LONG BLOG
Phils Game/Pop Music Similarities #294 - Outback Spiral
Featuring Banjo - Kazooie and country music.
Greetings fellow game music lovers,
ah, Raresoft. Originally producing computer games under the moniker "Ultimate Play The Game" they gained their biggest fame in the 90s when they started producing games for Nintendo consoles like the original Battletoad games (which got a sequel recently) and later the Donkey Kong Country franchise which helped revitalize the eponymous character and introduced some back then revolutionary techniques for bringing SGI rendered models to home consoles. The later got a reputation for cute platformers. Their first one with original characters was the Banjo-Kazooie franchise for the N64 which produced two installments before the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. Despite the reception of their games sinking, due to a large part because most of the key employees left the company, Banjo & Kazooie remained one of the companies most popular characters being a symbol of the heyday of the company during their golden days with Nintendo.
And there was much rejoicing when they appeared in Smash.
Anyways, one of the more important themes in the game is the Spiral Mountain theme that plays outside of Gruntildas cave and is often considered the main theme of the series:
So for today's entry I dug up some country music with similar progressions to this one:
Bill Clifton & The Dixie Mountain Boys - "Faded Coat of Blue" (1963):
Gene Watson - "Let's Give It Up Or Get It On" (1973):
Emmylou Harris - "I Know An Ending When It Comes" (1979):
The jingle seems to be a standard in the country/gospel domain especially if a banjo is involved (pun intended).
The principal melodic progression might be derived from a sequence in the 1856 ballad "Darling Nelly Gray":
I might have some more Banjo - Kazooie stuff in my storage. Let's see next week.
Phil out.