Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Regarding The Ink Spots!

This weekend I’d hoped to encapsulate my thoughts about Bioshock 2. But as always the real world has intervened and I haven’t had enough time to actually complete Bioshock. In fact, I haven’t had enough time to even get through enough of the game that I feel comfortable discussing it at length. Bioshock’s play demands not only full attention and concentration from its player but also an emotional and mental investment above and beyond most games. I can easily remove myself from the world of Mass Effect or Assassin’s Creed (indeed, the latter’s world is designed to permit such easy and fluid movement) but Bioshock forces me into Rapture, and Rapture is a horrible place to be. Playing the game is a nerve wracking and incredible experience, similar to watching a great horror film. Rivet gun in hand, I shoot for the head unerringly but I feel Rapture pressing down on me constantly. After each area I find I need to rest, so marathoning the game is not an option. As a result I am ill equipped to write about Bioshock at length. I could say “Now this is how you do a sequel,” but that wouldn’t be much of an essay. It would be more of a response to last week’s piece. So I want to talk today about a band I heard playing in the background of Rapture. The Ink Spots.

The Ink Spots first entered the video game vernacular with I Don’t Want To Set the World On Fire in Fallout’s introduction. They permeated the radio in Fallout 3 and occasionally leak their way into other titles either attempting to evoke feelings of profound isolation or devastation. Their lonely, keening and all too often selectively sampled music has been used to set the backdrop in many a ruined wasteland. We Three hums through the abandoned radios of Rapture, hammering home the loss of your little sister.

Renditions of classics like Java Jive and Cow Cow Boogie will probably never find their way into the collective consciousness of games, but even these lesser known hits stay true to The Ink Spot’s profound loneliness. Even when they’re happy The Ink Spots are alone, iconoclasts arrayed against the world. They drink too much coffee and talk weird. They have girl trouble (as if there was ever any other kind) in bulk. People don’t respect them because of who they are and how they see the world. And everything they do, everything they sing, reflects that.

A brief history lesson. The Ink Spots were founded in 1931 by Orville Jones, Ivory Watson, Jerry Daniels and Charlie Fuqua. Their lineup varied dramatically over the years, weathering war and Orville Jones death in 1944, but was sustained in one form or another until the late fifties. The last decade of the band’s existence, however, was strained, with a constantly shifting lineup and no input from the band’s founding members. After 1945 the original band members had been scattered to the winds and persistent financial problems plagued the Ink Spots until their dissolution in 1964.

The parallels between the branding of their band and its relation to the manner in which publishers and developers manage video game franchises is apparent, if a bit of a reach, in the history of The Ink Spots. But far more interesting in the longing and isolation apparent in even their most upbeat songs (of which there were already few). For example Cow Cow Boogie celebrates the uniqueness and isolation of being a mixed-race ranch hand, and the manner in which this unique perspective of isolation generates fascinating and illuminating cultural fusions. It was also a song about Ella Fitzgerald making hilarious sounds.

Then there’s Java Jive, an ode to coffee, something any nerd worth their salt can relate to. Aside from these odd points of cheerful songwriting the Ink Spots music deals mostly with isolation and loss. They make music about what it is to be outside of the social norm and lose the people you care about. They make keening, soulful music about the most profound kind of loneliness imaginable.

As such it’s not too surprising to see them appear in so many videogames. They were, in a very real way, some of the first black nerds (all due respect to George Washington Carver, who was both African-American and a tremendous nerd) and to see them reproduced in so many games is heartwarming. It makes me believe that maybe, just maybe, our culture will start to take a piece of advice from Leigh Alexander and examine our relationship with other artistic mediums. It could certainly only help our growth.

And it’s good to see something other than epic sounding battle music in a game, to have something with emotional impact and subtly included in its place. While scoring in games is certainly a critical part of their design and development it seems as if the majority of titles focus on the same sweeping themes of conflict and togetherness. It seems like we’ve forgotten as a culture that there are experiences other than conflict and combat that enrich our lives, and that discussing these themes is critical in creating effective art.

So thank you, Ink Spots. Your painful, storied history and amazing music are still keeping us awake and making us feel like maybe we’re a little less alone than we thought, and I’m glad to see you popping up in unexpected places. Here’s hoping we see more like you in games in the future.