The Book of Souls: Live Chapter

50 Years of IRON MAIDEN bonus episode: You’re Gonna Love Our Maiden Bootleg Collections!

50 Years of IRON MAIDEN bonus episode: You’re Gonna Love Our Maiden Bootleg Collections!

GRAB A STACK OF ROCK bonus episode

If we knew only one thing about Harrison, it is that he loves live music.  Like many fans of live music, Harrison has attained quite a collection of Maiden bootlegs.  Simply put, Harrison’s goal (and Mike’s as well, though not nearly as complete) is to get a live album or bootleg from every Iron Maiden tour.  In the perfect world, we’d both own live versions of every Maiden song ever played live.  There are many, such as “Caught Somewhere In Time”, that were played live but never recorded or released live.  And that where bootlegs come in.

In this episode we look at our “Maiden boots”, all CD unfortunately.  We always like to have a variety of audio formats to show you, but this time all we have is CDs.  But a lot of them, we do have!

Please join us for the premiere – we love to interact in the comments!  See you tonight.

Friday May 29 at  7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube.

SHOW NOTES:  We only have a couple episodes left to do, but will be taking a break from 50 Years of Iron Maiden for a short time.  Grab A Stack of Rock will continue regularly, and 50 Years of Iron Maiden will return as soon as possible.

 

Past episodes:

Handy YouTube Playlist:

 

 

Handy YouTube Playlist:

 

 

🅻🅸🆅🅴 50 Years of IRON MAIDEN episode 34: The Book of Souls: Live Chapter – May 22 Show #2

50 Years of IRON MAIDEN episode 34:  The Book of Souls: Live Chapter

A special 🅻🅸🆅🅴 episode

GRAB A STACK OF ROCK episode 149

Harrison and Mike are racing to the end of 50 Years of Iron Maiden!  After the Book of Souls studio album, Iron Maiden reliably provided us with a Live Chapter to mull over.  Featuring a host of new songs and a clutch of classics, The Book of Souls: Live Chapter is a fine retelling of these stories in the live setting.  This one was released in audio and video form, but Maiden declined to release a DVD or Blu-ray.  Instead the live show was given to us for free on YouTube.  Still, we have already had so many live albums and videos to discuss.  What will this Live Chapter offer us this time?

As usual, Mike and Harrison will break down the album track by track.  Harrison will discuss the tour, what songs were played, dropped and never seen again.  Expect our usual thorough approach and maybe a surprise too!

Join us live in the comments – we always appreciate your participation!


Friday May 22 at  7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube or Facebook.

Past episodes:

Handy YouTube Playlist:

 

 

Handy YouTube Playlist:

 

 

#1243: Checking Things Off the List: Creative Works in Early 2026

RECORD STORE TALES #1243: Checking Things Off the List: Creative Works in Early 2026

I have been relatively silent in Spring 2026. Like many of us in these uncertain times, I have been paralyzed when trying to think of the future. This is rare for me. In the past, when I have found myself unable or unwilling to create, I tended to throw the towel in and cry “I quit”! Then more sober minds gently remind me that talking about music is something I’m pretty good at. They tell me it’s OK to take a break without nuking everything. So, this time I haven’t freaked out. I’ve just created at my own pace, and focused what juice I do have on videos. Videos are a different creative process and it feels more immediate to me at the moment.

Every year, twice a year, I try to do something “new” creatively. This could be writing, cooking, or video making.  I can rarely plan ahead or field creative suggestions.  Something new always comes along.  It just happens organically every summer.  Some future summer, I swear, I will take up meat smoking at the cottage, but not this year. This year, a new investment has been made and new equipment acquired in another direction.

Drones came into my life in 2024 when I accumulated enough Amazon points through my work to buy one. I chose the Potensic Atom SE, a great drone for beginners but not with the 4k 3-axis camera that a better drone carries. It was not until I tried both that I appreciated what the better camera can do. In 2025, I had a misadventure with the Ruko company and not one but two of their drones.  While I loved their 4k camera with brushless 3-axis gimble, I didn’t enjoy that their drones are prone to crashing.  My more primitive Potensic didn’t seem to have that weakness.  If only it took better pictures, I mused.

Welcome to 2026, my new Potensic 4k drone with brushless 3-axis gimble.  I upgraded.  My parents enjoy my photos and want to see what I can do with a better camera.  They made it happen.  You can really see the difference.  You’ll see how the horizon is always perfectly level.  That’s the 3-axis gimble.  Thank you mom and dad!

New thing #1 in 2026:  New improved drone.  Check ✔


Music: “SMC” by Def Leppard


Music: “Mighty Morris Ten” by Episode Six, featuring Ian Gillan and Roger Glover of Deep Purple

My summer creative goals are usually cottage goals.  The drones are a perfect example.  You could not ask for a better camera in the most perfect setting.  I’m all about “set” and “setting”, as they say in psychology.  Mindset, and physical setting.  The cottage is the setting that gives me the best conduit to my creative side.  I used to do a lot of animation videos from the lake, and I’d like to return to that.  Since those days, live streaming from the lake is a creative highpoint.   I started in 2020 using a primitive phone and Facebook Live, and they got better year after year, with 2026 being hopefully one of the best.

Because I love the night up at the cottage, and also because strange things have been seen and heard there, I have always wanted to live stream from the spooky dark.  The ideal topic would be UFOs and the paranormal, I reasoned.  I put the idea on the shelf as one that I hadn’t fully formed.  Something to do someday, sometime, if the right circumstances came to be.

In 2025, while in a hospital emergency ward waiting to be seen for a rib injury, I spent my idle time reading the dystopian science fiction of Australian author Violeta M. Bagia.  I remember complimenting the book and comparing it positively to Firefly in tone.  Since that time I’ve learned that Bagia is not only a Blaze Bayley & Wolfsbane fan, but a UFO and paranormal enthusiast.  Due to her location in Australia, her best time happened to fall at 6 AM EST, while the cottage in the woods is just waking up from the pitch black dark.  It became obvious that I had my special guest and my setting for the UFOs and Paranormal episode.  Please welcome to Grab A Stack of Rock on Friday May 22 at 6:00 AM EST:  Violeta M. Bagia!

New thing #2 in 2026:  Finally doing the UFO and Paranormal episode from the cottage.  Check ✔

Coming May 22: Sci-fi, UFOs and the Paranormal with author Violeta M Bagia

But that’s not all.  Harrison and I still have 50 Years of Iron Maiden to wrap up, and we’re so close!  We are ready to cover The Book of Souls: Live Chapter, and as usual we do live albums as live episodes.  Not wanting to delay 50 Years of Iron Maiden another week, I decided to do two shows in one day, at two extremes of the day:  sunrise and sunset!   This isn’t a goal I knew I had, but I’m excited to do it.

New thing #3 in 2026:  Sunrise and Sunset Hour Shows in One Day.  Check ✔

Two Live Show Announcement for May 22 2026

I have a long long weekend coming.  Feeling the strain, we’ll be taking some extra time at the lake that weekend which will give me plenty of time to prepare and do two really good shows.  That always makes me happy.

It’s already late May.  That is rather late in the year for my creative side to start percolating, but start it has.

 

 

 

 

#626.4: The Big Lists of 2017 Part Four: LeBrain brings the reign

LeBrain’s Top Lists for 2017

2017 was, from almost every angle, a shit year.  Another onslaught of losses in music, entertainment and sports (another list on its own).  2017 was as devastating as 2016, but perhaps all that loss was turned into musical dividends.  Before the year was even half over, I had already found my #1 album of 2017 from a surprising corner.  I knew as soon as I heard it that it was something remarkable.  I pencilled it into the #1, wondering who would topple it.  Over the months, no-one did.  Though my annual Top Five Albums list was not finalised until last week, the #1 album never changed.

Before we get to albums, however, let’s check out some winners in other categories!

BEST BOX SET

MAX WEBSTER – The Party

I put my reputation on the line when I recommended The Party to everyone I knew.  I only got good reviews in return.  For the record, it was our own Uncle Meat, back in July, who broke the news of this box set.  He knows someone involved with the remastering and was aware of the project well before the public was.  Though the packaging was bare bones, the reissue otherwise hits all the bases.

BEST REISSUE

DEF LEPPARD – Hysteria 30th anniversary edition

What was probably my #1 album for Christmas 1987 is my favourite reissue in 2017.  In a year featuring fantastic reissues by Marillion (Misplaced Childhood) and Whitesnake (1987), none brought me back in time like Leppard’s Hysteria did.

 

TOP FIVE ALBUMS OF 2017

 

Normally I exclude live albums from my lists, but this has been a special year.

 

5 1/2.  IRON MAIDEN – The Book of Souls: Live Chapter

5. STEPHEN PEARCY – Smash

4. ALICE COOPER – Paranormal

3. THE DARKNESS – Pinewood Smile

2. GRETA VAN FLEET – From the Fires

1. STYX – The Mission

I haven’t cared so much about Styx since I was 10 years old!  What an incredible album The Mission is.  And I’m counting it as CanCon, because of singer/pianist Lawrence Gowan (but you can call him Larry).

 

Other fun categories!

BEST NEW ARTIST – Greta Van Fleet

BEST SOUNDTRACK – John Williams, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

BEST SOCIAL MEDIA – Michael Sweet (Stryper)

BEST ARTWORK – Deep Purple, for InFinite

MOST IMPROVED BEHAVIOUR – W. Axl Rose (Guns N’ Roses)

BEST COMEBACK – Quiet Riot, for Road Rage

BEST GUITARIST – Tom Morello (Prophets of Rage)

BIGGEST DOUCHEBAG – Gene Simmons (KISS)

SECOND BIGGEST DOUCHEBAG – Kid Rock

BIGGEST MISTAKE – Black Sabbath and Bill Ward not playing together at all before The End, a wasted opportunity to set things right.

 

REVIEW: Iron Maiden – The Book of Souls: Live Chapter (2017)

IRON MAIDEN – The Book of Souls: Live Chapter (2017 Universal)

Not many bands can get away with releasing so many live albums so late in their career.  Iron Maiden can.  They can for three main reasons:

1: They still kick enormous amounts of ass.
2: Their setlist changes tour after tour and there will always be songs you won’t get to hear again.
3: See #1.

It doesn’t hurt that their new albums are as acclaimed as their old. Ever since Maiden’s 1999 reunion with Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith, we have been treated to an abnormally solid stream of brilliant records. Deal with the devil, perhaps? Faustian bargain #666?

The atmospheric and shadowy intro to “If Eternity Should Fail” is a perfect way to begin an Iron Maiden concert.  This track is magnificent.  It also serves as a dramatic way to open what is sure to be the greatest live experience on Earth. “Scream for me, Sydney!” yells Bruce to rile up the crowd. Yes, The Book of Souls: Live Chapter is taken from a number of different shows, which is a format Maiden have succeeded with before.

Another thing Maiden do successfully is top-load their live set with new songs.  The first two songs here are the same two as The Book of Souls itself.  Single “Speed of Light” really kicks up the excitement level.  To go from the epic drama of the opener to the taut single immediately causes an energy surge.  From there, we travel back to 1981 with “Wrathchild”.  It’s like a time machine to the London stages that young Maiden once trod upon.  Bruce’s scream is unholy.

Jump cut to Canada and “Children of the Damned”.  Bruce speaks French for the raving Montreal crowd, a nice touch of respect for the province of Quebec.  Maiden never sagged in popularity there.  In Quebec, Maiden’s 1995 album The X Factor (with lead singer Blaze Bayley) went Top 10.  Back to new material, “Death or Glory” is another energetic shorty.   The triple guitar solo slays.   Then it goes to epic, “The Red and the Black”, 13 minutes and the longest track on the album.  Riff overload!  Unabated, we launch into “The Trooper” and “Powerslave”, both old classics that remain as amped up as they were in the 80s.  It is pure joy to listen.  (Only qualm: backing vocals on “Powerslave” sound like tape.)

A pair of top-notch new songs, “The Great Unknown” and “The Book of Souls” kick off the second CD.  These are not short tracks.  In a way this is the “meat” of the set.  It is a run of 17 combined minutes of epic Maiden, and it’s a lot to swallow.  Savour every bite; this is prime stuff.  And will they ever be played live again?  Who can say?

You know the show is drawing to a close when you hear the opening chords to “Fear of the Dark”.  This favourite has been in the set since 1992.  It’s the crowd’s chance to really sing along and be a part of it.  More favourites follow:  “Iron Maiden” and “The Number of the Beast”.  (Absent is “Run to the Hills” which is on plenty of other live Maiden albums of recent vintage.)  “Blood Brothers” from the reunion album Brave New World seems oddly placed in the second-to-last slot.  The crowd at Download festival are thrilled to sing along.  On CD, you can hear Steve on backing vocals clearly, and appreciate how he and Bruce complement each other.  Then finally, it’s a terrific “Wasted Years” from underdog favourite Somewhere in Time.

The mix here is just dandy.  There are variances in sound from track to track and city to city, but these are minor and only natural.  You can clearly pick apart the instruments in the stereo field, and it’s pure delight to do so.  Once again, Iron Maiden have released a quality product.  You cannot go wrong by investing in any version of The Book of Souls: Live Chapter.

4.5/5 stars;