SCANDINAVIAN METAL
The Ruthless Metal YouTube Channel posted what you can describe as an underground documentary called “The History Of Swedish Hard Rock & Heavy Metal 1970-1989” a few days ago and interest is picking up fast. I quite enjoyed that one since I have a lot of good memories attached to the period. First hard rock concert I ever saw was a Swedish band called Trettioåriga Kriget (or Thirty Years´ War) in the mid 1970s. I was also involved with 220 Volt for a while (found a few copies of some signed prints on thick yellow paper recently from those days, nice drawing by Shoko Ozawa).
RITCHIE BLACKMORE
The new Blackmore´s Night album “Nature´s Light” is released next week, actually on the exact same day (March 12) as the rather suspect Rainbow release “Osaka 1978” (interesting period, but the jury is still out on the sound quality). I have to assume that Blackmore is not that happy about the clash, but then he might not know about this at all? Blackmore´s Night has the cover of the April issue of BURRN! Magazine over in Japan (they never ever fail to give Blackmore the cover when he makes a move).
DIO
Fans of Ronnie James Dio will be pleased to know that there will be an official autobiography published in July. Titled “Rainbow In The Dark: The Autobiography”, it will reveal everything. When I interviewed the man back in 2001, he did acknowledge that he was working on a biography and that a third of it was done, “No moss grows on my feet, man; I’m always ahead of everybody”. The full interview is archived on this blog in August 2012.
KARI BAND
We finally have some action outside of Japan from the Babymetal Family as the Kari Band (formed by some of the key musicians behind Babymetal, like bass player Boh) has a live album of jazz-funk stuff titled Kari Band With Friends – “Live At Streaming” coming out in late April. It is released on the UK JPU Records label, known for bringing Japanese music to the West. Hopefully this is the start of a trend, the Babymetal musicians has a lot of great stuff out there (although mainly in Japan), and they deserve more recognition. Superb players all of them.
(Top image shows signed 220 Volt prints & BURRN! 4 2021 Blackmore´s Night cover)
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