Not that he needs any promotion from us here at Cane and Rinse but because I like him – and his cat Charl – Smooth McGroove (real name Max Gleason) is the focus of this week’s Street Fighter II-themed Music Monday.
Here the tone-perfect Smooth, a sort of Bobby McFerrin for the videogames generation, takes on three of Yoko Shimomura’s most instantly recognisable character/stage themes from Street Fighter II (Ken, Ryu and – of course – Guile) in his inimitable multi-tracked a cappella style.
This Music Monday ties in with issue 133 of the Cane and Rinse podcast.
This week’s ‘bonus’ (if you can call it that) is Cheap Trick’s Mighty Wings, as featured in the hit 80s movie Top Gun. You may notice that it sounds more than a little bit like one of the pieces above.
Not only that but Cheap Trick’s rawk anthem (and the Top Gun OST in general) was also obviously – and much more logically – every bit as big an influence on Hiroshi Kawaguchi’s music for Sega’s After Burner.
