10.24.2020

Iron Maiden: The Bruce Years, pt. 1


With the addition of Bruce Dickinson in 1982, Maiden became MAIDEN. Drummer Clive Burr stayed for one album before giving up the kit to Nicko McBrain, who has remained with the band ever since. 

See here for pt. 1. Let’s continue this journey through the Maiden discography with friend and fellow irons-upper Marshall Mason. First up:

1982


Side One

Invaders

Marshall: 3/5  Not exactly the perfect Maiden song, but it is the perfect opener to this album.

Bryan: 3.25/5  Yep, that makes sense to me. I always feel kind of bad for not liking it more than I do. As a kid, I always got it mixed up with “Warrior” by Saxon (which I thought was named “Invaders from Over the Sea.” And I like much better) I don’t know how this confusion persisted for as long as it did; misinformation that got in my head in the early 80s has had a long shelf life, even still.

Children of the Damned

Bryan: "If he had lived he would have crucified us all!"

Marshall: 4/5  This song is where the album declares that it is not fucking around.

Bryan: 4.25/5  If you listen to this song with the events of Children of the Corn in mind, it synchs up agreeably. You have to supply your own “corrrrrr-nnn!” to the chorus, though. Fantastic tune. 

The Prisoner

Marshall: 3/5  I love the chorus for this song. I used to play the intro (the clip from the TV show) on my parents' answering machine at work. I was such a brat.

Bryan: 4/5  That’s awesome. I ended up a big Prisoner fan later in life, but for some reason I compartmentalize that experience from my fandom of this song. Ditto for “Back in the Village.” 

22 Acacia Avenue

Bryan: 3/5  One that others like more than me. Repurposed from Urchin (Adrian's former band)'s "Countdown."

Marshall: 2/5  This one’s okay.



Side Two

The Number of the Beast

Marshall:  3/5  Am I fired for only giving "Number of the Beast" a 3? It's definitely a good song. That shriek at the beginning is pure gold. But it's not one of my favorite Maiden songs.

Bryan: 6(6!6!)/5  No way you’re fired, no, but I can’t agree. This one hits me like a plunger of adrenalin to the heart. 

Run to the Hills

Marshall: 4/5  Of course this is the best song on the album, excluding B sides. It has one of the best choruses I've ever heard!

Bryan: 6/5  Hell yes it does. How can you go wrong with this one? I’ll never forget one particular VHS tape sent to me and my brother in Germany, 6 hours of random MTV programming (and all those American commercials). It had the videos for “Number of the Beast,” “The Trooper,” and this one all on it. Glorious moments for my ten year old self. 


Gangland

Marshall: 1/5 A low point for the band. I heard they sacrificed "Total Eclipse" for this song because the drummer wrote it. What a tragic decision. 

Bryan: 3.5/5 See and I kind of love this song!

Marshall: I do like the part, "Once you were glad to be free for a while. The air tasted good and the world was your friend".

Total Eclipse

Bryan: 3.5/5  I only ever heard this one when I got the CD. The break/guitar solo section of this is pretty cool. 

Marshall: 5/5  Easily one of the best Maiden songs of all time, and yet so few have heard of it! It's all "Gangland"'s fault. "Cold as steel, the darkness waits" is BAD ASS. This song shows Bruce doesn't just have a pretty operatic voice. He gets gritty here.

Bryan:  Your enthusiasm for it definitely makes me reconsider this one. I dropped it on my dishwashing mix, which means I'll be hearing a lot more of it. 

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Bryan: 6/5 Poor Marshall: when I sent him this spreadsheet at the beginning of our listen-through, I had only “six-six-six!” as my notes for this and side B’s other big ones. But what can be said? This is everything re: Maiden all in one song. 

Marshall: 4/5  "The sands of time for me are running lowwwwwwwwwwwww" and then the band jumps in and he's still going, is one of the greatest heavy moments of all time. I remember when my brother pointed that part out to me. 

Bryan: I always sing along with that part – it’s like the harmony to “Africa” by Toto or any number of other examples where I am physically incapable of not doing so whenever it's on – and am always thankful for that little pause for intake of breath Bruce takes before starting the stretch where he sends it all sailing up into “YEAAAAAAAHHH!

Marshall: When I was a songwriter, I tried to mimic that effect in several of my songs. And the guitar solo is INSANE.

Bryan: Just start to finish perfect.

Final Thoughts

Marshall: Total 29 (Avg. 3.22)  A high point in their career and one of the most classic of classics, but I actually believe their best days still lay ahead.

Bryan: Total 39.5  (Avg.  4.39)   Few bands manage a side two as epic as the one offered up to the world here. And like you say, it’s not even their best work!

~


Side One

Where Eagles Dare

Bryan: 5/5  Sound effects so rarely work in songs. Exceptions definitely include when the band is recreating fx through their instruments, as Nicko does here with the rat-tat-tat of the machine guns on the cymbals. Or Iron Maiden in general - they get a permanent use-of-sound-fx waiver.

Marshall: 4/5  I LOVE that intro. I heard that intro was Nicko's audition. Harris heard it in his head, and he looked for a drummer that could do it exactly right.

Bryan: Definitely Nicko’s tune. 

Revelations

Bryan: 4.75/ 5  As textbook metal for me as Judas Priest’s “Victim of Changes” or Demon’s “One Helluva Night.” I think about this list (songs that define metal to me) often enough. Those three are definitely on it, but I go back and forth - over decades, now - on what else should be on it. ("Holy Diver" probably, too. And "Mister Scary." Project for a rainy day.) Anyway, I can't imagine my childhood without Piece of Mind in my walkman, and this song more than most.

Marshall: 4/5  Just as “Where Eagles Dare” is Nicko's spotlight, this one is Dickinson's spotlight. His voice is incredible on this song. I get chills every time I hear, "the eyes of the Nile are opening, you'll see".

Flight of Icarus

Bryan: 5/5  One of my faves. 

Marshall: 3/5 I know this is a classic Maiden song, and it's definitely a good song, with a great chorus, but doesn't quite reach the level of "favorite Maiden song" for me. I think because it gets repetitive.

Die With Your Boots On

Bryan: 3/5 These guys really know how to end a side one.

Marshall: 2/5  I first heard this song on Live After Death and didn't like it at first. The chorus is stupid and repetitive. It's grown on me a little since then.

Bryan:  You just gave me permission to knock my score down a bit to where I think is more honest with me. I remember when this one of their “biggest” songs, like pre-Powerslave. The band expanded beyond this one quite well. 

Marshall:  It's funny how many of your comments talk about "sides." What are these "sides" of which you speak? :) I hadn't dealt with sides since like 1991.

Bryan: Truth. But since they designed those early albums with sides in mind, so that’s part of the pleasure. Maiden's one of those bands, like Rush, that tended to follow a song-placement pattern, album to album. It's part of why Brave New World feels so much like classic Maiden: they followed the classic pattern! All in good time, though.



Side Two

The Trooper

Marshall: 3/5  This song is all about the instrumentation and vocals. The guitar riff is genius. The intro is bad ass. The instruments stop and he yells "he'll take my life but I'll take his too!" But the chorus is pretty lame: "Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh"

Bryan: 6/5 You've got the wrong pronoun there, but close enough. Here’s another one where I feel bad for Marshall getting my original notes, which were these: “What can you say. The scene in Free Enterprise where Robert answers the asteroid/ Alvarez question/ crossword downstreaming of being a Trek and Maiden fan. ” Those were just notes to myself to follow up on - but he must've thought I was writing in code.

Don't know who out there has seen Free Enterprise (1999) – it wasn’t a big hit, or a hit of any kind, really, but if you’re a first or second generation Trekkie, you probably know of it. It was (not including the SNL skit from the episode Shatner hosted) the first meta-Trek, something which later became a genre unto itself. There’s a scene in the movie where one of the leads receives a phone call from a contemptuous ex-girlfriend, who still, despite her ex-status and her contempt, contacts him for crossword answers, which he always knows, the joke being his geekery - particularly his Trek geekery - has instilled him with actual demonstrable knowledge (at least for crosswords). I can relate to this scene, not just for Trek but for Maiden. I was one of the kids whose first glimpse of so many things (the Crimean War here, the Blitz, hell Margaret Thatcher) came thanks to Maiden. People who came to Maiden (or Trek) early in life were familiar with many things discovered by others only in the classroom. Chuck Klosterman calls the band (derisively) "British-history-obsessed" in his otherwise excellent book Fargo Rock City. True but a narrow truth: their scope was history itself, not just British, and not really with any provincial airs. Hell, "Run to the Hills" is as anti-provincial as it comes, just one of many examples. Anyway, I'm grateful for the thousand ways Maiden (and Trek, again) prepared me at least for crossword puzzles.

To your point on the chorus, here’s one where I kind of agree. I’d argue that it works – and maybe even works gloriously - but it’s a pretty lame choice for a chorus. This is a rare agreement with you on such things; your anti-soccer-chant remarks never land with me. 

Here, by the by, is where the tradition of starting off side two with a "The (occupation)" song begins. For anyone paying attention to such things.

Still Life

Bryan: 5/5 One of my favorite "deep tracks". I love when songs say the album name in the lyrics. The opening backwards-masking is (apparently) "Don't be fiddlin' with things you don't understand."

Marshall: 4/5  Of all the songs on this album, this  one got into my head the most. The intro is gorgeous. The chorus grabbed me: "Night-mares!" I really love the part, "can't you see, not just me they want you too!" I actually did have a nightmare that somewhat resembled this song. And Star Wars. It was weird. I wrote a song about it called "Blue Nightmare", and I tried to make it sound a bit like this song.

Bryan: Oh I can totally remember hearing that “Nightmaa-aares!” in the Walkman – you just brought me back to that. This was, again, a big Walkman album in my life. I seem to not be able to stop bringing that up.

Quest for Fire

Bryan: 3.5/5  You ever see this movie? I've always wanted to do a marathon of movies that inspired Maiden songs. They get it wrong here, though ("in a time when dinosaurs walked the earth…!") but hey, good line, and Bruce belts it out well. Ditto for the chorus. Some great bass in here, throughout.

Marshall: 3/5  Never saw the movie, no. This is a good song, I like it, tempted to give it a 4, but I don't like it as much as "Revelations" and "Still Life". I like it as much as "The Trooper" and "Flight of Icarus".

Sun and Steel

Marshall: 4/5  I love all the fencing songs. This song is so fun, and so catchy.

Bryan: 4/5  The opening line (“You killed your first man at 13…”) and the chorus will always stay with me, they’re just imprinted on my brain. Between this and “Holy Diver” I really had Boethius’ wheel re-enforced as a philosophical constant. And yeah, any fencing song works for me. Another way Maiden helped me out with crosswords forever after. (Epee, foil, etc.)

To Tame a Land

Bryan: 4.25/5  I don't know how many times I've heard this over the years, but it's possible this last listen for this project was the most enjoyable. What I said about ending Side Ones goes for Side Twos, too. The last few minutes are as protoypically Maiden as anything I can think of (bass propelling things, twin leads, Nicko galloping along) and then the winding it down to a quiet finish. 

Marshall: 5/5  Back when Steve Harris knew how to tell a story in a grand finish to an album. He started doing these epic masterpieces on this album and the following two albums. I just love all the places this song goes instrumentally, starting with the bass solo at 2:50. My favorite part is the guitar solo over one of the coolest bass riffs EVER, starting at 4:40. And that bass riff just keeps chugging along as the guitars battle it out, back and forth before finally joining together behind that bass riff. GENIUS!

Final Thoughts

Marshall: Total 32 (Avg. 3.56) Is it just me, or did the production value drop on this album after Number of the Beast? Anyway, this album was when Dickinson's voice was at its peak. He'd really mastered his voice and was in tip top shape. So many good songs on this album.

Bryan: Total 41.5 (Avg. 4.61) If you’d asked me prior to this what I thought of the production, I’d have praised it. Because I think of the mix as meeting in the middle of my ten year old head on the Walkman. Still do, really, but I think there’s a tininess to some tracks.

~

(1984)



Side One

Aces High

Marshall:  5/5  I LOVE this song. This was the first Iron Maiden song I ever heard. I remember that line, "got to get airborne before it's too late!" It was intense, and then the chorus hit. "run, live to fly, fly to live" and I was already singing along.

Bryan: 6/5  I can still remember the impact the arrival of this album had on all the D&D sessions of my youth. What can you say? It’s iconic, it’s perfect, it should be re-scheduled as a Class One narcotic. As should the side two opener. But we’ll get there!

Two Minutes to Midnight

Bryan: 4.5/5  The lyrics on this song were written on the back of my sixth grade notebook. I remember reciting them in my best Sean Connery impression "And the jellied brains of those who remain..." to my tablemates. Any other band this would be their signature tune. With Maiden, it's almost crowded out by other, better anthems. Almost. Still anthemic, still awesome. 

Marshall: 4/5  That guitar riff intro!! That was the first signal that this song was going to be intense. The lyrics of this song are absolutely amazing. "The body bags and little rags of children torn in two" is something you'd expect to be dropped casually by a death metal band, but Maiden had already built up a lot of credibility as not being hyperbolic, so this becomes a dead serious (pun intended) anti-war anthem.

BryanI have a friend who doesn't get metal and his go-to thing whenever the topic comes up is to mimic "To kill! The un-born in the woo-OOMB!" He doesn't understand he's just making the object of his confusion all the more awesome.


Losfer for Words

Marshall: 4/5  The best heavy metal instrumental ever written. The dueling guitars on this song are just exquisite. I wondered for decades what "Big 'Orra" meant, and it wasn't until the internet that I could find out. I searched for it, and Nicko said it's kind of poking fun at the way he talks, and means "big horror"

Bryan: 4.5/5  That is the kind of thing the internet should have stayed invented for, right there.

I can respect and even metal-salute nominating this for best metal instrumental, though Faith No More’s “Woodpeckers from Mars” is a respectable alternate. Undoubtedly, though, like Maiden's own "Transylvania" or portions of Megadeth's "Into the Lungs of Hell," this is Headbanging 101. 

Flash of the Blade

Bryan: 4.75/5  Same as "Two Minutes," any other band this'd be their signature tune. There should be a Guitar Hero Maiden song where you're just on horseback, vaunting various things. I forget the Argento movie that uses this one – Phenomenon, maybe? I’m acting like I can’t just google it, but I’ll save it for later, but I’ll add it to my one-day Maiden-movie marathon. 

Marshall: 5/5  Another insanely bad ass guitar riff intro. I love the chorus of this song, "you'll die as you lived in a flash of the blade." Then it goes back to that insane guitar riff. THAT GUITAR RIFF!!! There's also a part in the guitar solo where the guitars are doing these two different melodies on top of each other and it is just mind boggling to listen to.

The Duelists

Marshall: 5/5  This song's music really evokes the image of two people intensely fencing. It just feels like fencing theme music. The guitars, again, do some amazing magic on this song. It even feels like the guitars are fencing! And again, the chorus is incredibly catchy.

Bryan:  3.5/5 It is indeed great cinema of the mind. Not so much evocative of the (great) Ridley Scott movie, and I don’t know if it was even meant to be. Anyway, as side closers go for me it’s not great, but it gets the job done and then some.


Side Two

Back in the Village

Marshall: 4/5  Another amazing guitar riff intro. The guitar work on this song is amazing. This is one of my favorite songs of all time, and yet it's my LEAST favorite song on this album. That's how absolutely mind boggling this album is.

Bryan: 5/5  Right there with you – not a fave as a kid, a “Holy shit, how did I not love this?” fave as an adult. And you’re so right about that guitar riff! Just terrific – this song is everything metal needs to be. As is:

Powerslave

Bryan: 5/5  As is the next one too. What can you say about this? Freaking Powerslave.

Marshall: 5/5  One of the coolest things about this song is the vocals. Makes sense since it's Bruce's tune. It really evokes the feeling the song is about. The background vocals during the chorus are incredibly spooky. But the best part of this song is the guitar solo beginning at 3:00, with the bass almost doing its own solo underneath. It's exquisite. Then they really get down to business at 3:50! They just keep trading off, even the bass and drums each sort of get their own solos. Then the jump back in is absolutely seamless. 

Bryan: There's nothing quite like "Powerslave". Well, not counting "Creeping Death," I guess, both conceptually and metal-masterpiece-ly. it'd be fun to put together a playlist of only Egypt-inspired metal. Those two, plus Blue Murder's "Valley of the Kings" and "Ptolemy." What else? Leave your suggestions in the comments. 

That brings up something I wanted to take note of: the controlled-POV of Maiden songs. They're like little movies where both band and Bruce play different parts. It's not an approach every band takes, and of the ones who do, it's not an approach every band actually does successfully. It's never a problem with Maiden, though - you never think Bruce is singing about himself or Steve writing about himself. They're selling concepts, plays of the mind, etc. The "are they Satanists?" confusion from American audiences was always funny to me even as a kid; clearly they're describing a scenario like a book/ movie and not actually promoting anything. Who couldn't see that? This changes a bit down the road when the band incorporates more personal lyrics into the songs, but at this stage, at least. Maiden is pure theater. 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Marshall: 5/5 And now. Now comes the epic album finisher. The only song that could possibly top every single song on this amazing album. This is the best song ever written. My favorite instrument in this song actually is the drums. Nicko is absolutely genius on this song. My favorite part is the break where it's just the bass guitar and spooky vocals, then that lead up back into the song is incredible. 

Bryan: 5/5  What can you say. Perfection. "The chosen on-n-n-ne!" This is the "chosen-one"-iest of all Maiden's "chosen one" songs.


Final Thoughts

Marshall: Total 37  (avg 4.62) This was the best Iron Maiden album ever recorded. No, this was the best heavy metal album ever recorded. No, this was the best album ever recorded. The instrumentation on this is absolutely incredible. It almost seems superhuman.

Bryan: Total 38 (avg 4.75) So say we all!  

We're just reviewing the studio albums in this listen-through, but a quick word on:

(1985)

- the document of at least two nights in Long Beach, California from The World Slavery Tour, (if you could even imagine such a thing today. I hope no one ever cancels Maiden. It's likelier now than it was at the peak of the PMRC.) in support of Powerslave.

Marshall: My favorite live Maiden and basically the perfect live album. These guys are masters at the live show, and all their techniques were on full display on that album. I didn't think they could get that good until Rock in Rio, which I'd say is a close second to Live After Death.  

Bryan: A lot of my friends say Alive (Kiss) is the best metal live album, but that's nuts and I tell them so whenever it comes up. I'm a Kiss fan and I get that it had a big impact when it came out, but it’s nowhere close. Live After Freaking Death all the way. 

Marshall: I just don't get Kiss. They are really bad. Like, not even a little bad, but really bad. It's not that they don't have their moments, they do, but, just not very much talent in that band. They're performers far more than they are musicians, and I care about music a lot more than performance. That said, I owe them a great debt for the influence they've had on all of my favorite music that came later.



Bryan
: I only got into them in the late 90s, and that was mainly because my friend and old bandmate didn't stop bugging me about them for years and he's a pretty funny guy, and his energy eventually infected me. That and I genuinely love Ace Frehley's 1978 solo record. My timeline was: not liking them so much in the hair metal era or after, not caring about their reunion tour, rediscovering my love for Ace Frehley (1978), saying "I only like Ace's Kiss songs" for 2-4 months, then finally succumbing to the full-on collect-it-all madness. Definitely more performers than musicians, more spectacle/ style than substance, more fun to collect/ be a fan of than perhaps listen to.

Anyway, back to Maiden. I like a few of the later vault releases like Live in England. While we’re here, when I was growing up I always wanted Maiden Japan, which was a white whale of my vinyl-hunting youth. I just never could find it anywhere and mail order was unknown to me then. I was disappointed, though, when I finally got it as an adult. Maiden's got a lot of live stuff, but the casual fan can make do with just Live After Death.  

And that cover! I remember my brother explaining that this H.P. Lovecraft guy quoted on it was the same guy who invented the gods in that one chapter (since removed) of my copy of Deities and Demigods (D&D manual). 

~

(1986)

Side One

Caught Somewhere in Time

Marshall: 3/5  I like this song, it's a good opener. But a tad repetitive, a sign of things to come. Let me guess, time is always on your side, and you're caught somewhere in time? Got it. No, I insist, I really did hear you the first time!

Bryan: 4.75/5  I totally respect that. It’s true, I can’t deny it. But there’s a 12 year old in my head on a BMX standing in front of an imaginary posse of monsters and Marvel comics who is stuck in time, or rather is glaring at me from it, who is refusing to let me go any lower than 4.75. This - and most especially the next one - is the sound of returning to the States after five years in West Germany, of junior high, of a reunion with America. I realize this can't be anyone else's association with this song / album in general, but it's inseparable from my feelings on it.  

Wasted Years

Marshall: 5/5  One of my favorite Maiden songs. That guitar intro is so cool! Such a catchy chorus, and great lyrics. It's also definitely my favorite Maiden video. I remember watching that on Headbanger's Ball and being floored by all the images being flashed at me. So much history!, I thought. Decades went by, I'd since bought every album, seen all the Eddies and photos of the band, heard every story. Then I went back and watched this video on YouTube, and recognized every single image being flashed at me, AND I knew the back story for much of it. It felt like the reward for all my hard work!

Bryan: 5/5  Amen to that. Imagine being twelve and having drawn all of those covers over and over again for years and then seeing the video in 1986! It made me feel like a vet, and the video was the parade. 

I mentioned Wayne's World last time, and it's weird to reference that movie twice in two posts, but there's that scene where Wayne picks up the guitar at the guitar shop and starts in on "Stairway to Heaven" and they point to that sign 'NO 'STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN'". For years whenever I'd walk into a Guitar Center the "Wasted Years" riff was the one I'd always play on whatever demo guitar was plugged in. My version of that sign would read 'NO 'WASTED YEARS.'"


Sea of Madness

Bryan: 4.75/5  I keep expecting to listen to this and think oh, okay, I've overrated it. And it never happens.

Marshall: 2/5 It's a decent song, nothing much to write home about. Filler.

Bryan: I have written home about it – literally! True story.

Heaven Can Wait

Bryan: 4.75/5  That riff is such dynamite, and the soccer chant stuff in the middle is the best.

Marshall: 1/5  This song is exhausting. The lyrics are stupid. It's like 7.5 minutes of yelling "heaven can wait" 32 times (yes I counted), and "oh oh oh" over and over again. Talk about phoning it in.

Bryan: Wow, we split hard on this one! I find it neither exhausting nor stupid and no more repetitive than any other Maiden classic. And I love soccer chant Maiden – the strategic use of “whoah oh oh”s! is a column on my mental spreadsheet of appreciation for the band. 

(There was a lot more back and forth here but it boils down to I love it, Marshall doesn't.)

Side Two

Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Bryan: 4.25/5  I go up and down with this one over the years, all these years later still. I read the book it’s based on once and liked it. 

Marshall: 3/5 This song is so upbeat, which seems appropriate for its subject. The whole thing is about perseverance. And the drums just pounding away consistently throughout the song mimics the feeling of running.


Stranger in a Strange Land

Marshall: 3/5  I like the bass intro, which stays constant throughout the verse. I like this song. I relate to the lyrics a lot. My favorite part is the middle guitar solo. There's a sort of bass solo underneath it going at the same time. I love it when they do that sort of thing.

Bryan: 3.25/5  Not a bad song at all. Not a fave.

Déjà vu

Bryan: 4.5/5  For me one of the great underrated tunes of Maiden's career. I love when this one gallops off from the slow beginning. Irresistible riff/ chorus. Just a great idea for a song, particularly a Maiden song. 

Marshall: 3/5  I like this song, but I tend to tune out by this point in the album.

Alexander the Great

Bryan: 4/5  Okay I was looking fwd to listening to this one again given your high opinion of it. I can safely say I enjoyed it more this past listen than any time before. The middle instrumental stuff is awesome, no doubt - full-on 5 stars. I still think the verses are kinda crowded, though, cramming words in, kinda info-dumpy. ("He paved the way for Chris-ti-an-i-ty!") This is not something I hate about Maiden; I find it kind of adorable, actually. 

Marshall: 5/5  Another one of their epic album finishers. I really love the intro and chorus. I love the changes in this song, right around the middle, heading into the solo. The guitar melody there is so good, then they double it with both guitars before launching into an even grander solo. I totally agree about how crowded the verses are. That's sort of Harris' style. And I agree that it's cute.

Final Thoughts

Marshall: Total 25 (avg 3.12)  This was clearly a massive step down from Powerslave. The band was starting to experiment with new sounds and styles. Unfortunately, the members were in disagreement about the new direction, which ultimately led to the loss of two of their most important members over the next few years. Dickinson was so disillusioned with this album that he contributed nothing to it except his vocals.

Bryan: Total  35.25 (avg 4.4)  I remember reading the Mick Wall book and discovering how unhappy Bruce was with this direction this one took. It surprised me, but then it made sense. I can see how Bruce phoned it in with this one, and how the band more or less repeated a formula, the beginning of a pattern which would be repeated a few more times in the years to come. Not immediately, though, as we will see next time. 


Hope to see you then!

10.20.2020

Iron Maiden: The Paul Di'Anno Years


I did a series of posts years back on Iron Maiden, but they were intended to be a warm-up to a planned Thirty Days of Maiden, which never actually materialized. Part of the reason it never did is because while the idea was to spend a calendar day apiece on thirty Maiden songs, I happen to have more than thirty favorites. No matter how I sliced and diced it I could not find a thirty-song set that felt comfortably definitive for even such a subjective task as “my favorite Maiden songs.” Clearly an exhaustive album-by-album approach was needed to get to the bottom of things. 

That was 2014. It took me six years to finally follow through on the below, and I needed to enlist the aid of my buddy and fellow Maiden-enthusiast Marshall Mason to get the job done properly. Marshall! Welcome to the blog and thanks for doing this with me. Tell the good folks at home how you got into Maiden and why you’re here.  

Marshall: I got into Maiden around 1988. I raided my brother's cassette collection. I didn't like heavy metal. I thought it was satanic and too heavy. But I really loved the song “Eye of the Tiger” (to this day, I say that song was quintessential metal!), and I was curious and open minded. I went through Ozzy, Anthrax, and Metallica and was not too impressed until I happened upon Powerslave. "Aces High" hooked me in right away, and by the time that break in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" came, I was definitely a fan, and by extension, also a fan of heavy metal, because if I could find one album, surely I could find others. To this day, Powerslave is my favorite metal album and favorite Maiden album. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was the current album at the time, and it was around then that I saw videos for “Can I Play With Madness” and “Run to the Hills” on Headbanger's Ball, a show I gravitated to specifically because of Maiden.

Bryan: I really wish they’d re-run Headbanger’s Ball. Or put out some mega-stream/collection of it all. 

Marshall: I've been developing a Headbanger's Ball playlist of songs I've owned and am purchasing, and I'm really happy with it. It feels like tuning into the show, without interruptions or commercials.

Bryan: Those playlists are absolute dynamite. I remember how rare it was to see Maiden on MTV. That changed with Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, when at least “The Evil that Men Do” and “The Clairyvoyant” were in heavy rotation. 

I too got into metal on account of my older brother, who was into all New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands, as well as Dio and Accept and pretty much all early-to-mid-80s metal. “Eye of the Tiger” was a bit of a gateway drug, totally. One minute I was singing nothing but Men At Work; the next it was Judas Priest and Sin After Sin

My parents like a lot of parents of that era were worried I was absorbing bad mojo from heavy metal, but I think they saw my brother was doing okay, so I had that on my side. I can’t recall a time when I didn’t know Maiden, really – they kind of just appear during my memories of being eight or nine. Maiden’s new album around this time in my life was Piece of Mind (which I had on cassette so my memory of it comes with that escalating-tone boop-de-boop-boop-BEEP that started some tapes back then.) My brother and I would draw all the album covers and singles in our room in Sprendlingen. When Powerslave came out, forget it, we were both over the moon – so much to draw/ copy on that album cover! We’d aged out of drawing in our room together by the time Somewhere in Time came out, but that cover design covered most of my textbook-covers in junior high.  

I wish I still had those sketchbooks. 

Marshall: You were a few years ahead of me. I always felt like I got in right at the tail end, and missed out on the heyday, which was disappointing. I think this is why I'm having such a midlife crisis now and going back and listening and discovering all the stuff that came before my time. I've sort of owed this to myself for a long time. Now I've got time to kill and I have nothing else I'm really interested in anymore. When COVID ends, I think I might even start going to concerts, which I rarely did before, for financial reasons.

Bryan: I gave up going to shows sometime around 2005, but I’d planned to see Kraftwerk this past summer in Chicago. I hadn’t bought any tickets, but I kept circling the idea. Alas the COVID made the decision for me. I’m sure that when people start going to shows again, it’ll be the sweeping shots of hundred thousand people crowds upping the irons in South America that ease more than a few people back into it.  

Let’s get things going with the Di’Anno years. For those unfamiliar, Paul Di’Anno was the first lead singer for Maiden, singing on their first two studio efforts. Starting with:


(1980)


Side One

Prowler

Marshall: 3/5  Always a crowd pleaser, this song is custom made for live shows.

Bryan: 4/5  Absolutely. I had access to my older brother’s albums, but the “Sanctuary” single, which also had this song on it, was one of the first I personally purchased. I remember the whole thing: getting my allowance money, getting dropped off at the Neu Isenburg Mall where he bought Number of the Beast on vinyl, and I got this one. We were always pooling our Maiden; he was very loyal to Bruce and so he never bothered getting the first two on vinyl. (Another reason it took me a few years to really get into the first two albums.) 

Anyway, I apparently bought the Dutch vinyl single, as my version has "Sanctuary" and "Prowler" on it, and I listened to that thing a hundred times. I always think of both these songs in an eight year old ownership way, as “my” songs, the ones I had outside my brother's albums.

"Sanctuary" cover. (In the words of Bobby Darin, could it be our boy's done something rash?)



Sanctuary

Bryan: 4/5  I guess I kind of covered my answer above, too. Like "Prowler" it had that whole from-the-POV-of-a-killer/deviant quality that was so edgy at the time. 

Marshall:  3/5  Another crowd pleaser. The solos on this are great. This song is so good live. They usually stop in the middle and introduce the band. Then they jump back into the song. Such a cool move, live.

Bryan:  I wish more bands did that sort of thing. I like when songs become part of their act like that, like “Running Free” is the get-the-crowd-singing song, etc. 

Remember Tomorrow

Bryan: 4/5  The fast break and then back to the other section is so quintessentially Maiden. This one foreshadows the Dickinson years. I go through the same mental process whenever I hear this one: I’m just getting a little bored with the first part when the fast part kicks in and saves it for me. 

Marshall: 3/5  Cool song. 


Running Free

Bryan: 5/5   Perfect. Every goooooooooool montage should be to this.

Marshall:  2/5   It's a fun song, but the lyrics seem uninspired, and the vocal harmonies are not very good.

Bryan:  I’m scandalized! I think the vocal harmonies are good enough for this sort of song. You know all this, I know, but for the benefit of those who don’t, the soccer fandom of the individual members of Maiden is an ongoing thing with the band. Steve Harris played for West Ham’s youth squad and was even offered a spot on Leyton Orient (if memory serves from that Mick Wall book.) There’s a Brazilian side that uses Eddie for its mascot; thousands of people in the stands unfurl a huge Eddie banner. I forget the name of them; you can see them on the Rock in Rio DVD special features, though. Anyway! This is one of my favorites.

Phantom of the Opera

Marshall: 4/5  My favorite Maiden song from this era. I love the guitar riff during the verse. I love how the vocal melody and guitar melody line up for part of the verse. I love the guitar solo. My favorite part is the breaks. The break in the middle, with the bass going first and then the guitars lining up behind that, pure genius! Dickinson does this much better live than Di'anno on this record. It really is perfect for him, having the operatic voice and all.

Bryan:  3.5/ 5  You know, that’s always been my problem with this studio version. I heard Bruce sing it first. I do like it for what it is – that’s basically my take on any Di’anno song (except “Running Free” and “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which even though Bruce sings both well, I prefer Di’anno’s takes.) You’re totally right, though, this is vintage Maiden song construction.

Marshall: Interesting! I heard Bruce sing this first too, but for me that was a plus! I fell in love with this on the Live After Death album, so now when I hear the original, I have a greater appreciation for how good of a song it is, even if I still prefer Bruce's version. Maybe if I'd heard the original first, I wouldn't have formed such good feelings about this song in the first place.

Side Two:

Transylvania

Bryan: 4.25/5   Cinema of the mind Maiden

Marshall:  3/5  Headbanger’s delight.

Bryan:  Whenever I hear “The Shortest Straw” by Metallica – and this happened fairly recently so I was reminded of it – I picture a sort of Wayne’s World scene of my friend and I riding around in a car as teenagers, headbanging. But the only time anything like that actually happened was to this song, and it was much later, like 2002. And I was by myself.  

Strange World

Marshall:  4/5  This is a beautiful song. This is what an Iron Maiden "ballad" sounds like it. We don't get very many of these! I remember in high school when a kid played this and said it was early Maiden. I didn't believe him because it sounded so different from "Can I Play With Madness" and "Run to the Hills". I bought this album years later and discovered he was right!

Bryan: 3.5/5  I always remember it as just Side B’s “Remember Tomorrow,” just missing the fast break section, but that’s selling it short, it’s a great track. As you say some rare Maiden balladry.

Charlotte the Harlot

Marshall: 1/5   Meh. Gets a little better later when the guitar solo comes in after the mellow part in the middle.

Bryan: 3/5  This is one I never really took to. It’s grown on me a bit over the years. It’s weird because I’ve been saying some variation of this (“it’s okay”) since literally 1984, but part of my brain still expects hey, a few more listens, it might click. My older brother and all his friends were always convinced this one was one of their big league songs, which is probably why. 

Iron Maiden

Bryan: 5/5  A theme song! Perfect.

Marshall: 3/5   That riff in INSANE. The break in the middle, leading back to the riff is my favorite part.

Bryan: Tony Iommi always gets the credit for being metal’s riff master god and he certainly wrote some great ones. Nothing against him. But Maiden has just as many , if not more, and some of their riffs are so inventive in addition to being catchy that I think they deserve the appellation. 

Marshall: But wait there’s more. “Burning Ambition”. This is a B side. The intro riff on this is really brilliant. One of their better songs from this era. They should have used this instead of "Charlotte the Harlot".

Bryan: Oh man, I have not heard this in so long. Great riff indeed. As mentioned, I had the “Prowler” EP, and my brother's friend had the “Running Free" (and “Women in Uniform” but we didn’t count that at the time since it was just a cover) one. 


These days, I like that track fine, as well as the band that performed it originally, the Sky Hooks. I always think of them this time every year on account of “Horror Movie” being in perennial Halloween-mix rotation.

Final Thoughts:

Marshall: Total 30. (Avg. 3)  The production quality of this album is scarcely made up for in the quality of the songs and instrumentation. The singing is bland at best. But I often go back to this album because holy cow, some of the playing and songwriting on this album are incredible. But I have to be in the mood for something very raw sounding.

Bryan:  Total 36.25 (Avg. 4.03)  That about sums it up. I like the rawness (and the thrash-ness of the next one) as outliers in the Maiden experience. There’s a prototype-feeling, an alternate-universe feeling. They announced themselves fairly accurately, just needed the right band members to join and flesh it all out. It’s interesting to consider this in the context of what Samson (Bruce's band) or Urchin (Adrian’s) were doing at the time. 

Next:

(1981)



Bryan: That cover! Brutal. Among the most iconic images of my heavy metal youth. Let's dive in.

Side One:

The Ides of March

Marshall: 3/5  This is clearly intended as an album intro, and it works marvelously for it. When this song ends, I'm just dying for that bass line for "Wrathchild"!

Bryan: 3.5/5  Absolutely. It’s tough to score an intro/table-setter like this. It gives Judas Priest's "Electric Eye" a run for its money and segues so perfectly into:

Wrathchild

Marshall: 4/5  One of the best songs from this album.

Bryan: 4.75/ 5   Agreed. Almost as perfect a single for me as “Running Free” is as far as expressing a certain vector of Maiden excitement, 

Murders in the Rue Morgue

Marshall:  3/5  I enjoy this song a lot, but sometimes it feels unnecessarily rushed.

Bryan:  4.5/5  True. I really do love it, though. I’ve revised my score for this a few times but each time I put it lower than 4.5 I end up bumping it back up. This is another score I’ll chalk up to my brother and his friends assigning the song a certain level of importance in the early to mid 80s. 

Another Life

Bryan: 3.5/5  This one, like the album itself, has only grown on me in the years since I first borrowed my brother's vinyl. It's just a "Prowler" rewrite, though, seems more like entry-level Maiden.

Marshall:  3/5  I love the guitar riff in the intro, and love how they go back to it toward the end.

"Twilight Zone" single.


Genghis Khan

Marshall: 3/5  This song is great, it really works on this album, but boy does it feel rambunctious.

Bryan: 4/5  Essentially thrash in the middle. Very epic end to side one. Well, if the next one didn’t exist. 

Innocent Exile

Bryan: 2.25/5  I would’ve lopped this off. 

Marshall:  2/5  Not a bad song, but it doesn’t really rev my engine, aside from that bad ass intro bass line.

Side Two:

Killers

Bryan:  4.25/5  The breaks in the middle don't quite work for me, but the rest of the song is great.

Marshall:  4/5  I love this song! The intro is bad ass, it gives that lurking feeling that the song is about. Not a huge fan of Di'anno, but his singing on this is absolutely perfect. He almost sounds like a stalker! I heard Dickinson try this one live, and it's pretty weak.

Bryan: Definitely one of his signature tunes. I’ve never taken a deep dive on post-Maiden Di’Anno but the list of bands he formed and the lengths sometimes gone to remind anyone of the Maiden connection is impressive. 

Paul in later years.

Prodigal Son

Bryan: 2/5 Never cared for this one. 

Marshall:  3/5  This song feels really good until it suddenly stops for a weird riff that feels out of place.


Purgatory

Marshall:  3/5  A little rambunctious at times, but that chorus in the middle and the guitar riff during it, MAKE this song. "Pleeeease, take me away, so far away…"

Bryan:  3.75/5  Absolutely. This thrashier side of Maiden is fun. I’m glad it’s limited, but it sounds great here.

Twilight Zone

Bryan:  3.75/5  Not much to say about this one. It’s fine.  

Marshall: 3/5   Fun and upbeat song. The chorus is pretty catchy.

Drifter

Bryan:  3.25/5  I like this chorus, as well. That makes three catchy choruses in a row. Although it doesn’t feel like quite the bang that we should get at the end of a Maiden record. Not bad, though.

Marshall: 3/5  Cool song.

Final thoughts:

Bryan: Total  39.5 (Avg. 3.59)  This one is always better than I remembered, but it’s never the first one I ever reach for. (That cover, though!) Welcome to the party, producer Martin Birch. 

Marshall: Total 35. (Avg. 3.18) A huge step up on production quality from the first record. I feel like this was a proof of what they set out to do on the first album, that this is something that is here to stay, and will develop from here. That development is exactly what they deliver on the next album. So in a sense, Killers is a transitional album to the real Iron Maiden that we all know now.


~

That wraps up the Di’Anno era.  Ousted from the band for performance issues, he still has his champions, like this guy. He made an indelible contribution to the history of heavy metal by fronting the band for any period of time, in my opinion, and there are certainly worse things to have on your resume than Iron Maiden and Killers

The band needed a frontman, however, who’d not only show up more consistently but accommodate their growing popularity and vision. They needed someone like Bruce Dickinson, in other words. Coming next! 

10.13.2020

Killing Castro by Lawrence Block

Now, he was going to Cuba to get this Castro. He didn’t know who Castro was, except that he was running Cuba and somebody didn’t want him to keep on with it. He didn’t care about this. He cared about twenty grand, which meant soft living for a long time. 

Twenty grand could get you into a lot of big-breasted girls. You could drink  a lot of premium beer, sleep in a lot of silk-sheeted beds.
So what the hell.” 


Let's jump back into the Hard Case Crime Chronicles with 
HCC-051:


From the back cover:

There were five of them, each prepared to kill, each with his own reasons for accepting what might well be a suicide mission. The pay? $20,000 apiece. The mission? Find a way into Cuba and kill Castro.

The breathtaking thriller, originally published the year before the Cuban Missile Crisis under a pen name Lawrence Block never used before or since is the rarest of Block’s books – and still a work of chilling relevance all these years later.


We’ll get to the author in a little bit, but this was originally published in 1961, a couple of years before both Cuba and political assassination took different turns of chilling political relevance.  

Before we jump in, just a reminder on what these Hard Case Crime Chronicles post are all about: (1) they're an ongoing project where I decide which of the HCCs I've accumulated over the years are worth keeping and which I'll donate to the free libraries around my neighborhood, and (2) intended as breezy, spoiler-free fare. The right analogy, I think, is we're like passengers on the bus and each morning you see me reading a new paperback and we've struck up a friendly conversation, not a deep dive.

Still here? Excellent. 

I loved this book. It’s so sleazy. It reminded me of two of my favorite films: Sorcerer and The Killing. The former was of course based on the classic French film The Wages of Fear (1953) which was based on the book Le Salaire de la Peur (1950) by Georges Arnaud.  The Killing came out in 1956 and was based on Clean Break (1955) by Lionel White, a prolific author of oft-adapted crime books. I don’t bring any of this up to suggest some kind of cross-pollination, only that some kind of existential state of anxiety was being worked out in all these works. Killing Castro (which first saw print as the below under a pseudonym) was a relative latecomer to a well-established mood.


I’d very much like to talk about the spoiler in this one – I will consider the comments section a free zone as always so if anyone who’s read the book wants to talk about the ending, I hope to see you there – except it’s definitely one to see for yourself. That all the characters are doomed in this one is a foregone conclusion, of course; likewise, that some of them are irredeemable bastards while others have a shabby nobility is all to be expected. But how it all plays out is definitely a big surprise. 

There are intermittent sections that simply relay the events that swept Castro to power and after. Those chapters are some of the most interesting, just because the events themselves were (and remain) so interesting. My favorite of the Blackford Oakes books was probably for the same reason; the Cuban revolution and its ascension to Cold War Immortality always intrigue me. It's written with relative sympathy for all sides though of course it would be considered "rapidly anti-Castro" these days. I wonder what the author would think about the next sixty years of Cuban history?

Actually is the author still alive? I've of course heard of Lawrence Block but never read him before. Or even looked him up before. Let me do so now.



Okay, I'm back. Just the wiki but holy moley this guy has written an awful lot. And yes, still with us, eighty-two years of age. I've got at least two more Blocks in queue for this project - I think possibly even three. I'll have to look up a few interviews with the guy for next time. 



Killing Castro is a great, quick read. Brutal in spots, the proverbial bumpy ride through a shady part of town.


The Hard Case Crime Chronicles will continue 
with Losers Live Longer by Russell Atwood,
appearing sooner or later.

'Bleak and Sad from the Get-Go' (The Delta Flyers, s1 e15)

Let's have another quick look at a Voyager episode I more or less skipped during my watchthrough as a result of my grudge (since overcome) against this guy:

Ethan Phillips as Neelix.


When I first saw this one I wrote: "This episode is probably pretty good; it's not them it's me. I'm not the guy to properly evaluate this - I just can't with this guy." 


Am I the proper guy to evaluate it now? Probably still no. But I'm a fan of Neelix now, so I feel a mild obligation to re-visit all those episodes I unfairly maligned previously. And it gives me an excuse to dig up the “Jetrel” episode of The Delta Flyers and see what Robbie and Garrett had to say about it all.

(A side-note: my Monday morning tradition is to listen to the new Delta Flyers episode. This morning’s - I started working on this Monday morning - was “Tattoo” and was a hoot. I've been wanting them to get Picardo on the show and they finally did via phone.)

Anyway, back to today's revisit. The plot:

Jetrel, the man who invented the Metreon Cascade, a deadly weapon which destroyed Neelix's home on the Talaxian moon Rinax during the war between Neelix's and Jetrel's people, comes aboard Voyager claiming to seek test subjects for a treatment to a disease caused by exposure to the Cascade. It is, however, a ruse. He wants to use Voyager's transporter technology to try and rematerialize the disassociated remains of the victims of the Cascade. The experiment fails, and Neelix forgives a dying Jetrel.


Well. It's not a terrible episode, but it's still not a favorite. Ethan Phillips does some good bits here and there, and the reveal at episode's end about his own misrepresentations/ guilt is a worthy twist. But, as RDM notes (I pulled one of his quips for the title of this post) it's all a bit one-note, and the b-story doesn't really match/ mirror the A-story. Which is like Trek 101 of the Berman era. 

He also mentions another Drama 101 sort of moment when he notes how the episode deprives the audience of the "full meal" of the monomyth/ hero's journey. Most stories utilize this structure; it's what an "arc" is. (May I interject here and say I really like RDM's thoughts on drama in general? I find his insights into the biz and drama to be consistently worth listening to.) What this episode lacks is both dramaturgical story structure - something I bet even the most passive viewer recognizes as missing without even knowing the terms of the workflow - and utilization of the camera. 

The ending (again this is all riffing on RDM's comments from the episode) is a good example. Neelix's hero's journey is complete. His inner shame has been revealed, his fury re-negotiated, he's a new man, forgiven. Yet the camera stays on the guest (Jetrel) while Neelix returns and leaves. What? It's Neelix's journey, not Jetrel's! Well, it's both, but Neelix is the hero of the stroy, not to mention (duh) the actual cast member. The camera should be on him and used to show the "flip" in Neelix's journey. RDM relays something Rick Berman told him: it's motion pictures, not still life. The screen should capture movement, and the movement should tell the story. The camera is a narrator.


All this sort of talk really blows my skirt up. I like this kind of stuff a lot. Listening to artists and writers talk about the mechanics and symbolism of storytelling always fascinates me, as does anything through a sort of Joseph Campbell/monomyth lens. 

Speaking of Rick Berman, Garrett mentions here how Jetrel (James Sloyan) is basically doing a Berman impersonation throughout, either intentionally or accidentally. Interesting. 

And speaking of Sloyan, this is now my third opportunity to say "Oh hey, James Sloyan, I like that guy." He does good work everywhere he appears. Sure, like some asshole, I called him "Jason Sloyan" in my original write-up of "Jetrel" but let's not let that retcon my sincere appreciation for the actor's work, on Trek and elsewhere. 


Couple of notes from my re-watch:

- In the pre-credits sequence Tuvok refers to logic when planning his billiards shot. Is it really logic that dictates the geometry of billiards? It's logical to assume a controlled force plus trajectory/ angle will result in the desired outcome, sure, but the way he puts it is slightly... well, illogical.

- Jetrel is supposed to be Oppenheimer, I guess. I'm not sure if it's mentioned whether the Talaxians had a similar "Manhattan Project" brewing. Not that it needs to be an exact one-to-one; I mean, a sci-fi spin on a real-world moral quandary is pretty much why we're here. No problem with that, but it adds to rather subtracts from the one-note-ness. 

- Along those lines, if you want to tell this kind of story but have no intention of rising to the level of Rush's "Manhattan Project," just skip it. Make that the bar to clear, whatever your intention.

- I had as one of my notes that Ethan Phillips plays this one a little too angrily for me, but then it makes sense in the end. He's filled with shame and disgust with himself as well as trauma and rage, etc. The choice makes sense as an actor. He does some stuff with just his eyes and mouth that impressed me. Sounds kinda wrong.

- Another note that I had to change due to plot events: “I mean how many Talaxians are left for this cure to work on?” Not many, right? Jetrel's cover story is kind of flimsy. I guess he's relying on Neelix to be distracted by his own emotions. (Correctly, as it turns out.) 


- I still don’t quite get Neelix/ Kes. I was glad they talked a little about this in another episode of The Delta Flyers, but it's implied that their relationship is never consummated. So in what sense are they a couple? It's perfectly fine to have a non-sexual relationship, of course, but their dancing around certain things is confusing. Especially given her age and that whole Kes-mating-cycle episode. 

- The big monologue of horrors in the big scene between Neelix and Jetrel is the kind of thing that looks good on paper but is just too much when actually done. These sorts of things - when a character delivers the "I still smell the charred bodies..." sort of script, with slow zoom and appropriate keyboard tones - never work. 

In the comments section of my original review aforelinked, Bryant Burnette wrote something worth quoting here: "This is a good example of the series taking advantage of the conceits which are particular to it. The whole thing only works if transporter technology is unknown to the races who are involved; so it couldn't have been done on TNG unless the role of Neelix was filled out by a guest star; and then, it loses a lot of its impact. DS9 could get closer, thanks to the wormhole, but it's still got the same problem. So good on ya, Voyager! This was an example of you being quintessentially you."

Good point. And this would be an excellent list to make for Voyager: episodes that could only work in the Delta Quadrant.

I bet it would be unfortunately brief. I love Voyager, but I do wish some of its Delta-Quadrant-ness had been isolated and augmented in the mix more. 

In closing: voted dead last in my initial rankings, I'd probably move it up into the top ten now, maybe just below "Phage." 

10.03.2020

'Look Dejected and Go to the Weed Patch' (The Delta Flyers, s2, e7)


I’ve been enjoying
The Delta Flyers, the podcast Garret Wang and Robert Duncan MacNeill have been updating faithfully week-after-week for the past five months. Which on one hand is not surprising: they both certainly seem like affable company from the characters they played on Voyager, or intelligent guys from interviews over the years. But it’s not always a given that an actor will be good company in other contexts, particularly when the subject is his or her work, or a franchise to which he or she is attached, so it’s always a relief when it happens. 

Here they are both pleasant hosts and their insights into Trek, Trek Inc., storytelling, the biz, and the craft are all modestly and cogently delivered. I’m just glad they haven’t gotten sick of doing it.

This past week’s episode was devoted to: 



the seventh episode of Voyager’s second season, written by Thomas E. Szollosi and directed by Mr. Jonathan Frakes. Neelix is working out his jealousy of Tom; Tom’s working out his feelings for Kes. They crash-land on an away mission and discover a newborn dinosaur-bird-looking-thing, which activates a mutual instinct to keep it alive. Which they do until its parent returns (looking like one of the Cenobites) and, now friends, beam back to Voyager.



Ethan Phillips is a guest on the episode and is great fun. His chemistry with the guys is effortless, like they're just picking up what they were doing twenty years ago without missing a beat. The anecdotes from both the Voyager days and any back-in-the-day days are always fun on this podcast, but Ethan had some great ones. He revealed that the very first direction he ever received as an actor was “Look dejected and go to the weed patch.” This prompted McNeill to say something like it was inspiration that as an actor he never forgot and Ethan deadpans “(slight pause) I took it to heart.” I don't do it justice, it's a wonderful little bit. Still laughing about it, and my brain has filed it for something or other down the line.

Lots of great moments like that. I hope they get everyone from the cast sooner or later. Beltran's been on and I think they had a recurring guest star (apologies for no link - tough to quickly google this info) but I hope they reach out to Braga, Berman, Jeri Taylor, everyone.


Their reverie on the episode, too, made me wonder where it landed in my own rankings of season two and so I looked it up:

I don't recall too much about this one besides being annoyed to discover I'd be spending my lunch hour with Neelix's goddamn jealousy issues. I did grade it, though, which is how I know where to place it in the countdown.”

Oh. That's right, I was unfortunately dismissive of Neelix until I don’t know, season six or so of my Voyager watch-through and there are plenty of snarky comments like that one. I feel bad about that now. This is the eternal peril of committing your snark-ass opinions to print ("print"). What do you do when you change your mind on something down the line? By the time I finally softened enough on the character to start to admire various things Ethan Phillips was doing I was practically done with the show. 

This slight will not stand, and so I plan to blog up those Neelix-centric episodes to which I previously gave short shrift. They'll all show up in this space sometime over the next few months. 


I figured I’d start with this one, since I enjoyed listening to them talk about it.

I like the general idea of two men overcoming their more violent impulses by mutually nurturing an alien infant. It’s not played for laughs or drama, and of course it all takes place between the forty-odd minute grid of episodic TV, but it all comes across warmly. A shuttlecraft hits the same kind of Berman-era storm and two characters working out some issues take refuge in a Berman-era cave. Like the one with Geordi and the Romulan, but with a dinosaur baby, and with more at stake as it's two principal cast members and not just one. I think it's McNeill who mentions during the podcast how Jonathan Frakes loves actors, so he's very attentive to things actor like to do or may need or want to avoid, etc. This is not a quality always present in a director, particularly the directors of episodic television. (So I'm told)

The performances flesh out the spirit of the title (which could be interpreted as "calving," which is kind of gross to us non-farm kids) quite well. They give birth to their friendship. And from here on out in the series Paris and Neelix are friends. So that’s nice. It's a little cheesy, I guess, but everyone involved does a good job. 




Much of the dialogue over the alien infant puzzled me though. Are reptiles really the same, planet to planet, quadrant to quadrant? Paris objects at one point to the idea of a cordazine shot. Fair enough but he says “We can’t pump it full of drugs without knowing its body chemistry.” Well – they have a working tricorder, so… they certainly
do know its body chemistry. They don't know its drug interactions, sure, but that's different. I get that the alien is probably not in the database and all, but they already established some other baseline-terran-based-reptile stuff. This isn't just medical-tricorder-inconsistencies, though, here’s what I’m getting at: it’d have both added drama and seemed more Trekky to me had they gone with the cordrazine and then they had the added dramatic complication of a side effect and guilt.

Also: they lose a shuttlecraft. It's become something of a cliché to mention re: Voyager but one can't help but remark on it. Harry's talking about saving up replicator rations to make a clarinet at the beginning FFS but the ship cranks out replacement shuttlecraft on demand. I guess that's an appropriate hierarchy of demand; you wouldn't want to serve on a ship where that situation was reversed. 



I ranked it twenty-second out of twenty-six in my season two overview. I think I like it more than that on a second viewing. Let the record be corrected to reflect it is now my nineteenth or twentieth favorite episode of season two. 

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