Mountain Goats & D&D Music Recommendations

Plus RIP Wayne Kramer

I enjoyed this recent interview with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats in the Arizona Daily Sun. In response to a question about getting into the headspace of a character when writing a song or playing a roleplaying game, John said the following:

“It's improvisation. You got a name and you know a thing or two about somebody, and you just start speaking, either outloud or on the page, or whatever. When I'm playing D&D, that's what you do. I don't usually play D&D. I play games with much simpler stats. And D&D is sort of more of a war game. You have a character, but the character is secondary to what you're doing. There's a lot of games with characters that are more primary. Where what you're actually doing is improvisatory drama, with a rule set so the action can advance.”

The Mountain Goats are a Critical Hit Parader favorite, and game designer/writer Eric Garneau talked a lot about the band in our conversation for the Appendix LP podcast.

D&D Music Recommendations

Last week, The Geekerati Newsletter published “Dungeons & Dragons Themed Music Recommendation.” It included the song “In the Garage” by Weezer, which contains the following D&D-related lyrics:

I've got a Dungeon Master's Guide
I've got a 12-sided die

The Geekerati Newsletter is written by Christian Lindke and “provides general interest discussion of films, TV shows, role playing games, and SF/F fiction.” I highly recommend it!

RIP Brother Wayne Kramer

Last week, The Saturday Evening Post published an article called “50 Years of Dungeons and Dragons: 10 Big Moments,” which included a brief mention of Rage Against the Machine Guitarist Tom Morello. Rage Against the Machine were one of the spiritual successors of the MC5. We sadly lost MC5 guitarist/co-founder Wayne Kramer last week who passed away from pancreatic cancer.

The MC5 were a vitally important band. Proto-punk and proto-metal, the group’s Kick Out The Jams live debut album is essential and well documented. Wayne was involved in other interesting projects, both of a musical and activist nature. There have been many tributes posted. I especially appreciated the following one by Dan Epstein:

Rest in Power, Ramblin' Wayne

For those looking to expand their Wayne Kramer playlists, I’d like to testify that my favorite post-MC5 song of his is "Realm of the Pirate Kings" from his tremendous 1995 album The Hard Stuff:

And here’s a smoking performance from his MC50 band consisting of Kim Thayil from Soundgarden, Brendan Canty of Fugazi, Marcus Durant of Zen Guerrilla, and Faith No More bassist Billy Gould (plus a guest appearance from singer Arrow de Wilde of Starcrawler):

If you want to pay tribute to Wayne Kramer in a conspiracy-oriented RPG game, you might find inspiration in the way the MC5 tangentially figure into the plot of the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. The JAMs (Justified Ancients of Mummu) are a secret society in opposition to the Illuminati. John Dillinger explains how the conflict between the two groups spilled into the music industry:

“Actually, the Illuminati own the companies that put out most of the rock. We started Laughing Buddha Jesus Phallus [a record company] to counterattack. We were ignoring that front until they got the MC-5 to cut a disc called ‘Kick out the Jams’ just to taunt us with old, bitter memories.”

RIP Brother Wayne - thank you for the testimonials!