From fall 1988, right before Gene Simmons was set to do his big interview promoting the new Simmons Records label, Pepsi Power Hour host Laurie Brown had Rob Cavestany and Dennis Pepa of the young thrash band Death Angel come in for a quick chat!
Check it out!
For all things Blaze Bayley, go to BlazeBayley.net.
GRAB A STACK OF ROCK #117
We cannot imagine a better way to wrap up the Blaze years on 50 Years of Iron Maiden, than chatting with the man himself. Metal fans worldwide, we present to you Blaze Bayley!
This isn’t just any Blaze interview. With Harrison and Mike involved, you know we’re going to go deep. We’re going to respect the man and his entire career, from Wolsbane to Iron Maiden to solo. A lot of the information we covered won’t be found in mainstream interviews.
In this interview, we cover:
For us and this series, asking Blaze our favourite questions was the realization of many dreams. Instead of saying “Do or Die”, Blaze likes to say “Do, or Do”. This interview was the culmination of us just doing it, for the love of music and the love of Iron Maiden.
Folks, you are in for a treat. Please welcome Blaze Bayley to Grab A Stack of Rock.
Past episodes:
Handy YouTube Playlist:
Spoiler Alert! Sven Gali and director Phil Kates won the Best Metal Video at the 1993 MuchMusic Video Awards.
The classic lineup of Dave Wanless, Dee Cernille, Shawn “TT” Minden, Andy Frank and Gregg Gerson were on hand to receive the award and perform the awesome single “Under the Influence” live. With energy and heads-a-bangin’, Sven Gali rocked the studio and the street with ruthless aplomb. Yet the band were humble as they received their honours. Is that Kim Mitchell in the audience?
Teresa Roncon presents the band in this classic MuchMusic video, while Erica Ehm is also present for the proceedings. Check out the other nominees!
Harrison and Mike are thrilled to announce that this week on 50 Years of Iron Maiden, we have an incredibly special guest: Blaze Bayley himself, the first Iron Maiden alumni to ever grace the show with their presence. Thank you so much to Blaze for doing this.
In this interview, we cover:
Get ready this Friday for the premiere of our interview with the amazing Blaze Bayley! You can find all things Blaze at BlazeBayley.net.
GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man
Episode 116: Music & Mental Health 3 with Dan Chartrand
The third part of our Mental Health trilogy will be a live show, Friday night as usual, but what will we do differently this time?
Special guest Dan Chartrand will be with Mike as we discuss the challenges of overcoming Seasonal Affective Disorder, and childhood bullying. Even if it happened 40 years ago, bullies can still have an affect on your behaviour today. If you ever feel overly defensive, for example, that could relate to old bullies that you thought you have long forgotten. We will dive deep.
With fall upon us, we’ll also tackle Seasonal Affective Disorder and techniques to deal with it. This is a ghost that has haunted Mike for many years and though it is an annual struggle, Mike will share what he has learned.
As always, we’ll bring it all back to music too. Mike will share his favourite music that he plays to feel good when things get him down. Don’t miss this live episode as we’ll be taking your questions and comments.
Be kind to yourself. See you tonight.
Friday September 12 at 7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic. Enjoy on YouTube or Facebook.
BEHOLD! After much shopping and hunting, Harrison has acquired a “complete” Blaze Bayley solo CD collection. With two caveats:
1. A physical copy of every released song is included – not necessarily every CD that Blaze ever released. There is one very rare and limited Blaze compilation that Harrison does not have, but has nothing on it that he needs.
2. Blaze has done many collaborations on others artists’ albums that are not a part of this solo CD collection.
To compensate, Mike brought in one Blaze collaboration on the new Absolva album Justice, which features the Appleton brothers from his current band.
Harrison breaks down his collection chronologically, beginning with the amazing Silicon Messiah album, right up to the present day. Lots of signed CDs here including some very limited rarities. Check it out!
This collection of Alice Cooper interviews and videos circa 1987-88 was recorded from MuchMusic’s Pepsi Power Hour.
Topics include:
You’ll also see clips of videos for “The Man Behind the Mask”, “Freedom” and “I’m 18”.
BEHOLD! The inspiration and artwork of the Mad Metal Man, Harrison Kopp, knows no bounds.
In this incredible piece of art, Harrison has paid homage to Albany’s greatest band, BLOTTO, in Lego form! This is a first of its kind for the band.
In the artwork you can clearly see the five core members of the band, with their images paying tribute to the “Metal Head” music video (and the Combo Akimbo album in Bowtie Blotto’s case). Their backdrop is a reference to their Across & Down EP, with a crossword puzzle painstakingly made by Harrison. Even the audience members in the photo contain Easter eggs and references to Blotto songs, and maybe even the artist himself.
No AI was used in this image, and only minimal Photoshop was employed. The lighting itself is made in a very creative and cool way, with physical lights. Harrison breaks down all the details in the video below. Can you spot them all yourself?
As thanks for creating this art, Harrison has been honoured with the privilege of choosing his own Blotto name. Watch the video to see what name he chose!
RECORD STORE TALES #1215: Burning the Notebooks
A sequel to #768: Scanning the Notebooks
You can’t keep everything forever. This is an unfortunate truth that is one we must all face. Eventually, you gotta throw things out.
Or, if you have a flair for the dramatic as I do, you gotta burn ’em.
I’m sure at one point in my life, I thought that these science notebooks would come in handy. Indeed, I can’t remember how electron shells work anymore, which I used to find easy, so maybe there was some value in those books. The real reason I hung onto them for so long was because I made so many doodles and sketches that I thought might be funny to keep. I took a quick look and scanned some of the memorable ones (some can be seen here) but there were so, so many. Were they all keepers? I didn’t want to tackle that task and so I stuffed the notebooks in a corner for five years.
These books are over 35 years old now, took up too much space for something that will never be read again, and a decision had to be made.
I remember a lot of kids in highschool saying, “Ooh I’m gonna burn my notebooks as soon as school is out!” I don’t know if they did that, but I decided to honour them by burning mine. I kept some pages. As I went through them, I pulled out pages with doodles and sketches and funny notes. Those might be shown in another video later on, but for now, let’s see what some 35 year old highschool notebooks had in them that was worth saving from the fires.
As you can see, heavy metal music was always the main thing in my life. There are guitars, there are band logos, lyrics, and a few passing grades too.
I guess the truth is, I always felt like school was something I had to do, in order to go home and listen to music at the end of the day. I did fine, I passed, but my mom always felt I could have focused more. I think these notebooks show she was right. The grades were good, not great, and my attention was clearly elsewhere at times.
With notes dating back to 1988 and ’89, perhaps some earlier, it wasn’t easy to let these go. I’ll never be able to use them to teach myself about electron shells. The best I could do was keep some pages and use the rest to have a cool fire.
As Jon Bon Jovi said, “it’s hard letting you go.” I hope the video is worth it.
Who doesn’t love musical mail? Check out some thoughtful gifts from Tim Durling and Marco D’Auria, plus a really cool surprise from Amazon.
Marco and Tim were apparently on the same wavelength when these two parcels are sent.
Sometimes Amazon’s listings are not accurate, and you have to take a chance. Fortunately their return policy makes things easy if you ordered the wrong thing. In this case, I ordered a CD that I need for an upcoming show. I found a Japanese import reasonably priced, but there was also a deluxe edition that I was told was really good. Check out what happens next. You won’t believe it!
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