ProgPower fan requests regarding the Maidens

[Mr Toast]

Hey!

Rage is storming the stage at the moment and Mr Toast is toast. It has been a long weekend with six rolls of film to develop when I get home tomorrow - I should have bought another four rolls!!!

Anyways, I decided to wear the Maidens shirt (the one with Charlotte's grave on it) and fielded quite a few inquiries about the band. Specifically, several people in San Francisco and South Florida would very much like to see the Maidens visit their area of the country...

Phantom Blue is still very much a topic of conversion here as well. JoJo's awesome guitar playing has been mentioned several times, as well as Linda's killer drumming.

I have a couple of photos with myself with some fairly well known people whilst doing the walking billboard thing that I will share later. Bernie Versailles is about Mel's height...

Stonehenge...

When I was watching Nightwish onstage last night, it occured to me that she and the Nightwish guitarist might make for an interesting band concept, with Mel being the maximum height requirement - I think he is actually shorter than Melzy...

But I digress. Quite a few people here know of the Maidens, even if they have only visited the website and heard the samples (they thought these sounded great btw!). Just thought I would share!

 

[Bruce Chickinson]

Thanks Toasy. I love Frisco and Florida would be fun too...esp. if we ran into Nicko in the grocery store.

 

[Mr Toast]

Just a quick followup:

I was hanging with the CircleIICircle guitarists after the gig (sorry, I am really bad about remembering names), and one of them struck up a conversation about the shirt. He had listened to the soundclips and was very impressed with Danny's "Number Of The Beast" video. I joked with them that they should have you gals open for them in Florida sometime...

I also ran into Nick Van Dyk (one of many times over the weekend) and suggested that he catch one of your shows. He had already seen you gals at the Galaxy (back when Mel was with the band) and was of course impressed...

I'm still in a state of euphoria/shock at the moment. Jon Oliva, or Uncle Jon (as we came to know him) made quite an impression on the Utah guys (the Katagory V members and a few others - they were kind enough to let me room with them). As a compliment to the kind hospitality we offered (he proclaimed that we had the best beer on the third floor of the hotel), he wore a KatV shirt onstage during CircleIICircle's performance (they were playing a few Savatage tunes as well as the CircleIICircle stuff) - which did not go unnoticed. He even seemed to recognize my face from waaay back when Savatage played the Speedway Cafe in Utah over a decade ago when I worked there - which is funny, because I had no idea who he was when he brought this up. In fact, I didn't find out until two days later that the guy I was hanging with was the legendary Jon Oliva. I made sure to thank him for the opportunity to meet him before he headed out on Sunday...

The pictures turned out great, and I'll post one or two here when I get them uploaded later in the week.

So yeah, the entire thing was very surreal and I highly recommend to everyone - ATTEND PROGPOWER V!!!

 

[Mr Toast]

Here's a pic (click on pic for larger version):



Myself and Bernie Versailles. Redemption put on an awesome show! They were the first band to play, and Ray Alder also graced the stage briefly (to sing the song he did on the album). They even did a new tune or two from the upcoming album!!!

 

[97reb]

I was there too, but not aware another Maidens fan would be there, sorry to have missed you, man. Yeah, Bernie Versailles was amazingly vertically challenged. Ray Alder sounded excellent, he really showed some great range on that song. Missed Melsy being there this year, again.

 

[Mr Toast]

Hey 97reb!

I'm sorry I missed the opportunity to hang with you too!!! Oh well, next year...

Here's a pic of me with Nick Van Dyk (he saw one of the Maidens shows at the Galaxy).

Click on pic for larger version. I was wearing a different shirt though...



The guy below has excellent taste in shirts!