Big Bang Babies Official Merchandise T-Shirt

In the early 90's Big Bang Babies was one of my favourite bands! They were very similar in style to Poison and Warrant, but sadly they never broke out like those bands did. Along with a long list of demos, they released two albums, a 6 song self titled EP and a 10 song album titled Black Market. With songs such as Everybody Needs a Hero, Saturday Night, 8 Arms, and Stop the Clock, these guys should have made it big.

After Big Bang Babies, lead guitarist Kerry Kelli went on to play with other bands including Slash's Snakepit, Skid Row, Vince Neil Band, Ratt, Warrant, L.A. Guns, Pretty Boy Floyd, Tuff and Alice Cooper.

Pictured here is the front and back of a very cool concert shirt I ordered from the band back in the days of mail lists and order forms through the mail pre internet sales! Such a great logo that most never got to see!

KISS Super Big Gup Cups

Just saw this today. I have not been collecting KISS merchandise for years now, but this looks cool! New KISS Big Gulp cups from 7-11. I guess its partly that they look cool, and partly that I have a nostalgia for the old 7-11 Slurpee cups that I used to collect as a kid. I'll have to stop by my local 7-11 this weekend to see if we have these in Canada so I can pick up my set. The last Gig Gulp cup I purchased was the really cool 3D Iron Man cups promoting the first Iron Man movie.

Terry David Mulligan's Good Rockin' Tonite

Back in 1984 there were a ton of rock videos, and if you wanted to see them, you had to turn on the TV and wait for one of a plethora of video shows to show them to you. Unlike today when you can just go to Youtube and watch any video you want, any time you want. But back in 1984 you watched video shows such as the grand daddy of them all, Friday Night Videos, or Canada's version called Good Rockin' Tonite. GRT was a 90 minute weekly video show hosted by Terry David Mulligan. I can remember watching this show regularly for years, always hoping to see videos by my favorite bands such as; KISS, Motley Crue, Helix, Def Leppard, Lee Aaron etc. They were also always having contests, usually for signed albums and posters. On one occasion when I entered, I didn't win anything, but I did receive this really snazzy postcard, which wasn't even hand signed - the signature was printed on the card. On a separate occasion, I entered a Motley Crue contest, and won a signed Gary Moore album (go figure)! I was never a fan of Gary Moore (I actually had no idea who he was at the time) so wasn't all that thrilled with my win. But years later I traded it to a friend for a copy of the ultra rare Wendy O Williams (Plasmatics) album titled Deffest and Baddest. Being a huge Plasmatics fan, I was pretty excited to acquire this Wendy O Williams album I had never even heard of. A quick Google search today finds this description of the album: Originally, the album was to be credited to the fictional rap group "Ultrafly and the Hometown Girls," with Wendy's name left off it, but the distributor wouldn't back it without Wendy's name. On this disc, Wendy slams hair bands, creates interesting sexual scenarios between Jerry Falwell and Jessica Hahn, and oh yeah, becomes the first person to fuse rap and speed metal. Thanks Good Rockin' Tonite... that Gary Moore album turned out to be a pretty awesome prize!

I Panned for Gold with the Metal Queen

I went with the family to Fort Langley to visit the Fort Langley Historical Site. Fort Langley is the exact location where, a century and a half ago, a huge fur trade organization called the Hudson's Bay Company established a small post to trade with the First Nations of the West Coast. The enterprise grew, evolved, and influenced history, leading to the creation of the colony of British Columbia. Fearing annexation by the United States, British Columbia was proclaimed a Crown Colony on this site by James Douglas on November 19, 1858.
And on Monday while there, my son got the chance to pan for gold at their gold panning exhibit. While there another family stepped up to try their luck and do some gold panning. Turns out songstress Lee Aaron (aka the Metal Queen) was standing next to me! I didn't have the heart to let on that I knew who she was, as I always feel like such a nutz talking to celebrities I don't know. I was just happy in the knowledge that the singer of some of my favorite songs (some of which just happened to be on the iPod in my pocket at the time) was standing next to me in the muck pretending to pan for gold!

STRYPER Murder By Pride

Christian rockers Stryper will be releasing their newest album on July 21st, called Murder By Pride. The band had a "Murder By Pride" artwork contest on their website for fans to submit the potential cover for the upcoming album. The winning artwork, which will be used for the group's new CD, was submitted by Gilvan Rangel of Campina Grande, Brazil. The band says, "Hundreds of submissions were received and carefully reviewed."
Above left is the artwork that Gilvan submitted to the band. The image on the right is the artwork after it was tweeked by the band, and as it is being advertised on sites such as Amazon. The middle image was created by Tobi Elektrik over at Firestream.net, and I think it is a substantial improvement over both the original and tweaked versions. Ever since I saw the original image, I have disliked the face in the image. And I much prefer the zoomed in image of just the body and arms, and the much larger Stryper logo. All in all I think the middle image looks more like an album cover to me than the other two.
I really hope that Stryper will decide to showcase all of the images they received on their official web site, as I would love to see some of the other images that were submitted. If you would like to see two such images, you can check out Death is Gain where the artist has posted two of his submissions.
The official album 'may' have the image to the right on it, but my iTunes copy will happily have the middle image as its cover!

Firehouse Magazine cover montage

Today while reading the January 2009 issue of Mac World magazine, I became fixated on a two page spread that showed a cover gallery of every issue of Mac World magazine. It got me thinking how cool it would be to have something like that for my magazine, Firehouse Magazine. It didn't take long before I was sitting at my Mac digging though my Firehouse web site folder looking for scans of my magazine covers. Although I didn't have scans of all the covers, I did have issues #39 though 80 (issue 80 was our last issue, in 2000). Twenty minutes later I had whipped up this montage of the last 10 years of Firehouse Magazine covers. Although many of the cover scans are awful, I was still very pleased with the outcome. Perhaps at a later date I will sit and rescan all 80 covers and make a complete cover montage. Until then, this looks great as my computer desktop!

A Musical History of Disneyland

It finally arrived today! I received my copy of the 50th Anniversary "A Musical History of Disneyland" collection, which includes 6 audio CDs containing over 7 hours of Disneyland music, as well as an exclusive 72 page hardcover book.
I have been wanted this ever since I first heard about it back in 2005. The original sets also included a reproduction of the very first Disneyland Records LP "Walt Disney Takes You To Disneyland" on gold vinyl. The original sets were only available at Disneyland, or though the Disneyland mail order, and the cost was over $100, and shipping though Disneyland mail order is incredibly high to Canada, so as much as I wanted it, I never did buy it. It showed up on Amazon.com about a year later, without the vinyl reproduction, and with a price tag of about $100. At the time the US/Canadian conversion was still pretty high and the cost of shipping to Canada, and the almost assured costs of duty when crossing the boarder were still enough to keep me from buying it. When it finally showed up on Amazon.ca with a slightly lower cost, I was excited, but still never shelled out the cash to buy it.
Finally this Christmas when I was asked by my mother what I would like for Christmas, I though about it for a while and came up with the two items that I really, really wanted; the Disneyland Records display unit, and the Musical History of Disneyland set. Since I knew that I would have many changes to pick up the CD set, but would probably never see another Display unit like this one, I decided to ask for some cash to help out with the purchase of the display unit. But I still wanted the CD set. Upon visiting the Amazon.ca web site over the Christmas holiday and seeing that they were showing 'just 1 copy left' of the "A Musical History of Disneyland", I decided to take the plunge and order my copy before it was too late. A day or two later when I received the conformation email letting me know my copy had been mailed, I was thrilled! Today it arrived. It's been added to my iTunes collection, and I am listening to it while I type this. I am currently listening to "Country Bear Vacation Hoedown".
I always love those photos I see on the internet of people unpacking new computers etc as if they were some sort of incredible treasures. So I decided to take some pictures of my own. I now present the 'unboxing' of my "Musical History of Disneyland" CD set. Enjoy!















If you are looking for a review and complete listing of what is on the set, check out the review on Mouse Planet.

Woodward's Music Department

The other day while flipping though the records at a local thrift shop, I came across this unusual item. It is a small bag, just big enough to hold a 45 rpm record, from Woodward's music department. For those of you who don't know, Woodward's was the name of a department store which operated in Western Canada for one hundred years, before its sale to the Hudson's Bay Company 1993, at which time the Woodward's stores retired to the history books.
I remember that when I was young, most department stores had a pretty decent record department. I did a lot of my record shopping at Planters which was the record department of the Bay. This paper bag was obviously for anyone purchasing and 45 singles, or other smaller items. I assume they also had a larger version for LPs. This one has a flap on the back like an envelope, and you can see where it had been taped shut when the customer made their purchase and left the store.
The front of the bag lists the shopping locations in British Columbia as Vancouver, Oakridge, West Vancouver, New Westminster, Victoria and Port Alberni, and in Alberta in Edmonton, Westmount and Calgary.
When I found this, I was really hoping their might be an original receipt inside so I could see how much was spent on records, but no such luck.
Luckily though, the thrift store clerk let me take this treasure home with me for free!

Disney offers new CD format CDVU+

This week Walt Disney Co. music label Hollywood Records is offering a
new CD format with extra features to encourage compact-disc purchases
in a bid to reverse declining CD sales.
Hollywood Records on Wednesday unveiled its new CDVU+ (CD View Plus)
format with digital magazine extras, song lyrics, band photos and
other extras to boost fan loyalty. The new format also replaces the
traditional CD booklet and plastic jewel case with recyclable
packaging. Teen punk band Jonas Brothers will be the first act to use
the technology when they release their self-titled album on August
7.Disney executives hope to hold the interest of fans by offering
content similar to the extras on movie DVDs and convince them that
pure music products still offer good value. The content on a CDVU+ can
be downloaded and accessed online and off. The label said the extra
content had been produced for the new format rather than using the
band's outtakes or widely available material, such as existing music
videos.

Dragonforce Sold Out!

Apparently I underestimated the popularity of Dragonforce. Last night Euro metal band Dragonforce played here in Vancouver at the Croatian Cultural Centre. I was excited about going to the show, but had to work until 9 pm and didn't think I would be able to make the show. The night before the show, I was on the bands web page forums and read that there would be 2 opening bands at the Dragonforce would not be onstage until about 9:30 pm. It takes about 45 minutes t get downtown, so if I left work right on time, I could make it to the show by about 9:45 pm. I left work and raced downtown, only to find that the show was sold out! Luckily for me, the front doors were all glass, and from the front door, I could see into the front lobby and right into the hall where the band was playing. This is how I watched the show. Not the best view or sound, but I did get to see and hear the show. And as it turns out, there were sooo many people at the show that the temperature was unbelievably hot and all during the show I saw people leaving due to heat exhaustion. I myself was standing outside in the beautiful evening air! So, I didn't have to bear the heat, I saved the $30 ticket cost AND I got to see and hear the show. I guess it worked out OK. Although, if they ever come back, I am getting my ticket early!

The above photo has been Photoshopped to help as a visual aide to go along with the story above - for those of you who were having a hard time visualizing what a Sold Out show might look like! The actual photo was taken of myself at Disneyland, standing at the ticket window after closing.