KISS-DYNAMITE COMICS

I won’t be fooling anyone in saying I collect comics. I don’t but for my 50th a couple of my friends picked me up a set of KISS comics. 10 in total which is cool to have as this is basically my comic book collection.

KISS Dynamite is comic series which I think may still be in print. Not to sure about that but the ones I got are kinda neat.

KISS Dynamite features a storyline written by Amy Chu and all the illustrations are by Kewber Baal and better yet this has the seal of approval of Gene Klein and Stan Eisen.

Below I nicked this paragraph from mycomicbookshop.com

Written by Amy Chu. Art by Kewber Baal. Cover by Goni Montes. KISS is back! Back to the FUTURE in this dark sci-fi adventure. In a world without sun and a world without heroes, four young friends embark on a dangerous mission – to uncover the truth about the mysterious Council of Elders and their underground home, the city of Blackwell. But first they need some help from the past… ‘What is the power of KISS?

Each issue is 32 pages(well the ones I have that is) and the artwork is very good and detailed. You can buy these issues online for $4 or less but if anything it’s a neat thing to own.

Nothin’ But A Good Time(2021)

“Nothin’ But A Good Time” is a great nostalgic read in which over the 500 or so pages of the book you get a great feel for what really went on during the 80’s along the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

Authors Tom Beaujour and Richard Beinstock did their homework as all the bases are covered in this fascinating spin of what went down on those street corners and bars like the Whiskey, Gazarri’s and many others.

The authors did a bang up job at interviewing tons of bands, artists who give a firsthand account of what all the acts were doing to get noticed to land that sacred recording contract.

Tons of info in this book as its all new interviews with so many bands even Nelson are featured!

Nothin’ But A Good Time goes from the beginning of the 80’s when Motley Crue made a name for themselves playing the LA circuit along with Quiet Riot and others.

Ladano’s homeboy Sweet from Stryper is waving at him.

As the 80s get going than of course comes RATT, WASP and a ton of others. The great thing is this book uncovers a ton of info and backstage stuff I had no idea about.

Case in point…

The business side of things though always seems to interfere with the artists whether it’s a bad deal or management issues. Here’s a snippet from the book quoting those fun loving dudes known as Winger talking about the biz involving there association with producer Beau Hill.

I could tell you about a hundred stories from this book like the time back in late 82 when both George Lynch and Jake E Lee where up for the guitar spot in Ozzy Osbourne band.

Lynch thought he had the gig all sewn up so when it came down to the decision both George and Jake were present at the rehearsal hall when Ozzy walked up to George to tell him he was out and Jake was in. Jake and George were both standing they’re side by side when Ozzy broke the news and then walked away.

Awkward!

Highly recommended read!

Rock Candy Magazine: Dec 2020/January 2021 Issue

I have not done a “Rock Candy Magazine” review in a bit. As you already know I’m a huge fan of this magazine as it features a bunch of those brilliant Kerrang writers from the ’80s.

Since I have a tie-in with a review coming up that is featured in this issue I thought “Oh what the hell”.

Who that band or artist you ask?  Well, you will have to wait a few days to find out. How’s that for a cheap plug! 

Rock Candy is up to Issue 23 now (Yup I have all 23) and as always the writers have stepped up.

By checking out the cover above you can see all the musical goodies that are inside.

First of all, is a 10-page tribute to Eddie Van Halen which is very well done. 

“Yes” is the main focal point here and it’s a great read as there are new interviews with Trevor Rabin and Jon Anderson on the making of the mega-selling “901025” release back in 1984.

Pretty cool interview with Snake Sabo from Skid Row as he talks about recording the brilliant “Slave To The Grind” release. In what will come as no surprise to anyone they were having trouble with Bach already. lol

Rick Allen from Def Leppard discusses quite openly what he went through on that night of his accident and the amazing perseverance he went through to get back into the studio to finish Hysteria.

Look at that pic above it’s Ladano’s fav Bible Belters Stryper in which Micheal Sweet talks about the success and hassles of being well…Stryper!

Now the Award for best picture (see below) in this issue of Rock Candy goes to! Drum roll, please! 

Bam! That my friends is the one and only Pat Benetar! Wowzers what a great-looking woman and R.C take an in-depth look at all the shit and hassle Pat took in the late 70’s and early 80’s on getting her music out there in a male-dominated business!

Pat had to deal with a lot of creeps but guitarist Neil Giraldo as we all know together had a bunch of great selling albums and huge singles during the roaring ’80s.

Something I didn’t know is that Giraldo played lead guitar on Rick Springfields “Working Glass Dog”. Yup, that’s Neil on “Jessie’s Girl”.

Rock Candy never disappoints as they always make each issue interesting and #23 is no exception!

KISS: Alive And Forever (2002)

For many KISS “Alive Forever” put together by Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs is the Holy Grail of the painted one’s touring history.

Released back in 2002 “KISS Alive Forever” has been out of print since then.

Copies of this paperback book are going anywhere from $134 to $600 Canadian.

That’s crazy but there are fans I’m sure would and will pay this price!

I’m not one of them…

In saying that, a move I normally don’t do I was actually surfing iBooks through Apple, and for some reason, I typed in KISS.

In the midst of other KISS books on the market, there was Alive Forever in digital form for $25. 

Still a little steep for me for a digital copy but compared to the prices mentioned above 25 bucks was cheap.

So I bought the digital copy.

So if you read my post the other day on the Julian Gill “KISS On Tour 2020” Gill right off the bat mentions that “Alive And Forever” is the holy grail of KISS Books.

The difference between the two is that Gill features no interviews with people involved with KISS at various points during there touring history whereas Gooch and Suhs do interview a ton of people involved with KISS except KISS themselves (SHOCKER)

(check out that pic of Gene’s hair catching on fire in Ottawa Ontario back in 1975)

The authors did their homework, big time!

This book took over 7 years of research as the authors sifted over 10,000 pictures (200 are in the book)  and as I mentioned interviews by the people that were there at various points during Kiss touring history.

That’s the clincher and is the selling point of this book as you get the scoop from everyone involved in KISS including roadies, wardrobe consultants, bands that opened for KISS, and stories of KISS spending habits that got them into trouble in the 80s, as well as a hidden off the stage keyboard/sample fella named Gary Corbett(more on him shortly) who was with KISS during the late 80s.

The best part of the book I find is that whole 1980-1992 era of KISS when record sales were dipping and Stanley and Simmons were in mid life crisis mode! Not that they would ever admit to it but I will say I enjoyed it.

During that era especially starting at the 1981-83 period KISS was crumbling. If you click the post above (The one with the pic of ACE you will see for yourself KISS was in trouble) you get a sense of how business was being run. 

The best part is how KISS made Ace seem like a part of the band when he wasn’t as their record contract would be void and would have to be renegotiated which did indeed happen and Gene and Paul took a hit financially at the time. 

How about KISS management in early 88 telling Gene and Paul to chill out on the spending as the debts were mounting. What does KISS do? They fire management and hire Stanleys shrink for a short time to run the band.

Gary Corbett as I mentioned adds some great insight into being the hired gun to play keyboards, backing vocals, and samples on the Crazy Nights Tour.

Corbett says at one point during the Crazy Nights tour KISS would send him home as tickets weren’t selling in some markets to save money and when they would play the bigger markets the call would come to Gary to show up.

One interesting story that appeared in this book and along with the Gill “KISS On Tour 2020” was back in late 1989 when KISS released “Hot In The Shade” album and wanted to tour to plug the album. 

The only problem was the promoters were not biting on a KISS tour. At one point a promoter offered a theatre tour to KISS as they felt the demand wasn’t there for an arena run. 

But..

Out came the single ‘Forever’ and it went Top 10 and guess what? The promoters came knocking  for arena dates and KISS did the smart thing by taking on two hot current bands as opener at the time, that being Slaughter and Winger who were selling platinum so Gene and Paul knowing this would help the cause in selling tickets took the plunge and it worked as it was the best selling KISS tour ticket wise since 1979’s Dynasty Tour.

Once 1996 rolls around the makeup goes back on and the original four are back. But by 2000 that’s over as Peter is given his pink slip read the post below.

What better way than Peter knowing he’s gone than to trash his drumkit at the end of his last show at the time! 

You cannot make this kind of shit up!

My apologies for the scans as it was a pain to do it this way but I wanted to show you all how the format of the book looked like.

Now here is something cool. Now it’s common knowledge that if you are a KISS fan the Creatures of the Night Tour was a flop. A lot of has been made of that but in this book well take a look below…

Gooch and Suhs calculated the Top 5 least attended tours. 

Here friends is the proof that 1992’s Revenge Tour and 1983’s Lick It Up Tours drew fewer fans per show than 1982’s Creatures of the Night Tour.

I knew the Revenge tour was iffy at best but what surprised me was all the hoopla that was made by KISS ditching the makeup in 83 putting out a good album in Lick It Up that went Gold yet the tour before it (Creatures) had an album that sold less yet more people attended the shows.

KISS fans are a funny bunch. Myself included.

The only real knock I have on this is the mistakes in writing which surprised me as did they not have an Editor?

But in a way that’s cool as the sloppy writing reminds me of my blog!

In having said that…

“KISS: Alive Forever” was a great read. I would have preferred a paperback copy but you sometimes have to do what ya gotta do.

Seek this one out!

 

 

 

KISS: On Tour 2020 Edition

Julian Gill has put together a massive book that has all of the KISS Tour Dates from 1972 to 2020.

This book is filled with a ton of info and I have always been a geek with this kind of stuff. Tour dates/attendance and how much money was made.

Unlike RUSH who authorized their awesome book on this format a few years ago (“Wandering The Face of the Earth”) dealing with KISS, on the other hand, you won’t get any official stuff like this from them but what you will get are some hardcore fans putting these books together and releasing them.

Gill over the course of 700 plus pages in this book has listed as much info as possible on every possible KISS show from the beginning which was November 1972 when Gene, Paul, and Peter auditioned as a three-piece for Epic Records. 

Did you know that? I sure didn’t. It’s stuff like that which is very interesting to me. 

Each tour is documented by a writeup which leads to all the dates for that year.  Example ‘Rock N Roll Over Tour’ and the amount of touring they did behind it. 

What is fascinating is not so much the KISS glory years on the road (1975-79) but those tours starting from the aborted American Tours for both 1980’s “Unmasked” and  1981″The Elder” releases as in the United States those albums that were deemed flops.

KISS did a tour in 1980 as they went to Australia where it was mass hysteria as both the Unmasked album and single Shandi were riding high on the charts.

Where this book comes in as a great read is that the KISS shows made 3 million dollars on that Australian tour which is a ton of money but the promoter still lost $250,000 grand on the tour as KISS showed up with an entourage of 45 people and lived it up.

The live it up motto would haunt KISS into the 80’s even more but that’s a story for another time. ( come back in a few days as I will explain it in my next book review)

What I decided to do was ask KISS Superfan the one only John T Snow as he has seen KISS five times in the ’80s. So you can get a good look at how this book is set up.

Here are John’s dates followed by what was printed in KISS On Tour 2020 for each show that the Snowman saw in Atlanta.  You can click on each review to make it bigger as it will be easier on your eyes.

Dec 26, 1983;

 

Jan 9, 1985;

Dec 31, 1985

Feb 10, 1988

 

July 20, 1990

Thanks for sharing those dates Snowman!  As you can tell by those five pics you can get a feel for how this book is laid out.

Even better is the fact that Gill mentions the aborted Canadian Tour that KISS had planned for Canada on the “Hot In The Shade Tour” back in October 1990! 

Damn it if Thunder Bay wasn’t going to be one of those stops! See for yourself posted above!

I knew about this date back then as there is a story tied to it but that’s for another time. Ask me next time I’m on the Lebrain Train!

“KISS 2020 Tour Edition” is a massive read and was actually priced really decent at Amazon ($40 Canadian) and is a great addition to any KISS Fan out there.

 

 

 

 

 

Adrian Smith: Monster of River Rock (2020)

Adrian Smith is one of my favorite guitar players/songwriters’s ever. Just check out those Maiden classics like “Die With Your Boots On”, “Two Minutes To Midnight”, “Wasted Years”, “The Wicker Man” that all begin with that Smith trademark opening riff. 

I’m more surprised and if you’re a Maiden fan you could relate to this statement that I was psyched out that Adrian of all the guys in a band decided to write a book!

“Monsters of River Rock, My Life As Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler” is the title of Smith’s book, and as you can tell he loves fishing.

When I preordered the book back in July it had a delivery date of early October. By the time I finally got the book it was more like mid-November. 

In between the book being released first in Europe in September the reviews were mixed. Many comments were “there’s not enough talk about Maiden” ” Too much chat about fishing”  “the book is 70-30 % fishing” etc.

I get it folk’s but like his pal, Bruce Dickinson’s book where Bruce talks about his love of aviation and keeps his private life out of it Adrian goes down that same road in talking about his love of fishing but does open up about his private life somewhat.

You can’t really knock Adrian on how he wrote the book. The title says it all and even though I’m not a fisherman myself you can’t knock the man’s passion which is music and angling.

Over the 300 pages, Adrian writes about how his father took him fishing as a youngster every Sunday when he was a young lad, and from there that ruled his life until the young lad came across Deep Purple’s Machine Head and he packed in his fishing rod and picked up the guitar.

Being a Maiden fan I wanted to read about some history in regards to the band that has made itself a household name.

Adrian writes about how he grew up with Dave Murray and the two of them always stayed in contact with each other. When Maiden was looking for a guitar player in late 1979 Dave and Maiden’s main man Steve Harris asked Adrian to join them.

Adrian at the time turned them down saying his band Urchin was making some progress and didn’t want to pack it in. 

As fate would have it a year later Urchin had called it a day. Working at a dead-end job with no money as he couldn’t afford the bus home Smith was walking when guessing who he bumped into?

Steve Harris and Dave Murray were walking coming right towards him and after some small chat Harris told Adrian point-blank that “Maiden was making a guitar change would he be interested?”

Again!

Adrian knew this was his last chance as he said he could see Harris with a stern don’t waste my time if your not 110% committed look whereas Murray had a grin knowing that his friend had better say yes!

Adrian said yes and we know the rest. But as he writes imagine if he had enough money to take the bus home that day he would have never bumped into Dave and Steve.

Fate!

Being a Canuck it was a hoot to read about Adrian’s Canadian Adventure.

Smith writes candidly that after the 13 months Powerslave Tour ended in mid-1985 he and his Canadian girlfriend now his wife Nathalie rented a Trans Am and hit all the fishing lakes around Banff Alberta and as Adrian writes it wasn’t the smartest idea to rent a fast car for dirt roads in which he posted a pic of the car lying on the side of the road in a ditch.

Here’s another cool little story from his book below on another brilliant Smith composition “Stranger In A Strange Land”.

Stories like this are their weight in gold as I had no idea of this taking place and that was back in 1986-7.

Smith does an awesome job of weaving in and out his passion for fishing as well as his timeline of being in and out of Maiden. (Smith left Maiden in 1990 but both he and Bruce returned in 1999)

Definitely worth the read.

 

Dave Mustaine: Rust In Peace-The Inside Story of a Megadeth Masterpiece

Happy New Year’s Folks. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be posting nothing but Book Reviews. Hope you find some interesting reviews here that may even pique your interest in checking this stuff out.

A cool concept for a book really from Dave Mustaine and his ‘Deth buddies.

Write a book on the timeline that took your band from basically being a minor league team into a major league team.

“Rust In Peace: The Inside Story of the Megadeth Masterpiece” is a great read over its 208 pages.

Once I dug into this book it was a two day read as I could not put it down.  

This book comes right from the people who were there recording “Rust In Peace”.  

Dave Mustaine, David Ellefson, Marty Freidman, Mike Clink(producer) all get their say in the making of a game-changer album in their mega world.  Sadly ‘Deth drummer Nick Menza passed away back in 2016.

Chapter One begins with Megadeth on tour promoting 1988’s “So Far So Good So What” release and touring Europe opening for Iron Maiden (along with David Lee Roth and KISS) on that summer’s Monsters of Rock Tour.

Plain and simple Megadeth is a mess. Both Dave’s are strung out on heroin and are having issues, to say the least at what is happening off stage instead of what’s happening on stage.

Basically, their management yanked them off the tour and sent them back to LA to pull it together which took time as both Dave’s were in and out of rehab more times I could count. 

The two Dave’s were so out of control with drug abuse ( you name it they did it) that they fired their management at the time and hired Doc Mcghee but before they even recorded the album Mcghee quit as there manager as Doc said he was tired of cleaning up Motley Crue and certain members of Bon Jovi. 

Enough was enough came the word from everyone around the Megadeth camp. 

Album four from these guys would be the make or break record and of course, we all know it definitely made the ‘Make’ category.

The two Dave’s basically canned guitarist Jeff Young and drummer Chuck Beehler (who in this book talks openly about his time in the band). 

The book focuses on the rehab stint’s of course as well as the auditions of guitarists and drummers and the recording process of the Rust In Peace album.  A real good read as the book has a good flow.

Ok here’s a few juicy tidbits of info for you. Maybe you will know this info already but I didn’t…

-Marty Friedman before joining Megadeth had actually auditioned for Ozzy before Zakk Wylde got the job.

-Being a drummer in Megadeth is no easy feat as ask the two techs who got the job of the full-time drummer when the main guy wasn’t cutting it anymore. Original drummer Gar Samuelson (RIP) was replaced by his drum tech Chuck Beehler and a few years later Beehler himself was replaced by his drum tech who was Nick Menza! No such thing as job security in Megadeth!

-Producer Mike Clink was on speed dial when Guns N Roses would begin recording their “Use Your Illusion” records as Clink would bow out of the recording which is what happened towards the end of the recording of the ‘Deth album. Needless to say this irked Mustaine!

Publishing and writing and what basically boils down to money are also featured predominately in this book. 

Below is a paragraph from Mustaine that sums it up.

Chris Poland was the original guitar player in Megadeth on their albums so as you can see alumni have come in and out of this band over that time period.

Once the album hit the streets and touring as part of the European and North American Clash of the Titans tour as well as opening Judas Priest’s Painkiller Tour pushed this album to Platinum and in return made Megadeth a headline act once 1992’s “Countdown To Extinction” came out.

As the 90s went on eventually Menza and Friedman both left replaced by other players yet come 2015 there was talk of a reunion but to make a long story short, money(Shocker) and one person not being up to snuff in the chops department put an end to any chance of a reunion. 

This was a great read as you can see the inner workings of a band on its rise but almost coming unglued due to the excesses of the two Dave’s but cleaning up gave them a new lease on a career which is still going to this day.

 

 

Rob Halford: Confess (2020)

 Amazing that Rob Halford will turn 70 years young next August and in that time Robbo has lived the life of the “Metal God”.

 “Confess” is the autobiography right from Halford’s long and still ongoing career and when the book was announced 4 or 5 months ago I preordered it right away on Amazon.

I really was interested in what the Metal God would have to say as Rob has kept his private life private but now comes the time for Halford to…

Confess! 

What a great title for a book. Brilliantly written and it’s as if Rob is reading it to you. The great thing is the book keeps moving along so basically, the first 50 pages are about the young Halford growing up in England. 

From there on out it’s about how theatre life and music piqued the interest and of course how Rob ended up in Judas Priest and how they became a HUGE band in North America in the 80s.

Halford goes into great detail about a lot of things about growing up a gay man in the ’70s and into the 80s where he had massive anxiety issues if people were to find out. I must mention that his bandmates in Judas Priest always respected his lifestyle as did his own family including his parents and siblings.

The story however is not all rosy…

Rob touches on how he was sexually assaulted by a friend of his dads as a teen which he said if his father were still alive he would have never put the story in the book. Also, there’s the time when Halford had sobered up in the mid-80s by the time Turbo was released and Rob’s then-partner committed suicide.  Speaking of suicide there is also the story of the two young men who tried to commit suicide (one died and the other man lived) and how Priest was taken to court back in 1990. 

Rob goes back and forth in telling the tale of personal issues(relationships) going on in his world as well as personal issues in Judas Priest which with success happens.

The story of Priest is great as Halford goes into great detail about there first two albums Rocka Rolla and Sad Wings of Destiny being on the Gull label and how for years CBS Records were trying to buy the rights for it but the owner of Gull Records to this day refuses to sell them.

Lots of great inside stuff as Rob talks about how Priest broke through in America touring their asses off and making album after album.

Want to know the real story about whether or not “Unleashed In The East” was live or as fans called it “Unleashed In The Studio”. It’s all here described in great detail.

If you are looking for any real Priest drama there really isn’t much(except for the issue of KK quitting) but the one thing that surprised me was that the two guitar players Glenn Tipton and KK Downing have not got along since 1977 when Priest was recording the Sin After Sin album. 

Rob writes about the time they recorded in the late 80s with writing trio Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW). The British trio had written a string of Number One U.K, Rick Astley! Need I say more. Even though the three songs Priest recorded with SAW  never saw the light of day Halford still says he likes what they did with them.

Lot’s of touring stories and Rob is candid about that time on tour when Priest played Toronto on the Operation Rock N Roll tour back in 91 and how things broke down in all thing’s Priest.

Rob talks about leaving Priest in which he says it was a miscommunication as he wanted to make a solo album and go back whereas the Priest guys took it that he wanted to quit.

Tons of info (Rob seems like a genuine fella ) and as Rob does say it was good to Confess after all these years.

Get This!

Pictured below Izzy and The Metal God!

 

 

I Want My MTV by Rob Tannenbaum & Craig Marks

 

Growing up in Canada we didn’t get MTV in the ’80s. (What we got was our own video station called MuchMusic). MTV was a big business when I was in high school as they played way more hard rock videos than what MM offered here in Canada.

A guy in high school had a huge satellite dish in the mid-80s and various times during the year we would go over to his place to watch the debut showing of the latest Van Halen or Def Leppard videos. I still recall watching “KISS- Animalize Live and Uncensored” at his place the very first time MTV showed it. (early 1985) We were blown away as Canada’s MuchMusic even though it was good would not show that kind of stuff. 

“Now look at them yo-yo’s that’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Money for nothin’ and chicks for free”

I Want My MTV is put brilliantly together by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum who did over 400 interviews with directors, executives, producers, artists, VJs, and anyone else associated with the industry of MTV from its beginnings in ‘81 to the end of the music video era in ’92. 

The pic below sums it up perfectly…

Crazy to think that MTV when it began its run on Cable TV and even though it was based in New York. None of the NY cable companies would touch it. 

It was places like Tulsa Oklahoma and secondary markets that broke MTV, not the big U.S cities where all the main cable providers said that MTV would be done in a year.

Tons of great Chapters(see the picture above, how can that not get you psyched out) as one chapter focuses on David Bowie calling out VJ Mark Goodman out on why MTV for not playing Black Artists in 1983. Check it out below. Bowie tunes Goodman up. 

Michael Jackson basically changed that with the release of Thriller and Beat It. MTV took the stance of playing only ‘Rock’ videos so they said Jackson wasn’t rock until all of sudden Eddie Van Halen plays the solo on “Beat It” and MTV  basically says ‘Yep that’s Rock so add it to the rotation” Plus the time when umm, well read the excerpt below!

Rap had the same problem as well getting onto MTV than came the Run- DMC and “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith mashup broke down those barriers.

DMC tells the cool story of how they had Aerosmith’s “Toys in The Attic” in a crate with other records as they dug that drum intro which goes into the guitar riff.

DMC says that when they would talk about the song they would only know it by “Toys In The Attic”-Track 4 which was “Walk This  Way”. 

Run- DMC had no idea that the band was called Aerosmith or for that matter, they had no idea who Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were.  They had no idea the title of the song. Run- DMC only knew the song as track 4!

A contestant who won a Lost Weekend in Detroit with Van Halen was just that!

 

Any guesses on what video Chapter 21 is about?

This is such a great read as it goes year by year. The MTV Awards became a yearly staple at MTV.  Funny how to read stories about how Madonna basically stole the performance that year (1984) and made her a household name.

You can read about how MTV execs convinced Mick Jagger to say “I want my MTV” for $1. Or that the car on the cover of a ZZ Top album cost $250,000, so they put it in their videos to get the tax deduction! How video directors would all bid for the same jobs and at times it would get ugly between them. Better yet how about when Guns N Roses were the biggest band in the late to early ’90s. Axl had one of his friends hired at MTV to host Headbangers Ball. As Axl told his pal (Riki Rachtman) “You want the job at MTV? I’ll make the call!”

WOW!

 Just read below as it pretty much sums up an 80s boardroom meeting at MTV!

Gene Simmons! LOL

Sorry for the shotty pics folks it’s the best I could do!

This book is full of stories about rockstars, dwarves, models, and drugs. How MTV almost did not make it into a second season or for that matter the second-ever video as after The Buggles Video Killed The Radio Star Was Played the screen went black.(in case your wondering Pat Benetars You Better Run was the second video played) The perseverance of the original creators of MTV (Bob Pittman, John Sykes-not the Whitesnake fella, and John Lack) was very instrumental in getting MTV into all the homes in the U.S.A.

Amazing Read!

Martin Popoff: Iron Maiden Trilogy.

Hey, Folk’s Martin Popoff has just released his third book in a series focusing on Iron Maiden.

Empire of the Clouds just came out last week and I just received it in the mail and I’m psyched to dig into this book on what is easily my all-time favorite band.

Martin in all three books goes album by album,song by song not only the Iron Maiden material but Popoff also digs into the solo albums by Bruce Dickinson, Steve Harris, Adrian Smith, Paul Di’Anno, Blaze Bayley throughout the four decades of Maiden!

As a fanboy since the summer of 1981, I can honestly say Martin does his homework as he basically has interviewed all of Iron Maiden even manager Rod Smallwood at various times throughout the years.

So for me, these books are legit.

Basically with the three Maiden Books combined you’re getting well over 700 pages of stuffed info!

Thanks for the books, Martin…

Click the link below and check out his books and support independent writers!

http://www.martinpopoff.com/html/bookslist.html