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Today, March 5th, marks the 5th anniversary of the “I Love That Song” series. It may be not as popular as it can be, but I do hold it dear to my heart. Starting from quite a simple idea, now it has developed to something more, and hopefully in the future something even better! But how has ILTS been done all these years? How did it start and where will it go in the future?
Well, the idea for these series of articles was created by one of Orange Lounge Radio’s site administrators, Deacon “Deekman” Ross, while doing a huge update to the site and also to gather more people to get interested in the podcast. Originally he was the only person that was going to make articles for the site; but when the idea was pitched to the hosts and the chat, I immediately jumped in to help and collaborate. I LOVE music and this seriously could not let this opportunity pass on.
I had actually worked in a personal “I Love That Song” before the one we know and love on the GameFAQs forums, making topics and posting music from games that I liked and giving a small paragraph on why I did on a daily basis. So being a fan of OLR, I just wanted to help with something I am familiar with and I am passionate about.
So back in March of 2009, Deekman posted the first article of ILTS for the world to see. It was about Street Fighter III 3rd Strike and the song “Let’s get in on”. It was short article, around 200 words and quite simple. So after the premier, I ran MY first article. It sucks, like really sucks, at least by today’s standards. The song I picked was “1998” from DDR Extreme. I thought since “Hey, OLR was a show about DDR, I should do a DDR song”. And it was not totally bad, it was simplistic and right to the point, but I look at it today and I seriously think to myself “WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING?!”. I did get better at writing these articles eventually and I am still getting improving.
Later on, DarkTetsuya, long time contributor and fan of OLR, also jumped in to collaborate with articles. We ran a regular schedule for quite a while, along with other articles that run on the site, but as the years passed only ILTS was the one that endured the test of time and regularity, for the most part. ILTS articles were stopped around September of 2009, basically because of lack of interest and real life stuff. I did feel bad for the articles stopping after such momentum they had only 6 months back. But as you know, they did come back on March of 2010. The format did not change but I made it my own personal effort to get ILTS running again. Luckily DarkTetsuya also jumped aboard on helping the articles going again.
After this, DarkTetsuya focus on BEMANI and more contemporary songs in video games, while I focused more on classic video game songs. Though it was not planned like that, it just happened like that. We did mix it up a bit from time to time, like doing April Fools articles and sometimes making political statements. I also added some new twists, like adding videos and the infamous “I DON’T Love That Song” article. In the long run we tried to make our articles a bit more than just “this song is good, listen to it” and made it more about the song and give more of a background to it.
If there is an article I am proud of during the OLR years of ILTS is the one for VVVVVV. I put a lot of effort into it and it is one of my better articles there, it almost resembles how ILTS is today. My most popular one though is the aforementioned “I DON’T Love That Song” article about Crazy Chocobo. It was done at the spur of the moment when I first heard it since I seriously hate that song with a passion. The idea of not liking a song was something I wanted to revisit but didn’t, though it resurged as another idea later on VOG, as the OC vs. OC Remix articles.
Speaking of VOG… After all the years working on the OLR website, really big news hit us around April of 2012 (Yeah, almost two years ago). VOG was being started by Bobby Blackwolf and OLR and others were joining this new network. DarkTetsuya and I did not what was going to happen us and we were worried for a little while until Bobby Blackwolf showed interested in the ILTS articles and wanted us to join the network too as Staff Writers.
Again, we were worried since we did not know what would happen to the OLR site or what would happen to the articles themselves. We thought ILTS would end and that was it. But as I said, we got invited to join the VOG staff and we both gladly accepted, at least at first.
DarkTetsuya and I pretty much paid our tribute and thanks to OLR and ran a last series of articles during E3 week that year; we called it FIR-E5. And as we prepared we prepared for VOG we ran into a stump. While we still wrote the articles however we wanted to, but we had to expand our selection to stuff other than “video games”. It is still a problem I run into times.
While sometimes it does put me in the spot when selecting music and writing articles, it has also made the quality of the articles improve a lot. Especially since I now have editors and peers that help me on it. Something I did not have on OLR.
Basically on the old days it would be like this:
Select song > write article > make banner > post it.
Nowadays it is like this
Search artists > listen to songs > select song > write article > proof-read article > send it to editors > wait for approval > get posted.
So there are a lot of extra steps to it. Again this has also help improve the quality of the articles but it is also something I have to deal with since I do not have total control of the articles and how they get posted, if they do. This is also why I now run solo on ILTS.
DarkTetsuya could not handle the pressure and I do not blame him. I think I would have done the same if given the chance, but I think pressure is also something we have to deal with if we want to aspire to greater things and VOG is that.
So now ILTS is my baby, an adopted one if you may, and it has been tough. Whether it is not getting articles on time or real-life stuff (on both editorial and my part), ILTS is striving to be more and I hope it can get there. Right now it has taken the first steps toward being that dream I had a long time ago in GameFAQs and hopefully in the future that dream will become a reality. Top priority right now is getting ILTS to run on a schedule and getting articles done at much faster pace, then maybe interviews or who knows, maybe an ILTS podcast too.
Before I sign off, I would like to give thanks to everybody. Deekman and DT, without you ILTS would not have worked and be where it is now. Thanks to Rob and Bobby for believing on ILTS and giving it a home, and especially to all the readers out there. You inspire me to do better each time and to strive even further.
Until next time, keep on listenin’!
_________________ "I LOVE THAT SONG" - Now on the VOG Network!Current ILTS article - Working by Evan LE NY from Spacechem
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