The Corellian Job

More than likely this is everywhere at the moment, and thanks to Dave for sharing it with me, but if you haven't already, you must check this out:



It's an animated Star Wars that is true to the originals! The colour palette, the sounds, the music and even the dialogue just sing Seventies Star Wars - and it's a beautiful thing.

I'm not a big Star Wars fan. I'm really not. But aged seven it was the biggest thing in my world, and even this many years later I can see and hear the in-jokes and visual references to the original trilogy and in particular the first movie here. It's not overdone, no-one's trying to push an agenda (the last shot is a bit of fun, and why the hell not?), and you can see how easy it would have been to have taken all the talent here and ruined it by going too far, too fannish. But they didn't, and that's really cool.

Lando has to appear in the next one though, guys!

Talkin' Eds: In the Days of Blaze

For years I wasn’t aware that Iron Maiden had a third vocalist. In fact, it was only on properly inspecting the booklet of The Best of the Beast that I saw him – a (then) young man with sculpted sideburns and long black hair, named Blaze Bayley.
Blaze Bayley was born Bayley Cooke in 1963 and made his name in music as the lead singer in Brummie (well, Tamworth) act Wolfsbane. Like Bruce Dickinson’s Samson the band had a bumpy history and a few stabs at the big time – a handful of albums, some music videos and promise of US exposure, but their profile wasn’t high, and it’s probable that after Dickinson’s departure Bayley might not have become the new Maiden frontman but for the good fortune of Wolfsbane supporting Maiden on the No Prayer on the Road tour. Here’s what they might have sounded like, a little more polished for international release:


I think I can see why Steve Harris might have encouraged Bayley to audition. Audition he did, and the rest is history, albeit a diminishing part of Maiden’s growing story. Nevertheless, despite his brief time with the band he leaves as his legacy two albums, a handful of original B-sides and a tenure that lasted a good six years; he outlasted Di’Anno and was nearly in the band as long as Adrian Smith’s first term. Granted, his voice doesn’t compare well to Dickinson’s – it’s deeper; deeper than DiAnno’s in fact. But that doesn’t matter if you consider the direction Maiden were taking at the time – longer, more ponderous songs, less of the spitfire Eighties composition. To that end, Blaze was a pretty good fit.


Unfortunately it seems now that the fans simply wanted Bruce Mk II, and more to the point, they wanted an unchanged Maiden. The band’s development continued, but took faltering steps in doing this, with the ultimate effect of giving Bayley one good album for his voice, and one where his vocal limitations could not save struggling compositions. Furthermore both album tours were hampered by an apparent on-stage allergy Blaze suffered from (oddly not to manifest in his later acts), which compromised his vocals and, combined with a pretty static presence unlike Dickinson’s hyper one, gave mixed performances. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. For what it’s worth, I like Blaze Bayley, and I think at least half of his material with Maiden not only has legs but is well suited for the band at the time. Bruce’s return may have saved Maiden’s reputation with the headlines it garnered, but the band’s fall from grace isn’t just down to this one man, at all.


As a final taste, here’s Bayley with the band gamely struggling through The Trooper, a song that few vocalists could do justice to, and which was plainly unsuited to a touring baritone. Performance-wise it’s a near disaster, with a member of the crowd spitting at the singer while he gets more and more worked up by the insult directed at him. Keep watching to the end and you’ll see that bandleader Harris doesn’t leave his frontman to wear it alone but stands alongside him, ready to unleash some serious aggro on the audience himself. Amidst a pretty ugly scene, there’s a solidarity that wasn’t as evident in Maiden’s fanbase at the time.



Bayley’s Wikipedia entry reads as you’d expect it might – a real rollercoaster of fortunes peppered with mismanagement and personal tragedy. His solo career went well enough, and recently he’s toured with a reformed Wolfsbane, seemingly happier and in a better place for it. Good on him, and godspeed, Blaze.

Putting the Fan Film into Fantasy Films

Not quite in the wake of Judge Minty, here's an earlier stab at the 2000AD-based fan trailer; a mock trailer this time, and in French. I'm sure its writer would approve nonetheless given his work in French press.

Voici Pat Mills' Slaine the Horned God, based on the book of the same name by Mills and Bisley, and reproducing the latter's work with admirable devotion!



I didn't think it too many, etc.

Talkin' Eds - No Fear of the Dying mash-up

In concluding this month's overview of the last albums of Iron Maiden's great initial push, it occurred to me that with the relative weaknesses of No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark there's a pretty decent album's worth of material between them. This mash-up album, call it 'No Fear of the Dying', could effortlessly bridge the gap between Maiden of old (raucous, impish, aggressive in places and punchy with song length) with the Maiden that was developing - longer, more studious, introspective yet looking out at a real world rather than a fantasy one.

Then I thought, why weigh one side of an album with the early attempts at the latter, of which only Afraid to Shoot Strangers survives as anything close to a stand-out? So back to the fun stuff it was.

Lads and gentlemen - introducing No Fear - Iron Maiden of old's last gasp before the age of Blaze and the return of Bruce:


















No Fear of the Dying

Tailgunner
Holy Smoke
No Prayer for the Dying
From Here to Eternity
Hooks in You
Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter
Be Quick or Be Dead
Weekend Warrior
Wasting Love
Chains of Misery
Judas Be My Guide
Fear of the Dark

Right, now to make up an iTunes playlist and see if this thing will fly!

Judge Minty fan trailer

Courtesy of Dave who also sent me a Fleetway reprint of the original strip a while back, it's the Judge Minty teaser for the forthcoming fan film:



I am really impressed with this. particularly for its devotion to the look of the story - all very faithful to the comic's design with Lawmasters (bike cannon!), the Grand Hall of Justice, Mega City One's Gherkin-like buildings (a Mick McMahon innovation) and of course Carlos Ezquerra's iconic design of the judge uniform. Oh and Dredd of course, played by Dredd artist Greg Staples with nary a smile or removal of helmet - as it should be. So much of this deserves further explanation - it would have been easy for the makers to stage this on an industrial site or warehouse interior with official Termight replica helmets and hardware, but they didn't . It might have been obvious to some to include as Dredd's cameo a strapping 'roid-fuelled stand-in for Old Stony face, but the slighter, leaner Staples is truer to the original, and to McMahon's version as well. I do wonder about the palette and 'look', particularly after seeing similar and less-impressive stuff on Spartacus recently; the digital stage and bleached screen has dated since the likes of 300 and Sin City, but it's not enough to put me off at all. More information here of course, in the mean-time, messrs Garland, Travis and Urban - take note...

Talkin' Eds - Fear of the Dark (1992)

1992 in Metal

New Albums:
Alice in Chains - Dirt
Body Count - Body Count (features controversial single Cop Killer)
Def Leppard - Adrenalize
Faith No More - Angel Dust
Fear Factory - Soul of a New Machine
Helmet - In the Meantime
Monster Magnet - Tab EP
Nine Inch Nails - Broken EP
Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power
Rage Against the Machine - (self titled)

In other news, Izzy leaves Guns 'N' Roses, Crue fire Vince Neil, and the world is slightly safer with no more activity coming from Europe, Ratt and Stryper. In the year leading up to this Metallica have released their 'black album', and Nirvana and grunge have arrived well and truly; in a year's time Anthrax will throw in their lot with the grunge-ready The Sound of White Noise, and Korn will form.

This is a pretty significant album in some ways. The Fear of the Dark Tour brought Iron Maiden to New Zealand for the first time, although only as far as Auckland. More significantly of course is its place as Bruce Dickinson's last album re-reforming in 1999. In the years leading up to Fear the band had individually explored other avenues and projects, and Renaissance man Bruce spent those years writing, fencing, releasing and touring his own albums, and of course learning to fly. Once again, everything changes for Iron Maiden after his departure, but more on that in another post.

The Album
There are three things going on in this album, really. The group's sound is changing - certainly as much as it was during No Prayer, and added to this is further experimentation with contemporaneous styles - Be Quick rather aptly nods towards the speed/thrash of the lies of Anthrax. The videos have had a ramp up too - Be Quick and Wasting Love both attempt new things, bringing the members in and miming to a soundtrack, and as in the previous album there seems a concerted effort on Steve Harris' part to steer the lyrics away from the fantastic and towards the mundane and the contemporary. It's a delicate balance, particularly as this follows a very late-80s penchant in pop and rock music of the 'public service' or 'social commentary' song. Many bands and artists try it at some stage in the careers and many of them fail, usually stumbling when the demands of addressing big issues within a three to four minute song just can't and won't fit. I do think the attempts on Fear are a fifty-fifty score - Be Quick is a great opener and while not explicitly about the scandal rides on the fall from grace and death of Sir Robert Maxwell (who also meets Eddie on the single's sleeve), while Weekend Warrior is more specific, targeting football hooligans. The latter works for me because of the delivery (Dickinson compliments a rather AC/DC-like composition by singing in a Brian Johnson style) and the simplicity of the thing; the added fact that Steve Harris is an enormous football fan himself adds to the intent hugely - you can imagine him getting worked up about something like this. Compare and contrast with Fear is the Key - a messy affair with awful lyrics and Bruce adopting a Robert Plant vocal style ("liesandliesandlies..") during the double-tempo wig out over a theme of… what, responsible loving? AIDS ("nobody cares 'til somebody famous dies" recalling the recent passing of Freddie Mercury). Childhood's End has a good sound and fierce opening drums but flounders again lyrically with its talk of tyrants, lack of food, love and 'seed's. Lyrically these songs just aren't strong enough to carry the themes through, nor, sadly, does Afraid to Shoot Strangers, Maiden's Gulf War meditation. It succeeds in as much as it adroitly captures the moral confusion in a soldier's mind, but can't bring itself to go beyond that point, even though there's an obvious urge to, unlike wartime songs before it (The Trooper is perhaps closest) and after (Paschendale et al) which work precisely because they're contained in that one moment. So Harris is out of his depth with contemporary social commentary, but that's okay - heavy metal and pop music in general struggles with this anyway, and to Maiden's credit this is really the last we'll hear of this sort of thing for a good while.

Where Fear does work is in looking back to the band's earlier roots and marrying them to new styles. Judas Be My Guide could have come off Piece of Mind, while Chains of Misery, like Hooks in You on Prayer, evokes a more US sound - as if Motley Crue turned up on the day to do the backing vocals for fun. Wasting Love is a second stab at a ballad after No Prayer's title track and it actually works, with a nice lead by Janick Gers added in. The album's closing title track is almost a standout for its subject matter - a return to the supernatural, although Gers' The Apparition tries this too - I think… the lyrics don't make much sense and Bruce's Steve Perry delivery doesn't help. It's telling that subsequent appearances of Fear of the Dark on The Best of the Beast and Somewhere Back in Time have favoured a live performance, and rightly so. The song is fine, if merely reliable, but in a live setting with a huge crowd behind it it takes on a new verve and is a good indicator of how Maiden could turn an okay composition into a crowd pleaser. The second-to-last and least mention of the album is The Fugitive, based on the movie/TV series of the same name. Ham-fisted choruses ("I am the fu-gitive... Being hunted down for game! I am the fu-gitive... But I've got to clear my name!") follow some nice verses, but it's not a keeper, and Maiden have done far better adaptations before and after this. In other news, song number two From Here to Eternity publicly kills off occasional band muse Charlotte the Harlot, the casualty of "a tumble at the Devil's Bend', which goes to show what hazards come from riding a motorcycle with The Beast.

Cover Art
Thankfully the cover art is a distinct improvement, and like its title track has been gathered into the bosom of 'classic' Maiden iconography. Illustrated by Mervyn Grant after a late commission from Derek Riggs proved not to the band's tastes (or perhaps it was the lateness of the commission - the reasons are apparently vague), the scene is of Eddie as a demon in a tree, merging with its trunk and branches, but as the artist states not part of the tree itself. Whatever, it's a nice, sinister and detailed piece with a good composition and rather fetching use of colour and light. It turned my head back in 1993, so it must have worked.

Album Tracks

Be Quick or Be Dead (official video)
From Here to Eternity(official Bad News-esque video)
Afraid to Shoot Strangers (Live in Mexico)
Fear is the Key (album track)
Childhood's End (album track)
Wasting Love
The Fugitive (album version)
Chains of Misery (album version)
The Apparition (album version)
Judas Be My Guide (album version)
Weekend Warrior(album version)
Fear of the Dark (live at Donnington)

Reissue, Repackage - The Meknificent Seven

And now, for a change, something I actually DID throw out. Well okay, I replaced it, and the story goes a little something like this:

Here is the earliest edition of the collected strips of 2000AD's original series of ABC Warriors, bringing together the escapades of this rag-tag™ unit of war robots on Mars, created and written by Pat Mills and illustrated by a slavering roster of future heavyweights of the UK scene - I'm talking Gibbons, O'Neill, Ezquerra, Brendan McCarthy and of course Mick McMahon, who provided the gorgeous cover illustration for this imprint by early 200AD licencees Titan. Inside are all of the Mars stories written by Mills, plus an introductory strip by Mills and Kevin O'Neill, like the cover, produced exclusively for this collection. Years passed and this imprint was discontinued. I saw it as recently as a couple of years ago in Graphic in Cuba Street - shame I didn't pick it up then.

After Rebellion purchased 2000AD they went into their own reprinting venture, and started things off modestly. The reproductions are pretty good, although suffer from some downscaling due to the original comic's page dimensions not being A4 compatible. This (left) is the cover of their initial run of The Meknificent Seven. The cover is by future ABC art droid Kev Walker in a post-Simon Bisley painterly style. Walker produced vibrant and consistent work during his long tenure on the strip, but the choice of illustration - itself a very post Black Hole era design, is Awl Rong. It's ABC leader Hammerstein, which is fine, but it's a nineties redesign of the robot, doesn't sell the crucial image of the ABCs as a team, and it seems like an afterthought to provide some sort of continuity with the later reprints of the colour strips. I wonder whether the original reprint was a Titan-owned piece, which might explain its absence along with the dedicated introductory strip? Apart from setting the template for future ABC reprints, this is the least-collectable version, and it's the one I replaced as soon as I could (sorry Dave, to whom I gave it to). Moving on…

Here is Rebellion's second stab at the reprint, produced last year. It's a gorgeous cover - not the McMahon commission of course, but it is a reproduction of a contemporary 2000AD cover by the artist in question, and it's just what it should be - all seven Warriors in colour, retro-coloured to fit the Seventies era style. The contents are a step up too - the Titan strips have been included, Pat does a foreword (this aligns the volume with the others in the series published between editions), and as volume two, the aforementioned The Black Hole by Mills and Bisley/SMS is also in black and white, the first recap chapter of that strip is included as a taster. I was deid chuffed when I got this and didn't regret my purchase. The only way it could have been better to my mind would have been reprinting the original gatefold pages from 2000AD in colour, and perhaps included the Steve 'Preacher' Dillon-inked 1985 Annual story Red Planet Blues. As this wasn't written by Mills but by some guy called Alan Moore however, I could understand why Rebellion might have omitted it.

It's now 2010 and Rebellion are keen to have another poke at the US market. Onward to a new edition of The Meknificent Seven! Spine-wise this ties in with the existing collection, although the cover is a radical redesign - a pretty slick composite of a panel of Gibbon's work within, and it looks cool, but not as cool as the Titan original. Inside what do we have? An introduction by Pat, the Titan strip plus single-page strips for the core five Warriors used in their 80s return, the Black Hole teaser is back in its own volume where it belongs and in colour… Red Planet Blues.

I think I know what they might select for the next reprint now.

…

Mongrol smush greedy publishers!!!