I'm writing this column earlier than normal as we have plans for Thursday evening. I'm celebrating my birthday in grand style by going to a live gig featuring melodic Prog Rockers Solstice, supported by the fabulous Ebony Buckle. I'll put in a couple of links at the end so you can get a feel for what they're like (the Ebony Buckle will be the delightful bit of pop silliness, 'Susan', which I promise will bring a smile to your face; the Solstice was recorded at Colchester Arts Centre back in 2023, so you can even see the venue we'll be at!).
Still no news on my Mytek contracts, but I'll be chasing them up once my elderly ears have stopped ringing. Long gone are the days when I headbanged to Motorhead (often supported by Girlschool) at ear-blistering volume back in the late Seventies. Me and my best mate Mark saw a lot of New Wave of Heavy Metal bands back then, although we were both into more Proggy music; he was a huge Genesis / Steve Hackett fan, and we saw Hackett a few times and I'm still following him (he's tours relentlessly). I was into Hawkwind and, yes, they have a new album out this week which I will be getting, to go with the other fifty or so albums they've released.
Musically I'm reliving my childhood because loads of bands are re-releasing albums that have reached their 50th anniversary. Warriors on the Edge of Time, one of Hawkwind's finest albums, is 50 next month. Dozens of others are getting remixed and remastered with bonus demo versions or live recordings. As I tend to listen to music on two tiny speakers attached to my laptop, and I'm streaming a lot of the music, the remastering doesn't always show through, but I do like a live album.
And a good documentary. I watched Becoming Led Zeppelin yesterday, which had me digging out a recording of their Knebworth appearance back in 1979—I was there! August 4th, slap bang in the middle of a crowd of 100,000 people. It was a weird mix of bands, none of which I was especially interested in (they even had Chas 'n' Dave as one of the support acts!), but worth sitting out in a packed field just to have three hours of Zeppelin playing at their peak.
Nowadays I'm less about rockin' all night and more about getting home at a reasonable hour.
The research for the Air Ace Companion is going well, although I'm stretching Google Translate to its limits. My new obsession is to find out who was the assistant to Julio Cesar Medrano when he was drawing for War Picture Library and Commando in the early 1970s. I'm surprised to say that I actually know some of the artists who worked with Medrano, including ex-Starblazer artists Quique Alcatena and Raul Vila (who drew one of my Starblazer scripts). I've tracked down a couple of others via Facebook and e-mail and so far... well, I'm still working on it.
I'm also in touch with a couple of artists from Spain who worked on Air Ace, so it will be interesting to get their perspective. And I'm researching a few other artists and editors for short biographical sketches. This is always my favourite bit of doing a book where I'm trying to ferret out such details as: was there just the one woman or were there two women who worked on Air Ace? I know you're all asking that same question.
At the time of writing I'm still deep in that rabbit hole and the answer, if I can find out myself, will be published sometime in the next few months.
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