The one thing that I'm most interested in/fascinated by is music, starting with the hard rock / heavy metal of the 80s. I remember 'progressing' from Bon Jovi, Def Leppard & Whitesnake to AC/DC, Van Halen & Iron Maiden to Metallica, Megadeth & Slayer. I also love great instrumental guitar records by the likes of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai.
Somewhere along the way I developed kind of an 'obsession' with the all female band Vixen, who seemed to be almost the perfect band. They had the sound, the songs, each individual member was very strong and they all had great chemistry/personality - and yes, they had the looks as well ;-)
Even though the line up has changed so that only Jan Kuehnemund remains from the band that put out the first two albums, I still follow them closely ; go to
www.vixenrock.com to find out the latest news.
I'm also interested in any projects that former members are involved with. Currently that includes Share Ross with Bubble ( www.planetbubble.com ) although they haven't been very active for a while, and Roxy Petrucci with her new band Roktopuss along with former Femme Fatale vocalist Lorraine Lewis ( www.myspace.com/roktopuss ). Also kind of a former member is Roxy's sister Maxine Petrucci (she played bass on one tour), her site is www.myspace.com/maxinepetrucci
You can also find some additional Myspace pages for them, e.g. Share and Roxy's personal pages and ones for the individual members of Vixen - Jan, Jenna, Kat & Lynn. Plus I've been doing a Vixen webpage for several years now, you can see it here www.neilsvixenpage.com
In the last few years I've been heavily into gothic or symphonic metal bands, usually with female vocals. For me, this all began with The Gathering who with the amazing Anneke van Giersbergen on vocals were like saviours, just when I thought I was never going to find a great new band ever again! From there I discovered other bands in a similar style or with more operatic vocals, like Within Temptation, Lacuna Coil, Nightwish, After Forever, Epica ...
To bring things right up to date, a couple of my current favourite bands are Arch Enemy and Opeth. One is 'pure fucking metal' and the other make incredible progressive compositions, typically around the 10 minute mark, with elements from beautiful acoustic interludes to harsh death metal vocals.
So with that little introduction out of the way, I'll be posting some blogs about shows I've been to, including any good pictures I was able to take.
I also like to play the guitar and figure out and transcribe any and every type of guitar part, even arrange other instruments for guitar. You can see some transcriptions on my Vixen page but I'll probably post some other stuff on here.
================================================Just a little test video :