Nick C

Walked into an antiques shop today and was amazed at some of the stuff there.

I picked up:

Stan Bush - Higher Than Angels complete with OBI £4

Stan Bush - Call to Action complete with OBI £4

Magnum - Keep the Nite Light Burning £8

Demon Drive - Four Play £3 (about the norm for that but I'd been meaning to get it for a while)

Alien - Crash £6

All used but bang on condition no scratches or anything in fact they look like new.

Came to £25 and they knocked off £5 so paid £20. Think eBay may be getting a couple

Grateful Dead - Reckoning

Grateful Dead - In the Dark

Creed - s/t (finally - after 2 copies went missing in transit I ended up spotting it in my mates shop)

War - Why Can't We Be Friends?

Aerosmith - Unplugged

Remastered doesn't always mean it's better. Many of these remastered CDs are victims of the Loudness War with nothing for dynamic range, clipping and distortion. They're remastered to sound like today's music. I always avoid them for that reason.

 

I haven't heard "Diver Down" but could that be your problem with it? The production of VH's early stuff wasn't that great in the first place. "Remastering" it might just make it worse.

Nailed it - I've started avoiding lots of remasters due to that very reason, although not all suffer. They sound okay on tiny speakers, in cars e.t.c. but as soon as you put them on a decent system then they become almost unplayable in some cases. Plus you can't crank them up to decent levels, they're already loud but as every instrument / voice has been boosted to practically optimum levels it looses the dynamics and even at low levels they become fatiguing to listen to. So if you do want to crank it that bit more instead of it becoming louder it becomes distorted.

With regards things I can barely play that I used to love - I would say a whole lot of the Queensryche catalogue, not because of sound issues - just the way everything became very messy towards the end of the Geoff Tate phase - the way he started coming across as a total arsehole, it just left a bad taste in my mouth with regards all that had gone before.

Spoiler alert - If you like So You Ran by Orion the Hunter read no further as the comment below could ruin the song for ya!

Another one I just cannot listen to anymore is Orion the Hunter - So You Ran ....alllll because of the bass player popping the string and screwing the song up completely. It starts in the song around the 15 second mark and he keeps doing it throughout the song all the way through, just as you're digging it up comes that damned discordant bass note thrown in just to piss you off and completely detract from the song. Jeeeez .... now that out of everything and I mean EVERYTHING I have ever heard that pisses me off beyond description. I used to love the song but that note did put me off but it has got worse as time has gone on....now...now I can't listen to it...I might try putting it through Audacity and trying to get rid of it!

Casanova - Heroes

Marseille - Rock You Tonight

Shaved off these days .....I gave up on it sometime between the age of 40-45 when it looked awful - I still look awful though but in a more general way! If I could still grow it long I would - but at least I had it when it counted/mattered

Hydra - s/t

Hydra - Land of Money

I've got this on pre-order as it's not out over here yet....not long to go, really looking forward to it.

Black Spiders - Kiss Tried to Kill Me

Fancy Space People - E.P.

Over last few weeks

Snowmen - s/t

Black Spiders - Kiss Tried to Kill Me

Black Spiders - Sons of the North

Black Spiders - Volume (CD/DVD)

Black Spiders - This Savage Land

Fancy Space People - E.P. (Vinyl)

What If - s/t

Kiss - Rock & Roll Over

Kiss - s/t

Kansas - Prelude Implicit

Circa - Live From Here There and Everywhere

Legacy act? ...wow is it that long since the debut (1997!!!), must admit I lost interest after the third album. Even with Lint I preferred the tracks that were out previous to it that appeared on various samplers around the time (Frontiers mag?) rather than the reworked versions that appeared on Lint. Saw them at the Gods though and they were pretty good.

Winter - Into Darkness

Diamond Head - s/t

Vendetta - s/t

Gerry Laffy - The Money and the Magic

 

The Evil Dead - remake ... okay - prefer the original, no humour in the latest.

 

To be fair, there's not much humor in the original Evil Dead either. The slapstick didn't really kick in until Evil Dead 2.

 

As for the remake ... the gore-hound in me greatly enjoyed it.

 

Hahaha...you gore hound you, is that tomato ketchup on the sandwich .... or something more sinister?

Just watched The Doors - The Doors are Open.........I remember watching it years ago around my mates house all gathered around his tiny TV in his room .....and I just bought it the missus as she only originally saw the first 5 minutes wherever she was at the time and never got to see it.

2004 ... it's actually my age and not when I joined.

Styx - Pieces of Eight - just took my fancy today for the old car drive to work...

and on the way back.....

Styx - Pieces of Eight - only took one CD in with me today.

Boring info of the day :

According to a little book of facts I have lightning can and does strike twice quite often so the phrase is bogus really.

Backed - Forsooth 'tis good, I was surprised at the emergence of a new album actually. It seems like every so often after little or no activity they delight us with some new music. Lovely !

The Evil Dead - remake ... okay - prefer the original, no humour in the latest.

Black Oak Arkansas - Back Thar and Over Yonder

Anderson/Stolt - Invention of Knowledge

The EU was already falling apart. Fences were being erected, Greece has been sacrificed and put under immense pressure to uphold a political ideal Spain could well be next. The EU itself is impotent it cannot respond with any speed to anything that might pose an issue.Dis-economies of scale springs to mind, too big too unwieldy and without any answers to economic or social problems.

It also made me laugh when huge companies were saying how we must stay within the EU....half of them shed European jobs moving a good percentage of their operations outside the Eurozone to cut costs, so EU jobs are pretty low on their list of priorities...hypocrites.

The xenophobic card is pretty boring now and a typical knee jerk comment as well as untrue. I suppose the Scots were xenophobic back when they wanted their independence from the rest of the UK (which incidentally I support) ??

I'm all for free movement over Europe even the world but it needs an element of organisation and control. The EU by it's unwillingness to address this has created a perfect breeding ground for far right extremists to prosper. No-one I knew who voted had an issue with that, but for the people who lost out and didn't get their way after voting or start moaning after the event because they couldn't be bothered to vote it's an easy target.

So democracy spoke and the people who voted against democracy (how ironic) in favour of the EU are upset either way almost a 4% difference separating the stay and leave camps in numbers that turned out to vote not seen for over 20 years. Even people who voted to remain had doubts ...saying the EU is far from perfect and need significant reformation. People voted out as they felt powerless against the EU bods, they saw Cameron for all his bluster and bravado over achieving significant change and a new agreement come back with absolutely nothing, they felt that their wishes were not being heeded. It has happened before in the UK hence the rise of the UKIP and SNP due to people angered by the total disregard given them by the patronizing "ruling" classes, and they say "we get the message", they don't nothing changes. They do not care what people think...THEY are right - you do not even figure in their thoughts.

Now the EU leaders are saying they need to reform...we need to be more human, we need to make changes....where have we heard that in the political spectrum before??? How quickly they choose to forget and carry on as usual. "Let them eat cake" should be the EU motto.

Next you get the younger demographic moaning how they have been screwed over by the baby boomers, yawn, it's the same crew moaning about the Tories getting in at the last election....both these results would have been avoided if they weren't so COMPLACENT, so used to having everything handed to them on a plate and got off their backsides to vote but having said that when I hear them on TV saying " The reason I want to remain is so my roaming charges on my phone stay low" I worry. Turnout in areas with a younger demographic were significantly lower than other areas. You think they'd learn. Plus the few 20 - 35 yo's ones I knew were split around 50-50 over it (ok there was only about 7 of them I spoke to but still!).

Now you have some sore nimrod with a petition for pulling London out of the UK and having them ruled by Brussels ..... ffs words fail me....it's that metropolitan elitist attitude that people from other parts of the country voted against - I don't even think they understand how much they are hated. It must be hard for people living in crumbling towns losing their centres to boarded up windows to see all the money being spent 10 minutes down the road - ignored and forgotten, viewed with contempt - the middle classes, the working classes both deserted and betrayed - the people who work hard day in day out to see their taxes spent on vanity projects or bailing out rich bankers who seem impervious to any harm they cause - the divide between the have and have nots getting wider and more obscene with every passing year, you work hard and your wages go backwards. In the end they got a kicking, we may have to pay in the short term but things will change and there is a feeling they will...having said that there was the same feeling when Blair came to power and look how that turned out.

We are still part of Europe no matter what people say it's just now we have chosen to play by our own rules and have our laws determined by the people they affect directly, it's no longer a one size fits all ...if people are so desperate to be ruled by some dead eyed conglomerate of suits who only care where their next banquet is coming from....then fine there's plenty of countries to move to where they like that kind of role over and play good submission, better choose carefully though as change may well be coming in other states (note states not countries).

Anyway I could go on and on but I said elsewhere I'm done with this referendum, this is definitely my last comment as I'm sick of all the hypocracy and ill feeling from people who are crying because they didn't get their own ways, I won't be replying so anyone who wishes can have their rant as well - I AM DONE. It's now time we worked together and create something with what we have. We have the tools back in our own hands to create our destiny again after being controlled for so long so lets get together and learn use them again.

Over last few weeks

Black Oak Arkansas - Original Albums Collection (BOA, Keep the Faith, If an Angel..., High on the Hog, Street Party)

Black Oak Arkansas - Raunch and Roll Live (Complete)

Jim Dandy - Ready as Hell

Diamond Head - s/t

Whitford / St. Holmes - Reunion

Man - Back into the Future

Man - Rhinos Winos and Lunatics

Frost* - Falling Satellites

The Association - Original Albums Collection (bit of 60's pop psyche)

Frost* - Falling Satellites

Whitford\St. Holmes - Reunion

^^^^I didn't know Tony Carey had so many releases.

Yeah - a few more than that....and that doesn't count the instrumental albums haha!