*IS TEN THOUSAND TIMES DED*

Oh my... I cannot articulate how much I love this, mostly because I am laughing too hard. But seriously, this has just given me an entire year's worth of joy in the space of five minutes.

Okay, everyone knows The Wind Beneath My Wings, right? Here's Michael Ball's version, which I happen to like, for reference (excuse the Xena, but this was the only version of it I could find on Youtube). Classic, slow, sentimental, much loved song you can play at weddings, funerals and your Dad's sixtieth birthday bash. You know the one.

Now, here are my beloved, beloved boys Sonata Arctica (YES, the Finnish metal band, for those of you sitting at the back) doing their version of this pop classic. I... am INCOHERENT, seriously. Oh, my BOYS. This is simultaneously utterly and soaringly gorgeous and the funniest thing I have heard ALL DECADE. ~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~

Dear power metal scene, and Sonata Arctica in particular, I love you very, very much. Please do not ever, ever change, and in particular please do not ever develop ANY sense of how you look to people whose senses of the ridiculous have developed beyond the embryonic. Please keep doing wonderful, ludicrous, utterly unselfconscious things like this for ever and ever, because the world could more easily spare a million scoffers than it could spare one band THIS AWESOME. ^_^

...I would totally dance to this if it ever got played in a club. And if they play it live next time I see them, I bet I cry. ^_^

Laters,
Rath

A propos de rien, except that sternenstaub mentioned the Eurovision, I've just found the bestest photo of Lordi that I've seen in ages. Castle + monsters = win. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

WUS last night was completely off the sanity chart, since we got a prog set and a weird covers set right after each other. Word to the wise: don't cover Megadeth. You do not sound like Dave Mustaine, and consequently absolutely nothing you can do to the vocals will do anything but detract from the awesome. On the good side, I did get to headbang myself into rapturous oblivion to the Children of Bodom cover of Alice Cooper's Bed of Nails, which is one of the most brilliant things ever. There's this one moment in the chorus where the lead guitar line collides absolutely amazingly with the note Alexi's singing and it makes the back of my neck tingle every time. Eeeeeeeeee. *shivers*

There were also two (that I picked up) weird Manowar covers in there and now I have a terrible urge to listen to Manowar a lot. Okay, I don't think that's so terrible, but I bet everyone else does.

Meanwhile, I am so dead of tired right now. Luckily I am off work this afternoon. Downtime plz...

Laters,
Rath

Bon Jovi, Heartbreak Eyes.

This apparently is a lost demo from the first Bon Jovi album. The user who posted it has a ton of similar outtakes, demos and so on (man, gonna be here all night!), but Bon Jovi has a particular place in my heart, so this is something a little special for me.

Cos... one of the fucked up things, for me, about the invention of sound and video capture technology is that even while it gives us chance to have the past at our fingertips, it really rams home the fact that you can't have it all, ever. There's more material already on record than any one person could ever sift for everything they wanted to hear, and much of it locked in vaults or forgotten in attics where you couldn't get to it anyway; and that's before you start asking for the stuff that wasn't caught on the magic reels, the one-nights-only that nobody taped, the old episodes that the BBC threw out. The rehearsals where someone achieved that one perfect riff while the deck wasn't running.

And even what we do capture and get to general release, is never the same as being there. This is why I love eighties hair metal videos and watch them with tears in my eyes; they're like tiny perfect splinters, sent shattering to the winds when the nineties put a sledgehammer through my sonic birthright and sent the pieces flying through time on the precarious wings of VH1 Classic and fans' old tape collections. And somehow, miraculously, they survived until now, twenty years later, they can embed themselves under my skin and dump their small cargos of preserved light and sound and beauty into my veins. I'm staring through a Youtube-sized, pixellated window into an age that doesn't exist any more and probably never did outside the daydreams of a pack of fluffy-haired adolescents in tight trousers, and it hurts so much to know that it was broken before I ever got there - but I can never stop hunting for more pieces.

...maybe some part of me still does believe that one day I'll find them all and be able to put it back together. *soft smile*

Rath

If you can hear this sound somewhere in the distance:

./~BURN DOWN JERUSALEM
My wish is your command...!./~

it is almost certainly me singing along on the astral plane loudly enough to be actually audible. Cannot... stop... listening... to Dream Evil's Crusader's Anthem. And every time I play it I seem to be turning it up another notch.

Have not felt like this since was seventeen and playing air guitar while standing on bed listening to Dio and Manowar. Currently not sure which of mp3 player, heart, brain, and universe is going to explode first. \m/^_^\m/ ♥ ♥ ♥

SEND HELP. AND BIGGER SPEAKERS.

The Navigator

And, 'nother meme! This one from zeldenthuis. You comment, I give you a letter. You post five songs that start with that letter, ideally with some kind of upload or link!

Apparently, annoyingly few songs I love start with an R. >.> Still, I can cheat if I have to, because the word "Rock" does indeed start with an R...

( Onward! )

Actually, there are more I could've included, but I'll be good and stop. Anyone want a letter?

Laters,
The Navigator

[This is Thursday's post that I didn't make because the internet crashed. Friday's later on!]

More than half way! Though to be honest I don't know that I'm going to want to stop this after eight days... it's good for my mood as it makes me take a mental note of everything good that happens over the day. ^_^ So today:

1. lookingforsigns bought me a gorgeous opalite stone! Opalite is magic - in low light it's the blue-green white of winter ice, but any light shining through it comes out on the other side a deep, glowing red-orange colour. Like fire at the heart of winter... so beautiful I feel like I should have gone blind just staring into it. Thank you, sis. *s*
2. Looking at the moldavite pendants in Nomads, at sternenstaub's suggestion. I know exactly which one I want - it's a piece of rough moldavite held by silver wire, with a pink cabochon-cut stone above it. I held it in my hands for a few moments and my palms tingled for the next five minutes. Unfortunately it costs *whisper* a hundred and twenty pounds, so I will almost certainly never have it... but it made me happy to look at and touch it for a bit anyway. (Moldavite is earth that was thrown up by a meteorite impact and fell back fused into olive-green glassy stone, by the bye - it's weird and wonderful in the highest degree!)
3. Indigo's smoked-salmon-and-cream-cheese bagels - awesome comfort food - and their caramel slices, which today were absolutely fantastic. Basic-style good food is one of life's most underrated luxuries.
4. Koi doing an impression of a set of bagpipes attacking somebody. This is a noise I don't think I can physically describe, but I laughed until it hurt. Koi is great at sound effects. ^_^
5. Various mental images involving attractive men, whips, and black leather. Why my brain is generating this sort of thing today I do not know but I am not about to complain.
6. Music! Within Temptation's The Silent Force is a gorgeous, gorgeous album. *sighs happily*

Laters,
Rath

Overheard last night:

navigatorsghost, frowning at a large sheaf of paint swatch cards: "I want something pretty to stare at while I'm in bed." *pause* "So since I'm single, I'll have to paint the ceiling."

In related news, I am apparently still a teenage metalhead. I've been trying to work out what colours to paint my room and I've told myself "not black, it's too much of a bitch to paint over and the landlord will hate me." Because I am trying to be grown up. Unfortunately it turns out that every colour scheme I know how to do a decent job of uses black as a base colour...

I think I have an alternative scheme now, but just in case anyone here is a frustrated Changing Rooms star... what colours should I paint my room? Answers in the comments please!

Laters,
The Navigator

If you saw me in a police car, what would you assume I'd been nicked for?

Laters,
The Navigator

argh argh gig tonight so much shit that could go wrong want to crawl under a bucket argh...

sternenstaub, you won't believe this one - look at it! Clearly the subversive street art campaigns of late have gone all the way to the top. *stares* And it works by grasshopperbeast power! Lookit!

And less dramatic, but so perfectly Me in its nature that I can't resist posting it, is this: my favourite Motörhead ballad complete with various art of the Grim Reaper. Yes, I did say Motörhead ballad, there is such a thing. I know you're amazed and most people apparently hate this song anyway, but... whatever. I love it. Lemmy's vocals sound all the more emotive for the fact that he's really struggling to make his voice do what he wants, and those soaring, mourning, achingly cold guitar leads feel like they're being raked down my very soul. So beautiful.

Aaaand... that is all. Now I go back to copy-editing. Laters!

Rath

I usually don't have much (any) time for Christian metal, but even I have to sit up at the idea of a Capuchin friar, aged 62, fronting a metal band.

This is fantastic. The guy's not even preaching from the stage, or at least he alleges not to be. He's just a former missionary and member of a holy order who caught heavy metal and decided he had to be part of it. There are no words for how much glee I feel at this - it certainly provides good evidence for my belief that if you have metal in your blood you will find your way to it, no matter how long or circuitous or downright bizarre the route. ^_^

And, this? The fact that I'm amazed to hear something so open-minded from a Christian is probably a damning reflection on Christianity's spokespeople in general, but:

"I never did it to preach, I did it because music is beautiful ... If I want to convert people, I simply want to convert them to life, to welcome life, to enjoy life ... I am religious and I am a priest but I am not doing this to convert people to Christ, to faith or the Church, but for them to try to understand life, to be able to enjoy it. Nothing more." - Friar Cesare Bonizzi

Yes. YES. Because what the hell else are you supposed to be doing up on that stage? Amen, brother!

Incredulously but frankly delightedly,
Rath