Chess - A Musical Game?
- art58koen
- Oct 5
- 3 min read
Last week, my son asked me out of the blue if I played chess…
I had to think for a moment, as the last time I played chess was probably 25+ years ago, but ‘Yes’!
He suggested that we should play a game sometime, to which I fully agreed.
Even so, I was quite surprised as he’s a fanatical gamer and not really into non-digital stuff.
He explained that it would be fun to sit together and play, a wonderful idea, but did we actually have it somewhere?
Uh, yes and no, in the previous century I’d bought a game box in Holland with all kind of board games, such as snakes & ladders, checkers, and of course chess.
But where was that box? I knew the answer, in the storage room, but that was not helpful at all, as that room is a disaster zone with loads of boxes, bags, containers, etc.
A little later, I decided to give it a try, went upstairs, and found nothing.
Granted, I didn’t look everywhere, but that box was reasonably big; it should have been easily spotted.
Anyway, I told him I’d buy it somewhere in Bangkok and searched a bit online for wooden games & toys, which turned up plenty, except chess…
Eventually, I thought of some of the larger bookstores like B2S and Kinokuniya, but found something on the Asia Books website!
Therefore, yesterday afternoon I went to Siam Square, located the Asia Books store, and to my pleasant surprise found it easily enough!
The price was ok, just under 500 THB, but the packaging seemed a bit odd…
Now I have been living in this part of the world for almost 40 years and am used to ‘mangled’ English, but this was quite different!
CHESS - The Original Recording Remastered Deluxe Edition, it read…
For a few seconds, I thought perhaps it was one of those ‘longboxes’ (*) from the past?
But no, there wasn’t any CD inside, and shaking the box a bit produced a sound of moving chess pieces!
What the heck, mission accomplished. I paid for it, and once home, opened the box.
As expected, just a magnetic chess set with plastic pieces and a folding board, all good.
Later though, I studied the packaging again and suddenly realized that it really looked like one of my AFAS cartoons (**), it certainly followed the same guiding principle, mashing up 2 different things…
‘The Original Recording Remastered Deluxe Edition’ is nowadays standard on any new vinyl/CD version of a classic album from the past, usually with lots of bonus tracks, alternative takes, etc.
And Chess is, well, just a game of course, but if seen from a different viewpoint…
There’s John Brunner’s novel ‘The Squares of the City, a 1965 science fiction novel structured around the moves of the famous 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin, (***) still very readable!
Musically, there’s Chess Records, an American record company established in 1950 in Chicago, specializing in blues and rhythm and blues. (****)
After some consideration, I opted for something else, the 1984 Chess Musical, with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of the pop group ABBA, lyrics by Ulvaeus and Tim Rice. (*****)
A single from the album, "One Night in Bangkok", performed by Murray Head, became a worldwide smash, reaching #3 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
With such a clear Bangkok connection, this Chess was the obvious candidate for a new cartoon!
On the packaging, I found some more ‘useful’ weird English…
Afterword: We have already played several games of chess, which was good fun, with no ‘edit undone’, ‘cheat codes’, etc.
LINKS:
Worth watching: ABBA and The Cold War: The History of CHESS the Musical
It actually was released in 2014:
Chess: Original Recording / remastered deluxe edition (unlike the one I bought!)
Note: I post daily new AFAS cartoons on:
A most enjoyable post, KK.
Finally, I crack it🕺🏻, login first before leaving a comment 🥳💫
So on reading, I embarked on an adventure into my storage room with the objective of course of locating my cherished chess set from being a child. No luck, I’m afraid, but I did find too very handsome chessboards I just set of antique chess pieces featuring the Romans and Barbarians made of some ancient metal. I put them to one side..
My father taught my two younger brothers and myself to play chess and we often played with a travel set on the way to Cornwall and then whole challenges and knockouts between the four of us. These were great fun since my father kept things always eve…
I read it and it was so interesting that I wanted to buy a chess game to play. But I've forgotten how to play. Oh, I guess I'll have to go back and practice.
Nice!
Fun to read. Being a chess fan, knowing my way around Bangkok bookshops, being no stranger to endearing messed-up English signs seen across Asia, it's all quite relatable. Missing though: who's the better chess player, you or your son😀?