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!

January 6 - Minions

In my search for new music, which is a constant driving factor in my life, one of the key places in the last 10 years or so has been Vertigo Music, an independent music store on Division in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Herm, the owner, is extremely friendly and never one to shy away from offering suggestions based on what music you have identified that you like - or suggesting a chat with one of his staff members who might be more in tune with your specific interests than he might be. It was through Vertigo Music I discovered Isis, which in turn led to discovering Hydra Head records.

Actually, one of the things I really started discovering at Vertigo Music was that some independent labels have very distinctive artistic visions. This starts with the music, but often bleeds over into the style of the artwork as well. Relapse records is one of them, and Southern Lord is another. As a result, I started exploring labels a little bit more - and that brings me back to Hydra Head records. Hydra Head is run by Aaron Turner, who was one of the main figures in Isis - and if you look at their Wikipedia entry, you will see that they specialize in heavy metal, which really is far too broad for what they are looking at. I would add the term experimental to it - and really even that wouldn't do Hydra Head justice. The label shut down in 2012, but their roster ended up including quite  a few bands that I really like, such as Isis, Cave In, Pelican, Botch, Neurosis, Sunn O))), and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Once again, I start with one stone dropped in the ocean (Isis), and end up taken in very different directions.

One of the bands I found through Hydra Head is Torche. They are really heavy, usually pretty slow, but with a great sense of melody. They are often labeled a stoner or sludge metal band, but they don't necessarily agree with that themselves. Their sense of humor is also visible in some of their album titles, where I still think Meanderthal is my favorite (although Harmonicraft is good as well). Their album Restarter from 2015 was released on Relapse records (one of the labels mentioned above), and it was one of my early highlights of the year's releases. To get a good sense of what they sound like, I decided to share the one track I probably have listened the most to out of any songs released in 2015: Minions.

January 5 - Hatesong/Halo

When I was born, I have a feeling that my parents dropped a giant rock in the ocean. This rock was my musical starting point. It had The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Abba, Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon, and Chris de Burgh. That was music both of them liked - although my mom was more Beatles and my dad was more Rolling Stones. Then my dad brought in some songs that were more out of left field, and the one that really sticks with me was Norwegian new wave band The Cut and their version of In Dieser Stadt (I'll have to include that later). That was on the fringe of the rock, but it was definitely part of it. There was probably more to the rock as well, but the pieces that entered the ocean were definitely the ones I remember best.

What happens when you drop a rock in the ocean - or water in general? Waves... Waves form like rings way, way out. And that is what my musical life has been all about - chasing those wavy rings... I found a rock of my own to toss in and create some disturbances in the pattern when I discovered Kiss in 1980, my music teachers tossed in a rock of some classical music, especially Die Moldau by Smetana, which still stays with me, and then Arve started tossing in country music. These disruptions in the patterns didn't stop me, they made me look farther and farther - always seeking the new and the different. The fascinating thing is when you discover rings from rocks that had been tossed in earlier - such as my middle school music teacher Reidar Fiske's love for 10CC - or when they merge unexpectedly, creating new starting points for yet other rings to explore.

The reason I went to such great lengths to describe how I found Opeth, and then in turn Steven Wilson, is that this is once more a set of rings that both separate and unite. From Porcupine Tree I discovered the extraordinary drummer Gavin Harrison, who in turn has been playing for King Crimson, whose records have been remastered and mixed for 5.1 surround sound by Steven Wilson again - and who use Tony Levin as a bass player, whom I first encountered when listening to Peter Gabriel. And, as I previously mentioned, Steven Wilson worked with Fish - and I decided to see what those two albums were all about and found that I had given up on him too soon. I keep chasing those rings in the water, and by following them once more, I found Gavin Harrison's release from 2015, Cheating the Polygraph. It turned out that he had taken some of Porcupine Tree's compositions and arranged them for big band. Now, my experiences with big band music have been limited, but watching the movie Whiplash really made me appreciate some of it a little bit more - and I have had a taste for the work of Mingus and his big band for some time - so this sounded interesting to me. And then I listened, and my mind was blown away. This is challenging music, but man, is it good... Please, give mr. Gavin Harrison a chance and listen to Hatesong/Halo...

January 4 - Routine

Steven Wilson. I was introduced to this English genius through Opeth, who I most certainly will be addressing later this year - and in all likelihood I will do so more than once as well. But let's talk about Steven Wilson. He started the band Porcupine Tree, which he initially created as a fictional band with a long backstory and album titles before starting to record as the band. The first album, On the Sunday of Life, was a compilation of the best songs he had released on several cassettes in the late 80s, and for the second album, Up on the Downstair, was also largely a solo project, but featured guest appearances by Richard Barbieri (keys) and Colin Edwin (bass), who later joined the band full force. He did expand the band further, first with Chris Maitland on drums, who was replaced by Gavin Harrison, and finally adding John Wesley as a touring member on vocals and guitar.

Porcupine Tree started gaining notoriety in progressive rock circles, and Steven Wilson's visions led him to recognition both within traditional progressive rock and in progressive metal. He produced Fish (of Marillion fame from the 80's) on both his Sunsets on Empire and Raingods with Zippos albums in 1997 and 1999, lent some of his talents to help produce Marillion's marillion.com album in 1999 (they have had Steve Hogarth as their lead singer since they got rid of Fish in 1988), and even worked with Norwegian singer Anja Garbarek, producing her 2001 album Waving and Smiling.

However, I did not know any of this at the time. I had given up on both Fish and Marillion (very prematurely, as it turns out), and Anja Garbarek was of no interest to me (I had heard some of her early work, and while it was ok, it wasn't my bag). Neither had I heard of Opeth yet, although Steven Wilson in 2001 produced one of their masterpieces, Blackwater Park. I actually stumbled across Opeth through sheer dumb luck, about 5 years later.

Fall 2006 through the summer of 2007 was a pretty grueling year for me. I was working full time at Alma College, and I was finishing up my Master of Arts degree in counseling at Spring Arbor University. On the face of it, it doesn't seem so bad, but finishing my counseling degree meant completing a practicum and internship, which was on top of the full time job. So my weekly schedule consisted of leaving home around 7 am and not coming home again until 9 pm or so Monday through Wednesday, then being home at "normal" time so I could be with the girls on Thursday evenings while my then wife worked, and "normal" time on Fridays - but with additional internship hours on Saturday mornings, which let me to miss several of Emma's soccer games. I know there are many people out there who have schedules that are harder than mine was, but for me, this year was still tough, and the only reason I could do it was that I knew that there was a light at the end of the tunnel - and I was hoping it wasn't a train.

So while I was doing this internship, I also walked the aisles of Meijer from time to time, and I always looked in their CD section (this was when they actually still took in CDs outside of the best sellers). While looking, I found this very interesting looking CD called Ghost Reveries by a band called Opeth. I had no clue what it was, so I put it back. However, I kept coming back to it, looking at it, thinking that this looks like something I will like. I eventually got to the point that I remembered the name after leaving the store, and during one of my no-shows sitting in one of the back rooms in the computer lab at MCCs Greenville M-Tec building (that was the name at the time - and yes, it had several study rooms in the computer lab back then), I searched YouTube for their music, and I found the song The Grand Conjuration from Ghost Reveries - and love affair was born. As usual, I filled in the back catalogue, album by album, and that's how I started seeing the name Steven Wilson pop up. He was the producer for the three albums leading up to Ghost Reveries: Blackwater Park (2001), Deliverance (2002), and Damnation (2003). The chain effect had begun...

So now we are at the beginning of 2016, looking back at 2015, and Steven Wilson released Hand. Cannot. Erase. It is his fourth proper solo album, and while it is not as good as Grace for Drowning (2011), it is still easily in my top 5 for 2015 - and yes, the list will eventually be published... To get you all started, I have selected what for me is the emotional centerpiece of Hand. Cannot. Erase., a song about loss and grief (this is starting to look like a theme here) called Routine.

January 3 - Daddy Doesn't Pray Anymore

Good music is good music regardless of genre. Back when I was in high school, one of my best friends announced that he and some classmates were starting a country band named after him in a traditional "danseband" stil: Arve Hjalmars. It was just for fun - or so I thought - but I have come to realize that while there was a massive dose of humor and timely 90s irony, there was a genuine interest in and maybe even love for country music at the heart of much of what he did (I dare not speak for the rest of the band - and I probably shouldn't speak for him either). And it rubbed off on me.

Arve had started turning my ear ever so slightly in a very stealthy manner as early as middle school, when his passion for ZZ Top filled my small Christmas and birthday present budget until I had purchased most of the ZZ Top cassettes with the orange "Nice Price" label at Playtime, the legendary record shop in Trondheim in the 1980s. I can hear the protests already - "ZZ Top isn't country." Taken as a whole, you might be right - they are still that lil' ol' boogie band from Texas - but there are gems in their catalog that can't be described as anything but country, for instance "(She's a) Heartbreaker" from  Tejas and "Mexican Blackbird" from Fandango. The thing is, not only were the songs country, but they were great as well.

So spurred by Arve's interest in country, which was further amplified by other bands' declared love for the music, I started looking around and exploring, and I found the country that I didn't care for was the country most often on the country charts and radio - the slick and overproduced country made more to sell than from the heart. Then there was the country that usually wasn't corrupted by Nashville, the country of the fringes, and I liked that. Mind you, I am aware that some of that might be by design, just like fast food companies are bringing in food designers to make their mass produced crap (which I admit to eating) look more rustic and artisan, but I still like it...

So during last year's Country Music Awards show, I was teaching my night class as I always do Wednesday night, and Christine was at home with a remote in her hand and space on the DVR, and she pressed record when Justin Timberlake (whom I greatly respect although his music isn't for me - the dude is immensely talented) and an unknown (to me) guy named Chris Stapleton performed, because she thought I might like it - and boy was she right! 

Good music is good music regardless of genre. Chris Stapleton isn't just good, he is great. When I look back at 2015, Traveller is clearly in the top 3 for me. It is an album I have played over and over again, and while I have a hard time picking just one song, the emotional cornerstone of the album is the gem "Daddy Doesn't Pray Anymore," a song he wrote about the passing of his own father. Listen carefully and you might really hear him choking up singing it - and, if you are like me, you might choke up right there with him...

January 2 - Chlorine And Wine

I love best of lists. I am working on my personal lists for 2015, and I thought I'd use this space to highlight some of them. The first song is a latecomer - Baroness released their album Purple on December 18, and I am still digesting it. I was introduced to Baroness at Vertigo Records in Grand Rapids while I was working at Grand Rapids Community College and would make stops there frequently after work. I picked up Red and Blue, along with their early EPs before I started back at Montcalm Community College in 2010. Their double album Yellow and Green was released in 2012, and it blew me away (there's a great chance a song from that album will make it here sometime this year as well), and after 3 years, there was finally new music from this Savannah, Georgia based band. The lead off single was a grower for me, and here it is in all its glory: Chlorine and Wine.

Oh - and John Dyer Baizley does all of their artwork, along with artwork for other bands, Norwegian band Kvelertak among them.

New Year's Day - January 1, 2016

OK - I have decided to challenge myself to write a new post every day this year - with one song per day. I will try to have personal anecdotes with every song, so you will know quite a bit about me after this year's optimistic 366 entries. If it goes well, I might consider continuing it beyond 2016, but first I have to get through this year...

For the first song, there really wasn't much of a choice. I will turn time back about 33 years, to 1983. The band U2 was making a huge political statement with the album War and the brilliant Sunday, Bloody Sunday, and while I didn't really hear them that well yet - I was too busy being 11, watching Return of the Jedi, and listening to Kiss - the album has made a huge impact. Today, while I am not listening that much to Kiss anymore, I am still watching Star Wars - but this time it is The Force Awakens - and today, I will listen to New Year's Day by U2.

Radio Days: Resurrection

My last stint in radio was another spectacularly great one - at least for me. In 1995, I finally packed my bags and record collection and left Hustad Leir (see earlier blogposts here and here for more about that time) for Bergen, where I joined Studentradioen i Bergen. I started as an engineer mainly for the shows Skumma Kultur hosted by Svein Tore Bergestuen, Høydepunktum, and Plog. Three very different shows with very different demands: Skumma Kultur was a cultural program in a magazine format, but with Svein Tore, they covered quite a bit of breaking news, and he had high technical standards, which in turn made me a better engineer. Høydepunktum was probably my favorite show to work on - a highlight show of the week that was. As an engineer, I was challenged in reediting a lot of the pieces so they were shorter and fit a new flow. This was also in the days of reel-to-reel tape editing, so I had to physically manipulate the tapes. I loved every minute of it. And I had the fortune of working with great young women (they would probably say girls at that time): Line Hegna, Tonje Aursland, Kathrine Synnes, and, I believe, Vibecke Spjeld. Some of them have gone on to careers in NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Company. The last show, Plog, was the music magazine dedicated to "roots" music, artists like The Louvin Brothers, Tom Waits, and Richard Thompson were among Thomas Ekrene's favorites, and he was the host of the show. Johan Ludvig Brattås was also involved, and he brought his eclectic taste for international traditional music to the show as well. I was introduced to Mongolian throat singing and Finnish traditional music - and I actually started liking it.

While Mongolian throat singing surely is interesting, I have to confess that Hedningarna is higher on my list of favorites. I got a chance to see them live in 1999, not too long before I moved to the US. They are a Finnish/Swedish band, and their last studio album, Karelia Visa, explores traditional music from Karelia, a historical Finnish region that largely now is part of Russia following the Winter War of 1940. The liner notes are extremely interesting - describing their experiences researching this music in a region that appears not to have changed much at all. The following song, Mitä Minä, is from Karelia Visa (Karelian Songs).

However, I started getting restless being in the control room at all times, so I asked if there was any chance that I could start a show of my own. I had a name and a concept for it that I really liked. The name was Undertoner (undertones), and it was about all the unsung heroes of music - the producers and session musicians. The people in charge liked the concept and I got my half-hour time slot. I remember shows about Rick Rubin, Daniel Lanois, Tessa Niles, and Tony Levin. However, I also remember being chastised for having one half-hour show featuring one song only, with my voice in the intro and in the middle, hovering over the effects. The song was Echoes by Pink Floyd. It was and remains my favorite Pink Floyd composition, and it showcases so many of the elements I like in music. It is droning, it is dissonant at times, yet it has dreamy, ethereal beauty in the vocal harmonies, it is slow building, and it uses dynamics effectively. "And I am you and what I see is me." However, playing one song for close to 30 minutes is not the most radio friendly thing to do...

I worked in Studentradioen until I left Bergen in 1996, then again from fall of 1997 until I left Bergen in the fall of 1998; however, I had one final ambitious project: I wanted to create a series about the history of rock music. Coda was the name of the series, and I had close to 30 parts, each at about 30 minutes (I have to check the number of episodes, but it was scheduled for the full year). When I left Bergen, I was around week 10 or so of the series, so the final 20 episodes or so were made at a high pace, trying to get it all wrapped up so they could keep broadcasting the show. It was a great project for me, and while I wish that I could have spent more time on the last episodes, I am incredibly proud that I did create it. I tried making copies of the show for myself when I recorded all of them onto DATs (they had been recorded on a computer workstation at this point - we finally had one), but I messed up a few of them - but I believe I have them on MiniDisc still.

When I left Bergen for the second time, I also left my radio days behind. However, I met a lot of great people that way, both in Radio Ung and in Studentradioen. I learned a lot about sound and music, and my musical tastes were significantly expanded. The final song this time is one that I believe I played during the Undertoner show about Tony Levin, a spectacular bass player, here with King Crimson. This six-piece version of King Crimson was spectacular - and the use of Midi with Adrian Belew's guitar is interesting. But listen to Tony Levin's deep bass singing (he is the bald bass player with a mustache) and pay attention to his bass. Robert Fripp's tritonus is creating a spectacular dissonance throughout the song, and having two drummers in Bill Bruford and Pat Mastelotto and then Trey Gunn on the Chapman stick (which also really is Tony Levin's instrument)... The double trio created very interesting music!

Radio Days vol. 3

After a long absence, which I hope made everybody's hearts grow even fonder, it is time to revisit my past once again. I started working at Radio Ung when I was 13 and depended on buses or a very kind father taking me back home, my voice was breaking, my hair was at the beginning stages of a mullet, and I had started looking at my mother's guitar, really wanting to learn how to play it. I was there when they closed their doors in 1990 - at which point I had turned 18, my voice was deeper, I was driving, my hair was long, and I was playing in a band myself - albeit sporadically. Those five years shaped me immensely, and much of that started with the chance encounter that got me involved in Radio Ung.

But enough generalities... As I think I wrote last time, I started working with Jon Inge Lund - and our engineer was Steinar Stjerna for a while, then Geir Gautvik took over. Our information came mainly from magazines like Kerrang! and Metal Hammer, although I have to admit that I did collect quite a few issues of the Swedish music magazine Okej, which seemed to feature Kiss in at least every other issue. I will have to get back to Kiss in a later post, because Kiss happened to be the only band I ever listened to from 1980 to about 1984/85, and I still have a connection to them and their music. However, due to Okej being very Kiss-centered, information about other band started filtering in: WASP, Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, Scorpions, and other bands from the more glam-filled scene that at that point was labeled heavy metal (I think the discussion of what was metal then based on todays standards becomes rather ridiculous, as it was hard to imagine too many of these bands getting any airplay on traditional radio stations until Twisted Sister released I Wanna Rock and We're Not Gonna Take It from Stay Hungry - because it was considered metal). Later on, the literature was enhance by me purchasing The International Encyclopedia of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, which was a goldmine for lineups and discographies. It is hard, in the age of Allmusic and Wikipedia, to imagine how hard it was to get information about bands and their music - so the metal radio shows really played an important role in discovering new music and getting information about the bands and artists.

As time went by, Flazz lost Jon Inge to the army (Norway has conscription, so he had one year of military service to do), and when he returned, his involvement was reduced to Balladehjørnet (the ballad corner), which was a segment dedicated to power ballads. In the meantime, Flazz changed name twice - first to Metal Rendez-Vous, named for an album by Swiss band Krokus, then to Madhouse, with the Anthrax classic played in the intro - and it was expanded from 30 minutes to a full hour. There was also an assortment of people coming and going during this period, including both Jan Are Hansen and Geir Saanum. However, Jon Inge finally found his way back, along with Ståle Gundersen, and the three of us were essentially the final lineup of Madhouse, a show that had started up as Flazz five years or so earlier (I have to admit I am sketchy on part of the history before I started - and even during my time there, my memory is like a Swiss cheese).

When the name changed to Madhouse, the character of the show also changed. At that point, our tastes had expanded, so we decided to have a broader approach to our show than just metal - so we became a rock show instead. I have to confess that the main reason for this was to be able to play songs by U2, whom all three of us really loved. This was in the days following The Joshua Tree and leading up to Rattle and Hum - and I still remember the anticipation felt when I went to the movie theater to watch Rattle and Hum. It was an oddity for the late 80s, as the music film for the silver screen was a dying breed at that point. I had seen Hal Ashby's Let's Spend The Night Together about The Rolling Stones, and I caught (This Is) Spinal Tap when it was released (although most of the humor went over my head at that time - but now it is among my favorites). Ståle, Jon Inge, and I had several memorable moments, but I think the one that stands out is when we had an all-night special at the end of 1989, celebrating the decade in rock. I still remember laying out records on the studio floor based on what year they were released, selecting songs from each of them, working our way chronologically from 1980 to 1989.

In addition to Flazz/Metal Rendez-Vous/Madhouse, I was also involved with Bjarne, which was a humor show with long, drawn-out skits about close to nothing. It was always reporters talking about some nonsensical local issues, such as making one of the steepest hills in Trondheim into a skateboarding ramp - or a skit about a reporter at a wine-tasting event, getting more and more drunk, with the names of the wines getting more and more creative - and harder and harder to pronounce.

But in 1990 it was all over. Radio Ung was over and done with. I did follow some of the people from Radio Ung over to NB Radio - NB being Norges Blindeforbund (Norwegian Association for the Blind), doing both Bjarne and a magazine format Sunday night show, mainly focusing on cultural events (and I was doing record reviews). But by the time I graduated high school in 1991, I thought all my radio days were gone for good. NB Radio wasn't as fulfilling as Radio Ung had been - the family feeling was all gone, as we now were the newcomers - and I wasn't doing Madhouse anymore, which had been my home for five years.

Of course... there is some music to be played as well... Here is Anthrax with Madhouse:


My favorite moment from Rattle and Hum has to be Exit - which I think is a criminally overlooked song from The Joshua Tree.


And since I mentioned Spinal Tap, here is one of the many highlights from that movie as well!

Radio Days vol. 2

After my nervous and fumbling introduction to live radio broadcasts, it was time to set up a meeting with The Guy - the one responsible for Flazz (creative spelling of dandruff, which is a known side effect of long hair - which is what the rockers were supposed to have). I was told he would be in the studio taping next week's show the coming Friday, so after school I once again got on the bus and took it up to Flatåsen, which was the name of the suburb where Studio 45 was located.

I remember being nervous, and my jean jacket was replaced with a grey and pastel yellow coat for the occasion - which is significant, as it had pockets that could be zipped up. I entered the control room, where The Guy was going over the plans for the show with his engineer, but something seemed off... There was something with the eyes of the engineer that didn't look quite right, and there was a dog in the studio - with a white harness. It was a seeing eye dog - and the engineer was Steinar Stjerna, who was blind, but really taught me all I needed to know about engineering.

I think this is an aside worth mentioning, because Steinar really taught me to rely upon my ears rather than my eyes when doing any kind of sound engineering. While this may seem self-evident, it is very common to look at the VU meters to try to keep them fairly level throughout a broadcast - but what that does not take into consideration is the dynamics. Someone talking does not have the same fullness or body as a band playing together, and this fullness also translates as higher volume (also, different pitches played at the same volume registers at different volumes by the human ear) - meaning that even though the VU meter may be nice and steady hovering around the same reference point, the subjective experience is that the music is played louder than the people talking. This is what Steinar effectively taught me - it was a "use the force, Luke" moment, when I was able to move away from relying on instruments and rather focus on what I could hear.

Anyway, The Guy turned out to be a high school student, already sporting his trademark mustache (which now is gone). He was 4 years older than me (which would have made him 17 at the time), and we quickly developed a friendship that still is strong. His name was Jon Inge Lund, and after getting the initial information as well as some more information about what music I liked, he pointed to the angular rectangular bulge in my coat pocket and asked what tapes I had brought with me. I pulled out two cassettes I had borrowed from Jan Are, probably that same day, and they were Whitesnake's Love Hunter and Ready an' Willing. Seeing that I had two tapes from one band, he quickly asked if I knew anything about them - we could maybe do a special show on Whitesnake? Unfortunately, I didn't know a whole lot, so the plans for a Whitesnake special was shelved. However, I did join Flazz, and I quickly adapted to the show's special feature: Heavytoppen, which was a hard rock top 10 (or maybe 6, I don't remember the number of songs) where we invited listeners to both nominate songs and vote on them. It was a rather ecletic list, with Mercyful Fate's Night of the Unborn, Accept's Fast as a Shark, and, later on, one of my favorites: Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers.

On that note, I think it is time to finish up this installment of Radio Days. As usual, I will leave you with a little music. For those of you who only know Whitesnake from their late 80s music (Still of the Night, Here I Go Again, Is This Love etc.), it is worth knowing that they started out as a very blues based outfit, right from the ashes of Deep Purple. It has always been David Coverdale's band, and he eventually grabbed first Jon Lord, then Ian Paice from Deep Purple for some of his late 70s and early 80s recordings. One of my favorite Whitesnake songs was on the very first album, but I loved it from their Live... From the Heart of the City album: There Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City.

Then, straight from Heavytoppen, Deep Purple with the title track from their 1985 comeback album, Perfect Strangers: