Captain Lou Albano sadly passed away this week. He was a well known wrestler in his day, wrestling in the tag team The Sicilians in WWF (the promotion that later became WWE), and later became a manager during the 80s’ colorful WWF roster. However, what most of us know and love him for, is his role as Mario in the Super Mario Bros. Super Show! Many people decided to play the different Mario games and watch the show in tribute of the sad loss, and someone decided to release something special to lighten us up.
Jason Cox, who is more famous as XOC, is quite famous for his quirky, light hearted arrangement, using everything from guitars to rubber duckies. In 2005, he released SMW, a complete Super Mario World soundtrack arrangement album which took the game music community by storm, and has since released many releases ranging from movie game soundtracks to Kirby, but now he has returned to Mario yet again and delivering XOC Plays Super Mario Bros. 3, a complete Super Mario Bros 3 arrangement project. He’s not alone either, as he has brought on Dan Taylor, the bassist from Metroid Metal to do the bass for many of the tracks.
You can get the album at XOCMusic.com for $5 USD, which contains both high quality MP3 and FLAC encodings. So pick it up, honor the talent and memory of Lou Albano and be sure to check out our review of the album in the near future!