Friday, February 12, 2010

I was working in the lab late one night ...

Some years back I read an article in a chess magazine about a press conference Garry Kasparov was giving after some tournament or other. Apparently all was going well until some fellow several cans of Tennent's Super to the good/bad (depending on how you look at it) burst in and started asking all sorts of random things. The journo, as I recall, thought this outrageous and a great insult to the then world champ but it seemed to me that one of El Drunko's queries - something along the lines of "Why do you always play chess in silence? Wouldn't you rather have some music on?" - was a question the chess world should really have a think about.

Just imagine if Ashtead had music playing in the background during their club nights.



Wouldn't it make chess more fun for the players? Might the spectators be treated to the sight of S&BCC President Angus French doing the Monster Mash while waiting for his turn to move?

Alas I fear that while FIDE remain busy implementing their plan to fuck up chess through the introduction of as many stupid rules as they can possibly think of they will probably not have the time to act on this visionary proposal. Still we do at least have the collected videos of Peter Lalic to keep the flame alive.

Here's another pair of great chess/fab music combos from Peter. First a win with Black against Neil Davies of Surbiton



and second we see Peter chopping up his County u-180 captain Julian Shipley in fine style.




So thanks very much to Peter for allowing our little blog to include his vids. Keep up the good work fella - I hope you'll send us more in due course. In the meantime, who's with me for a march on the next Surrey League AGM to get background music made mandatory from the 2010/11 season onwards?

2 comments:

ejh said...

When I used to play for Oxford City, background music was pretty much compulsory. Well, it was in the run-up to Xmas anyway, with rehearsals taking place in the room next door...

Anonymous said...

One venue I used to have to visit every year was in a community centre above a room rented out by an old woman taking singing lessons; sadly she was no Leona Lewis.

True, this did add to the atmosphere - mainly because I was too childish not to keep giggling every time she hit a particularly bum note.

On the other hand, their players seemed completely immune to the noise. Maybe that's why I always lost there?

Adam B.