January 7 - Empire of the Clouds

Iron Maiden. I have to admit, I thought they were done when they released the not so good No Prayer for the Dying. I didn't really think it had much to do with Adrian Smith leaving - at least not in my eyes - it was just... Boring... More of the same - or maybe not the same. Then Bruce Dickinson stopped singing for them and left, and I really lost track of Iron Maiden.

But before losing track of them, I found them. Back in 1984-85, I was in elementary school  - 6th grade at Strindheim Barneskole. If memory serves me right, it has to have been one of the most important years of my life, as so much of who I was really was formed that school year and following summer. Looking at ripple effects again, this was the year everything really started changing. Three key friendships formed that year, and it all started with a fight.

When I started elementary school back in 1979, I was put in a class with about 30 kids - and they were mainly from my neighborhood with some from adjacent areas. One of the boys in my class, Arve, was one of my more peripheral friends until he moved away in third grade, I believe, following his parents' divorce. He only moved to the other side of town, but since he at that point probably was more of an acquaintance than a friend, he might has well have moved to the other side of the world. At that time, it was very much out of sight, out of mind. However, he came back to start sixth grade with us. I am still not sure exactly why we fought - I think he wanted to show how tough he was by taking on the biggest guy in class, maybe not realizing he also was taking on the biggest wuss - or at least one of them. This happened during the long midday recess, and it happened in the schoolyard, so it caught the attention of the teacher on outside patrol duty. The fight hadn't been vicious, it was much more of a brawl where I think he was trying to lift me off the ground, so no punches were thrown, and nobody was hurt, so the teacher was ingenious in her approach to conflict resolution: Why didn't the two of us go inside and talk it out. I cannot thank her enough for that. I don't remember what we talked about, but Arve and I really haven't stopped talking since. It's not that we talk often anymore - being on different continents kinda stops that - but when we talk, we still pick up where we left off, so it is a really good friendship to have carried along for now more than 30 years.

The second friendship formed was with Jan Are. This was a friendship that was formed over a shared love for music - or what passed as heavy metal back in the mid 80s (which is quite different than what people now consider heavy metal). The way I remember it, he came up to me asking me if I liked "heavy" - and when I confirmed this, he said that he did too, and we started talking. Very early on, he borrowed Deep Purple's Made in Europe from me, and I was introduced to Iron Maiden when I borrowed Powerslave from him. Throughout our teenage years, which were about to begin at this point, Jan Are introduced me to a slew of great music - without him and his brother, I would not have listened to Rush or Marillion, so I am not sure where I would have been when it comes to the progressive music that I love without them. Jan Are also introduced me to alternative and more extreme metal (for then) - such as Voi Vod, Slayer, Venom, and Celtic Frost. He was also the one who had lent me the two Whitesnake tapes (Love Hunter and Ready an' Willing, I believe) I had in my pocket when I made the third important friendship that year, at the end of the summer break before starting 7th grade at Rosenborg Ungdomsskole.

Looking back, it is really amazing how all of these events are connected. It was a chance encounter that led me to meet Jon Inge - an encounter that is better chronicled under Radio Days vol. 1 and Radio Days vol. 2. But what didn't strike me until I started writing it this time was that all of these friendships started within the span of one year, and in many ways, that year is the year that really shaped who I was to become, because the events of that year still reverberate.

Anyway, I did indeed find Iron Maiden through Jan Are that year, and I soon had taped copies (tape to tape copying has a lot of loss, but at least I did have the music to listen to) of most of their albums - and with Xeroxed cassette covers including lyrics as well (to all members of EMI and the Iron Maiden family: I have since purchased all of the albums on CD - and I had some of them on vinyl and some on tapes I also purchased as well - and I think this is well past the statute of limitations for these transgressions). And while I lost interest in new music from them for a while, I started finding my way back when they released the outstanding DVD, The History of Iron Maiden – Part 1: The Early Days in 2004. I had seen the album Dance of Death in the stores, but I wasn't really feeling the new releases yet. That started changing with both A Matter of Life and Death (2006) and The Final Frontier (2010), but as I was listening to The Book of Souls (2015), I found my jaw dropping more and more. I had planned on playing it in the background while doing some grading, but I found that the grading was pushed to the back burner and the music took center stage. I did not expect an Iron Maiden album to be found on my list of best releases of 2015, but it is definitely there, and the crowning achievement is the 18 minute epic, Empire of the Clouds. I have always liked Iron Maiden's long songs - such as To Tame a Land from Piece of Mind (2983) and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner from Powerslave (1984), and Empire of the Clouds, which is about R101, the British airship that was the worlds biggest aircraft in 1929 and crashed in France during its maiden voyage in 1930. Please enjoy!

Radio Days vol. 1

I miss radio. After discovering NPR, I can say that I don't miss the listening part, as I do my fair share every day: Michigan Radio is my travel companion for both my morning and afternoon commute. But I miss being a part of a team creating the broadcasts. I think I spent about 8 years working with weekly broadcasts (sometimes more often). Most of it as the host/DJ of various music shows, predominantly focusing on the heavier sides of rock; however, I also spent quite some time as an engineer, making sure the programs sounded the way they should - and I enjoyed that as much as anything.

My radio career (as much as you can call volunteering a career) began the summer of 1985 through a series of rather unbelievable coincidences. I was 13 years old, and one day I found myself home alone (I believe my parents and sister had left to visit my grandmother). Being home alone and bored, I picked up the phone and called a party line, which was pretty new at this point - and, I believe it still was free. After the normal series of hellos, I ended up talking to two girls (which, of course was what I wanted to do anyway). We hit it off fairly well, and I ended up agreeing to travel across town to hang out for a while. I met up with them, and we ended up just talking, sitting down at some benches in their neighborhood. I did not know the first part of the unbelievable coincidences at the time, but one of the girls I was talking to was the daughter of my best friend Arve's mother's partner. In other words, she was his step-sister, but since she lived with her mother, I had never met her, nor did I know she existed.

Anyway, we were sitting outside, just hanging out and talking as a couple of guys walk by. They knew the girls and started talking to us. One of them, Chip Peters was his name (by no means a Norwegian name - but then again, he had at least one parent who was either English or American), noticed the patches and buttons on my jeans and jean jacket (at least a Dio patch, probably a Rainbow patch, and a couple of Kiss buttons - it was my standard fare at that time) and decided he would quiz me about music. I was able to answer all of his questions but one (what motorcycle does Rob Halford of Judas Priest ride on stage?), which must have impressed him. He told me that he had just started working for Radio Ung (ung=young), which was one of many brand new radio station in Trondheim that had started up as a result of an opening of airwaves to other actors than the nationally owned NRK, and then he proceeded to ask me if I wanted to start working there as well - because they had a rock show that I might be able to work for. I said, "sure," and we agreed to meet later that week so that I could meet the managing editor to see if this actually could happen.

I still remember my first meeting. Once again I took the bus to the other side of town, and I met Chip as planned. When we walked over to the studio, I was very surprised to see that it was in the basement of a large apartment building, which again was a part of a complex of apartment buildings - similar, yet more upscale, to the American projects. Studio 45 was located in Øvre Flatåsvei 45, it was owned by Trondheim Kommune (municipality). In the daytime, they ran job training/sysselsetting (essentially giving the unemployed something to do) programs, but in the late afternoon and evening, the two radio studios that made up Lydverkstedet (the sound workshop) were used by volunteer organizations who started their own radio stations - and that is where Radio Ung fit into the patchwork of activities taking place in a very small space.

So I enter the studio. Immediately to my left, there is a large office with windows all around it, which is the only way natural light enters the premises. To my right, we have Lille Studio (the little studio), lockers, then Store Studio (the big studio). Finally, behind the office on the left hand side, there is a common area, and that is where Jørund Hølaas, managing editor, meets and greets me. Whether he actually sized me up or not, I am not sure, but I remember it as him taking a close look at me, then asking me a couple of questions before saying, "OK, come in the studio with me, we have to run an outro right away." I started trembling. I was only expecting to find out whether or not I would be starting - not to actually get on the air. But I did it. I joined him in the studio - I said my one line (which I wish I could remember) as a part of the closing of the broadcast of the program "Give Peace a Chance," and then it was all over. The show was done, and my first time in front of a microphone was over with. It happened so fast that I didn't get the chance to get really nervous. I was then told that I should come to the studio again that Friday to meet the host of Flazz, which was the hard rock show I was going to join. But for now, here is John Lennon singing the song that named the radio program I first was associated with: Give Peace a Chance.

Also - since it still grinds me that I got this question wrong, here is Rob Halford entering the stage on his motorcycle. The song is Hell Bent for Leather:

And, finally, since a Dio patch probably was to blame for my radio entrance, and since he, according to everything I have ever read, is the nicest guy in metal (and please don't argue about him being metal or not), here is Dio with Egypt (The Chains Ar On), which is one of my personal favorite Dio tracks...

I Thank You

It's Thanksgiving week here in the United States, and with that in mind, I start a series of songs about thankfulness - or sort of thankfulness. The first band out is that lil' ol' band from Texas - ZZ Top. It really is a shame that most people I grew up with only knew about them from flashy MTV videos with a spiffy car and scantily clad models. At that point they had almost abandoned their trademark blues/boogie rock and were all about click tracks, heavily treated guitars, and synthesizers. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but when you contrast songs like Gimme All Your Loving', Sharp Dressed Man, and Velcro Fly to classics like La Grange, Tush, and I Thank You (and the list goes on...), there's just no comparison if you ask me.  On the other hand, there are good indications that they will get back to form again after signing to American Recordings and enlisting Rick Rubin to produce their next album.

Anyway - I would in all likelihood have been completely oblivious to the splendor of ZZ Top if it wasn't for Arve Hjalmar Holmen, who has been among my closest (if not the closest) friends ever since he decided that he wanted to take on the biggest kid in class upon returning to our school in sixth grade after a three year absence (that's what living on the wrong side of town for a few years can do to you). A teacher broke us up, which probably was for the better, as I was getting my rear whooped. We were taken inside and told to make nice, and the conversation that started that day has really not stopped - the pauses only get longer, as neither one of us lives in Norway anymore (both of us needed to leave the country to find wives). 

I don't know where Arve got his interest in ZZ Top from or where he had heard them, but the result was that for every birthday and Christmas through middle school I bought him a tape of an old ZZ Top record. ZZ Top's First Album, Rio Grande Mud, Tres Hombres, Fandango, Tejas, Degüello, and El Loco all found their way into his collection of tapes - and I copied them to tapes of my own. Years later, after buying a CD player, the ZZ Top Sixpack was purchased as soon as I could afford it - but Degüello had to be purchased separately, and purchase it I did. It is packed with spectacular songs. I Thank You opens the album, and it hardly ever slows down. Yes, there are a few fillers in there, but most of the songs are so good that Degüello has to be ranked among the best ZZ Top albums. 

The main riff is a pleasure to play - and from the following clip I believe it is possible to see how much they enjoy playing it themselves. This is from Essen, Germany and was recorded on April 19, 1980. I just watched their Live from Houston DVD, but I found it to be pretty bland and boring - all the edge was removed from it. However, back in 1980, when their long beards were still pretty new (and they had all just turned 30 the year before - much can be said about youthful exuberance). Oh - and the song was written by none other than Isaac Hayes...