rock trumps

hello there

whilst out shopping today, which did indeed involve allowing a 9 year old to select a type of petrol and put it in the car, look you see (it's ok, he was not smoking at the time), i stumbled upon some most magnificent card based games. i purchased not one, not three, but two of the several i saw, and thought i would show off just the one for now.

i'd like to think that the intellectually gifted types which i attract to this blog have worked out already which one off of the title of this post.

yes, that's right - Rock Trumps is the card game i am showing off here. i paid £1 for the set, which i felt to be a bargain. that would certainly seem to be all the more of the case, looking at the £4.95 plus postage it costs over on amazon.

what is it? a, and i would be pretty sure this is all unauthorized, version of Top Trumps, only with rock stars rather than, say, tanks, planes or cars. basically, related things (in this case rock stars) are awarded points on factors. you deal the deck amongst all players, call a value and challenge others to say the one on the card in front of them. whoever has the highest number wins the cards.

rock stars here - 52 of them - are rated and ranked on : hit factor, output, legendary status, bad hair days (no me neither), volume and, of course, sex, drugs rock n roll.  that is the criteria, after all upon which rock legends are rated, discussed and ranked amongst us, the humble fans who idolise them. well, most of them.

indeed this picture has been taken with my shiny new iTwat phone, and with Commodore 64 camera mode well on. you may want to appreciate, dear reader, the rotation of this image. blogger clearly does not like apple, and so most of the pictures that follow have been flipped, turned or rotated.

it features many, many great rock stars and, as we shall sort of see, some crap ones too.  it does not, alas, feature the chap who recently declared himself to be "the greatest living rock star in the world", a declaration which could well be true, assuming some 150 to 200 better qualified actual rock stars all died last night and the press has not gotten around to reporting them all. but let's look at who we get.

first off, then, two of the more bizarre inclusions for "rock stars" in a set of 52 cards.

if i mention the fact that there's no Slash, no David Lee Roth, no Robert Plant and no one off of, say, Pink Floyd or Deep Purple in the deck, i think you get the gist of why these two are strange inclusions. as it happens, both rank fairly low in the important category of sex, drugs, rock n roll. both are under 10%, which is a shame considering that Bono owns (or owned) a club called Mr Pussy, and Sting is roundly celebrated for all that "tantric" business he gets to to with his apparently very difficult to please wife. 

sorry about the pics being upside down; blame it on the bad relationship between google and blogger.

now, then. i should be watching The Who right now, but the BBC have opted not to show them live. it seems such an honour as that was to be extended to Kanye this year. what a brilliant use of the budget. still, here two of The Who feature in the deck, with one of them still being alive.

space within a 52 card deck was limited, i suppose, and Keith Moon was a bit of a formality. but Pete? why him over Daltrey, who would happily down a bottle of brandy, start a fight and do a storming gig, or John Entwistle,  who granted was considered to be the most boring member of the band, right up until the point he was found dead in a Vegas hotel room, surrounded by hookers and coke.

with space limited you can understand that not all of great bands can feature. that does not, however, stop one from being somewhat baffled by certain representations of bands.

Commodore 64 mode? surely, for that can only make these two far, far cooler than they could ever hope to be in real life, despite their oddly high score in the world of rock trumps.

really? Ace Frehley being designated as the best choice to represent Kiss in this collection? are they sure that he's more rock than Gene Simmons or Paul Stanley? as for Eddie Van Halen, well, he's someone that gave his name to a great band and then patented something or other you stick on a guitar. when one thinks of Van Halen, one thinks David Lee Roth. who does not feature here.

here you go, here are these two in non-Commodore 64 mode so you can see how sad they are.

which two rock stars, you might ask, score the highest in the deck? well, Lemmy does not do too badly at all, but overall it would be, upside down thanks to that blogger / apple argument, these two. 

both are without question giants of all things rock, but methinks that some of the scoring is somewhat high. Ozzy Osborne 100% for sex, drugs, rock n roll, for instance? that means they consider him to be more rock and roll than, say, Keith Richards, and to have a better sex record than Prince. hmn. as for Axl, well, a timely reminder of what a great he could have been if only he had a manager to force him to work.

i'd like to think that the scoring and ratings in this game are deliberately bizarre and somewhat controversial. we had immense fun, my (considerably) better half and i, playing this, and a lot of the fun was drawn from a debate over certain ratings. some of them are certainly conversation starters.

well worth picking up if you can find it at the price i did or not far off of it, if you were wondering!





be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!