Reading DragonLady’s blog, where she pointed to Bruce Dickinson’s birthday(By the way, I had no idea DragonLady is the wife of my blog friend, Dr J, is this a small world or what?!) I remember again that Maiden is going to visit Romania this year.

Maiden will be in Romania in a few months from now and I have’t yet bought a ticket! Am I an idiot or what? It is the second time Iron Maiden comes to Romania, this time with Bruce Dickinson, the first time it was with Blaze Bayley and I haven’t been to the show either.

Actually this year is pretty mad for Romania’s rock scene. Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, John McLaughlin, Judas Priest, Queensryche, Lenny Kravitz, Linkin Park, Manowar(hail, hail, hail and kill), man this is a long time wish of mine!!!, Nightwish, Testament and Whitesnake, they are all going to be in Romania this year!

Tibi from LostArtOfBlogging.com reminds me of Metallica. Indeed, Metallica too!

I don’t know what happened, seems that this year everybody wants to come to Romania! And I left out big names that are not part of the rock scene, like for ex Alphaville, Leonard Cohen, etc. Last year Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson were here and created a historical moment singing one song together, after all the world (the one that is actually interested) knew they don’t get along well.

Won’t you come to Romania to see them this year?

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I’ve seen via Guitar MX an interesting list of top 25 greatest guitar riffs of all time! Man, this should have been one of my next posts, now I can’t write it anymore! So, what can I do about it? Well, join it and sustain the post! So, here’s my short thoughts on this:

I think that Metallica patented the dark clean guitar riff. I don’t understand why Enter sandman is there and One is not. I remember about 10 years ago we used to consider One as being the hymn of rock fans. I don’t know if this is something international or not, but, man, that riff identify Metallica and rock music IMO. Enter sandman has a great starting riff but, man, One is better!

Regarding Paradise city (GNR) I can’t tell what’s more easy to recognize: the fast picked/strummed chords in the beginning or the solo part on the same starting part.

Iron Maiden’s Run to the hills…well, I love’em but no! There are far better starting riffs like for ex Metallica’s One (does it start to become annoying, or what?) And if we’re speaking about Maiden. why not Fear of the dark? Man, how about Megadeth and Symphony of destruction, any decent metal head recognizes that part by one single note! Symphony of destruction is a rock hymn too!

No Satisfaction? Man, that song can be recognized by a non-rock fan on spot! I think that those notes are kind of the most famous in the history of rock (maybe I am overreacting, but you get my point). What’s that thing with The white stripes - Seven nation army? Why is that one of the greatest riffs? Don’t blame me, but I didn’t even know the song! Should I worry?! Please tell me if you didn’t know it either so I can chill!

The list has been actually started by The Telegraph and people there contest it also. The fact is that the list is called “greatest” which gives a subjective feeling to it. Greatest is like good, beautiful, something that stays in the eyes(ears in this case) of the judge. Greatest does not actually mean most famous, most recognizable or something similar.

Anyway, let me hear your opinions on this! And stumble me, baby!

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During struggling period with the band, we’ve had our share of “unique points of view” from one producer or an other.

I remember one time (we used to play pop rock at that moment) we went to a record company in Bucharest, introduced by somebody, to speak about our “future” in music.

So, here we are in this guy’s office, 4 people on one side of the table, namely THE BAND and one person on the other side
, THE PRODUCER-MANAGER.

I will call him producer for the sake of this post.

The guy listened to what we used to play back then, he had the tape there, knew what was our musical direction, pop-rock as I have already said.

Producer(to the drummer): So, how old are you?

Drummer: 34

Producer: You’re 26. I see you wear long hair. You’ll cut your hair and die it.

Drummer: —silence—

Producer(to the lead singer) : What’s your age?

Lead singer: 31.

Producer: You’re 25. How do you wear your hair? (the lead singer had kind of a baseball hat)

Lead singer,taking off his hat: I shave my head.

Producer(to me): How old are you?

Me: 26

Producer: You’re OK. The hair is OK (I had short hair at that moment) we need to work a bit on shirts/outfit but it will work out. (I was wearing my hippest t-shirt, totally out of rock but totally into new trends, IMO, so my self pride was hurt a bit cause I did my best at that moment to look hip and trendy, you know, to have that “artist” look, sun glasses in my hair, damn, I looked good!!!)

I don’t remember what the guy told to the bass player but he was OK too, except the hair that he needed to arrange a bit. If I well remember that started a bit of a resistance from his side cause he had enough hair, as we used to laugh, for a shower and a strong wind, after wearing it long for years (Steve Harris fan for good!!! Iron Maiden rules!)

Producer: Well, now about music. You need hits, you need something to work in dance clubs, to make people dance.

We were already disoriented so anything he would have said would have been taken for granted, we were kind of groggy already. Shortly speaking, he pointed us to a famous local band, Voltaj , playing kind of a dance music with rock instruments, after 20 years of struggling in heavy metal world. You need this kind of music to make it!
See the video below for an idea.

So we left his office arguing if we’ll do it or not. Some of us wanted, some of us didn’t want or at least not feeling OK about it. Anyway, the whole thing failed at one point, frankly I have no idea why, maybe axlfuckingrose remembers.By the way, he’s the lead singer I am speaking about, my mate in this band since 1998 and since 1997 in an other band, Kapela, I will present him to you at some moment as a guest blogger here. In the meantime here’s his site (in Romanian, poetry and pictures)

Well, so that was some story we’ve lived to tell. There were more during years, I will tell them here also but the whole point is how much are you willing to change to make it big with your music? Will you change the look? The music? The band??!

How much are you willing to take and what will make you snap and say no? What’s your boiling point?

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I am sure that a lot of you (rock fans) admire voices such Bruce Dickinson (Of Iron Maiden, of course), Michael Kiske (ex Helloween, “the silver throat” as some used to call him - by the way, I am a big fan of you, man!!) and others with similar abilities. I know I do. I love this kind of voices. What I didn’t know is that you can actually study this kind of vocal technique and that the way they sing is not just pure talent or God given voice but also studied technique. Here in Romania, I am not aware of someone teaching this kind of things. Of course we have all kind of music schools and a lot of great vocal trainers, but, damn, I don’t think we have something similar to this.

Here’s a movie of a guy singing a Queensryche’s song. He is a student of this private rock class. Of course, lead singers like Dickinson or Kiske are not born every day, but admit it, he’s there!

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Since a few days my car CD player is locked (since I removed the battery for a quick fix on my car) and because I am moving into a new apartment, I can not find car’s support leaflet with the unlock code. That’s why I use a portable mp3 player. This gives me an other point of view on the music I listen.

For example, this morning, I realized that there are particular bass guitar sound for specific bands, a bass guitar sound that defines the band’s sound in general. Some I could easily spot were Iron Maiden and Manowar. If you take Steve Harris’ bass sound and style of playing, I think you can not miss it. If you listen carefully, his way of playing, with his fingers gives a smooth, “puffy” sound for the bass (yes, this is my perception of it, despite the musical style,Harris would probably kill me for this), while it also sounds like the strings are loose, like he is somehow tuned 2-3 tones below. Also consider that “riding” style of playing and you have Steve Harris’ unmistakable bass sound!

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