We all knew this day would come. We just didn’t know it would be today.
Only a couple weeks after his final concert, Ozzy has joined his bandmates in Rock and Roll Heaven.
I really don’t have the words. You’d think I’d be prepared for this. I was not. The biggest loss in metal, ever?
I’ll think of more to say later.
Rest in Peace, Ozzy.
I played Bark At the Moon and No Rest for the Wicked on the weekend. MY albums. MY Ozzy.
Ozzy – that guy who I thought was “crazy”! He looked scary to a 12 year old.
Then I saw a picture of him in a cowboy hat. “He doesn’t look so scary.”
He wasn’t.
Ozzy wasn’t the prince of darkness. He was the clown prince of metal, and I think he loved it that way. Joking, pulling faces, making people laugh just as hard as he made them rock. Ozzy was my companion during the awkward teenage misfit years. Ozzy was cool without being cool. He was simply Ozzy. There was only one. He couldn’t be replaced in Black Sabbath. Any time they tried, they embarked on a new journey, because you cannot replace Ozzy Osbourne.
Ozzy had a knack for a melody, and impeccable taste in guitar players. From Randy Rhoads to Jake E. Lee to Zakk Wylde, he made them famous.
Ozzy’s real talent was as a facilitator of talent. He brought together drummers, bassists and guitarists. He formed bands that we still talk about today, from the original Blizzard of Ozz to the Wylde/Butler/Castillo lineup that is my personal favourite. His knack for bringing people together, both in bands and in audiences was unparalleled.
There will NEVER be another Ozzy. Only pretenders to the throne.
RECORD STORE TALES #1200: Birthdays, Castles and Cornfields
My goal when making drone videos is never to invade privacy, only to make cool videos of the things around me. Ever since 2022, Jen and I have been driving past this cool “castle” in the middle of nowhere. We have stopped to take pictures because it is such a whimsical looking place. I have long wanted to do a drone video of the castle we once called Deke’s Palace.
I woke up around 5:30 AM on my birthday. I chatted with friends and enjoyed a birthday steak for breakfast. I thought about driving somewhere to make a drone video. Around 8:00 I decided to wake up Jen and make a run into town. I packed up my Potensic drone and made our way up to the castle. We waited for three cars to pass, and then I was airborne. I saw no vehicles for the entire flight, but I did soar close enough to the castle to see its ramparts, battlements, and three turrets. I also hovered over a winding river, and zoomed low over a cornfield.
I always like to try to accomplish something new creatively when I can, and this counts as a brand new location. I am very happy with the resultant video.
After my flight, we went into the essential hobby store Leisure World, and I treated myself to a birthday gift.
Simply a wonderful birthday, enjoyed in the best place in the world.
For weeks we have been building to this moment. The Fear of the Dark era ends, and a new singer is required. After considering Doogie White, who went on to success with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Iron Maiden chose Wolfbane’s Blaze Bayley as their new lead singer. While Blaze had a connection opening for Maiden, his selection was a surprise to some. A power baritone, Blaze was not an operatic singer like Bruce Dickinson. Nor was he a complex punky shouter like Paul Di’Anno. What would the new Iron Maiden sound like? We tackle that subject and much more on tonight’s epic episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden.
For the first time since No Prayer for the Dying back in the beginning of June, Harrison and I are joined by a special guest to dissect this album. You may know Jake (Not From State Farm) from his appearance with me on John Clauser’s Music Corner. Jake asked for these episodes (the pair of Blaze studio albums) because of his deep love for this era. Both Jake and Harrison come at this album from the perspective of having a special connection with the music of Blaze. Mike on the other hand is more simply an Iron Maiden fan, and provides a sense of balance. We hope.
This is the longest episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden to date! Why? Because we have so much to discuss:
14 original studio songs including three Japanese bonus tracks (B-sides elsewhere)
Two cover songs (B-sides: The Who and UFO)
The cover art by Hugh Syme (two versions)
A deep analysis of the lyrical themes
Our personal stories and connections with The X Factor
Facts and trivia
The tour and setlist
The Blaze Bayley interview tracks (B-sides) of which we have five segments to play for you
As usual you can expect us to be comprehensive, and we do not disappoint in this episode.
We hope you can make the premiere tonight where I always try to interact in the comment section! Up the irons, and into the unknown!
Friday July 18 at 7:00 P.M. E.S.T. Enjoy on YouTube.
* I wanna shoot myself for saying the “STATE” of Quebec instead of “PROVINCE” in this episode. UGH. What a mis-speak. So embarassing!
I was sad to learn this week that one of my earliest collaborators, Tommy Morais, passed away last year. He was only 32.
I first met Tommy when he was just 18. It was around the time of the release of the “new” KISS album Sonic Boom. I was writing a complete set of Kiss reviews on Amazon to celebrate. As it turns out, Tommy was also writing reviews for every Kiss album, and lots more that I was working on too. I jealously read his writing. He was good.
Eventually I decided to reach out to Tommy via email, and tell him how great his reviews were. We became friends. We didn’t agree on every Kiss album. Tommy liked Animalize a lot more than I did! He had the rock star hair and a glam image. Tommy was no-holds-barred when it came to the music he loved. He identified with the Kiss song “Freak”:
I’ve got streaks in my hair People point at me and stare If they ask me I say: Yeah! I’m a freak And I love the clothes I wear Let them laugh ’cause I don’t care It’s my cross, I’m proud to bear I’m a freak
Tommy was based out of New Brunswick and eventually moved to Ontario. Meanwhile, I transitioned my writing from Amazon to WordPress. Tommy was an eager reader, and was responsible for a couple Record Store Tales and several reviews. Tommy wanted more Kiss! So I wrote Part 26 and Part 27 of Record Store Tales by his request. Tommy also contributed several of his own reviews to this site! For me, Tommy wrote reviews of:
As you can see for yourself, Tommy was a wise rock fan beyond his years. Every artist he reviewed for me really peaked long before he was even born.
I never met Tommy even though he was only a short distance away, relatively speaking. We lost touch shortly after the Europe review. I was really saddened to hear of his passing.
Gone way, way too soon. Rest in peace Tommy. Here’s some Kiss for ya. I hope you’re rocking up there with Eric Carr. You were an original.
These three drone videos are the edited-down results of everything I shot on the weekend of July 4-6. All videos were shot with the Potensic Atom SE. I brought both the Potensic and the Ruko, but as you can see, it was a very windy weekend and I did not want to risk the Ruko. Next weekend, I will attempt to fly the Ruko again.
Enjoy these magnificent videos, and amazing songs by Deep Purple, Hello Hopeless and the Arkells.
Robert Lawson is a friend and authorSolidarity Forever: The Art and Soul of Stevie Van Zandt.* He recently posted this hilarious story on social media and I asked if I could use it. It is good to know there are still new Record Store Tales to be told!
RECORD STORE TALES#1199: The Springsteen Fan that Couldn’t Math
Bruce Springsteen recently released the second instalment of his Tracks box sets, called Tracks II: The Lost Albums. It contains seven albums’ worth of unreleased Bruce Springsteen, and has received critical and fan acclaim for the quality of its songs. Robert recently had an interested customer.
CUSTOMER: “How much is the new Springsteen boxed set, like $200?”
R: “Actually double that.”
CUSTOMER: “It’s $600???”
R: …sigh…
* Solidarity Forever is the definitive account of the musical journey of the music legend of Disciples of Soul, Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, and anti-apartheid project Sun City fame, Little Steven Van Zandt. Following Van Zandt’s unforgettable sixty-year (and counting!) career from his beginnings with the Asbury Jukes and Springsteen to leading the Disciples of Soul, from touring, arranging, and producing timeless music to playing an onscreen gangster in The Sopranos and Lilyhammer, Solidarity Forever is packed with a level of detail that will impress devotees and enchant new fans.
Every song, every album, every single, live shows; bootlegs, production credits, covers, activism-everything is covered here and presented alongside fascinating interviews of over forty past and present band members and Van Zandt himself. A stunning work of music journalism and love letter to rock ‘n’ roll, Solidarity Forever delivers Little Steven’s story and the timeless messages of his music like never before.
“This is no time to be fighting each other What we need, what we need is solidarity.”
RECORD STORE TALES #1198: Happy 101st Birthday to Doris Anne Winter
One year ago today, we wished my Grandma Dolly a happy 100th birthday. She was visited by friends, and family from afar. She enjoyed cake and balloons. She legitimately had a good time. She actually had two parties: One for friends and neighbors and one just for close family and friends. She was exhausted by the end of it. Heck I’d be exhausted if I celebrated my birthday over two consecutive days, and I’m half her age.
Grandma is still with us today despite the odds, and will be celebrating 101 years. She doesn’t look the same anymore. The last six months have taken a toll as she has battled time and illness. Something in her just refuses to give in. Back in January, I did a special show with John Clauser as a tribute to my grandma, thinking we’d be losing her imminently. Now it is July.
Today she will just have a few visitors. There won’t be a lot of celebrating happening. She’s just too tired and weak. But she did truck on for another year, hitting another milestone. 101 years. Imagine being there for the roaring twenties, the dirty thirties, the Second World War and the baby boom. Picture living through the rapid advances of the 1950s amd 1960s, when television became the norm and Grandpa worked for Bell telephone, connecting all the neighbours with the latest technology for communication. Grandchildren arrived in the 1970s amd 1980s, and Grandma had a whole new adventure ahead of her, spoiling us. For us, when we were kids, being babysat by Grandma was a treat. She’d let us eat Rice Crispies with lots of sugar.
All this and more. Living through the 1990s when her Grandson learned to drive, and started taking her out on weekends. She’d make dinner for me every Thursday night when I was at school doing night classes. Anthropology 101. I loved that class. I would arrive stuffed full of her famous pork chops in mushroom soup. Onto a new millennium, and finally a global pandemic that closed her in as we tried to keep her safe. She survived two bouts with Covid. Imagine that.
I’m really proud of my Grandma for hanging on as hard as she has. We thought she was gone many times over the past three or four years. I brag about her a lot. A 100 year old is a rare thing, but a 101 year old is even more so. It doesn’t look like an easy existence, being 101 years old, but she lives for our visits. They are the highlight of her week. Fortunately she has lots of visitors. My mom goes to see her several days a week and she has friends visiting on the other days. Where she used to babysit me, now when I visit I sort of babysit her. She asks for the TV to be changed to the baseball game, or she asks for me to find her glasses. She can’t see very well anymore, but she likes the sound of the TV. She still loves her Blue Jays.
You never know what to expect when you go and visit Grandma these days, but I hope she has a good day today.
Happy birthday Grandma. We all love you. We just want you to have a nice day today, and we’ll see you very soon.
50 Years of IRON MAIDEN episode 17: Raising Hell – Bruce’s “Final” Show
A special 🅻🅸🆅🅴 episode
GRAB A STACK OF ROCK #108
Scream for me, YouTube! For the “Final” time, Bruce Dickinson takes the stage with Iron Maiden, at Pinewood Studios in the UK. It was a big pay-per-view worldwide TV broadcast. Recorded 28 Aug 1993, the Air Raid Siren bid farewell after 11 years in Iron Maiden.
Released on VHS on 5 September 1994, the Raising Hell show is controversial for one main reason: Simon Drake. A “horror magician” that was invited not to open the show, but to perform alongside and during the show, Drake’s “magic” was a unique addition to Iron Maiden. Drake had his own segments on a side stage, but also interacted with the band on “From Here to Eternity” and other segments.
Even watching the show without Drake’s segments, it’s an odd one for Iron Maiden. A smaller stage inside a studio is an unusual place to see an Iron Maiden concert. Still, history unfolded that night, and Harrison and I are here to tell you all about it. And show you, too: we will run a selection of the Simon Drake bits for you to…enjoy?
Tonight’s episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden ends the reign of Bruce, as we soon embark on the era of Blaze. Tune in tonight and join the comments!
Friday July 11 at 7:00 P.M. E.S.T. Enjoy on YouTube or Facebook.
RECORD STORE TALES #1197: Moose Sausage & Mental Health
Summer is well on its way. I’ve waited a long time to get here.
I love doing live broadcasts from the cottage. This weekend was going to be packed full, just like our bags and boxes that we loaded in the car for our first trip of July. We hit the road at 4:30 on Thursday. Preparing for Friday’s live episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden, we played all of Live at Donington on the way to the lake. Not necessarily the best album for a lake drive, but Jen liked it, and it helped me prepare a little bit extra for the show.
Thursday night was peaceful, but hot. There was not much to do but play music on the porch. I cued up Tonight At Toad’s Place by Blotto, and started working on some show-related writing. Dr. Kathryn came over for a quick visit. We gossiped a bit about people we used to know, and after dark I shut it down for the night. Friday was going to be a fun day for us.
I began my Friday morning by cooking up a delicious moose sausage, and editing a new episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden. I wanted to do minimal editing, just to fix a couple spots with issues, but I ended up having a little more fun with it. At 8 AM we left for the butcher (The Beefway) and bought two steaks, a chicken breast, some lamb chops, and the best bacon I’ve ever cooked in my life. This extra thick cut bacon was so soft and sweet. It led me to an idea.
Canadian breakfast: moose sausage & mayo on a bun, with coffee.
We were going to do roasted potatoes on the BBQ. Jen likes to stuff hers with butter, but I had a different idea. I sliced up some fatty parts of the bacon and stuffed my potato with that. The end result was a delicious potato that tasted like a Smokey Bacon BBQ potato chip. The bacon pieces inside were soft and melted like butter in your mouth. A new masterpiece, but one that I feel I can only do with the exact right bacon. It has to be cut thick with lots of fat. And it worked beautifully.
The lamb, chicken and steaks also turned out really well. I did up some stuffed peppers with cream cheese, green onions and more bacon. The chicken breast ended up being the best one I’d ever made. The Beefway simply have the best food, and I have to admit I’m not too bad a chef myself. I used about half a bottle of BBQ sauce on one chicken breast, but that’s because I wanted it perfectly and completely coated. It came out so juicy and flavorful. Grocery store chicken seems to have a weird preservative taste these days. Not the stuff from the Beefway!
Friday night’s episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden went really well. It was our first live episode in quite a while, but I am glad that Harrison and I still have the skills. A surprise came that night: a donation! Our very first donation! Viewer Ryan Potter had this to say:
Thanks for this series guys! I’ve been enjoying revisiting these albums and going through my Maiden Collection with each episode.
Thank you Ryan for this first-ever thank-you. If we ever felt like we were not doing as good a job as we want to, Ryan’s comment will remind us that we’re doing just fine.
Friday was a difficult episode, because we had to review four CDs of Iron Maiden: A Real Live One, A Real Dead One, and Live at Donington (2 CDs). There were also two CD singles with an additional three bonus tracks to tackle. It required a lot of listening and a lot of notes, but Harrison and I managed to cover it all between the two of us. A proud night.
Friday night’s broadcast location for 50 Years of Iron Maiden.
But that was just the beginning for our live streaming adventures on the weekend.
Jex Russell, my “other” main co-host for many moons in the past, has been dealing with life lately. He recently had some free time come up, and said to me, “I’m ready. I want to do a live show. I want to tell people where I have been and what I’ve been up to. Let’s call it Ask Jex Anything and we’ll discuss mental health.”
I loved this idea.
We discussed when to go live. I was pushing for 8 AM Saturday morning, based on a past show we did in that time slot together. Mostly though, I didn’t want to do two live shows during prime cottage hours. One was fine. Two would be spending too much time on a screen during the best time of day. Jex was hesitant. What’s the point of an “Ask Jex Anything” episode if there’s nobody watching to ask? I crossed my fingers and set up the broadcast from my favourite spot: fireside. I gathered the firewood and a Canadian flag for an epic backdrop. I waited for 8 AM to come.
I think I had pretty much the best broadcast desk of any music show on YouTube today. You can get Pete Pardo with his wall of CDs behind him, or a “Hair Metal Guru” with loads of memorabilia, but nobody else in music had a backdrop like mine. A roaring fire, a Canadian flag, and nature. A few people walking down the road were wondering why this guy was out at 8 AM, talking on a laptop, at a computer desk in the middle of a beautiful green enclave. Why? Because it’s awesome!
Saturday’s office.
I had confidence that we would do a good show, viewers or no viewers. We always do.
It didn’t take long for the viewers to show up, and for Jex and I to open up, about mental health, music and balance. The questions began pouring in, and I could not keep up with the comments. Some people woke up early just to watch this special episode of Grab A Stack of Rock. Johnny Clauser and Tim Durling joined as surprise guests to share their own stories. Confessions were made, and I told a chapter of my story that I have never revealed before. Not even in Record Store Tales.
I believe that Satuday’s show, Ask Jex Anything: Music and Mental Health, is the most important episode we’ve ever done. Much to Jex’s relief, we had great views. Even exceeding the previous night’s 50 Years of Iron Maiden. We are very, very proud.
It ended up being a very good decision to go live in the morning. Black Sabbath were playing their final concert that afternoon. Everybody would be watching that, had we decided to go live later on. The morning show was a blessing.
From that point on, Saturday was ours to enjoy. It got hot – very hot. Eventually we went into town to get some air conditioning and soda pop. Staying cool was a challenge, and it prevented me from doing too much that day. No writing completed.
Droning on.
I did get to fly my drone a bit. I chose to fly my original drone, the Potensic. It is the better drone for stunt flying, and I made a few great videos. I still have to edit these. I managed to get one uploaded, which is “Nothing At All” by Deep Purple, to the visuals of a Lake Huron sunrise.
Sunday morning was time to pack our bags and head home. My mood crashed that day. It was an uncanny feeling of autumn; of “back to school”, even though it was only July. I could not shake that depressed feeling. We listened to April Wine on the way home because I wanted music that I was less familiar with. “All Over Town” is my new favourite song, but the crash hit me hard.
We tried to cheer me up by ordering in a nice dinner (The Burgers Priest), but failed. I woke up Monday morning unable to get out of bed. I lay there for hours, tired and worn out. I worked from home on Monday. In the old days I would have gone to work and felt worse and worse as the day went on. This time I managed. It is nice to have those options to work from home. It saved my Monday.
A beautiful weekend was had, despite the crash at the end. We’ll be back for my birthday. Close yet far!
I was sad to learn this week that one of my earliest collaborators, Tommy Morais, passed away last year. He was only 32.
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