vinyl

🅻🅸🆅🅴 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.

🅻🅸🆅🅴 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.

🅻🅸🆅🅴 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.

🅻🅸🆅🅴 On Spec: Best “Blind Buys”

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

🅻🅸🆅🅴 Episode – a sequel to the June 2021 Blind Buys episode!

Episode 161: On Spec: Best “Blind Buys”

Ever looked at a CD or a record and said “What the heck is this?  Looks interesting…I’ll buy that”?

We have!  Many times.  And tonight we’ll tell you ALL about it.  Join special guest Alex Winter and a mystery host!  Mike and Harrison are enjoying a deserved break, so Alex and Host will run the show tonight.

Our crew will show you the records, tell you the stories, and explain what these were good purchases (or not)!  It’s going to be a good time tonight on Grab A Stack of Rock.

 

Click above for the link to our streams.

Friday Sept 18 at 7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube or Facebook.

Tim’s Vinyl Confessions Ep. 851: TVC Succumbs to Angine de Poitrine

Today on TVC, Tim Durling finally gives in to the alien force that is Angine de Poitrine! Joining him is superfan Mike Ladano, and music archivist Robert Lawson who recently saw AdP in concert. Yow!

What is it about Angine de Poitrine?  At 333 years old (each), they have come to Earth to show us “Music 2”, the natural successor to “Music”.  Many have decried the gimmick:  whacky costumes, microtonal bass and guitar, loops and alien “vocals”.  Is that enough to make someone play the album on repeat at work?  Watch the episode and find out.

What we discovered is that all three of us have different levels of appreciation for Angine de Poitrine, but that there is something special and unique about this band.  It goes beyond the quirks.  Something about this bizarre music is catchy and contagious.  It scratches an itch you didn’t know you had.  Robert speaks of a concert vibe that he’d never witnessed before.  Even Rufus agrees!

I for one welcome our new alien overlords.

Later today on TVC!

 

A Lot ‘O BLOTTO! Collected Works of Vinyl And CDs

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

Bonus Episode

A Lot ‘O BLOTTO! Collected Works of Vinyl And CDs

A real treat for you today, with a special 17 minute bonus episode!  Today we’ll go through my entire, still growing, Blotto collection.  This will include all my vinyl, CDs, VHS, and more.  There are stories to go with each, and a ton of show and tell.  Included in this episode is an 8″ flexidisc, buttons, letters and more.  There is even an Easter egg, but only the diehard of diehard Blotto aficionados will notice it.

Join us after your workday and enjoy some Blotto!

 

Bonus Episode: Summer HQ Tour with Grab A Stack of Rock!

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

Bonus Episode: Summer HQ Tour with Grab A Stack of Rock!

Tonight, Mike is recording an episode with Peter Kerr of Rock Daydream Nation, so a pre-recorded episode is on deck!  One of my all-time favourites in fact.  As a sequel to last week’s bonus episode, a tour of Grab A Stack of Rock HQ, this week we’re doing the tour of Stack Summer HQ!

As we did last week, we’ll take a look at the memorabilia here at Summer HQ, and hear the stories.  Some will be familiar to original readers, but most will be previously unseen and unheard.  There is a lot of personal music history in these woods, going back to Grandpa’s original backyard parties with his turntable and massive speakers playing “The Gambler”!  There are also plenty of cool books and collectibles, art and animals.  Animals?  Indeed – when one tours Grab A Stack of Rock Summer HQ, one must be prepared for chance encounters in the wild.  One such encounter happens in this amazing video.

Please join tonight!  This is an episode you don’t want to miss.   Since I am recording with Rock Daydream Nation, I will not be in the comments section, but we’ll be back with your regular Stack soon!


Friday June 19 at  7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube.

 

Bonus Episode: A Tour of Grab A Stack of Rock HQ

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

Bonus Episode:  A Tour of Grab A Stack of Rock HQ

With last week’s 150th episode out of the way, and Harrison taking a break, it’s time for two fun bonus episodes!  In the first, this week we’re taking a tour of Grab A Stack of Rock home HQ.

Friends always want to take a tour of the home office.  Now you can!  Check out my memorabilia, collectibles, box sets, discs, tapes and more.  You’ll even see a unique music format that has gone unseen on this show since the LeBrain Train days.  Join me as we dig through stacks of rock to find nuggets and memories beneath.  Books, instruments, clothing, Lego, figurines, toys…when you have this much rock, space becomes the problem!  So we stack and stack, until one must dig to find it.

This is a fun episode.  Join the premiere so we can chat!

Friday June 12 at  7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube.

 

🅻🅸🆅🅴 When the Live Version is Our Definitive Version! With Joey Suto of Rock Show Critique

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

🅻🅸🆅🅴 Episode

Episode 147: When the Live Version is Our Definitive Version! With Joey Suto of Rock Show Critique

Please welcome Joey Suto of Rock Show Critique to the cast!  We have a fun and varied show for you tonight, with lots of physical product.  Expect CDs, vinyl, and maybe some tapes too.  Tonight we’ll be looking at songs where the live version is our definitive version!  This is a topic right up the Mad Metal Man’s alley!

Surely, you can name a few yourself.  Some will be appearing in tonight’s show!  Think about songs where the live version is always the go-to for you.  And which live version?  A newer one?  A vintage one?  We’ll hear 30 picks tonight, not including overlap.  (Disclaimer for the pedantic:  We don’t care how much of a recording is “live” for this exercise.)

Join us live, as we love to interact in the comments!

Friday May 15 at  7:00 PM EST, 8:00 PM Atlantic.  Enjoy on YouTube or Facebook.

50 Years of IRON MAIDEN episode 33: The Book of Souls with Reed Little

50 Years of IRON MAIDEN episode 33: The Book of Souls

Special Guest:  Reed Little

GRAB A STACK OF ROCK episode 146

Iron Maiden surprised many in 2015 when they announced that their new album, The Book of Souls, would be a double CD set clocking in at over 92 minutes.  Those who were tiring of long Iron Maiden epics would be faced with five bonafide long-bombers, including the longest Iron Maiden song of all time, “Empire of the Clouds”.  Led by single “Speed of Light”, The Book of Souls would go #1 in Australia, #2 in Canada, and #4 in the US.  That is where our three co-hosts are from for this appropriately long episode.

Joining Mike and Harrison tonight is Reed “Attention to Detail” Little of the Contrarians.  As usual, Reed brings his analytical mind to the table with some interesting notations.  Together we break down all 11 songs, as well as the first (and last) Iron Maiden B-side in several years:  “Maiden Voyage” from the Record Store Day single for “Empire of the Clouds”.  This spoken-word track features Bruce and Nicko, and we’ll let you hear some of it tonight.

This episode is completely unedited.  After covering the 11 songs, the tour, and artwork, we will leave you completely exhausted.  Join us in the comments tonight!

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

Past episodes:

Handy YouTube Playlist: