It has been one of those days. Everything that has happened today has rubbed me the wrong way. Well… maybe not everything, but most things. Why? Is it because the Bruins were shut out last night? It could be. Is it because the fucking Yankees are in the World Series? It might be.
Here’s hoping the drive home will be a turning point. Granted I will have to stop for gas before I get home, but I am finally going to finish my JRR Tolkien deep dive/audio book re-read. Well… I listened to the Silmarilian (boy, was that rough) and about 15 minutes into tonight’s commute I will complete The Lord of the rings (much better, except for all the singing… ouch). Up next in my Audible queue is Stephen King’s new short story collection. That should be a nice palette cleanser after all the Middle Earth fantasy. I guess I should read The Hobbit too, for completeness, and anything else that Tolkien may have published that I have never read. Naw, let’s get into some King for a while.
Once I get home the plan is to make a quick dinner for me and the love of my life. Burgers (fried on the stove) and fries (fried in the air fryer). Then we’ll sit down in the living room and enjoy a quiet night together making fun of our clinically insane cats. As per usual.
Here’s hoping for a fun, quiet night tonight and a less stressful work day tomorrow.
I want to vote tomorrow morning before work, if I can. The early voting polls open at 8:00am. I think I can pull it off. I’m hoping my wife can go with me. If she can’t then it won’t be Friday because of work, or Saturday because of travel, so Sunday?
I won’t be able to play any guitar before work tomorrow if we go to vote. Friday might work. Saturday is highly unlikely. Sunday? Maybe. We’ll have to see.
I took these this morning after finishing my exercise for the day. I thought I might use one for the photo a day thing, but I went with a cat pic from the previous post.
Guitar noodling on Friday. Two days from now. Make it so.
The weather in my neighborhood has been spectacular over the last few days. It was so nice that I opened a window while I was working today. The cats loved it.
We got some sad news from the land of British Heavy Metal from the 1980’s. Paul Di’Anno passed away.
Paul Di’Anno was the original singer in Iron Maiden. Well… original? Not sure, but he’s the singer on their first two records and their original demo and all that good stuff. He was either fired or quit or maybe a little bit of both in about 1982 or so, I think. He was replaced by Bruce Dickinson who quickly became a legend and the band exploded in a huge way after he was gone. I’ve heard the story from a bunch of different vantage points and they all are different enough that I don’t really know what happened. All I know is they were pretty big before he left and huge after.
Di’Anno was in a slew of bands after leaving Maiden. None of them were anywhere near as big, but he seems to have pretty much always been working. I think there was some jail time in his past somewhere too, and in recent years he had a bunch of health issues. He seemed to reconnect with some of his old band mates in recent years and everyone seemed happy to be in touch with him again.
At this point I will do what I always do when a public figure dies. I will make it all about me. Sorry for the narcissism.
I first heard Iron Maiden when I was in Junior High School. In seventh grade our bus driver, at the request of one of the eighth graders, would play The Number of the Beast album during our bus rides. He only ever played side two and we only ever heard the title song and Run to the Hills, but he played the cassette almost every day. It wasn’t for me. Ironically, it was Bruce Dickinson’s voice that really turned me off. I eventually came around, but at that time I was not digging the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Sorry.
Fast forward to my senior year in high school. All of my friends… all of them (I think)… were Maiden fans. I was the odd man out. Once in a while someone would force me to listen to something, and it was the then-current release, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, that almost brought me into the fold. It’s basically a prog-rock record disguised as metal. It wasn’t bad. I didn’t hate it, but as with Number of the Beast, it just wasn’t for me. Close, but not quite.
Not long after that, my soon to be college roommate Larry took one more shot. He told me that the very first Iron Maiden record had a different singer and the sound was much more raw. He put the album on and that was it. It was less grand and (dare I say it) operatic and more… punk? I think the band used to get pissed when people said they were punk-ish, but that’s what I was hearing… and that’s what I was liking. What sold me on that album was two things, really. The lack of production value (ironic since I was about to go to college to study audio engineering) and the singer. Paul Di’Anno. Bruce Dickinson is better in literally every measurable way, but I will go to the end of my days preferring Paul Di’Anno. It’s not you, Bruce, it’s me.
I devoured that first album. Then I checked out the second album, Killers. The production values went way up and the energy changed. I really liked it, but not in the same way as the first album. I found a copy of the Maiden Japan live ep and that was better. The rawness was back. I ate those three records alive for a while and eventually I started opening my tiny little brain up to some of the post-Paul Di’Anno stuff and by then I was ready to give in to it and Maiden became one of my favorite bands.
Their run of releases up to 1990 was unbeatable. I saw them for the first time in 1990, which was unfortunately when the wheels were sort of falling off the bus a little. I saw them again in 2000 when they were very much finding themselves again. I saw them a third time in 2019, a few months before the pandemic arrived, and while they are senior citizens now, they still have it. Whatever IT is, they still have it. I am going to see them for a fourth time next month. I’m looking forward to it.
And it is all thanks to Paul Di’Anno’s performance on that first album. That’s what opened the door for me. That’s what opened my brain.
Paul Di’Anno has passed away at the age of 66. Rest in Peace. Thanks for the music. Thanks for the energy. Thanks for the grrrrrrrrrrr. Most appreciated.
We had never been to St. Augustine, Florida before. Our anniversary road trip to Disney World brought us there on a bit of a destination tangent. I would like to go back to see more someday. I think I’d rather have color film in the camera when I get there though.
