I’m glad I popped by Mighty the other night for the MICROMUSICSF chiptunes party. Seriously, what a treat for the ears of this 80’s video game geek! Chiptune is music created from sound chips found in vintage video game consoles (Nintendo NES, Gameboy), computers (Atari 400/800, C64) and consumer electronics. Chiptune artists modify these devices to create their own music synthesized from these chips. A sampling of these artists who played the party are TRASH80, NULLSLEEP and STARPAUSE. Micromusic.net is also a great resource for chiptune music, videos and events.

There’s a full length documentary on the chiptunes scene called BLIP FESTIVAL: REFORMAT THE PLANET, it’s premering at SXSW this year. You know where I’ll be. Here’s the trailer:

BLIP FESTIVAL: REFORMAT THE PLANET trailer from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

I came cross this great little documentary of San Francisco’s favorite notable icon, Frank Chu. Frank was born in 1960, his father is 98 and is still alive, his mom was murdered by the CIA and 12 Galaxies or maybe there was some natural causes. He’s been in and out of jail, the Oakland cops almost murdered him a few times. He starts his routine at 8am downtown everyday and likes to break for lunch at Jack in the Box.