Mel Gibson´s “Hacksaw Ridge” has been nominated in no less that six different categories for this years Oscars, to be held in Los Angeles on February 26. The categories are Best Picture, Director, Actor in a Leading Role (Andrew Garfield), Sound Editing, Film Editing and Sound Mixing. Mel is bound to pick up something on the night, but then this is Hollywood and as we know that is pretty much Commie territory these days.
We shall see.
…
As noted earlier on this blog, UK comic Commando will celebrate its 5,000th issue in 2017, and this fact is duly noted in the new issue of Comic Heroes which interviews some of the key people over a couple of spreads. Looks like writer Ferg Handley wrote the story for issue 5,000, but we still have to see the cover art etc. Still, what you see here is comic book history in the making, no doubt about it.
Commando was born in July 1961, and so was I. How about that?
…
This arrived in the mail today, Crystal Viper´s 2013 album “Possession”. When I opened the CD package a free patch popped up, and that takes me right back to 1980. And that is quite appropriate, because Crystal Viper is all about early 1980s Heavy Metal. And they do it well. My respect for Marta Gabriel keeps growing, I like the songs and her voice is up there among the legends. I will not spoil the concept of this album, but I will say that it is highly interesting and it certainly works. Well, I guess this is it. I will get the catalogue now and the upcoming album.
Nice album cover art by Michal Oracz.
…
Jon Lord´s “Before I Forget” is reissued with five bonus tracks on January 27. Originally released back in 1982 when he was a member of Whitesnake, it was met with a great deal of enthusiasm from fans at the time. The album features top names like Simon Phillips and Sam Brown as well as members of Whitesnake and Bad Company.
Great album.
…
God bless YouTube. I try to find good bands to support and YouTube has been a good help in that regard in the last few years. Yesterday I checked out a number of Heavy Metal acts and one band out of Poland really stuck out. They are called Crystal Viper and they will release their sixth album, “Queen of the Witches” in late February. Singer/guitarist Marta Gabriel is a massive talent. She has a great voice for Judas Priest/Iron Maiden style Metal, she writes all the songs and on the side she is even a first rate fashion designer. This is the first Heavy Metal act that I have really felt some excitement for in years, I have ordered their last album and I am looking forward to the next. Great cover by artist Andreas Marshall.
…
Today I will say goodbye to a real gem from the old collection, a signed copy of a Deep Purple bootleg titled “Live In London”. The show was recorded in 1974 and was aired on UK radio, leading to the bootleggers having a good source. I bought my first bootlegs around that time and as you can see I tinkered a bit with the actual cover of this one, adding a picture of Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale (I cut it out of a poster I had from a Swedish magazine). In 1981, I got it signed by David Coverdale in Stockholm, as I met him for an interview.
Happy days.
…
A reader asked me about Stats and I guess I could mention some. 246 people subscribe at the moment, meaning they get a mail every time a post is added to this blog (must drive some of these good people nuts). Regular daily Stats range from 100 to 400, much depending on how busy I am adding stuff. Weekends are higher. I guess I have a certain audience that pops in when they have a bit of time off. Every now and then somebody links to something on the blog and then the Stats skyrocket for a week or so, this often happens with the Classic Rock Interviews. Highest number of visitors ever (so far) was noted on March 21 2016, with 1,902 visits. For a long time, there was two different systems checking out the Stats, I used to have one that showed hourly stats and that number used to be way higher. I have no idea why. The blog had up to 500 hits an hour on that system. Seems to be gone now. So there you go.
…
trinkelbonker 