In the rearview mirror

All my "social medias" (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace...) have been flooded with info about the new Firewind album "Few Against Many", which has been gradually presented the past few months (and especially now in May).

They started by playing 2 new songs live (Athens in January), and I loved "Wall of Sound" in the live-version, it had a cool riff and a snappy chorus. It's still good in the recorded version, however it sounds too "clean" and has lost some of the live-roughness, I think. But I will have to listen a few more times before I decide.

Then, there was the release of the single online - on YouTube. And then there was the live streaming of the whole album on Guitar World's site a few days before it was released in Europe, then the US then....worldwide.

[Gus talking about the new album]

So, there has been a LOT of PR for this one. And I travelled all over the globe last year to see these dudes live. 20 gigs, to be precise, from north to south, from east to west. I've got some great memories from those travels (some of them in the Firewind tourblog: www.firewindtour.posterous.com) 

BUT.... I haven't heard the new album yet. 

I actually don't want to. I have had all the oportunities in the world really, but the thing is that I'm on vacation right now with only a small little travel-laptop, and the sound won't do the album ANY favors.

I have learned that sometimes it's worth waiting to get that real, good experience (see, it's not just sex). ;-)

If I listen to it now, on a little laptop with its built-in crappy speakers, it will sound absolutely awful. And my first impression of the album will be "it sucks". Cause you NEVER get a second chance to make a first impression.

I've also learned that you appreciate music more if you've actually had to buy it. Well, I'm old-school, if it's a band that I REALLY like, I want a CD or a vinyl even, if there's a special edition or something.

It's a special feeling to get a real CD and flip through the pages of the booklet, or like back in the old days, start reading the lyrics before even listening to the album (or curling up somewhere with the lyrics while blasting the songs for the very first time).

Almost every vinyl that I've got at home, has a story behind it - and I remember each and every one. Those that I bought when I was still a kid, were extra special cause I had to save up to be able to buy them. Sometimes I would try to get dad to buy an LP for me by explaining how I really REALLY had to have that particular album...! He got a few Boney M-LP's for me in the 70s, a Beatles "20 Greatest Hits" and an ABBA-LP.

One of the very first albums I bought was Judas Priest's "Unleashed In The East" (I've told that story so many times that I'll spare you this time :-) ). The second Priest-album I got was "Screaming For Vengeance", but the deal was that my friend Camilla and I had agreed on getting eachother Christmas-presents that we could pick out ourselves. She chose Def Leppard's "On Through The Night" and I wanted "Screaming for Vengeance". We simply swopped. So, in a way I guess I bought it myself - kind of. It's still one of my favorite albums of all time.

Then I went to this "K-Mart" thing in Sweden called Åhléns in the early 80's and bought lots of cheap vinyls that were imported from Spain or something, and so called "cut-outs" (they would cut a small bit of the cover and sell it cheaper). Got Kiss "Lick It Up" and Scorpions "Blackout" that way for instance. I can even describe how it looked where I got them and the feeling I had when I had decided on which ones I wanted. It was something else, really. :-)

[This is a "cut out"]

 In the recording industry, a cut-out refers to a deeply-discounted or remaindered copy of an LP…. When LPs were the primary medium for distribution or recording, manufacturers would physically cut the corner, punch a hole, or add a notch to the spine of the jacket of unsold records returned from retailers; these “cut-outs” might then be re-sold to record retailers or other sales outlets for sale at a discounted price. A special section of a record store devoted to such items was known as the cut-out bin or bargain bin. – Wikipedia

Fast-forwarding to 1988 when I started writing for Kvällsposten and suddenly had records thrown my way. I litterally had sacks of records waiting for me at the office every week. For years they just kept coming, from every major label there was (this was still the era where the record companies ruled, the era before the internet).

I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but I've got boxes of CD's that I haven't even removed the plastic from. Some of those are now out of print and super rare. To me they were just "junk" because I had too many records to choose from. I didn't appreciate what I got. 

Since people stopped buying music and mp3's are now more common than a physical CD, it's just not quite the same. It's very CONVENIENT and I'm as guilty as anyone else of ripping and swopping stuff back and forth instead of buying it. But the feeling is not the same.

The best example would be the DYNAZTY-album. At first, I got a link from the label, to one of those special players where you can't download anything, you can only listen.

It was a great album, eventhough I had trouble getting that player to work properly, so they sent me a bunch of mp3's. Still cool songs, but.... Then, there was a burnt CD-ROM thing, which was better but... It was always that "...but...".

Then - FINALLY I received the ACTUAL REAL CD, with a note from the PR-lady thanking me for the patience and for the great review.
It wasn't until I had the real CD that I felt it kicked major ass! It's simply something special about owning an album as opposed to having something digital that is just abstract.

A record-collection is something quite different from having an mp3-collection on your computer. Most of those mp3's were probably illegally downloaded and you didn't have to look long to find them - right?

Having a record collection is almost like having a photo album - your whole life is right there. Your different phases, tastes, memories, feelings, and you had to do something to acquire it.

My point is, in order to get in the right mood for a new album, you sometimes want to make sure that everything is JUST right - the speakers, the sound quality, the album and your mood. Listening to an album on a good day will make you remember that feeling every time you listen to that album in the future.

You just never forget your first... ;) Make sure you get it just right.

 When you're on vacation you suddenly have a LOT of time on your hands. I ended up spending hours on YouTube last night watching videos by some of the female bands/artists that inspired me as I was growing up.

I've always collected albums by female rockers, whether it was all-girl bands or female fronted male bands or even the very few women who got a gig playing in a male band (not just singing).

The very first heroine was of course Lita Ford. When I was just a kid with very little knowledge of the music world, I remember stopping in the record store being totally in awe of the cool girls on the cover of this Runaways album:

Lita was of course the one who caught the eye of a curious 8-year old cause she wore that silver-thing on her arm. Then when she released her first solo-album in 1983, I really started collecting Lita-stuff. She was definitely the number one role-model.

[Cheesy early Lita-video, title track of her debut solo-album "Out For Blood"]

Joan Jett never appealed to me as much. It was only last year at Sweden Rock Festival when I attended her press-conference and saw her live, that I truly got why she's stayed on the top in this business all these years. She is genuine and breathes rock'n'roll! She ruled the crowd, they loved her! 

In the early 80's, there were very few females playing metal. One of my favorite bands was Rock Goddess. The youngest member, drummer Julie Turner, was so young at the time that they even had trouble getting her into some of their own gigs!
They came to Sweden opening for Def Leppard in 1984 I think, but I wasn't allowed to go. My parents were still not happy about the fact that their daughter was into heavy metal, it was something they had heard "bad things" about. Needless to say, they had to change their minds along the way... ;-P

[Rock Goddess with the asskicking Jodie Turner on vocals and guitar!]

I picked up whatever I could - Girlschool, She, Lita, Joan, Headpins, and then of course Lee Aaron. The Metal Queen. When I first heard her, it was on the radio (must have been some local station, they didn't normally play heavy metal on the national Swedish radio back in those days) - I thought it was a guy...! Man, the lady had quite a set of pipes! And she was beautiful too, not to mention a bundle of energy on stage. Well, that's how I imagined her, because I never saw her live and there was no YouTube so I had to rely on the reviews I read in the metal magazines I could get my hands on in 1984. I was happy to finally see her live at Sweden Rock Festival last year and she blew me away! She is still stunning and hasn't lost her vocal range one bit!

[Quite cheesy video but these were still the early years of music videos...]

As the years went by, the world of metal started to expand and more women fought their way in. Cause it sure as hell wasn't easy being a woman in metal in the 70's or 80's! There were very few, and the ones who DID manage to secure their place in the business, constantly had to deal with stupid juvenile sexism. It was automatically assumed that heavy metal was a man's world and as a woman you simply couldn't play.

At its best, you would hear comments along the lines of "well... pretty good - for a chick". It was still pretty bad when I joined my first band. When we played, I would constantly hear some drunk asshole (and his equally drunk idiot pals) yell: "Show your tits!". Well, show your d***k if you can find it, son of a b.... It was a pain in the butt, but you couldn't let it stop you.

Late 80's presented the classy ladies of Vixen for instance. Eventhough I wouldn't call them metal, I loved everything about them. I was young, thought of them as inspirational not only as great musicians but also as fashion-statements for women in rock. :-) I had the pleasure of talking to them a few times during their fairly short, but successful career and loved their personalities.

Other ladies that I listened to during this period was Femme Fatale fronted by a lady with an attitude - Lorraine Lewis. She's still active, playing the Monsters of Rock Cruise for instance. Would love to see her, cause most of those American bands never made it to Europe for some reason.

Doro had been around since...forever! Starting out with Warlock, I'd say she's also one of the few true, 200% dedicated and impressive metal queens out there. Doro and Lita won every poll for "best female artist" back in those days. I love Doro, who doesn't?! She's a wonderful, humble person with a true love for heavy metal.

Another band that I really liked, but who never made it commercially (they stayed somehow "underground" eventhough MTV aired their videos) was Phantom Blue.

They were the first and only female band to be signed to Mike Varney's Shapnel Records (only 3 months after forming!). Just as a bit of trivia, guitarists Michelle and Nicole were both students of Paul Gilbert and Bruce Boulliet of Racer X. Great guitarists and to top it all off - the amazing Gigi Hangach on vocals.

They couldn't compete with the likes of Vixen or Lita in terms of airtime or albums sold, but they made a mark in music history for sure. Michelle married John Norum (ex-Europe) and moved to Sweden where she formed the band Meldrum. I remember being in touch with her back and forth about a gig at my club Hard Break in the mid-, late nineties, but due to a double-booking it fell through. Michelle was anything but happy about it, to make a long story very short... :-( It sucks that things had to go so wrong. She passed away in 2008. Read more about the band here.

As far as VOICES...there was only ONE that could blew off the competition. Not that there ever was any competition. This woman was on her throne and nobody ever came even CLOSE to her vocal power! Ann Wilson of Heart. That voice amazes me to this day, she was and is one of a kind.

Then, of course, there was the CHEESE.

Some stand out as worse than anything. I bought records by these "ladies" but they've only been played once and then took their place in the collection just as "fill-outs", never to be played again.

Lisa Dominique, she was in Kerrang! all the time, but the only reason she was, was because she was selling her "sexy image" more than her music - she couldn't sing if her life depended on it! Take a listen to this (warning for possible injuries on sensitive eardrums....)

Then there was the super-cheesy Betsy Bitch from the band....Bitch. I'm lost for words, this is just about the cheesiest crap I've ever seen or heard in most aspects, especially lyric-wise! :)

Granted, she was one of the very first female metal vocalists, starting out in 1980, but that doesn't help, at all. Check it out:

Another uh..lady, that must be placed in the cheese-department is The Great Kat. It's not that she didn't know what she was doing; she was a classically trained violinist, graduated from Juilliard and had been touring playing classical music before she became...that. 

Once again, she ends up in the cheese-department simply because...well, you'll understand when you watch the video below. She could play, has even been listed as one of the top shredders of all time by Guitar One magazine. Maybe she would have passed unnoticed if she hadn't created this insane persona, where she often claimed she was Beethoven reincarnated. ;)

Enjoy...(or something)!

Jesus, I think I'll have go and take a break after that. :-)) Hope you've enjoyed the rundown!

_________________________________________________________________________

Honorable mentions that didn't fit into the article above but that you should take a listen to:

Canadian rocker Joanna Dean, loved her album "Misbehavin"

One HELL of a voice - Chrissy Steele (who was recruited to take over vocal duties after Darby Mills in Headpins. This is from her solo album "Magnet to Steele")

After about a week of regular "vacation" in Split, Croatia, I was saved from super-boredom by a visitor. Visiting me was young singer Vili Kovac who I got to know last year, and enjoyed yapping music with. This year he had a bit of more time on his hands to spend in Split. It's been enjoyable and informative for sure.

[Haven't got any pics of my guest, so I just stole one; This is from his video-shoot]

It's been fun and interesting. I learned a lot about rock in Croatia, sides of the music business here and we also met up with one of his friend here, guitarist from the band StimulanS who told me a little bit more about the reality for bands - especially metal bands - trying to survive in this country.
It was pretty oppressive hearing about how things are here, cause eventhough it's tough for musicians everywhere, it's on different levels in different countries.

- There is nowhere to play around here. No rock clubs, venues, nothing. Promoters will only book you if you're already a "name" and rather book the same artist ten times in a row, than take a shot at something new. And rockers are lazy asses too - they'll rather just hang outdoors somewhere with their beers than support the bands that actually manage to get a gig. And then they will stand at the door and argue about the price and want it a few bucks cheaper. It's a pain in the ass, you don't get gigs here and you can barely get a record deal playing this kind of music.

Then I wondered howcome artists don't try recording anything in English, to make it easier exporting and reaching a wider audience. The guys explained it with record labels being interested in fast buck, period. The faster and easier, the better. They are only interested in what will get airplay on Croatian radio. That's the main problem - in short.

Like I said last year when I was here and learned about how things were, it's really sad to hear, because there is great music here, talented musicians with the same fire and will to make it as anywhere else in the world, but it's ten times harder to make it - especially if you're playing metal.

This, for instance, is one of the bands Vili turned my attention to: Manntra. A mix between folklore and metal, members from a band that has had some success out in Europe, Omega Lithium, and a damn cool video - check it out:

I've watched a whole bunch of great videos the past two days from Croatian bands, and there's true potential there for many of them to have a great career outside the country if they only got the opportunity. Somebody has to get the ball rolling, somebody needs to be brave and look outside the box and just take a chance to release and distribute music from here out to a wider audience.

I hope that will happen, maybe it might help when Croatia enters the European Union, who knows.

Either way, had two great, half-lazy, music-nerdy days in the company of a talented young musician who I really wish all the success he deserves. I love his voice and hope to hear a lot more of it in the future:

He sure as hell has the drive and the will to go places, while still maintaining an integrity that is rare in new, aspiring musicians - especially considering the circumstances mentioned above.
You would think that with the difficulties musicians already need to deal with here, that he would be willing to do anything people tell him in order to get an album out. But dispite his young age, he has a very clear vision of what he wants to do and what he will absolutely not do. Respect to that.

[His power-ballad single "Kraj" - which means "The end". A compromise between what the label wanted and what he was willing to do]

Interesting days in the name of music-nerding, I just wish that my ability to speak Croatian was a lot better, as the language was the main barrier and the reason why I couldn't get into any extended discussions. After two days of searching for the right words I was exhausted and I still hadn't brought up half of the stuff I would have wanted to know. Maybe I'll need to go and get evening classes in music-Croatian for next year. :-)

http://www.facebook.com/intherearviewmirror

Found a bunch of old hard rock mags yesterday. Wow - it was such a total blast from the past! As I was flipping through them, it reminded me of the "good ol' days" when hard rock was SEXY! 
Us women often complain about guys being sexist, but truth be told - we were ALL simple cavewomen and cavemen back in those days!

I didn't start listening to rock'n'roll because of hot dudes. There WERE no hot dudes in metal back in the very early 80's. What, you had Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Sabbath, Accept, Scorpions, whatever... Butt-ugly men playing mainly for other men. That's what it was about around 1980-1984.

[No drool-objects]

But then something started happening in the mid 80's and between 1985 and 1995, things changed - a LOT! All the super-sexy guys drew girls to the shows, which of course served them as well - cause along with that, came the Kelly Bundy groupie-boom. 
All the girls looked kind of the same, in skin-tight outfits and high heels. I used to look like a hooker back then as well and I loved it. It was a kick picking out outfits that you knew would make heads turn. It gave us girls a sense of empowerment. 

[Most girls who went to gigs and rock clubs in the mid-80's until the early 90's used to look and dress like Kelly Bundy]

I remember once at this club, I had picked out a dress with a quite revealing cleveage. A guy stopped me, stared at the "Twin peaks" and went: "Holy fuck! Are those REAL? Are you aware that people can see your boobs?"  Well... DUH! Yes, of course. That was the idea. I had no problem with it.
I had an okay body back then, I could wear "slutty clothes", and it was fun. It was rock'n'roll!

Looking like a hooker was the "thangg" in the eighties. And boy was it worth the trouble! The GUYS were super HOT! :-D

When I'm flipping through those mags now, I remember how I used to buy PILES of those magazines: RIP, Hit Parader, Metal Hammer, Raw, Kerrang!, Metal Edge.... It was like PORNOGRAPHY! There were super-duper sexy rocker-guys on every page.

Quite seriously, I didn't give a rat's ass if Slaughter's Blas Elias was a good drummer or not, I bought his instruction video because he was hot! :-) 
(Yeah, don't tell me you bought Playboy magazine for the articles, mister! We're all the same. ;)

There were all those guys who appealed to the most primal, the most basic desires in us all. They were wearing VERY tight ripped jeans, tight leather pants that did very little to hide cucumbers and asses, unbuttoned shirts - or no shirts at all, and all that....LOVELY amazing, fantastic HAIR!!! Oh yes. I was a hair fetishist, I could die to just run my fingers through those manes! Dark, long hair, wow. Rachel Bolan's hair in 1989 for instance, unbelievable.

It was simply a time when hard rock was very sexy - on both sides. Women were competing for male attention, and I remember being in my early 20's, walking around in high heels even on regular weekdays, or going to the university in a tight, short, black leather skirt! I was the only one in my class who dressed like that, but I loved to point out that just because you liked wearing cool outfits, didn't mean you had to be stupid.

MEN cared about their looks too - to say the least, there were no checkered flanel shirts of baggy pants anywhere, the guys were strutting their stuff!

[Joe Perry, Aerosmith - strutting his stuff]

I guess you could say that the so called sexism went both ways, because we were ALL sex-objects! The songs were about parties, Harlies and sex, and frankly - the lifestyle of most rockers was about that - in a nutshell.

[One of the first "strutters" - David Lee Roth giving the ladies all sorts of ideas...!]

I miss those days a bit. It was a good time in the sense that it was actually when we were equals as crazy as it sounds. We all chose to be shallow sex-objects. It wasn't just guys being pigs - us girls were no better. We were perfectly okay with the situation and we owned it! Isn't that the way it's supposed to be - really?

[One of the main drool-objects back in the day - Stephen Shareaux, frontman of Kik Tracee:]

So, I'm thinking - hard rock has often been accused of being sexist - and musicians of being pigs. And god knows I've been pissed off at stupid Beavis and Butthead-type of guys many times, but if you look at it from a wider perspective, maybe rock was actually the most equal type of music there ever was.

Because where else were men as eager to show off and strut their stuff for the ladies, as they were in rock? Nowhere. 
Just saying - maybe it's time to reevaluate some things, as we're looking in the rearview mirror..... :-))

[Some guys you wanted to see more of - and some... not so much!]

 [And one last poser band - Hardline with the Gioeli brothers]

Yesterday really put my patience to the test (not that I have a lot of that to begin with...). 
 

Ozzy & Friends in Dortmund, Germany. Steel Panther opening. Perfect gig. 
Except for having to stay awake through an entire Black Label Society dead boring gig, but that's the deal, what can you do......

I hadn't decided whether or not I was gonna go, until an online friend asked me about my plans. She wanted to go and figured we could share room and go to the gig if I decided on Dortmund. Sounded cool to have company for a change and meet a new fellow music fan, so it didn't take a lot of persuading to get me to decide. I was going!

So, after working out our plans on the phone, I went straight to Westfalenhallen's own website, as they were the only ones selling tickets at face value.

I spent TWO (yes 2, two, zwei, två, deux, dos, due) freaking hours, trying to buy an Ozzy ticket!

The Van Halen ticket-hell that I went through a few months ago was a walk in the park compared to this. 

So, this is what you'll have to deal with, if you ever feel like ordering tickets from Westfalenhallen's website:

The website is not available in any other language than German. Great.

There is a link that says Tickets. When you click on that, you get three other links that sound similar, and if you don't speak German very well, it's pretty hard to understand the difference between the link "Tickets", "Ticket-Store" and "Ticketing Westfalenhallen"........ So, I clicked on the first one. Took me to some sort of search-page. Typed "Ozzy". Got one result - just some sort of info-page about the artist in German.

The page didn't include a link to any tickets. It just said that you could purchase tickets by clicking the link/button "Ticketinfos". Just my luck that neither the link or the button was on the page yesterday. :-( (they had fixed that the next day, no wonder I was going nuts for not finding it!

I was searching everywhere on the page and it took me an HOUR only to find some kind of ticket-store on that page!

I FINALLY tried clicking on any other artist on the page and it opened some outdated, old Java-applet that looked like it was left from 1987 or something.... After clicking my way through THAT I finally got to the last stage where I could buy the tickets (HALLELUJAH!!). Right.

First I had to REGISTER as a new customer. Fair enough. Then it wouldn't accept the password - so I kept requesting new ones. I ended up with a mailbox that had no less than SEVEN new passwords! 

NONE of them worked! (black smoke coming out of my ears at this point...)

I started over, registered again, used another mail address, realized that you couldn't print the ticket and it cost 15 euros to get them to send the tix outside of Germany, so... *sigh*  I had to go back and change my customer info and use Nadine's address instead.

And after TWOOOOOOOOOOOO HOURS I had the effing ticket!! I was ready to throw the PC out the window, one of the most frustrating online ticket-purchaces I've ever experienced!

But now it's finally done. Trip booked, hotel booked, concert ticket taken care of, so the show better not suck. :-) Not after the ordeal I had to go through to GET the ticket!

Somebody asked me why I didn't just request a press ticket. Because - as good as it is with freebies, they never send you those tix in advance. And the list gets there in the last minute, usually. So, you are always risking ending up way in the back because you have to WAIT for it.
I don't have the patience for that. I want my ticket at hand when I get in line.

I'm still into the music and the gigs - I'm not and I never will be, the bored journalist who's standing way in the back with a glass of wine talking to colleagues or just checking out the show from the soundboard looking slightly blasé.

I want the experience, the sweat and being part of a jumping, wild crowd - the actualADRENALINE. That's what I live for. So, no freebies for me if it's a band I really like (unless of course, it's a laminate that will grant me access to anything or I've seen the band lots of times already and need to just write a review). :-)

A month from now. June will be a kickass-month! So looking forward to it.

[From one of last year's OZZY-shows. This one is from Ergo Arena in Poland. I was sick as a dog, 39 degrees C fever, had spent all day in bed at the hotel trying to recover. Yet I forgot all about it at the show - it kicked ass!]