Captain Howdy

Niro is most well known as guitarist for King Lizard. https://heavyharmonies.com/cgi-bin/band.cgi?BandNum=5798 Probably not a band that well known outside of the UK/Europe.

Also Dirty Shirley with George Lynch

Looking at some other videos of this footage on YouTube and one name crops up in the credits as "music" and thats Shane Drasin. Looking into it more, Ric Drasin was the owner or creator of Golds Gym and it looks like he did these videos using family members to do various jobs. Shanes name also comes up as director of photography on another video I saw. Searching Shane Drasin, he appears to be a guitarist among other things and actually posted some new stuff on YouTube in the last few days, and once appeared on The Price Is Right playing a guitar. Sounds reasonable that he is at least playing guitar on that song, if not singing, but there is also a video of him and Adam Drasin doing a live performance, and its a different style of music and cant say which one of them is singing. Maybe this will help drill things down.

Gotta say, that does sound a lot better. Defo cranked it up on this one.

Funny thing is I used to own this CD https://www.discogs.com/release/9811968-Various-Foundations-Forum-90-CD-Sampler and that also has a Trouble Tribe song on it, but I dont remember it. I kinda regret getting rid of it as it obviously wasn't something common in the UK, and while it can still be picked up cheap it's always from the USA/Canada so postage is ridiculously high. (one US seller selling it on Discogs wants $10 for the CD and $50 for postage)

Was thinking about something like this the other day when I saw a bunch of new submissions to the main site. Yes there are still bands coming along with good names, but so many are terrible. Part of me wonders if it is because so many of todays bands are not necessarily English speakers as a first language and they maybe don't realise how bad their names are. Some names are just cookie cutter names as well. Names they think sound 80s but really dont. Also, I find it cringe when bands use the main persons name. Back in the day you could get away with it if it sounded cool (Van Halen, Bon Jovi etc) or if you were into the lighter side of rock (Huey Lewis, Bruce Hornsby, Bruce Springsteen etc) but today it really does not work, especially when you have some less than cool sounding name, especially once again, from a non-English speaking country where your name just isn't that normal or could sound like something else. Here are a few names that were recently submitted that are pretty damn awful imo Big Red Fire Truck Ruffyunz Deserta Robert Pehrsson's Humbucker (unless you are a guitarist you probably have no idea what a humbucker is) The Black Skeleton Nigro (yes it may be your surname, but you tell me one person who does not see that and think of a word that is not acceptable) Screamaker Youthex The View inside Of course there are still some decent band names, and some of them actually are good throw backs to 80s sounding names Jettblack Crazy Lixx Reckless Love Halestorm Crashdiet The Warning Bloodywood One Desire Of course though there were still bands back in the day that had bad names, but I do think its more glaringly obvious. I do think that while a bad name is not necessarily a sign the music will be bad, I do think there is at least a possibility they might lose potential new fans who are put off by the name though.

Funny thing is I had never heard of them back in the day, but bought the CD off Dan over a decade ago.

A bit of old school Mats Leven

The Warning - XXI Century Blood The Warning - Queen of the murder scene

I know its different economies between Canada and UK, but considering how much postage is from US and how much most European countries wanna charge these days, I would take 26CAD all day. I just got two CDs from USA this morning and they cost me $44CAD in postage. The CDs cost $44CAD as well, so $88CAD in total.

Apparently the standard postal service still has not fully recovered from Covid. On my most recent order from them the DHL shipping only cost £15 and was with me within 3 to 5 days. From USA I ordered a CD and that was £21 shipping with delivery of several weeks. Even the more expensive shipping options from Japan are more reasonable in my experience. I think shipping from Amazon Japan is about the same costs as well

back around 1999 I spoke to legendary glam scene regular, Kelv Helrazer via email (had never used anything like that before but was working in an office at the time and one of the metal mags at the time printed a list of email addresses of rock stars and journos etc) and I knew he was the guy to go to if you wanted unreleased stuff. He sent me a cassette with Poison - Crack a smile on one side and a bunch of PBF demos on the other. So this song was already familiar to me by the time they started releasing all those demos through Perris. This song always stood out to me as one of the best from those sessions. I am sure most of the songs that appeared on those three albums were as old as the songs on the debut as most of them were almost certainly written by Ariel Styles. Even the Public Enemies album released in 2017 was mostly re-recorded Styles songs from these demo sessions, with the only exceptions being the cover songs. Kristy Krash Majors only contribution to these classics was the title track of the debut, but even that was barely written by him. I was talking to Rob Wylde a few months ago about PBF and he said that barely anyone in the industry has a good word to say about Majors.

I will have to ask Rob why he didn't sign with Frontiers as I chat with him quite often. Will be interesting to get his take on them. As I say, from rumours I have heard over the last few years there is defo a certain way they do things that puts some people off of going with them. While I am sure worldwide distribution is great, if it cuts into your profit margins in a massive way, being with a bigger label might actually hurt more than it helps. I have said it many times before, but Frontiers has been getting worse in recent years. Not only are their prices often more than a lot of labels, but the sheer laziness in their bonus tracks on Jap imports sticks out like a sore thumb. You cannot blame the artists for choosing poor bonus tracks when every single artist on Frontiers now does it. And as you mentioned Midnite City, just look at their recent Jap release. A proper exclusive track. Not an acoustic, live or piano version. I just get the feeling Frontiers has grown to the point that it is now no longer an indy label in the traditional sense and has become a not so nice place to be. As for postage, do not even start me on that subject considering how much the US charges for postage and has a delivery time that the average snail could beat. I can order from Japan, pay slightly less in postage and get items within 3 to 5 days, and Japan is about 4000 miles further away than the US. A lot of sites are no longer giving us the choice of choosing to not pay duty and are including it in the postage costs, which is a shitter as in all the years I have been buying internationally (outside Europe that is), I have only been stung by customs a handful of times so was worth the risk of not paying in advance.

I don't like the HOL version. Slamers version is superior (and he did co-write it anyway)

I was talking to an artist several years ago about UK distribution (established 80s musician) and had they considered Frontiers. They out and out refused to deal with them as apparently they had spoken to them before and the deal they were offered was awful.

They said in the initial blurb that some re-records, some remixes and some previously unreleased.

First single from this compilation drops on Monday next week. A re-record of Whisky Tango Foxtrot. Also news of the album release due the same day.

I really hate the term "overrated" as its all going to come down to personal tastes. If an album or artist is successful, if you don't like them then of course you think they are overrated, but millions of people would disagree with you. I do think though that underrated is much more interesting as while yes it will come down to tastes as well, there are bands or albums that slip through the cracks and had they got more exposure who knows how people would view them. There are many bands or albums that people rave about that I really do not like, but I would never say they were overrated just because they don't interest me.