Heavy Metal Cover Girls - Gone Wrong

 Ihaven't done a Cover Girls post in a while - not since March, in fact - and since my album folder is bulging at the seams, I thought I'd better rattle one off quick. However this will not be the usual format; which is where I post a bunch of covers on a theme and attempt to be witty. 

 

No, the only things connecting  these covers are that 1. they have a woman on it and 2. they could easily feature on Terrible Metal Album Covers instead. This might be down to a dodgy theme, poor composition or a general lack of artistic...anything.   See what you think. 

Ted Nugent - Love Grenade (USA 2007)

Ok, so the artist can draw but while this might be an attempt at a "playful" old-fashioned pinup, it just comes across as tacky. 

Perpetual Rage - Empress Of The Cold Stars (Finland 2017)

You can sort of see what they were going for - an Indie comics vibe - but don't quite pull it off. 

The next band are more prog than metal but while I'm here...

Forest Field - Angels (NLD 2015)

Whereas this one is trying for an anime style and while it would look great on a hentai, is it really doing the band any favours? 

 

 

Hungry Wolf - Metal Bitch (Russia 2015)

What the fuck is wrong with her neck?!

And finally

Zardoz - Bombastic Plastic EP (Germany 1998)

Words fail me.

Remember that bad cover does not equal bad band

 

That's All Folks

The Mystery Of The Beasty Girls

 As I've mentioned before on this blog, I am a sucker for a compilation.  This goes all the way back to when I first became seriously interested in Rock and Metal although back then I was obviously buying cassettes and vinyl. 

  I'd happily pick up something with Paramoid on it for the tenth time just on the off-chance that one of the tracks I hadn't heard might be a hidden gem. Great way to find new music and if all else fails, I had something I could stick in my Walkman. 

  I quickly found that there were two types of compilation. Type 1 was the Label Sampler, where somebody like Neat Records put a collection of bands out in hopes that the established bands would lure in new fans for the up and comers.   Type 2 was best described as "What can we licence cheaply?"   I always found this second type more interesting.  Alongside the old, old tracks by Motorhead and Black Sabbath - and for some reason Hawkwind appeared on a lot of Metal compilations - you'd get more obscure stuff.  Sometimes old bands from the 70s, sometimes bands that were only popular in their home countries and sometimes stuff that had no real relation to anything else.  Those are why I was buying the rtape in the first place. 

  Moving on to the present day...

 Even after all these years I still have a small pile of cassettes on my shelf that I can't bear to get rid of, including quite a few compilations.  Here they are strewn across my bed.

                                       I've had some of these for nearly 30 years. Christ, now I feel old.

 There's one in particular we're going to talk about today. 

 

I appreciate you can't read the cover very well so here's the CD version.  

 

Dear Gods, that's ugly. A twelve year old with MS Paint could do a better job.  

The track listing leans heavily towards stuff from the 1970s that could be obtained without too much drama.

 This CD was released in 1995 and much of this material would have been ancient even then. The UFO track is from their first album (1970) and the Dokken & Tygers tracks might still be more recent but still date back to 1979 and 1981 repectively.  

  You wonder who this compilation was aimed at - either somebody just getting into rock and exploring the history or an older fan revisiting old favourites. Or, more likely, somebody who'd sorta heard of these bands and wanted something new for the car. 

 I recently dug this cassette out and give it a spin and that's when I rediscovered a track I'd forgotten about. 

 The who, now? 

     As you can guess this is a cover of the AC/DC classic done by a band who have a female singer and may even be an all-female outfit.  And I have never  heard anything by this band anywhere else. 

  A bit of googling turned up a wee bit of information. "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" was released as a single in 1985 and turns up on two other "Cheapo" compilations but there's no record of any other releases and there sure as hell isn't any information on who the Beasty Girls were.  To make it even weirder, they recorded before The Beastie Boys recorded their breakthrough album in 1986.

 The label was a German one so you'd expect Beasty Girls to be German, or at least Brits who had connections in Germany and I get the feeling this was a one-off outfit put together for the single.  (I actually wonder if members of Girlschool did a bit of moonlighting here. Maybe I should ask them.)

 That's it. That's all I have. I can't even play you the song because it isn't on Youtube and how often does that happen? 

 So for now, I have a mystery on my hands and no real way of solving it. I feel a headache coming on. 

 

That's all folks. 

 

Big D Builds A Tomahawk

 Hello again

 

  I'm making another model and this time it's an Airfix kit so I should be comfortably within my limitations.

  The current project is a WW2 fighter I've always had a soft spot for. 

  These days the Curtis P40 is seen as a bit  of an also-ran, especially compared to the late war triad of Mustang, Thunderbolt and Mustang.    The truth is, the P40 gave useful service across multiple theatres for US, Commonwealth and Russian pilots because it was what the Allies had.  The RAF would have sent Spitfires to North Africa in 1941 if they had any to spare  but they didn't, the RAF had Tomahawks and Hurricanes so that was what the Desert Air Force used.  For the vicious fighting over the Pacific Islands the USAAF deployed P40s until something better came along. You get my drift, yes?  The Tomahawk/Kittyhawk/Warhawk is another one of those fighters that held the line and helped chip away at the Axis Airforces in the early rounds, ready for the heavy hits later on. 

 Having said all that, I'm doing a P40 Tomahawk that didn't see any action, because it was serving with an airforce that gets a bit overlooked. 

I've been meaning to build this ever since I found this decal set online

 So after getting them from Ebay, I then chose the aircraft I want on my shelf
 

 

 Not only is it a handsome paint scheme but the Turkish markings make it look a bit different from the roundels and stars I'm used to. 

Next step: I needed an early model P40 - a Tomahawk rather than the later Kittyhawk variant with the longer fuselage and bigger chin radiator.  After a quick visit to Pompey's Waterlooville Models I came away with this.

 I am really looking forward to building a kit with those useful little pegs and holes again.

  I have just discovered two more issues though.

 

Problem One.

 Why is it that no matter how many paints I have in my box, I never have the right ones?  I managed to find 5 tins of dark green and none of them are the right bloody shade. 

  I may just use what I've got and hope nobody sharp-eyed makes a fuss. 

Problem 2.

 Oh dear.  I think I need some new brushes. 

 

Join me next time as I actually start glueing shit together.

 

That's All Folks. 

 

 
 

 

Film Review: Legend of The Shadowy Ninja: The Ninja Dragon (1990)

 Genre; Ninjasploitation. 

  Schoolgirl Shinobu Shindo is proclaimed head of her Yakuza family and as such, receives a family heirloom: A little bell on a necklace that summons three mysterious ninja sworn to protect her clan.  

  Meanwhile a pair of  ruthless killers are knocking off Yakuza bigwigs in brutal and messy fashion.  

  Gee, I wonder if those Ninja Defenders are going to be needed anytime soon. 

 Last night I watched 1917, which is a superb piece of film making on almost every level and I absolutely loved it. 

 "Legend... " is not a superb piece of film-making, or even a particularly good film but I still enjoyed it, albeit for vastly different reasons. 

 The acting is variable in the sense that everybody either emotes with all the intensity of damp cardboard or mugs ferociously to camera. At one point I became worried that one guy was going to be injured by his own flailing eyebrows.  

  The special effects are distinctly low budget but as seems to be common with this sort of Asian film, are definitely memorable. I couldn't help being impressed - sort of - by the guy getting his face peeled off like a bit of chicken skin on a drumstick. Then there's the monster at the end. 

 Yes that's right. A film  about warring Yakuza that already has mystic ninja in it, then ramps things up even more with rubber monsters. If I just say that this whole thing was created by Go "I am the Stan Lee of  exploitation manga" Nagai then it might make more sense. 

   Really, this is a live action anime right down to the OTT, hot-blooded speechifying. Accept that and everything makes more sense. 

  The big bonus for me was having a pair of  Joshi Puroresu superstars in supporting roles. You get Mayumi Ozaki being chillingly effective as "Female Killer" while Cutey Suzuki is on the side of good as a Ninja Defender. Naturally they square off in an epic martial-arts battle...um... a surprisingly technical wrestling match that goes on for quite a while. It's a strange interlude in a movie that isn't short of strange moments anyway. 

Despite the low-budget, the shonky effects, dodgy acting and a story that they might have made up as they went along, I found myself enjoying "Legend of the Shadowy Ninja." because it's so entertainingly daft that you just end up going along with it.   If you like the schlockier end of Asian cinema, this might be for you. 

WARNING: Do not confuse this film with the 1986 Godfrey Ho  cut n' shut effort "Ninja Dragon" which is an unwatchable trainwreck and doesn't have any lady wrestlers in it. 

Screenshot time.

Shinobu gets pensive.  "If I'm the star of this film how come I don't do anything remotely useful?"

 Look at me! I'm the comic relief. Aren't you lucky.

 This shot is cool and you know it. 

 

Ninja Defenders Assemble. 

Dude, you're breaking the Bro Code big time. 

 That's not how a gun works.

Suddenly  Yakuza, hundreds of them.  

Yakuza Assassin v Mystic Ninja in some extreme hugging!

 

That's All Folks!

 

 

 

 

Signal Red Cover All Saints "Pure Shores"

 All Saints are not one of my favourite bands but they did one tune that I will happily admit to liking (possibly becasue it's nothing like the rest of their stuff.) "Pure Shores" is a great pop song that manages to get under the skin in a good way. 

 Tell you what else I like? Rock bands doing a cover version and making a good job of it. The trick is to keep the spirit of the original while adding something of your own. Or get drunk and take the piss. (Looking at you Lawnmower Deth.)

British AOR outfit Signal Red recently had a stab at "Pure Shores" and I reckon they got it right. Have a listen.

  It would be really nice if the effort put into the song and making the video pickd up some attention from the mainstream. Or a bit of radio play. 

 Then I remember that we live in a world where WAP got to number fucking one. There's no justice.

A Fistful of Old Comics: October 2020

  On payday I decided to do something I haven't done in a long, long while; take  a stroll down Albert Road in Southsea and see if I could pick up something nice.  Personally I'd have preferred a day when it wasn't pissing it down with rain but that's Britain's weather for you.

  As it turns out, on the way to Albert Road the bus took me  through Highland Road and that's where I spotted this: 

 While I'm really not buying vinyl these days the chance to pick up a CD or two is always wonderful and that word "Collectables" on the sign definitely piques my interest. And that's why I hopped off at the next stop and trudged back through the rain.

  The owner was a nice chap and more than welcoming- definite plus point as some of these speciality shops aren't always keen on strangers - so I do hope I didn't drip too much on his floor. 

  I'm rambling so let's fast-forward to the relevant bit.  Downsairs was where I hit The Mother Lode. Two great boxfuls of old British Commando comics and a few US titles too. I was even more impressed when I found out that the Commando's were nice and cheap. 

   I pulled out a fistful at random that looked sort of interesting and went on my way with a warm glow that the pouring rain couldn't extinguish.  Here's what I came away with.  

 

 Secrets of Haunted House #27

 The only US title I picked up.  Not sure why it isn't "Secrets Of The Haunted House" mind you.

 

Battle Picture Library 1338 : Hoodoo

 

 

The next two I don't have the issue numbers for.

Curse that price sticker that I'm too chicken to try and remove.   

Starblazer - The Omega Experiment

 

Starblazer - Terror Satellite

The last few are all issues of Commando.

If you're thinking "BigD is just wanting to buy stuff that he couldn't get when he was a kid" then you would be DAMN RIGHT!

#984 Wings of Fear

 

 

 #1283: The Sword Shall Decide

#1299: The Black Zero

 

#1320: The Magic Blade

 

 

#1335: Death Of A Wimpy

 

 

#1354 Legend Of The Longbow

 

 

#1453: Man of Honour

I reckon there's a couple of hours reading in this lot and I might even try and do a proper writeup on some of them. 

 

If you want to go checkout RPM Records then here's the link:

https://myrpmshop.co.uk/

 

That's All Folks. 

 

 
 

BigD Builds A Fighter With A Big Nose Part V: The Final Chapter

 It took a long time, a lot of procrastinating and a number of minor tantrums but I finally, finally got this kit finished.   

  All things considered, to have done a good job on the La-200B would have involved ...well to be honest, it being built by somebody who isn't me.  This is not an easy kit to make by any means and I think I've already mentioned some issues with instructions and parts fitting together. My limited skills really struggled in several places.

But never mind all that bollocks. I finished it!

Yes, I know my kitchen table is a mess.

To demonstrate just how big this aircraft was, here it is next to an F16.

 

 

It really shows how much difference a couple of generations worth of  engine, electronics and airframe can make.

To finish, let me break it down by the numbers.

Original cost of kit : £15 (The same as a really good XL mixed kebab & chips)

Time taken to build kit:  Approx 49 days

Time it takes to eat a really good XL mixed kebab and chips: about 20 minutes

Parts I dropped on the floor and lost: 4

(Not counting the decals I accidentally lost into the washing up. Don't ask.)

Parts I decided not to bother with because they were inside and nobody was going to see them anyway: 12

Times I had to glue the sodding nosewheel back on after it fell off: 4

Times I used some very naughty words: Beyond counting.

How I feel after seeing the completed LA200B on top of my fridge:

PRICELESS

 That's All Folks

 

Music From The Weird Part Of Youtube; Double The Fun, Double The Odd

 It was about 11 o'clock at night and I was trawling through Youtube looking for music. What I particularly enjoy is stumbling across a new music channel and strip-mining it for anything that looks interesting.  

    Sometimes I find fogotten classics, sometimes I get cool stuff I'd never heard of and sometimes I get little moments of  oddness.  Well, on my safari into the wildlands of Youtube I found two minor gems.  

  This particular channel - or cluster of channels- was dedicated to music performances from German TV so i knew right away I was going to find things that never hit the radar over here. 

 

Let's start with this one. Pink Project - Another Brick In The Wall (1982)

  Pink Project were an italian disco outfit that had the genius idea of mashing up "Another Brick In The wall" with a couple of Alan Parsons Project tracks that happened to have similar tempo. It really does work awfully well although it took me a while to work out what was going on. 

 However, that's not why this is on the blog today. with the song a hit in Germany, studio execs wanted the band to come in and perform it and the result is... borderline disturbing.  

What you get is a face off between some sort of Space KKK and a group of children who, frankly, look like they are just about  to open their mouths wide and reveal flesh-ripping teeth. 

 Credit to: Fritz51330

 Apparently the Italian team re-recorded everything from scratch, including the iconic guitar solo. 

Song number two is another case of the song not being weird but the presentation sure is.

Copes - Hold On (1982)

  A quick look on the net didn't turn up much on this band beyond that they were Dutch and seem to have released this one single and nothing more.  Discogs.com  only lists two members so that might explain why the cameraman blatantly ignores the bassplayer and guitarist. 

  So the song is a perfectly ordinary piece of sorta-new-wave pop-rock. decent enough and with some  potential to sell records in the USA if they'd had a push.  The video/ tv performance was clearly filmed on a shoestring in a spare lockup but somebody did try and jazz it up a bit with some haphazardly-applied twinkling stars. Bless them for trying.

Oh yes, then there's the reasons I am posting the video.

  Firstly: the backing dancers - a quartet of young ladies wearing lingerie and bridal veils who don't seem to have got any choreography beyond "Wiggle a bit. Try and look sexy."  My theory is that a hen-party happened to wander past and got offered a ten-minute job.

 

Secondly: The flying banana. 

WHY IS THERE A FLYING BANANA?

I demand that somebody explain the FLYING BANANA right goddam now

 Credit to:Fritz51333

If you fancy delving deeper into the rabbit hole of 80s German pop charts then check out the channels I linked above and show the uploader some love. Ask him about the banana.

That's All folks.

Big D Builds A Fighter With A Big Nose Part IV

   Previously on "Big D Builds..."

I bought a model kit from a charity shop becaue it looked like a cool design. 

Since i'm not actually that good at building model kits this led to a lot of swearing and blobs of glue  everyfrigginwhere.

Now read on.  

 

 When we left off I'd managed to get the main body of the Lavochkin put together. Next step was to jam filler into all the gaps and bits where the parts hadn't quite aligned. 

 Once that dried I sanded it all down until I got bored and painted the result.

 

 

As an aside, the Celebrations sweet tin is a perfect size for keeping spare bits and pieces.  

Plus you get to eat the chocolate first. 

  I left off the canopy until I painted the fuselage.

 

Canopy is now on and I painted that distinctive nose.

 

I am disappointed that nobody in Cold War Russia took the opportunity to paint the nose bright red and maybe add some eyes on the side.
 

Here's a better angle on the (unpainted) nose.

Between the big schnozz and those three intakes the Lavochkin looks downright goofy from the front. 

 

  Now we come to the aprt I was really not looking forward to and in fact, this is why the update was delayed for so long.  

The Undercarriage.  

" Intimidated" is really not the wrong word.  As soon as I saw those miniscule parts on the sprue I knew this stage was going to give me nightmares and at least one psychotic episode.  FFS, why are the main undergarriage legs in THREE sodding pieces?  The Nosewheel strut is in two and the only reason I can see is that tehy wanted to fil some extra slots on the sprue.   

 The nosewheel assembly. Not counting the wheel there's three pieces making up this bad boy and all of them are tiny. Not a good fit with my well-documented lack of co-ordination and chunky fingers. 

 

 The mainwheel was even worse and turned out to be a bity of a trap. 

 

Here's the relevant part of the instructions. 

 That looks an awful lot like the mainwheel assembly  is essentially one straight line.Right?

 

So that's how I put them together.

 

Then I looked at the painting guide on the back of the instructions. 

 

 Lemme just highlight the problem.

That's definite right-angle going on there. Why is this not in the fucking instructions? 

Aarrgghhh!

 

Now I have to take these bits apart and glue them back together again. 

Did the guy who wrote the isntructions and the guy who designed the kit work in different sheds  or something?

I'm going to go have a a nice cup of tea and wait for the vein in my temple to stop throbbing. 

That's All Folks.

 

Big D Builds A Fighter With A Big Nose Pt III

   As you can probably tell, this project gets fitted in around stuff like work, eating and sleeping which is why it's taking so long.

   Last time I had finally managed to get the cockpit together and was feeling mildly pleased with myself. That was not going to last long. 

   One oddity of this design was that it had two engines. And for reasons that seemed justified at the time, the designers opted for a tandem layout with one engine in the nose, exhausting just in front of the landing gear. and one engine in the more usual position in the tail. 

  The kit had rather generously given me a whole engine to put together for the nose position with a ...complicated ... framework to hold it together.

I could not get the bloody frame to go together!        

  A definite problem with this kit was that it had none of the handy pegs and holes you get in an Airfix kit so it wasn't always clear how some bits fit together. Is part A supposed to slot on Part B or be glued to the edge?      The instructions did not clarify this. Then I couldn't help noticing tht some bits didn't quite match up to how they looked on the instructions anyway.

 

   Frankly I was getting a headache and  an ever-increasing urge to do something violently destructive. 

Then a revalation came to me.  

"All this is inside the model and nobody is ever going to see it. Why are you doing this, exactly? 

Just like that the clouds opened and sunlight shone upon my face. 

My path was clear and it did not involve the sodding engine fiddly bits. 

 Again, this feeling of satisfaction did not last.  

Trying to fit the cockpit into the fuselage and glue the shells togther was a traumatic 

experience and I had to hack some bits off the cockpit to make it go in. 

That's why the co-pilot's seat is leaning drunkenly to one side and the fuselage has several very large gaps in it. 

 

  Oh Lord, why did you make me so crap at everything? 

It doesn't get better on the underside.

Much as I'd like to blame the kit, we know what the real problem is, don't we?

Ah well. 

 Now just for a change I remembered to put some weight in the nose so my LA200 won't fall back on its tail.

A bolt and three nuts jammed into some blu-tack and job's a good'un.

 Then I broke out the putty and set about some of the gaps. As usual I managed a complete lack of finesse. 

 Obviously it needs some sanding. Then some more sanding. 

Fuck it, slap enough paint on it and nobody will notice.

Join me again for more misadventures in modelmaking and more damage to my sanity.

That's All Folks.