and Fire (Me, Tauce, Will, Brad, Brandon, and a couple other dudes) in that weird 7/8 - 5/8 groove. Jamming with Brandon is always a blast - at one point he and I managed to get a crowd of people around the piano and jam out some good classic 90's tunes (and TV themes like Rescue Rangers, haha) and good times were had.

TGI Fridays - still an OCR tradition for me. Not nearly as large a group this time, but the food was good. Also, IHOP seems to be the other place we frequent during meetups, and I hope that remains static in the future as well. DJP, Larry, Anna, and Cara (sp?), one of their friends and I ate some KILLER pizza at some local joint the first night. Definitely wouldn't mind hitting that place up again. Their largest pizza required a box about the size of a card table, literally.

The concerts were awesome, of course. Arm Cannon busted out some awesome renditions of songs like "Carry On Wayward Son" and "I Am A Real Americal". Smash Brothers was great... I was a little disappointed in the lack of bacon this year. But I did buy the album, so I did get bacon in some sense at least.

Hung out with some folks I'd met before but not really got to know very well before like Joe Cam--turns out he's got family here in my hometown.

I loved the events and panels. Really enjoyed listening to Grant Kirkhope, he's a super likable and nice guy. I really enjoyed the Video Game Composer panel. Tommy Tallarico always has cool info and insight to share, and we got to hear more from Grant and also Howard Drossin.

The OCR panel was fun. I really enjoyed OA's presentation and am eagerly awaiting the FF4 project release. I also had a blast giving him a run for his money when he thought he could just take that free HD Remix prize without any sort of a challenge at all Speaking of HDR, I finally got to play it, and it's AWESOME. Such a well-done release, it's one thing to read about it, but after playing it, I applaud everyone involved to the highest degree.

Another face (or two) worth mentioning that it was a real pleasure to chill with was Blind and his wonderful wife Jade. They are both every bit as awesome and friendly in person as they are here on the site. Blind's DJ set was also a real pleasure, and as the pictures clearly reveal, there wasn't a single person who did not move to the groove in funky ways

Wish it could have gone on longer, and I wish I could have done more, but that's how it is, and at least it always leaves me wanting to come back.

If Brendon makes his way here to the thread, I'm sure I can speak for all of us when I say how much we appreciate all the hard work that he and his staff put in to give us the opportunity every year.

[Dhsu]

I will find a way of cloning myself and combining the memories so I can actually go to everything I want to.

Either that or just not read the post-mortems so I won't know what I missed in the first place. ;_;

[Escariot]

TAGFest Videos:

Full tag:

Modified tag (end). norg cheering. Me and Brad celebrating in the back:

[BardicKnowledge]

It's 10.5 hours from St. Louis to Minneapolis?

It's 10 hours even along the optimal route, but we're extending it to 10.5 by going through Iowa instead of Wisconsin. There's apparently bad snow in MN tomorrow night, and we may need to stop -- we can stay for free in the ISU area.

[joe_cam]

Okay, this is a relatively big pic file, so I'm only linking here. This is the picture from outside IHOP.

click it!

Man, that's a picture chock full of gay.

Glad to have gone to another MAG and to hang out with so many of ya'lls again.

Because there was so much love and friendship going on at MAG this year, I feel it would only be fitting to ruin that by saying I hate every single one of you, this site, and ever remix except for the stuff McVaffe did as Jade Gemini. Burn in hell, I'll see you there.

Does that fill the drama quota for the year? I hope so, if not, I'll let somebody else chime in.

In all honesty (except for where I'm lying) I had an amazing time this year and it was good to hang out with some new faces (and cocks) for once. Concerts were friggin HAWT, and I hope that everybody who wanted to get a hot dog enough to go back and attempt to get one was happy with my hot weiner in their mouth.

Thank you to the hotties for kissing me for a hot dog. Also, thank you to the guys who felt the need to kiss me as well. S'all good.

Thanks for my posse at the back who whipped up a nice loud "HOT DOG" chant just to please their Hot Dog Overlord enough to let them get hot dogs afterwards. You are all my bitches and I hope you never forget it.

Much love to Dave & Oji for somehow feeling that I deserve to be interviewed on camera for this site. I have no idea how I am relevant enough to be considered worth interviewing, but I appreciate the gesture and will fully understand if the footage is burned. Considering there is also video footage of Dave and I shaking hands and hugging, not to mention him giving verbal approval for Twoson Hits the Road to rejoin the ranks of Bound Together, I will fully understand if he sobers up, sets fire to the camera itself and deletes this entire section of my post. <3 Dave. Drop me a line sometime if you've unblocked me on AIM yet.

Wish I could've spent more time in Jamspace, but I apparently wander around a lot more when intoxicated and if I didn't know better, I'd probably have wandered out of Jamspace while performing my own song. Also, if anybody has some good audio/video of that "Da Black Market" performance, PLEASE hook me the fuck up. *Stares at Xerol*

As much as I want to just blabber on about MAGFest for a few more paragraphs, I guess I should wrap this up.

Again, it was a great weekend, I'm glad I got to see (and photograph) Doug's cock, I'm glad I got to stick $6 down Starla's shirt and slap her ass, I'm glad I got to see pixieporn and I'm really glad I wasted way too much money to pick up copies of Tomba! and Valkyrie Profile for much cheaper than eBay prices.

I hope that all the new people I've chatted wtih actually do get in touch with me for possible musical ventures that are obviously either Animal Crossing or EarthBound related and that not ALL of them were just being nice to my face only to punch me in their dreams. Thank you for dreaming of me.

Larry Oji, you're still a white cracker ass motherfucker and I hate you so much. I should upload that interview I did with YOU to YouTube someday when I'm less lazy.

Finally, next time there's a Philly OCR gathering or something, I REALLY hope I get an AIM message about it or soemthing since I dont' really get over here on these boards as much as I'd like to do. I don't wanna miss another Philly meetup that I don't hear about until after it happens.

BGC, we'll hang out next time I visit my dad. Promise.

[Kizyr]

Ok, I finally got all my photos cropped and uploaded. I'll do the photos first, and say a bit more about the con later when I can think a bit clearer.

A couple shots of the OCR panel on Saturday (sorry Overcoat, you were kind of behind one of the speakers from my view):

OCR-Panel01.jpg

OCR-Panel02.jpg

And plenty of great shots of the HD Remix one-on-ones (excuse the blur--had to take these without flash):

DJP vs (new challenger): OCR-HDR02.jpg

Shael vs Theory of Nonexistence: OCR-HDR04.jpg

Mazedude vs (new challenger): OCR-HDR05.jpg

Jose the Bronx Rican vs (new challenger): OCR-HDR06.jpg

Larry getting beat in some Guile-on-Guile action: OCR-HDR07.jpg

Battle of the initials with BGC vs OA: OCR-HDR08.jpg

A few shots of The Megas in JamSpace (didn't bring my camera into their concert on Thursday, which was no less than incredible):

Megas-Jam01.jpg

Megas-Jam02.jpg

Megas-Jam04.jpg

And some shots from JamSpace on Saturday night...

This is how bLiNd rolls:

DJBlind-Blind02.jpg

DJBlind-BlindJade01.jpg (<- )

This is how q-pa rolls:

DJQpa-Q-pa01.jpg

DJQpa-Q-pa03.jpg

(aside--I really liked the NES-screen visuals in both the JamSpace and concerts)

And this is how zircon rolls:

DJBlind-JillAndy01.jpg

DJBlind-JillAndy02.jpg

DJBlind-JillAndy03.jpg (<- )

On Sunday, we converged en masse at the IHOP down the interstate:

OCR-IHOP01.jpg ( )

OCR-IHOP01r.jpg (<- higher res )

I'm gonna respond to comments and say more later when I can think more clearly. But of course, it was tons of fun, and I'm already missing it and looking forward to next year. KF

[audio fidelity]

it was all me, i know, jay.

it was all those tighty-whiteys - you know it - ha

and about the vids and audio uploads from mag - i can't wait to see what you guys do - thanks so much

[Jenz Drake]

I really apologize for anyone who thinks I'm a sap or a dork for typing all of my emotions out to you guys. I just have to. haha

OMG man... Jordan and I had SOOOOO much fun at MAGFEST. Traveling from North Las Vegas, Nevada... it was REALLY WORTH IT! Having it as our honeymoon, I felt truly blessed. I'm being serious too. The both of us have never been to any MAGFEST cons, but we've been wanting to go for a really long time. We met a lot of incredible people like Audio Fidelity, Big Giant Circles, Liontamer, Mazedude, Dj Pretzel, Pixietricks, zircon, Harmony, Joe Cam, Bustatunez, AE, and tons of others, lots of fans... etc... I couldn't believe it. Some of them gave me their phone numbers and I was just amazed because of how long I wanted that to happen... hahaha (since 2001 btw..)

When we said good-bye to a lot of the OCR people, I cried a lot in our room. I was so sad to go and say good-bye. It's just SO hard to find people that take video games and video game music as a passion.. I didn't want it to end. That's how much I really enjoyed myself. For me, growing up was hard because I was a tom boy (still am) and kept getting judged for the things I adored. The OCR community is REALLY a family man and I just want to say thank you to everyone for being friendly and real... Like Joe Cam making me scream, "I love weiners in my mouth!!!" during the Smash Brothers live set... =P and Audio Fidelity coming to our hotel room and feeding us with the most amazing peanut butter jelly sandwiches in the world.... hahahaha

Anyway, we can't compare to former cons and say this was the best one, but I've been to a lot of conventions in Florida and this was the best one I've ever been to. Maybe because of the OCR peepz and getting able to finally meet the Angry Video Game Nerd. Jordan was thankful he had the opportunity to play his set at JamSpace. What a good way to start a new year.

To everyone with the nice comments about Jordan and I (you know who you are) I really admire you. Thanks so much!!

[Escariot]

Kizyr - I... can't remember who this was: OCR-HDR08.jpg looks like BGC v. OA

[bustatunez]

Not much left to say really! I had an awesome time and wanna thank all the organizers and staff yet again, I go to plenty of game conferences and conventions but MAG is far and away the best. Thanks again to Jay, Brandon, Taucer, and Alexis for making up the best band ever (we *literally* have to take that show on the road, or at least submit some recordings). And ditto for Prophet, ToN, and everyone else who was in our 7/8+5/8 Xenogears attempt

Seriously every time I go to these meetups it makes me just wanna put everything aside and finally finish some mixes (because I temporarily become an uberfanboy ), hopefully that'll actually happen this time.

UNTIL THEN >: ( )

[joe_cam]

Kizyr - I... can't remember who this was: OCR-HDR08.jpg looks like BGC v. OA

FUCK. THAT was OA? Why didn't I know that?

Dude is on my remix project and I dont' even get to talk to him, shake his hand and thank him for doin shit for me.

OA, <3 u even though I didn't know it was you. I blame the lack of mental hard drive space from trying to remember 7 MAGFests worth of people and shit to do.