I finally found my Piece of Mind!

Last Saturday was a pretty good day for me. I was able to trade in a bunch of old bootleg videos and find a few records I've had on my wanted list for a while.

One was the Iron Maiden single reviewed below, another was this beauty, Iron Maiden's 1983 classic, "Piece of Mind." This was the last of the "classic" Maiden LP's on my list.

Classic for me is the period starting with the first album, and ending with "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son." I think most people would agree with that, though I've heard some argue that "Somewhere in Time" was the end for them, but who cares about that, this is MY blog!

That being said, this is actually my least favourite of the classic Maiden era. There are some deadly songs on here, most notably "The Trooper" and "Flight of Icarus", but there's also some uninteresting ones too. Not that they're bad, mind you. Least favourite Iron Maiden album is still a zillion times better that "The best Warrant album (an oxymoron?)" for example.

But "Sun and Steel" and "Die With Your Boots On" just never really seem to go anywhere. "Revelations" starts out with one of the best intros ever, but can't really keep up the pace. But, as I said, it's still Maiden!

The main thing I really remember about this disc is that the cover used to scare the Hell out of me! I always found this painting to be the scariest, even more than "the Number of the Beast". I dunno, maybe it's the colour scheme, or Eddie's menacing look, or maybe the breaking chains, who knows? But that's got to count for something!

The new Iron Maiden Single!

A few days ago I picked up the new Iron Maiden single "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg" at my local record store. I'm happy to say the song is actually really good, in fact it's stuck in my head right now!

The only problem I have with it is the intro, not because it's bad, just because Maiden seems to put a long intro at the front of every single song these days, whether it needs it or not. I think that started in the "Somewhere in Time" era and they've decided to stick with it, it seems.

The single is also noteworthy because it comes on 10" clear vinyl and includes the "crossed guns" logo sticker you see on the top right.

So anyway, I'm looking forward to the release of the full album on September 5th. If you want to hear the song, check out Iron Maiden's Myspace page here.

Lagwagon's return to form

You know how you have all those bands that you used to like? And they keep putting out new albums, and they're kind of OK, but they just don't really seem to care that much any more?

Well, Lagwagon used to fall into this category for me, but they reversed the trend with their latest, "Resolve". If you know anything about Lagwagon, you'll know that they used to be super-fast punk-metal and the first two albums were probably some of the best things ever.

Their third record "Hoss" was alright, but a change was in the air. After that, I thought they completely lost it, and I was diassapointed because I was a huge fan of their earlier stuff. I was even lucky enough to see them on the "Trashed" tour way back in about '94 at the Republik.

So they had fallen into the nostalgia category, and I'd dig out their discs once in a while to remember the good old days, but when I heard the song "Heartbreaking Music" from the newest album I was surprised. It sounded like old Lagwagon!

When I started to read up on the album, I got the sad news. Derrick Plourde, the original drummer committed suicide before the recording of the album, inspiring all the songs to be written in only two weeks. It's a fitting tribute.

The lyrics are heartfelt and sometimes heart-wrenching and the music is a throwback to the days when Derrick was the man behind the kit. I'm a little late with this review, as it came out in '05, but I wanted to write about it anyway.

To hear some samples, you can head over to Lagwagon's MySpace page or order it at Fat Wreck Chords. The version you see above is my copy, luckily I ordered early enough to get one of the 220 green vinyl copies.

Crap!

Dang, I can't believe this! So, I walked into Scratch records and saw the neat-o mosquito Billy Talent Devil Head shaped picture disc you see in the picture on the left. Look how excited I am! (also, kind of fat, apparently...)

And hey, it's only $5.98, not too shabby! So, I'm not the hugest Billy Talent fan, but a record this cool is not an easy one to pass up, so of course I buy it and bring it home.

Now I'm not one to buy a record just because it looks kinda interesting, I at least want to hear the thing, so I go to toss it on the old turntable and guess what? It doesn't fit! The hole is way too small, what's the deal with that?

So, you can see how dissapointed I am, so I'm not sure if I should try to widen the hole somehow or just forget about it. I don't know what I could really do, but I wonder if this was all of these records, or just mine that's a little tight.

Hopefully they didn't know about it and just went ahead with it anyway, thinking "hey, nobody's gonna listen to this thing anyway, they'll probably just hang it on their wall or something, so let's just make 'em all crappy!" or something like that.

Wow, that would be really lame.

Anyway, I guess I'll just hang it on my wall....

Hooray for Canada?

So I was at the thrift store the other day, and I found this in a box of 45's.

It's "the Heart of Rock n' Roll" by Huey Lewis and the News on red vinyl. Well, what with my penchant for all things coloured vinyl, I of course decided to grab it.

I noticed on the label it said "Canadian Version", and I thought, "Hmm, what could that possibly mean?" I also saw that there was no "A" or "B" side, but "East Side" and "West Side" instead. Weird, but oh well.

So, I get home, throw on the "East Side" and the song plays as I remember it, until the very end. After where the lyrics usually end, Huey Yells out "Toronto! Montreal!" in a completely bizarre voice. In fact, it may not even be him, but some random dork who just happened to be mopping up the studio or something.

So of course I then flip over to the "West Side" to hear Huey (or whoever) yell "Vancouver!" Vancouver. That's it for the west side. Sure, Vancouver is the biggest city out west, but come on, the East Coast got two shout outs! Couldn't he have yelled out "Victoria!" or "Calgary!" or even "Winnipeg!" for God's sake?

I wonder whose idea this was anyway. Like when people in Canada heard it, we thought, "wow, our country rules, Huey totally shouted us out!" or if some numbnuts DJ accidentally played the wrong side of the record so people in Vancouver heard Huey yell "Toronto!" Montreal!" and got all pissed because they didn't get mentioned and they went to Huey's concert and threw stuff at him and cursed him out and he was all, "what the hell was that all about? I yelled Vancouver! Did some DJ play the wrong side of the record or something?".

That would've been awesome. But seriously, Canada doesn't really have THAT many major cities, why did they bother with the two coasts? Doesn't that just make us look bad? Like Vancouver is the ONLY city in Western Canada?

I'm sure most of Canada's big cities would have fit neatly on the one side of this 45, and the other side could've contained something useful, like a recipe for cookies, or perhaps Huey's theories on the Kennedy assassination, or maybe , oh I dunno, ANOTHER SONG?

The worst KISS album ever!

There's no doubt in anyone's mind that "Music from The Elder" is the worst thing KISS has ever done. And KISS has done some terrible, terrible things. (Which we'll get into on another post, I promise)

So, it was 1981 and KISS was rapidly losing it's fan base due to some disco albums that were commercial hits, but didn't do much for their hardcore fan base. (Even though I still think Unmasked is a pretty good album, just not a good KISS album...)

So they decided to recreate "Destroyer", by bringing back Bob Ezrin. Now, how many times has KISS tried to recreate Destroyer anyway? Well, if you listen to their interviews, pretty much every album since 1976 has tried to be Destroyer, but none of them has really matched up. But that hasn't stopped the KISS hype machine!

Anyway, It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but this disc is truly awful. There's weird falsetto vocals, strange themes, and huge opera sections, it's all pretty much a big mess.
So, it's really no surprise this was their worst selling album, which also makes it one of the harder ones to find.

If you're into torturing yourself, you should really listen to this thing. It's worth it, even just to see what NOT to do when you're recording an album. However, it's rare status does make it one of the gems of my KISS collection.

I managed to find this in Calgary when I was a kid, and I couldn't believe my luck. It was in brand new condition, but I suppose most copies were probably listened to once at best, and probably not even all the way to the end. It's really that bad. I guess it was supposed to be a movie too, if it worked out, hence the "music from" in the title. I'd heard that Revolutionary comics was going to turn it into a comic book from Gene Simmons' story ideas, but I'm not sure if it ever happened or not...

Anyway, I think new pressings of the CD should definitely come with a disclaimer letting people know not to expect a regular KISS album when they buy this thing.

But with that said, it is an interesting listen, especially when you consider they went from this right to "Creatures of the Night" the very next year, probably their most underrated album!

Unfortunately they then went on to totally blow it again with the whole "Asylum", "Crazy Nights", "Hot in the Shade" thing, but oh well.

Light of Day Soundtrack!

Wow, I was stupidly excited to find this thing at Salvation Army for 50 cents.

After Seeing Joan Jett at Warped tour I've been looking out for her records so I was pleasantly surprised to come across this.

It's actually not too bad, the Barbusters (Joan and Michael J.'s fictional band in the fim) songs are alright, but the best part of the album is when Michael J. Fox SINGS! Yes, he sings. He sings. He sings. Even though I've heard it and typed it four times, I still find it hard to believe.

It's funny, he sounds like he doesn't really want to do it, but he was talked into it by someone and so he's just going along with it and hoping for the best. It could be worse I suppose, he's better than Don Johnson. (More on that one later)

And hey, this is the guy that made us all want to skateboard and play guitar, so we should cut him some slack, right? Anyway, if you haven't seen the film, it's pretty boring and crushingly joyless, so I would have to say the soundtrack is much better. (though I guess that's not really saying all that much)

Also, check out Joan's leather neck thing, is there anyone else out there who could pull that off? I doubt it. Well worth the 50 cents my friends, well worth it.