Archive for the ‘1994’ Category
Meeting Sepultura 1994
Sepultura was on the Chaos AD tour with Fear Factory, Clutch and Fudge Tunnel in 1993/94. I get a call on 
the day of the show from my friend Steve who owns Skinnies Records in Norfolk, VA and he says he’s guestlisted +1 and offers it to me. Hell yeah! I didn’t really care for the Chaos AD album that much but not having seen Sepultura before, I was definitely interested. The other bands on the bill were not even mildly interesting to me.
I pick Steve up and it’s a cold rainy night in early March 1994. We get to the Boathouse (I miss that place!) and go to the will-call window. The girl hands Steve and envelope and tells one of the employees to see us inside. I don’t recall getting a ticket for this one as it’s not in my ticket stub collection anywhere. Steve put the envelope in his jacket and we go in.
The 3 opening bands were pretty dull. I think Fear Factory was on right before Sepultura and Steve pulls the envelope out and opens it. Two Sepultura after show backstage passes! Score! We were both excited and I remember Steve saying, “Damn, glad I decided to look in the envelope!” Me too!
Sepultura comes on and they were great. They mostly played stuff from Chaos AD and Arise but threw in Mass Hypnosis, Policia, My Inner Self and Beneath The Remains. Score! They were tight and entertaining.
After the show, we just hang out as people were leaving. Several of our friends stopped to say hello and we both kept the passes under wraps until most everyone had left. We then went to the backstage door with our passes displayed and got ushered in. Saw some folks we knew back there and talked it up a bit.
My favorite memory was hearing someone in a thick yet higher-pitched Brazilian accent ask, “Does anybody want a beer?” I turn around and right behind me is Max Cavalera holding 3 or 4 bottles of Beck’s beer. I jokingly said, “Hey man, you sound like a girl!” He laughed, handed me a beer and said, “Drink up!”
We chatted with him and the rest of the guys for a few minutes and I got them to sign the envelope that the passes came in. They were very amiable and joked around with everyone a lot. Steve and I were pretty worn out and left.
I’ve been pretty lucky meeting bands over the years. And this was definitely another great experience. Sepultura was very gracious and seemed to love playing in the States.
So, thanks to Steve and Sepultura for a great night of metal comradeship!
Sepultura backstage pass, Beck's bottle cap and autographs (click to enlarge)
Tiamat – Wildhoney – CD Review
Tiamat first caught my attention with their debut album Astral Sleep. It was raw, simple, dark…almost run of the mill 
death metal. Typically mid-paced but it didn’t suck by any means. Daniel and I went tape shopping (yes, I was still buying them in 1991!). He picked up Solitude Aeturnus’ debut and I picked up the Tiamat. Great picks by both of us.
I certainly picked up Clouds in 1992 and I believe it was in one of the first 100 CDs I ever owned. I liked it a lot even though they slowed down a bit more. It was a little more atmospheric. Cool album for sure.
But then came 1994.
Wildhoney.
WILDHONEY.
I remember the first time I popped it in. I was doing some stuff in the house…probably playing TecmoSuperBowl or something. I just remember that the album felt like it was over soon after it began. It’s 42 minutes long but it flows. The way they tied all of the songs in together was simply brilliant. Wildhoney got even more mellow than Clouds. They added a certain sense of Pink Floyd to their sound…imagine the song Fearless by Pink Floyd with distortion and better production. It was awesome. It still is. There is not a bad song on it and I think it should be in every metalhead’s collection.
This album gets regular play, at least once a month. It’s a great one to drive to. Very smooth. They use death metal vocals, but not in a cookie monster sort of way. You can understand everything that Johan sings.
Even though it is very much still in print, I think it needs to be shared. So here ya go. Listen to it in order. Many times.
I don’t get high but sometimes I have thought about what it would be like to listen to this one on mushrooms. Let me know, ok?
Pat Travers – Putting It Straight
When I was still collecting vinyl, Iron Maiden was my #1 interest. As you probably know they released a ton of stuff and I had a good selection of it
thanks to Unicorn Records, Skinnies Records, Electric Smiles, Fantasy, eBay and trading through some pen pal type things from the backs of magazines. Oddly enough there were never any problems with the traders. I never got ripped off once. Honest lot those metalheads! As a subset to collecting Maiden stuff, I also was trying to collect everything that Nicko McBrain had played on. Not an easy task as there were some pretty obscure British things out there.
So my former supervisor and I were good friends and he told me about his record collection that had been sitting in his closet for 15 years. Knowing Mark like I did, I knew these were in near perfect condition. The guy was meticulous about everything. So I randomly stopped by Mark’s house one day (1993ish?) when I was in the neighborhood and we were just hanging out and catching up a bit as we hadn’t seen each other in a while. After a while I asked if he still had his records. He said he still had them and wanted to sell them. I wasn’t in the market to buy the collection but I surely wanted to peruse his crates. So he pulls out these 3 huge crates of records and I start flipping through one by one. Tons of 70s rock. You know, BOC, Zeppelin, Stones, Bob Seeger, Poco, America, etc etc. Nothing too obscure and surely nothing that a record collector would have paid more than 3-4 dollars each for.
There near the end of perusal, there it was. It was one of those heavenly “ahhhhhh” moments where it seemed like the clouds parted and the sun shone down on this box of records. Pat Travers’ Putting It Straight with Nicko on drums! Mark still claims to this day that I was shaking when I was holding it. I don’t doubt that I was. I was pretty excited. I said, “How much?” He responded, “Not for sale.” What a douche! But he did tell me to take it with me until I found my own copy. It was in pristine shape. PERFECT even. Shortly thereafter I found another vinyl copy at Skinnies and a year or 2 later he had the original and rare Jap pressing of the CD which I also bought.
I adore this album. It’s got Nicko’s signature drum licks written all over it. My favorites are Life In London, Offbeat Ride, Gettin’ Betta and It Ain’t What It Seems. The album as a whole is good and I highly recommend it if you’re into 70s hard rock.
Around 1994-1995 Pat came to town to play Wicker’s in Portsmouth, VA. I did my usual “show-up-to-the-gig-super-early” routine to hopefully meet the band. I lucked out as they were all inside getting ready to eat. I walked up to Pat and asked him to sign a few things for me and he was really cool. He signed my vinyl copy of this album and my CD cover. I asked him to talk about how it was to play with Nicko and he didn’t have many nice things to say. “Good drummer but a complete asshole after that whole Iron Maiden thing.” Apparently after Nicko joined Maiden, he landed his helicopter in Pat’s yard and bragged about his success. Who knows? I wouldn’t be that surprised if it was true. Not important to me either way. The guy that was sitting with us while we were talking about Nicko was Aynsley Dunbar. Of course I didn’t know that at the time. Had I known he was drumming for Pat, I would have brought my Jefferson Airplane and Journey stuff!
Nicko also played on Makin’ Magic which is also worth tracking down.
Vauxdvihl – To Dimension Logic (obscure prog)
I really can’t remember exactly when I first heard this but it was undoubtedly via Kelz and Denis Gulbey of Sentinel Steel Records around 96 or 97. Doesn’t matter. This is a great album all the way around and pretty obscure. Vauxdihl hail 
from Melbourne, Australia.
I highly recommend checking this out if you’re a fan of Fates Warning’s Perfect Symmetry. It reminds me a lot of that album although not quite as good. No, this album isn’t particularly groundbreaking but it’s a nice change from all the trad and the death metal that I have been spinning lately.
Since this is very out of print and relatively hard to find, I uploaded it for your listening pleasure. Download here.
The Metal Files 
You must be logged in to post a comment.