30 years ago this month, Black Sabbath released the excellent “The Eternal Idol” album. Based on a Rodin statue, two models had to pose for hours for that cover, and they got ill doing it (being covered in paint is not good for you). In fact, I talked to Tony Iommi about this cover back in the day. This album could in fact have been titled “The Gates of Hell” after another Rodin work.
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Got these in the mail today. Two Deep Purple Triple LPs – “A Fire In The Sky” and “The inFinite Live Recordings Vol.1” (Hellfest 2017). It is not cheap to collect Purple, but it is fun.
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Hot on the heels of the gigantic Vinyl box “Ten Year War” comes “The End” in various formats, and thus Black Sabbath is finally put to rest. “The End” was filmed and recorded in Birmingham in early 2017. Of course, it will never be the end in terms of new product (or new “old” product), but right now it is said that the band has reached the end of the line. And a fine career it has been.
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Sad to hear that former AC/DC member and founder Malcolm Young has passed away. AC/DC was formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus, they spent the 1970s building a solid reputation with the original band that featured Bon Scott but when he passed away in early 1980 they came back strong with “Back In Black” (that featured Brian Johnson) and they never looked back. Malcolm retired a few years ago due to illness but Angus was pointing out that many of the ideas on the last album was still his, picked from decades of jamming in the studios.
He will be missed.
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My copy of the Deep Purple “inFinite – The Gold Edition” double CD arrived in the mail yesterday (the triple LP live version of the live part of this release is on the way and will arrive here shortly). So what you get here is the last Deep Purple album “inFinite” plus a festival gig recorded at the Hellfest Festival in France in 2017 (13 tracks in all). I guess this is the good stuff and the good news is that Bob Ezrin has produced the live album, and it sounds really good. There are too many live recordings on the market with Purple that are not that good these days, so this is great news. In fact, I would say that for once they have put out something that I will play every now and then on a regular basis. Even the classics have some life in them, and we do get a few good tracks from the last two (Bob Ezrin produced) studio albums as well. Now Purple has always been a jamming band and on this night they launched into the old Henry Mancini soundtrack for the old detective series (1958-1961) Peter Gunn. And it sounds absolutely awesome. There is something magical about this band still and it is captured here in all its glory. The Peter Gunn television show is available on DVD should you want to dig in a little deeper.
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Added this book to the old collection yesterday. Swedish author Ella Wilcke´s “En sommar på egen hand” (Natur och kultur, 1940). Title translates to “A Summer on our own” and it is about a bunch of kids spending a summer together on the countryside. This book won a competition and was seen by the authorities of the day to be good and educational. It is interesting that the war was on and one could argue that this book was perhaps picked for reasons of preparedness as well? Here the kids could learn about nature etc. You could probably see this book from different angles once you really get into it. Incidentally, my copy was once part of a library in a village called Lit in my neck of the woods. Now it will get a second (or perhaps a third?) life in my collection.
Lovely cover too, the book has illustrations by Marc Hentzel.
Got this in the mail today. Babymetal “Live Legend IDZ Apocalypse” on Blu-ray (Japanese import). This was the first official Babymetal live document and what you get is two gigs from 2012 and one from 2013. Only 1,500 copies were released in DVD format, so those are super rare and very expensive now. The Blu-ray charted at # 7 on the Japanese charts. These early headline shows proved to the agency that Babymetal had a future beyond the Sakura Gakuin school project. So what you get here is history in the making.
(My image of said release – thank you Kalle for your support)
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25 years ago now, I published DEEP PURPLE FOREVER (issue) 6. Nice cover shot by Ola Bergman (Valle Hovin, Norway). Loads of interviews, it was a turbulent period. Some Black Sabbath from the Dio-reunion sneaked in as well.
Good times.
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trinkelbonker 