During the three years that I stayed in a reinforced concrete eyesore student residences at university, I had exactly one good neighbour. My very first neighbour wasn't exactly problematic, but he was very quiet and had the odd habit of frequently leaving jars of Dorito dips out on the corner windowsill I shared with him for months at a time, having forgotten about them. The student in the room next to me in third year (who was in what had been my room, because I had been moved next door) was decent enough but had a habit of playing an awful droning sort of noise through his computer speakers and we never interacted apart from to knock on each other's doors and politely ask to turn each other's music down.

Second year was the most interesting because the occupant of the room next to mine seemed to change monthly - most of the people in my corridor were obnoxiously loud and played golf against the fire doors at stupid times in the morning, and it's possible that they drove everybody in that remaining room out within a few weeks. Some of the occupants were nice, some of them were frankly worrying, like the large one who regularly bellowed at what I assume was his computer.

But the best of them, and also the one that stayed the longest, was opera_hat, an extremely well-spoken and well-dressed student who always managed to effortlessly give the impression that he had been tragically born about two hundred years after he was meant to be. His most striking feature was the monocle that he wore most of the time, and in general he was one of the greatest examples of the culture clash between technology and traditionalism that existed in St Andrews. Somehow we managed to convince him to join Livejournal, where he's the only person I'm aware of to mention "peerage law" on his Interests list, and he made regular appearances in the university's chatroom as well.

[opera_hat] g33|<3ry!!!!
[opera_hat] damn, |< doesn't look anything like K
[opera_hat] one would think it ought to
* opera_hat feels c|-|3373d!!!11
* Amaunet feels confused
* opera_hat is getting into this whole dork-speak

The issue of music is something that you're constantly aware of when you're surrounded by the paper-thin walls of student residences, and it's annoying no matter what kind of music it is when a steady bass thump is the limit to which you're aware of someone else's existence. But knowing each other outside that, when music floats through your shared wall you can have much more interaction - for the few months we lived next to each other, from the other side came the classical music you would reasonably stereotypically expect, as well as an unusual mix of cheesy 80s songs and what sounded like fast-paced punk rock. When either of us heard something that sounded good, we'd both regularly instruct each other to "Turn it up a bit" or "Sing louder!" via the chatroom, IM or just by shouting directly through the wall. Admittedly we must have driven the people living around us a bit mad, but if anything I'd like to think it was my turn to do that by that stage.

Eventually I decided to expose him directly to some of my music without the insubstantial wall in the way, because I was feeling like infecting people at that stage and I thought he was probably halfway there already having lived next to me for quarter of a year. I sent over a sampler collection after he'd heard one particular song that caught his attention, and his reaction over the chatroom was something along the lines of "Egad, these Gamma Ray cards are rather stonking, what." (I should point out right now that this is not a cruel impression on my part - this is genuinely how he talked and typed, and is just a small part of the reason why we all loved him so much.) For a couple of days after that, I began hearing various examples of their other work through the wall that presumably had been found on the network.

I think the biggest hit in this regard was Send Me A Sign, which when played at sufficient volume to be heard through the wall (which was nothing to speak of) once again prompted a phone call to come in asking after the name of the last song I was listening to so that he could download it himself. It's by Henjo Richter, who is probably my favourite Gamma Ray songwriter - there are four of them and they usually write about a quarter of the album each, though Dirk Schlachter doesn't seem to have been doing much recently and Kai's been filling in by stealing bits of other people's songs. Most of his songs are moderately Christian-themed, though this one could go either way - however you interpret it, I think it's one of their most fun, lively, and above all positive songs.


Artist: Gamma Ray
Album: Powerplant
Song: Send Me A Sign
Visuals: An actual music video that's ironically worse than most AMVs

I should also mention that Powerplant was released close to the year 2000, and not in the early 80s as that video would seem to indicate. They have since moved up from releasing music videos with random sepia, blur and distortion effects that look like they were edited by a ten year old with Windows Movie Maker, but it took them quite a while.

If by some chance you're still around and reading this, opera_hat, I'd really like to hear from you again (or even "...AGAIN!", provided this still makes any sense). Let's face it, making such a large accidental tribute post would be rather weird if I didn't.