For those of you who've hung around a while, my love of Sabaton is not news. There are metal bands with more intricate musicianship, but the overall blend of history and music sense is outstanding. They've also started a youtube history channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaG4CBbZih6nLzD08bTBGfw] with Indy Neidell, who has two other youtube channels dedicated to history in general and WW2. I'll post links to the first seven videos released up until now below, but another question has been…
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The final battle of WW2 in Europe was an odd affair. On May 5, after Hitler’s suicide but just before Germany’s unconditional surrender, American Army forces of the 23rd tank battalion joined with German Wehrmacht units to defend castle Itter [https://infogalactic.com/info/Battle_for_Castle_Itter] from the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division. Yes, you read that right. Not a large action, it was nevertheless an odd one, and the only known battle in WW2 where US and German army forces fought side b…
Peter Grant [https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2018/05/not-moodiest-of-blues.html] digs up a relatively recently released version of the Moody Blues “The Story In Your Eyes”. He’s also got a new book out [https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-stones-of-silence-is-now-available.html] . Saw them in college during the Sur La Mer tour. It was an outstanding concert, and always did like Wildest Dreams. In the meantime the Didact presents some power metal [http://didactsreach.…
One of the things I love about Sabaton is digging into history I was only marginally aware of, or completely ignorant of. So, the next song in my ongoing review is one of the latter – about a battled in Afghanistan during the soviet occupation attempt. History From infogalactic [https://infogalactic.com/info/Battle_for_Hill_3234]: > The Battle for Hill 3234 was a successful defensive battle fought by the 345th Independent Guards Airborne Regiment, Soviet Airborne Troops, in Afghanistan agains…
In addition to my love of prog-rock bands like Rush and ELP, back in the 80’s I also loved the explosion of “solo” players like Yngwie, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, etc. Perhaps my favorite though was not a guitarris, but a bassist by teh name of Stuart Hamm. His albums had a strong science fiction theme. The first was titled Radio Free Albemuth, and the – IMO far better – album that succeeded it and was my first introduction to him, Kings of Sleep, had song titles like “Count Zero” and “Black Ice”…