SE X

This weekend has seen me wearing my "Saul Blease Road Crew" t-shirt as he played two sets at the Summer's End X festival in Chepstow (the wonderfully acronymed SE X) so as well as lugging his keyboard and gear around I've been driving up and down the M5, M4, M48 and A48.

So sadly no painting or owt this weekend but here is the new video for Saul's cover of Where Is My Mind? I mentioned the other week that features B29's, nuclear explosions and some other fun stuff...

Where Is My Mind?

I've not managed to do much hobby wise this week as much of my free time has been taken up with a crash course in music CD production! Saul wants to release an album before he goes to uni with ten songs he's written and recorded over the last year and has delegated me to deal with all the non-artistic parts! So this week I've learnt all about glass mastering and CD pressing as well as the needs and differences between AP2 and Limited Manufacture Licences as Saul wants to include his cover of The Pixies Where Is My Mind? on the CD. All interesting but quite confusing stuff...

Anyway, that's why there have been no painted minis this week. I leave you the video of Saul's latest song, which does feature footage of tanks and other bits of military hardware! :-)

Good Morning, Vietnam! (and Stat's The Way To Do It, Lad!)

I came across an interesting website yesterday called the Radio First Termer Restoration Project.

Radio First Termer was a pirate radio station that ran for just three weeks out of a brothel in Saigon in 1971 and the website is dedicated to not only promoting the station, its DJ Dave Rabbit, but also restoring the first three hour pirate radio broadcast.

Listening the broadcast yesterday was a great experience and the work of the restoration project to preserve this little bit of Vietnam history is one to be applauded. It struck me that the broadcast would make for a great soundtrack to any Vietnam game with its mix of hard acid rock (The Who, Cream, Santana etc) and irreverent commentary.

The language and jokes are a bit colourful (I won't post a picture of the Dave Rabbit shirts!) but it is reflective of the period and to be honest of it offends you more than playing games about war I think you need to have a serious sit down and think about things!

In conclusion, if you are interested in the Vietnam War or game the period I would thoroughly recommend downloading all three parts of the broadcast from here.

Gromit of the Day:

Stat's The Way To Do It, Lad!

Pirate Metal

I am sad to say I dropped the ball the other day by not celebrating 'Talk Like A Pirate' day, a heinous oversight as Bleaseworld is based in the home port of no less a piratical celebrity than Blackbeard himself.

By way of amends and in celebration of all things piratical, here is a video of the 'True Scottish Pirate Metal' band Alestorm playing their song 'Keelhauled'.

Alestorm are a lot of fun and have released two albums, Captain Morgan's Revenge and Black Sails At Midnight, that are ideal background music for when you are counting your pieces of eight. Surely any band that writes lyrics such as "With the power of ale, he could not fail!" deserve wider recognition?

American Soldier

I picked up a copy of Queensrÿche's new album American Soldier the other day. I had fallen out of love with the US prog metal band following the release of the (to my mind) disappointing Promised Land (it is no Operation: Mindcrime!). However, they piqued my interest with the new album which promised to be an "epic concept album exploring the consequences of war from the soldier's perspective"...

I was intrigued that lead singer, Geoff Tate, had gone out and interviewed US vets from a number of wars from Vietnam through Somalia to Iraq and used these interviews to develop the album (and in a number of cases include excerpts of the interviews in the songs which can be quite harrowing).

Now if you are into Celine Dion then this probably isn't going to be an album for you, but if you like a bit of guitar and gung-ho rock then American Soldier may well be the CD to stick on when playing Ambush Alley or Scudbusters, I'm certainly enjoying it...