🅻🅸🆅🅴 KIX: Top Ten Songs with Alex Winter

GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man

🅻🅸🆅🅴 Episode

Episode 164: KIX: Top Ten Songs with Alex Winter, Keith Searock and David Alpizar

Alex Winter is back!  This time the Alexploitation main man is in the hosting chair.  For some of our guests, including Alex and Uncle Meat, it is their first time hosting a show.  Grab A Stack of Rock is proud to be their first.  First of many, we hope.

Alex has chosen the underappreciated KIX as his band.  You may recall that a few years ago, guest writer Holen reviewed the first five Kix studio albums right here.  Now it’s finally time to honour the Maryland quintet with their own dedicated episode of Grab A Stack of Rock.

Alex has recruited two newcomers to the show!  Keith Searock, who has joined us in the comments many times, is on the panel.  David Alpizar, whom I have worked with on Grant’s Rock Warehaus, is joining our crew for the first time.  Welcome to the cast, gentlemen!

This crew of rock veterans will count down their top ten Kix songs tonight.  Get it while it’s hot, and don’t close your eyes!  Tonight there’s gonna be a rock & roll overdose, with KIX!

 

Click above for the link to our streams.

Friday Oct 16 at 7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube or Facebook.

#1250: Change of a Season

RECORD STORE TALES #1250: Change of a Season

And so Summer 2026 rolls to its end.  This is our final weekend at the lake this year.  Closing time is upon us, and now it is time to reflect.

Like all summers, we must expect the unexpected.  Harrison has been out of commission since June and without my cohost and partner, I did a lot less Grab A Stack of Rock than previous years.  This time we tried something new:  guests hosts.  It gave me a break from having to run the show every Friday (and I did want it to continue running every Friday because of the momentum we built up).  I also did a few pre-recorded episodes on my phone that were unlike anything we’d done before:  Tours of both Grab A Stack HQs, and a voyage through my old Atari 2600 collection.

Food-wise, we broke new ground with our amazing French Lemonade, and the discovery of local quail eggs for sale.  This allowed us to continue our food experiments that we try to do every year.

Mostly though…I have been quiet.

I haven’t been writing much, aside from fiction.  I realize now that Jen had a two week stay in Toronto in the epilepsy ward that I haven’t written about.  It went well.  She was there for 15 days of observations, and we hope that they can learn where her seizures are coming from so they can be better targeted by drugs.  She’s done this before, so hopes are actually minimal, but it had to be done.  No sacrifice, no victory.  During those two weeks, I went to the cottage alone.  It was my first weekend alone there in over two decades.

It’s amazing I haven’t written about these things.  I haven’t written a journal in almost two months.

And so Summer 2026 was not really documented by stories and videos like I usually do.  I suppose that’s not so bad.  We lost track of all the music we played to and from the lake, and all the albums that made their debut on the porch.  However, one band made an indelible impact on Summer 2026:  Angine de Poitrine.

It was our first or second weekend back at the cottage in 2026.  It was Sunday morning, and I was bored waiting for Jen to wake up so we could pack up and go home.  I had seen this band around online, but was not interested.  “Another duo,” I said.  “Pass!”  Still, I was hearing a lot of praise, and I already liked microtones.  In my boredom, I put Live at KEXP on the TV and watched.

20 minutes later, a blown-away me watched it again.  And then one more time.

There is a mixture here between music and sport.  It’s athleticism, watching Klek and particularly Khn de Poitrine play.  Khn engages the loops while playing on two necks, and twiddling knobs with his toes.  Athleticism with melody!

I got home and started hunting for CDs.  I had to own this band’s music!  It had nothing to do with the image.  The image (black and white polka dot alien costumes with huge noses) was just visual icing.  The music itself hit me in a place I didn’t know I needed to be hit!  It was like scratching an itch I didn’t know I had.  And the songs were bizarrely catchy.  This band…they had something.  They dominated the front porch for the entire summer.  I don’t know how many times I played both albums, plus Live at KEXP from the porch.  Hopefully the neighbors thought it was the weirdest music they ever heard.

I made animations on the porch while listening to Angine.  I wrote fiction.  I just sat back and observed.

Summer 2026 is gone now, and I didn’t keep a record of it.  And I guess that is OK.

Fall and winter await, and many creative projects are ready to get us through.  I await not with dread, but with anticipation.

Allons-y.

 

 

 

🅻🅸🆅🅴 Defending KISS: Psycho-Circus with Peter Kerr and bicyclelegs

GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man

🅻🅸🆅🅴 Episode

Episode 163: Defending KISS: Psycho-Circus with Peter Kerr and bicyclelegs

Mike is off for a couple more weeks, so this Friday, Peter Kerr of Rock Daydream Nation is taking over!

30 years ago, the original Kiss reunited for the tour of the year.  Of course, the very next question fans had was:  will you make a studio album?  Kiss dodged that for a while, before they announced their reunion album with Canadian producer, Bruce Fairbairn, who resurrected Aerosmith from the dead.  But was he the right kind of producer for Kiss?

Psycho-Circus erupted in fall of 1998 and fans were split.

Tonight, Peter Kerr and his special guest bicyclelegs will defend Psycho-Circus from all the hate.

It’s not a small task.  The album has issues including minimal Ace and Peter, glossy production, ballads, and plagiarism.  I don’t envy these two men.

At the end of the show, Peter will graciously allow me to say a few words about Harrison and the future of Grab A Stack of Rock, and 50 Years of Iron Maiden.

Tune in tonight for what may prove to be an impossible task.  Let’s see what the fellows have to say about one of the most controversial Kiss albums of all time, and that’s saying a lot!

 

Click above for the link to our streams.

Friday Oct 9 at 7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube or Facebook.

We got our photo in under 24 hours! Not Dead Yet: John Cleese and the Holy Grail at 50 VIP Show and Experience

We were promised our photo in 72 hours, and we got it in under 24.

What this photo doesn’t show is the gentle chit-chat with John Cleese.

He also shook my hand twice which I thought was kind.  Check out the entire experience below!

 

REVIEW

A once-in-a-lifetime experience was had on Oct 3 2026 in Kitchener, Ontatio. It was over in a flash, so I had to document it live as soon as I got home, from Not Dead Yet: John Cleese and the Holy Grail at 50.

Last Christmas, my mom said “When will I ever have the chance to meet John Cleese again?”  And so for $374.75 each, she bought three VIP tickets.  One for her, one for me, and one for Dr. K.  With hindsight I wish she also bought one for my dad.  Not only would he have loved the show, but I think he would have lost his mind meeting Mr. Cleese at the end of it.

The show began at 7:30, but we were there well early to get a couple drinks and enjoy our front row seats.  The stage was bare except for a big screen, a table, two chairs, and stuffed bunny rabbit.

First, Mr. Cleese was introduced to a standing ovation.  He graciously thanked us all for coming to watch this film that he started writing in 1974.  Then, the film began.  It was the extended version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but I believe that they ran the wrong version of the movie.  Mr. Cleese specifically said that it was supposed to be a version that he himself edited, removing the Three Headed Knight scene.  That scene was in fact shown, as well as the “GET ON WITH IT!” bits from the extended version.  A minor slipup.

After the film, an 86 year old John Cleese returned for approximately an hour of Q&A with the audience, wearing bunny rabbit slippers.  Some questions were great, some less so, but being a total pro, Mr. Cleese’s answers were also entertaining and interesting.

The thing that surprised me the most was how much Mr. Cleese loathes the last 10 to 15 minutes of Holy Grail, which was assembled by Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam without his (and presumably the others’) input.  “It doesn’t make sense!” said Mr. Cleese multiple times.  And here is the main takeaway that we got from the John Cleese Holy Grail at 50 Q&A:  Writing is #1 for him.  Performing, comedy, commentary are all second.  He says they did 13 drafts on A Fish Called Wanda‘s script before it was good enough.  Holy Grail’s ending was not written, made no sense, and he really dislikes it.  He also dislikes the Three Headed Knight scene, and wanted it edited out.  The scene was kept because Eric Idle’s knight, Sir Robin, had nothing to do after they split up.

He discussed many projects including a new comedy on cannibalism.  He also revealed what inspired the famous Python “parrot” sketch:  a used car that Michael Palin bought and tried to return.

Mr. Cleese praised the talents of Kevin Klein, and make fun of Michael Palin’s “horribly boring” travel show multiple times.  He reserved sincere praise for his old writing partner, the late great Graham Chapman.  He was clearly a special man.  The whole show was very warm, and simply delightful.

And then we met him!

Check out the video below, recorded while still on the high of meeting John Cleese and having this wonderful experience.

REVIEW: Not Dead Yet: John Cleese and the Holy Grail at 50 VIP Show and Experience

A once-in-a-lifetime experience was had on Oct 3 2026 in Kitchener, Ontatio. It was over in a flash, so I had to document it live as soon as I got home, from Not Dead Yet: John Cleese and the Holy Grail at 50.

Last Christmas, my mom said “When will I ever have the chance to meet John Cleese again?”  And so for $374.75 each, she bought three VIP tickets.  One for her, one for me, and one for Dr. K.  With hindsight I wish she also bought one for my dad.  Not only would he have loved the show, but I think he would have lost his mind meeting Mr. Cleese at the end of it.

The show began at 7:30, but we were there well early to get a couple drinks and enjoy our front row seats.  The stage was bare except for a big screen, a table, two chairs, and stuffed bunny rabbit.

First, Mr. Cleese was introduced to a standing ovation.  He graciously thanked us all for coming to watch this film that he started writing in 1974.  Then, the film began.  It was the extended version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but I believe that they ran the wrong version of the movie.  Mr. Cleese specifically said that it was supposed to be a version that he himself edited, removing the Three Headed Knight scene.  That scene was in fact shown, as well as the “GET ON WITH IT!” bits from the extended version.  A minor slipup.

After the film, an 86 year old John Cleese returned for approximately an hour of Q&A with the audience, wearing bunny rabbit slippers.  Some questions were great, some less so, but being a total pro, Mr. Cleese’s answers were also entertaining and interesting.

The thing that surprised me the most was how much Mr. Cleese loathes the last 10 to 15 minutes of Holy Grail, which was assembled by Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam without his (and presumably the others’) input.  “It doesn’t make sense!” said Mr. Cleese multiple times.  And here is the main takeaway that we got from the John Cleese Holy Grail at 50 Q&A:  Writing is #1 for him.  Performing, comedy, commentary are all second.  He says they did 13 drafts on A Fish Called Wanda‘s script before it was good enough.  Holy Grail’s ending was not written, made no sense, and he really dislikes it.  He also dislikes the Three Headed Knight scene, and wanted it edited out.  The scene was kept because Eric Idle’s knight, Sir Robin, had nothing to do after they split up.

He discussed many projects including a new comedy on cannibalism.  He also revealed what inspired the famous Python “parrot” sketch:  a used car that Michael Palin bought and tried to return.

Mr. Cleese praised the talents of Kevin Klein, and make fun of Michael Palin’s “horribly boring” travel show multiple times.  He reserved sincere praise for his old writing partner, the late great Graham Chapman.  He was clearly a special man.  The whole show was very warm, and simply delightful.

And then we met him!

Check out the video below, recorded while still on the high of meeting John Cleese and having this wonderful experience.

More Adventures in Epilepsy – 7:00 PM EST

GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man

Bonus Episode:  More Adventures in Epilepsy

Wish Jen luck everybody!  She’s in Toronto for a two week stay as they study her brain, to figure out where those seizures are coming from.  She doing well, and tonight we have a special bonus episode to talk about our Adventures in Epilepsy.

This isn’t the first time:  Exactly six years ago today, we did our first Adventures in Epilepsy episode with guests.  That episode was prompted by a bad fall where she broke her arm.  Tonight’s mini-episode is inspired by her hospital stay.  It’s not easy having all those electrodes and sensors glued to your head!  Tonight we’ll catch you up on all this and more.

Not to be a downer episode, we end it with lists of famous people who suffered from seizures.  You’ll be surprised at some!

Check it out tonight, on Grab A Stack of Rock.

Click above for the link to our streams.

Friday Oct 2 at 7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube.

 

 

 

The Northern Lights & Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Northern Lights Multiverse Adventure [Original 1993 – NO AI]

Earth 1701.

MAD DOG MIKE WILL RETURN IN THE MULTIVERSE SAGA…

Harrison and Mike have always prided ourselves in our “NO AI!” stance when it comes to our art.  (Not just visual of course, but also the written word.)  Much like Queen with their “Nobody played synthesizer,” we have caved – partially – on AI usage in the Northern Lights series.

Harrison and Mike wanted to begin including multiversal variants of ourselves in the Northern Lights based on the concept of us being crew members on one of the Enterprises.  This reminded me that in 1993, I drew a comic of me as a shuttlecraft pilot.  It would fit seamlessly into the Northern Lights multiverse with little alteration – just some changes to the front cover to give it a Northern Lights comic header.  But damn, was it ugly when I scanned it.  Blue ink on lined paper, bleeding through to the other side.

“Could you clean it up and colour it, Harrison?”

“I could but it would take a lot of time.”

“Well, we’re trying to reduce your workload, not increase it.  I hate to say it, but I’m going to ask AI to clean it up and colour it.”

Which is what I did.  I went to…(I can’t believe I’m admitting all this, but I always to my best to be transparent with my work)…I went to Chat GPT and entered this instruction.

“I drew this comic based on Star Trek.  Please clean it up and colour it.”

That sent me down a rabbit hole.  I did not keep track of how many revisions I had to tell it to make in order to get something presentable.  I learned quickly that AI cannot make simple changes to your image without redrawing it completely, and this means something that looked OK on the last revision looks wrong now.  But let’s start with what I got when I told AI to clean it up and colour it in.

I got:  A female me in one panel, constantly changing uniform colours, Geordi’s skin tone being inconsistent from panel to panel, and a continuous lack of understanding of what Geordi’s visor actually was.  AI had multiple visors in most panels, and I had to settle for what I was getting.  In the end, I used Microsoft Paint to cut and past the best renditions into one panel, because AI kept changing my face and making me more conventional.  See image below:

Then we moved onto the cover image, which AI never got right and I had to give up and finish it manually.  I asked it to clean up the cover image, and colour it similarly to the last one.  I also asked it to remember that my character was the same person as the prior image, so it wouldn’t make me female again.  (I was hot.)  The AI got it more or less right, and then I wanted to make selective changes here and there.  Only I couldn’t.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was that AI could not change the title box on the left without changing everything else.  You can see the image below is what I was left with when I gave up.  All I wanted to do was change the title box on the top left!  It cannot do that.  It continually changed the shape of the Enterprise, the face of the alien, and my face as well, going further and further away from my original on every attempt.  A huge fail for AI.  The alien in particular got creepier and more vampire-like on some revisions.

It’s also worth noting that AI took many liberties in cleaning and colouring my image.  It knew to darken the background and make the stars white.  It added more stars, and two planets that I did not ask for.  It removed panel lines that I wanted on the alien’s UFO.  It changed my face quite a bit, and I had to continually tell it to make the face look more like my original sketch.  The text was formatted by the AI to look more like a comic, but I liked it and it wasn’t worth customizing.  I had reached the point where AI couldn’t get closer to what I wanted without ruining everything we had already got.   Diminishing returns.

Then, I went in for a second round of edits, to further hone in on what I wanted.  In the end I finally got close enough for rock and roll.

In a perfect world, I would have preferred to have Harrison clean up and colour the originals manually, but that wasn’t feasible.  To see what AI made, click here.  Thank you for your understanding or scorn, whichever it may be.

Mike 

THE ADVENTURES OF TEE BONE MAN:  PHASE ONE – THE SQUIRREL SAGA 

THE ADVENTURES OF TEE BONE MAN:  PHASE TWO – THE MULTIVERSE SAGA

THE ADVENTURES OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS:  PHASE THREE – THE UNICRON SAGA

 

 

SPINOFFS AND SIDE QUESTS

 

THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF EDIE VAN HEELIN’

THE WRITER’S ROOM

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Northern Lights & Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Northern Lights Multiverse Adventure [AI ENHANCED]

Earth 1701.  [For the original AI-free version of this comic, click here.  For an explanation to “why AI?”, scroll to the bottom]

 

 

 

 

MAD DOG MIKE WILL RETURN IN THE MULTIVERSE SAGA…

Harrison and Mike have always prided ourselves in our “NO AI!” stance when it comes to our art.  (Not just visual of course, but also the written word.)  Much like Queen with their “Nobody played synthesizer,” we have caved – partially – on AI usage in the Northern Lights series.

Harrison and Mike wanted to begin including multiversal variants of ourselves in the Northern Lights based on the concept of us being crew members on one of the Enterprises.  This reminded me that in 1993, I drew a comic of me as a shuttlecraft pilot.  It would fit seamlessly into the Northern Lights multiverse with little alteration – just some changes to the front cover to give it a Northern Lights comic header.  But damn, was it ugly when I scanned it.  Blue ink on lined paper, bleeding through to the other side.

“Could you clean it up and colour it, Harrison?”

“I could but it would take a lot of time.”

“Well, we’re trying to reduce your workload, not increase it.  I hate to say it, but I’m going to ask AI to clean it up and colour it.”

Which is what I did.  I went to…(I can’t believe I’m admitting all this, but I always to my best to be transparent with my work)…I went to Chat GPT and entered this instruction.

“I drew this comic based on Star Trek.  Please clean it up and colour it.”

That sent me down a rabbit hole.  I did not keep track of how many revisions I had to tell it to make in order to get something presentable.  I learned quickly that AI cannot make simple changes to your image without redrawing it completely, and this means something that looked OK on the last revision looks wrong now.  But let’s start with what I got when I told AI to clean it up and colour it in.

I got:  A female me in one panel, constantly changing uniform colours, Geordi’s skin tone being inconsistent from panel to panel, and a continuous lack of understanding of what Geordi’s visor actually was.  AI had multiple visors in most panels, and I had to settle for what I was getting.  In the end, I used Microsoft Paint to cut and past the best renditions into one panel, because AI kept changing my face and making me more conventional.  See image below:

Then we moved onto the cover image, which AI never got right and I had to give up and finish it manually.  I asked it to clean up the cover image, and colour it similarly to the last one.  I also asked it to remember that my character was the same person as the prior image, so it wouldn’t make me female again.  (I was hot.)  The AI got it more or less right, and then I wanted to make selective changes here and there.  Only I couldn’t.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was that AI could not change the title box on the left without changing everything else.  You can see the image below is what I was left with when I gave up.  All I wanted to do was change the title box on the top left!  It cannot do that.  It continually changed the shape of the Enterprise, the face of the alien, and my face as well, going further and further away from my original on every attempt.  A huge fail for AI.  The alien in particular got creepier and more vampire-like on some revisions.

It’s also worth noting that AI took many liberties in cleaning and colouring my image.  It knew to darken the background and make the stars white.  It added more stars, and two planets that I did not ask for.  It removed panel lines that I wanted on the alien’s UFO.  It changed my face quite a bit, and I had to continually tell it to make the face look more like my original sketch.  The text was formatted by the AI to look more like a comic, but I liked it and it wasn’t worth customizing.  I had reached the point where AI couldn’t get closer to what I wanted without ruining everything we had already got.   Diminishing returns.

Then, I went in for a second round of edits, to further hone in on what I wanted.  In the end I finally got close enough for rock and roll.

In a perfect world, I would have preferred to have Harrison clean up and colour the originals manually, but that wasn’t feasible.  In the end, I do feel a weird sense of satisfaction, seeing a close approximation of my 1993 cartoon, coloured and cleaned.  Thank you for your understanding or scorn, whichever it may be.

To see the original, non-AI version of this comic, please click here.

 

Mike 

 

THE ADVENTURES OF TEE BONE MAN:  PHASE ONE – THE SQUIRREL SAGA 

THE ADVENTURES OF TEE BONE MAN:  PHASE TWO – THE MULTIVERSE SAGA

THE ADVENTURES OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS:  PHASE THREE – THE UNICRON SAGA

 

 

SPINOFFS AND SIDE QUESTS

 

THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF EDIE VAN HEELIN’

THE WRITER’S ROOM

 

 

 

 

 

Rock Daydream Nation: ZZ Top’s Ultimate 80s Battle: Eliminator vs. Afterburner!

A Rock Daydream Nation Panel Show!   Tim Durling (Tim’s Vinyl Confessions/The Contrarians), Michael Ladano (Grab a Stack of Rock), Dan Chartrand (Off the Charts) and Peter Wicks (Wixxyleaks).

This one surprised me.  These two ZZ Top albums are often considered a pair, with one superior and one inferior.  Our panel provided some surprises and a lot of fun over this hour!  I surprised myself and changed my mind a couple times. Check out the show!

 


 

🅻🅸🆅🅴 Operation: Mindcrime III Review/Rant with Tim Durling

GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man

🅻🅸🆅🅴 Episode

Episode 162:  Operation: Mindcrime III [Geoff Tate] Review/Rant with Tim Durling

Q: What do Geoff Tate and Helix have in common in 2026?

A: They both made their new studio albums frustratingly hard to buy physical copies of in Canada.

Tim Durling from Tim’s Vinyl Confessions is tonight’s guest host, and he’s gonna tell you all about it!

Geoff Tate won the performance rights to Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime I and II as part of the settlement made for the Queensryche band name.   Tate has always taken pride in his rock opera epic, and so expanded the series to a trilogy with his new solo album.  Interestingly enough, Operation: Mindcrime III is not a third part to the story.  Instead, it is a re-telling of the first album, but from the perspective of the evil Dr. X.

Tim will tell us about each of the songs, and the experience of just trying to buy a copy in Canada.  Get ready folks – for a price he’d do about anything, except mislead you about Operation: Mindcrime III.  Is it any good, or is it the proverbial weak link in the trilogy?  Find out tonight, on Grab A Stack of Rock with your host, Tim Durling!

 

Click above for the link to our streams.

Friday Sept 25 at 7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube or Facebook.