Public Commander Keen Forum

Commander Keen and blues music - my two cents.

I have not been able to find Bobby Prince's birthdate, but he seems to be approximately a contemporary of my dad and someone who was a young adult in the 1960s. In the late 1960s in the US, blues music (mostly from the standpoint of blues being infused with rock guitar and keyboard playing) became incredibly popular. One of the most popular bands around 1967 was Cream with Eric Clapton, who styled themselves as a blues band. You also had Jimi Hendrix doing his psychedelic blues, the Beatles and Rolling Stones doing their own versions of blues songs on their late 1960s albums... it was just everywhere. I've had reason to dive into obscure music of the late 60s and early 1970s just out of general interest for the music of that era, and guitarists using the blues scale in their music was just all over the place once Cream got big. My music collection is full of obscure highschool bands of the late 1960s who maybe recorded 2 songs in their short lived history, and all the guitarists are riffing on the blues scale. It was just the zeitgeist for that era and it sounded cool for the time. It also gave musicians a framework to work off of for jamming and playing together instead of more tediously learning how a specific song went. I would also say that music played a huge part of teenage and young adult entertainment in the late 60s/early 70s, with things like school dances or bars in the US often having musicians in (rock) bands providing the music/entertainment over a DJ playing records over a sound system. My dad is of this era, he played in several bands, he idolized Eric Clapton, he has discussed the sudden great motivation amongst teenagers/guitar players of the late 60s to learn how to play blues/the blues scale on the guitar because at the time "it sounded really cool" and also provided a framework for how to play lead guitar compared to tediously learning very specific parts.

By the way, if you are not familiar with blues music or the blues scale, here is an overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eosor-ncv7Y

Anyways, I'm bringing this up because this history of blues/blues scale being popular for people of Bobby Prince's era seems to be a notable backdrop for some of Bobby Prince's Keen music.

It seems that ID basically allowed Bobby Prince to do whatever he wanted for the music in Keen 4-6 without giving him much in the way of specific requests or rejecting much of what he sent them. At the same time, in the early 1990s, Bobby was new to composing music for video games, so he may be relying more on his general background in music instead of thinking about how game music should sound a certain way... It is also reported in some bios of Bobby that he was a member of an RnB band in the late 1960s...

So while I listen to Keen music, I'm thinking stuff like the following sounds like its quite influenced by the blues scale and the popular music of the era when my dad/Bobby Prince were coming of age and playing in bands and learning to play music:

-Keen 4 - Shadowlands
-Keen 4 - Gotta eat your vegetables
-Keen 5 - Omegamatic
-Keen 5 - Be Sphereful
-Keen 5- Snooping
-Keen 6 - Mamba Snake
-Keen 6 - Brer Tar
-Keen 6- Faster

You don't hear blues influenced music a lot amongst popular musicians these days, and in some respects, music that has such an obvious blues influence seems to have been a generational thing that maybe went away as people of Bobby Prince's era moved out of music production. But it brings a smile to my face to hear this Keen stuff with the blues. Its not just a nostalgic memory for me, but also representative of an echo of the 1960s blues craze in popular music, and its influence on many musicians active during that time.

Personally, I'd love to hear the blues scale being used in some future music made for Keen mods

What a great topic! I am sure Nospike will think so too!

I always enjoyed the bluesiness and/or jazziness of Keen music, right back when I first played the games. It was always a really comforting sound to me. The Brer Tar one (which I managed to convince Scifidelity Orchestra to cover) always appealed to me in particular (from Keen6 demo of course) and back in the day though I wasn't a guitarist, I would take my violin in "banjo position" and cover that track.

In the early 90s, as you said, there will have been a lot of enthusiasm for nostalgia for 60s and 70s music. There was also a big emphasis on metal - just think of Doom or Duke 3d. By contrast, futuristic electronica may not have been as appealing - there was a lot of it but as the 80s had just happened, the novelty factor may have hit a low ebb.

Whereas nowadays the appetite for that kind of futuristic electronica has returned in recent decades, stronger than ever. You will hear this in modern mods, notably of course those of Dave216. Absolutely astounding atmospheric soundscapes.

That said, composition in modding has always been quite varied and some bluesy and jazzy stuff has achieved prominence (unofficial TUIT trilogy comes to mind), if nothing else in an effort to emulate the original Keen soundtracks and achieve greater Keenishness.

All the varied aesthetics can be wonderful and there is no one right answer. But the blues retains a special place in ones heart. In fact, my earliest Keen playing experiences (Keen1 which obviously has no music of its own) were often to the sound of none other than Cream themselves, as well as others including the Beatles, Abba and the Electric Light Orchestra.

I thought the map theme to suburban shenanigans is another great bluesy number, to my mind, quite in the spirit of some of the Bobby Prince keen music.

By the way, has Bobby Prince published any new music since the year 2000? I understand he had some serious health issues at one point, and his personal website /blog hasn't been updated in years. Is he still around?