From the Attic: Rare Iron Maiden Canadian Mountie slipcase limited cd's Promo Poster

A new edition to my collection is this beautiful Canadian promo poster for the limited edition slipcase cd's that were available in Canada for a very short time period.  The poster features Derek Rigg's great painting of Eddie dressed in the uniform of the Canadian mounties.  The painting was first used on the cover of the Canadian heavy metal magazine, Metallion during the 80's.  

Of course, these slipcase cd's are now quite rare as the mounties were apparently not happy about the unauthorized use of their trademarked image.  When they first came out, I was lazy grabbing them thinking they would be around for awhile, but just as fast as they appeared they were pretty much pulled off the shelves.  Luckily, I managed to get the one below because of a friend who bought two. 

The limited reissue cd's came out in 1998 and at that time the mountie image was under the ownership of Disney.  Control of the trademarks had been given over to Disney when the RCMP hired the company to promote their image and protect them from being abused in the commercial marketplace.  Thus, if anyone wanted to use the image to put a Mountie on a T-shirt, a mug, or in this case cd's, they had to pay a licensing fee or be charged with stealing "intellectual property." It really is too bad they were not around a little longer as I would have liked to grab more.  Someone has also bootlegged up some shirts with this design, there may have been a few official ones made up for A&B Sound employees, as I seem to remember them wearing one around this time, in fact I got one off of someone claiming it to be such, but the price was cheap, they look great, so what the hell.  Whatever the case, the local market seems flooded with obvious fakes.  Thanks to my friend Jason for giving me this poster to add to my collection.  I think this one will be next in line for a nice frame job. 

The cover of the Canadian magazine, Metallion that featured the first appearance of Eddie in the Mountie uniform, 'tis a shame the moose and wintery scenery were left off the cd's.

Scanning the Metal Scene in Vancouver. Rare and Unseen photos from the 80's

Recently I met an underground scene veteran from the old days and it was a lot of fun listening to her stories of the shows she attended in the early and mid 80's.  Oddly, after arranging to meet up so I could buy a few things she was selling off of her, I found out she was the sister of a friend of mine.  I also found that like her brother she possessed a wealth of information in regards to the old Vancouver live underground scene and was happy to share her memories and her own personal perspective.  In addition, and much to my delight she sent me some photos she had taken from some of the shows she attended.  After seeing the photos I knew that other people should see them, so I asked permission to share some of the photos that she had taken during the 80's.

None of these photos have been posted anywhere on the net until now and I am very pleased to show them now.  She did a great job of capturing the feeling of those times with her camera and she appears to have been a natural at securing great live shots.  Again I want to thank Rakayla for sharing these great pics!

Randy Piper (WASP)  at the New York Theatre, Vancouver B.C.

Blackie Lawless and Chris Holmes (WASP) at the New York Theatre

Blackie Lawless and Chris Holmes (WASP) at the New York Theatre

Mark Gallagher (Raven) at the New York Theatre, Vancouver, B.C.  March 22nd 1985 

John Gallagher (Raven) at the New York Theatre 1985

Mark Gallagher (Raven) at the New York Theatre 1985

A real cool shot of Helix at the New York Theatre

Yellow and Black Attack!
Michael Sweet (Stryper) "To Hell With the Devil" tour
 (ah, cough, cough move along, there is nothing to see here folks)

As she had decided to let some of her stuff go, I was able to get this nice Iron Maiden Back stage pass and an autographed Steve Harris ticket stub.  Both from Maiden's December 9th, 1984 stop in Vancouver.  

In addition, she was lucky enough to get a plectrum at the 1985 Metallica show in Vancouver which she still had all these years, realizing even back then, this was no ordinary Dunlop!

Clive Burr (March 8 1957 – March 12 2013)

Sad news today regarding the death of a legend.  One of the most telling things about Clive Burr is that he was never forgotten by fans, even those who were too young to ever see Maiden with him.  Unfortunately, I never got to see Clive play in person, but the albums he played on are THE Maiden albums.  Watching the "Live at the Rainbow" VHS for the first time as a kid was a life changing moment and Clive was one of my heroes.  R.I.P. Clive Burr.

It seemed fitting to spin his his most defining moment tonight

From The Attic: Robot Death Figure Derek Riggs Poster

Today's post features an amazing poster I received in the mail about a month ago from Mr Riggs himself.   I felt like a kid again when this arrived in the mail the other day and I stared at the poster for far longer than I care to admit.  This poster is an old painting he did around the time of the Killers album, but it was never used by Maiden.  However, despite this fact, the Maiden vibe is prevalent and it would have made a nice cover for any Maiden release in my opinion.

I must admit that I think I like Derek Riggs artwork more than any Iron Maiden albums that came out after Live After Death (though they still pump out great music when they are not busy with greatest hits comps and live cd's), it is a pity that this artwork was not used instead of the shoddy artwork used on the last few Maiden releases in particular.  It was because of Rigg's sinister artwork that I got into Maiden in the first place.  To some of you out there that might sound shallow, but you have to remember this was before everything was spoon fed to the youth, sometimes you had little more to go on other than a cover when investigating new bands.  The Killers LP sleeve seemed genuinely evil and the music was absolutely stunning as well when I first heard it (and still is!) I remember when I hung the flag on the ceiling over my bed, my parents were worried to say the least.

Unfortunately, Mr. Riggs does not seem to get the respect from Maiden and their management that he deserves, so please support him and buy his posters and/or book (which is great by the way).  Remember, there are countless imitators, but only one Derek Riggs.  You can acquire this poster via Derek Riggs for a very reasonable price at his website here. He is also nice enough to sign it for you if you wish and you can also see on my poster that he has hand drawn a couple of sketches, one of which bears a striking resemblance to ol' Ed!   Hopefully, if you buy this poster, it will do for you what it did for me, it almost made me forget about that terrible Dance of Death cover or the newest abortion of a cover that graces their most recent release, The Final Frontier.  Still, Iron Maiden are and will probably always be the greatest live band out there though.  They put bands half their age to absolute shame.

The Devil's Music: A personal history of the beginnings, illustrated by the forgotten cassette tape

"Those records are the devil's music and no son of mine's going to listen to them" -SNFU

AC/DC

My first tapes were AC/DC tapes given to me by my brother (The classic shit, Back in Black, Highway to Hell and Dirty Deeds) and I seemed to really take to them compared to the other music he listened to. I remember many a morning being awoken by the sound of bells coming from my brothers room as he put side one of Back in Black on his turntable and feeling excited by the sounds that came up from my heater vent. Still, I for some reason preferred the Bon Scott stuff as it seemed more real, less forced and even a little funny at times. He was always singing about booze, tattoos, women, balls and being a rocker. All this new information was sort of shocking to my young fragile mind (I was only in about grade 2), but it was also intriguing due to the fact that it seemed dangerous, wild and free. I have no idea why my brother gave me those tapes and he does not remember himself, but I played those tapes almost everyday for about a year or so, mesmerized by the music and the lyrics.  AC/DC became the foundation to build on.

I'm on a Highway to Hell!

TWISTED SISTER

When I bought my first tape with my own money it was like I had discovered the holy grail. I stood on the grass that day dumbfounded why on earth someone would want to sell something so valuable. I was not bothered in the least bit when the older kid asked me with clear resentment, "why do you want this crap anyway, no one likes this crap anymore".  I was puzzled why this older kid had suddenly decided that this tape stood between him and his new found hip status, especially since the tape had not been out long, but it didn't matter because all I knew was: this was definitely not Wham, Culture Club, Phil Collins (*no offence Phil, early Genesis is cool), Platinum Blonde, Michael Jackson or any other garbage my classmates were listening to, it was something different and when Dee Snider sang "you're going to burn in hell" I really thought he meant it and it was exciting! Even though Twisted Sister took a back seat to the much better AC/DC tapes, it ended up on steady rotation for about a year.  True metal or not, I am no longer embarrassed to be a Twisted Sister fan. Truth is they were a pretty decent rock 'n' roll band, and I like that rock 'n' roll and I don't care what some fat kid that lives in his mom's basement in Norway thinks about it. As funny as it may seem now this shit was pretty scary and hardcore to me as a forth grader. Luckily, Dee Snider looked like a clown on the cover which some how lightened the impact a bit, otherwise I am not sure I could have taken it (no pun intended).

See No Evil?

Here are a few ticket stubs from shows I went to where Dee Snider palys Twisted Sister tunes. Great times were had by all, except unfortunately a shitty band named Nickelback opened up for one of the shows. Nickelback were in their, "Pearl Jam" phase because you know it was still cool to be grunge if you had hopes as a paid musician. I don't like to talk shit about working bands normally, but they were horrible and even condescending and I remember everyone in the venue booing, yawning, sleeping and wallowing in their beer until they finally left the stage. They even had the nerve to talk a little shit on stage about Twisted Sister which i'm sure didn't help win over the crowd or me.

IRON MAIDEN

Anyway, after discovering Iron Maiden's, Self titled album and Number of the Beast, I sort of forgot about Twisted Sister (for years and years actually). Maiden took it to a whole new level for me, intelligent lyrics, solid musicianship and amazing artwork. I used to stare at the cover of Number of the Beast for hours. Even though that album was the first one I heard, I always sort of liked the first album the best. In addition to their own great music, Iron Maiden also opened the doors to the NWOBHM scene for me and I also checked out other great English bands like Judas Priest, Saxon, Tygers of Pan Tang and Diamond Head. It is probably largely due to Iron Maiden's musicianship that I later became interested in Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy and other great bands that were before my time.

Children of the Damned!

BLACK SABBATH

My buddy and I were going on a camping trip and he brought along Ozzy Osbourne's Speak of the Devil cassette for us to listen too. He bought it the day before and told me I should check it out. I was absolutely stunned by what I heard. We had discovered something beyond words that I still have trouble defining, it simply sounded like hallucinatory, drugged out hymns to the devil. Combine that with Ozzy's rants about starting riots and getting high, I sincerely thought that maybe I should not be listening to this shit if I want to lead a normal life, yet the next day I went out and bought Sabbath's Self titled, Paranoid and master of Reality albums anyway. Obviously, I found that the songs were even better in their original context, but minus Ozzy's ranting. Sadly, I no longer have the first Black Sabbath album on cassette, so I put the LP in the photo instead.  Black Sabbath are one of the most important bands in the history of rock and roll period.   

Satan's coming around the bend!

MOTLEY CRUE

I resisted Motley Crue at first, it did not do anything for me when I first heard it, but one night at my neighbors birthday party (we are talking grade 4 here, give me a break), her older brother pulled out Shout at the Devil and something clicked. I was really impressed with their imagery and sound, it had the danger of AC/DC, but the music was very different. They really had their own thing going on, it was heavy metal or maybe better termed party metal, but one thing is for sure that album kicks ass. Mean riffs, thundering drums and nasty attitude. I don't really consider Shout at the Devil a glam metal album, but this is what glam metal should have been. I soon found out that Too Fast for Love was a great record too. Though, they eventually found bigger commercial success, it is too bad that beginning with Theatre of Pain they began to lose most of what made them great. That record is decent, and really isn't as bad as the masses would have you believe.  However, I can't really listen to anything they put out after that album.

He's the blood stain on the stage...

VENOM

Discovering Venom later that year was like discovering Satan himself. Every time I played Black Metal I turned the volume down and when Buried Alive came on, I turned it down to a whisper, I was worried my parents would hear it and put me in a mental institution. I am not kidding, Venom scared the shit out of me and other kids, but we loved it! At some point, I got a Venom Black Metal shirt, but it went "missing" in the laundry one day. My parents were pretty laid back and cool about my music choices, but I think my mom was genuinely concerned about that Venom shirt possessing me one night in my sleep or leading me down a path into hard drugs and suicide. Instead, Venom with the help of Banzai Records led me towards the extreme metal underground.

Lay down your Soul to the God's Rock 'n' Roll!

METALLICA

Metallica were the band that sort of cemented everything together, as overused as the saying is, they became the soundtrack to my life. I first discovered Metallica when I took a summer job selling chocolate bars for a charity. One of the older kids that worked there was cool and into metal. He wanted to show us some of his tapes and one that stood out immediately was Ride the Lightning on Banzai records. The image of the electric chair and the lightning really made the tape stick out from all the others scattered around his room and I could not wait to hear what it sounded like. When he put it in the tape deck I was in absolute awe of the powerful riff that kicked in after the acoustic intro, it sounded like no metal I had heard up until that point. To put it into as few words as possible, Fight Fire with Fire was a musical revelation, I had no idea music like this existed. Sure, Venom were fast and similar, but this was something different. Faster and heavier than Iron Maiden, but more talented and serious then Venom. I soon bought both Ride the Lightning and Kill 'em All and the latter became my favourite tape in my growing collection. This dude also introduced me to Slayer and a few other bands. Sadly, he also told me that Metallica were playing in Vancouver soon and that he was going, but I had to miss the show as my mother made sure that I was not allowed to go to any concerts until I was in high school. Thus, I never got to see Cliff Burton play, and I also had to miss the Master of Puppets tour. I had tickets to this one and was planning to sneak to it, but my Mom found out I had tickets and made me sell them or she was going to throw them in the garbage. Anyway, I still am proud to say that Metallica are my favourite band and they have my respect forever even if I do not always agree with some of their unusual career decisions.

The leather armies have prevailed, the phantom lord has never failed

Okay, so I tell you all this not because I think my story is more important than one anyone else has to share, I just would like to share items from my collection with others that have the same passion for the music and share a few stories and provide context for the blog along the way.  I am not here to brag about my connections with so and so or bloat my own self esteem, I'm just a regular fan.