Saturday I went to the movies to see Christopher Nolan's masterpiece Dunkirk. I didn't know the story - but I was familiar with Churchill's words that we get acquainted with at the end of the movie thanks to Iron Maiden's WWII fighter pilot tribute Aces High, which live was paired with an excerpt from Churchill's speech from 1940.
Dunkirk is simply put the best war movie I have ever seen bar none. The pictures combined with the music (and the sound of a clock ticking incessantly) created a tension that really made me feel uneasy. There was very limited dialogue, and there was very little of the fast paced editing that we see in so many movies these days - and when it did happened, it was to heighten the confusion to make you feel you were part of the situation rather than watching it in a comfortable movie theater. There was also no gore and very limited amounts of blood. It wasn't needed to make me feel queasy. This is a movie that captures what I can only imagine is what war really can feel like, especially if you just are sitting ducks on a beautiful sandy beach, with troops advancing from the inland and airstrikes stopping anything from happening from the sea.
Now I know that I don't know what war feels like, but I have seen reports of veterans of Dunkirk saying it was like being back there again. But I do think we all need the reminder of the senselessness of war from time to time, and this is a great reminder. If there aren't massive accolades and awards to this movie for best picture and best direction, there'd better be some exceptional movies coming, as this was by far the best movie experience I have had in a long, long time. Not that I haven't seen other great movies, but this was something very different. This is a movie that deserves to be viewed on the big screen. Do not wait for it to be available at home through BluRay or DVD.
Thank you, Christopher Nolan. You delivered a movie so much better than I imagined. Now for the rest of you: Go see this movie! And in the meantime, listen to Churchill's words and Iron Maiden's Aces High.
1987 was a pretty special year for me. It was the year I turned 15, which also happens to be the age Norwegians get confirmed. Confirmation in Norway is more a rite of passage than a religious commitment, much due to the very secular relationship most Norwegians have to their church. The numbers are now showing this more than they did when I reached my milestones for the rites of passage in Norway. I was baptized in 1972, and while I don't have a percentage of the population being baptized that year, it should be somewhere between 96.2% (1970) and 92.2% (1975). That really mean that pretty much 19 out of every 20 children born in Norway around the time I was born were baptized. In 2016, that number had changed to 55.3% - slightly more than half.
The percentage of 15 year olds that were confirmed in the Church of Norway in 1987 was 83.6% - or five out of every six. I was not one of them. On my 14th birthday, I mailed in my slip to leave the church (14 is the age of religious consent in Norway), and when it became time to think about confirmation, I really only had two options: Not to get confirmed at all - or to do a secular version of this rite of passage organized through Human-Etisk Forbund (the Norwegian Humanist Association). I chose the latter - and while it is tempting to say that the tradition of confirmation was important to me, the more honest answer would be that I really liked the idea of the party with the ensuing presents. That being said, I was actually looking forward to the confirmation classes leading up to the big event itself. I do not remember what I was expecting in terms of learning, but I do remember the disappointment of going to a class led by an engineering student who really liked JRR Tolkien and constantly was less than enthused leading the classes. I don't remember a thing that I learned - nor do I remember the book we used, although I seem to remember that we had one.
The current percentage of 15 year olds confirmed in the Church of Norway (2016 numbers) was 60.0%. The humanist confirmation counted 17.4 % of all 15 year olds, so more than 3 out of every four Norwegians still goes through the transition from childhood to adulthood using confirmation as a rite of passage. For Americans, I would argue that this rite of passage takes place about 3 years later, as the transition from childhood to adulthood happens upon high school graduation, which is a much more formal event in the US than it is in Norway. In Norway, the high school graduates celebrate themselves through what used to be a week-long event of debauchery and deprivation also known as the Russefeiring, but parents and families don't celebrate the high school graduation the same way as the US. I have to admit that I like the American tradition of a formal pomp and circumstance commencement ceremony - and then the less formal, but very communal open house/graduation ceremony. As I have grown older, I find myself valuing education and educational achievement much more.
Anyway, my intentions were to keep that framework brief - and you can all see how well that went... What I really wanted to say about my confirmation was that I got enough money to buy my very first electric guitar that spring. I bought it from a guy who was about to finish middle school - he had been in my music/drama elective class and wanted to get rid of it. It was a Japanese knock-off brand, Jarock, and it was a black Stratocaster model. Oh yeah. I loved that thing. It didn't matter that it didn't stay tuned for the length of a full song, I still loved it. Because it was electric. It was black. It was a Strat (knock-off).
I was trying to think back to remember who I wanted to be like when I started to play guitar, and I honestly can't remember. I know I loved all the greats, like Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page, and I had a soft spot for Hendrix (at one point in my youthful exuberance I even stated that I played a lot like Hendrix because we used the same base scale - the pentatonic scale - yeah right...). I loved Ace Frehley in Kiss, but I think that Dave Murray in Iron Maiden was one of my early favorites. I even wrote an essay about him in elementary school, it must have been in 6th grade. It was fawning more than anything - and so my black Strat (knock off) was even more perfect given that it was one of Dave Murray's main guitars as well - although he could afford the original. When I got my guitar, their Somewhere In Time album was almost a year old, but one of the first "cool" riffs I taught myself was the beginning riff from the song Wasted Years from Somewhere In Time, one of the albums that really makes you miss the 12" covers of the LP era - it was filled with cryptic clues to earlier Iron Maiden songs (such as a digital clock showing 23:58 - or Two Minutes To Midnight). So - realize you're living in the golden years!
I told you all yesterday was easy... The link was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who inspired Iron Maiden to write The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner for 1984's Powerslave album. Watch the advent calendar score board for current standings...
This is one of the songs I love. It is a long song, but the movements are weaved perfectly together by Steve Harris' bass. It is a masterful exercise in storytelling if you ask me, and one of the highlights on the Powerslave album. And the production of this song is awesome.
Speaking of production, Iron Maiden long worked with a producer whom I first am aware of having worked as an engineer for an old British blues band that eventually got reborn as more of a pop band. To make it easy on you, I will say that the band is named from the rhythm section (drummer and bassist), and that they reinvented themselves as a pretty slick sounding pop/rock band, which also is what they are most known as. The song I am after was released as a single with part 1 as the a side and part 2 as the b side, but it was originally left off the album it ended up on. Who is the producer/engineer, what is the band, what is the song, and what year and album did it appear on?
Ever since I heard Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast and not much later watched the movie The Omen, the number 666 has been high on my list of interesting numbers. Since I am not a Christian, this interest is more curious, especially in how this number came to symbolize evil (if I were, I doubt I would focus as heavy on Revelations as the current rapture believers (I almost called them a rapture cult)). So, when I drove to Molde with my friend Hanne Kapelrud - I must have been in my early twenties - I simply had to turn down onto state highway 666 when I saw the sign. What I didn't expect was how this little detour would make me feel.
Hanne and I were on our way to visit a gathering of teetotalers in Molde, about 3-4 hours drive from our hometown, Trondheim. It was a strictly social event for us, and our spirits were high on our way there. The weather wasn't the best, but it wasn't horrible either, and we had Led Zeppelin's first album playing on the car stereo. It was getting dark, and Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You had given way to You Shook Me and, finally, Dazed and Confused. That's when we saw it: the white rectangle symbolizing a state highway with the number 666 in it. The decision was immediate. I turned on my turn indicator, and exited on to state highway 666.
We were not going to go far, but the rain had intensified and the darkness was embracing the car, the wet, black night sucking all reflections out of the headlights. Dazed and Confused entered its psychedelic section, and I could not find a place to turn the car around. Right then and there, I felt like we were sucked down this road with no recourse - and the stereo spewed out the doom of Jimmy Page attacking his guitar with a violin bow.
Now it couldn't have lasted very long, but it felt like it did. The feeling stayed with me, and it is revisited every time I listen to Dazed and Confused from Led Zeppelin's eponymous debut album. Please enjoy!
It's taken a while... Although 11 days into the new year isn't really that long, I could have started earlier in 2015, but my #2 selection wasn't released until December 18... As usual, it is really hard to rank them individually, but I tried ranking my top 10. In reality, I am dead set on my favorite album being Chris Stapleton - and I think that #2-5 are better than #6-10, but I could easily change order within those groupings.
Chris Stapleton - Traveller
Baroness - Purple
Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls
Gavin Harrison - Cheating The Polygraph
Steven Wilson - Hand Cannot Erase
Motorpsycho - En Konsert for Folk
Flest
Faith No More - Sol Invictus
Torche - Restarter
Sunn O))) - Kannon
Kylesa - Exhausting Fire
After the first 10, there are 15 additional recordings that really deserve to be mentioned - they are all albums I really liked over the course of the year. I have listed them alphabetically - but there are no individual preferences here:
Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color
Chris Cornell - Higher Truth
Clutch - Psychic Warfare
Echolyn - I Heard You Listening
Steve Earle & The Dukes - Terraplane Elder - Lore
Elephant9 - Silver Mountain
Enslaved - In Times
Ghost BC - Meliora
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
Robert Earl Keen - Happy Prisoner The Bluegrass Sessions
Otis Taylor - Hey Joe Opus Red Meat
Richard Thompson - Still
Steve Von Till - A Life Unto Itself
Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss
Since Chris Stapleton's Traveller reached the first place on my list, I really feel like I need to let him be represented again - and this is a very country country song, which he plays with in the lyrics. Here is Nobody To Blame.
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!
