Given the recent weather in Western Europe, now seems the perfect time to spotlight the Canadian indie rock band Hot hot heat.1 From what I’ve found, they remained mostly unknown outside of the anglophone world, but where relatively successful within it. They were not scoring number one hits left and right, but that’s not really how the success of an indie rock band is measured. Their albums garnered critical acclaim, they toured together with groups like the Foo Fighters and Snow Patrol,2 and music videos were made for several of their songs.
For example for Middle of nowhere, which was released in 2005. It starts with the band performing in a very small venue, possibly a garage, and the singer wandering off mid-song to go to the bathroom. When he comes, his band mates and the few people in the audience have understandably left him. He himself seems rather surprised by that development and decides to wile away his time at a chessboard:
This is, without a shred of doubt, his position:3
Yes, h1 is a black square, but there are other things to think about here, like: what the hell happened here? I suspect that our hapless player thinks that the bishops start on the b- and g-files. Alternatively, they may have just thrown some pieces on the board randomly.
The singer apparently has black.4 What should he do? He’s down a rook and under the threat of a disastrous discovered check. The machine has a slight preference for Nb2+ over just giving up, but our man decides, for some unfathomable reason, that Be6 is a better idea. Immediately after, though, he realises the hopelessness of his situation and knocks over his king.
Realism: 1/5 Maybe someone might argue that this position deserves a higher grade because nothing is majorly out of place, but such a person would be very wrong. The whole picture is nonsensical and there is no earthly way the discovered check could have been set up.
Probable winner: Black is going to feel the white hot hot heat.
1. [Actually, the perfect time was two weeks ago, but I can’t write these in a minute.] ↩
2. [You’d expect Hot hot heat to put Snow patrol out of work, but apparently not.] ↩
3. [This is the hottest, hottest diagram editor around.] ↩
4. [A hard if well-deserved fate.] ↩