Well, my scheduled posts have long run out. If anyone’s actually following this blog, sorry about that. I’ve been super busy. I may have mentioned this a while ago, and I’m incredibly inconsistent, but I’m taking a long break from writing fiction and have dived into my first nonfiction project: a band biography of the Swiss tech-thrash band, Coroner. “Tech-thrash” might be the best overall description, but it’s more than that.
So far, it’s been great, but a tremendous amount of work — much of the press is non-English, so everything has to be first transcribed and then translated. It’s very time consuming and doesn’t require a ton of thought. I spent 5-6 months doing that until we ran out, but just recently, three more folders have been located, so I’m gearing up to get back into that.
It’s an unusual perspective to have — to look at all of these interviews, features, and album reviews that span about a decade, get them in chronological order, and see how the land had lain. Plus, all the shows/tours, the various releases — the studio albums, the singles, the video, etc. Not to mention keeping track of what was going on with their record label at any given time. It’s a big ol’ puzzle and a lot to line up. The text language barrier, frankly, is the most time-consuming part, but once I start really digging into the information, that’s when it begins to become slightly overwhelming. But…it will all come together, and bits and pieces are, so that’s encouraging.
Two members are currently working on a new album, so contact is minimal, but what’s really pushing this forward is the engagement of the third, who is no longer an active member (though actively into his own excellent project). He photographs and sends each press piece, which is a massive amount of work on his part, and I would have little to work with otherwise. It also helps that he’s enthusiastic and uncommonly kind. I’ve found a lot of fanzine pieces on my own, but his efforts have absolutely quadrupled my reference material. At least. And I’m so, so grateful.
I’ve also commenced actual Zoom interviews — well, one, with him (that helps!) — which is really very anxiety-inducing, as I’m usually pretty terrible with real-time human interaction. He made it very easy, and that’ll go a long way in making me more comfortable to move onto the rest (which is a lot).
So, at this point, I’m still piecing everything together chronologically in order to get some kind of actual, workable outline together; will be returning to transcribing/translating more press; and moving forward with more interviews. Oh, and all the background reading apart from band-specific press. It’s a lot — I just took a week and minimized what I was doing every day just to get some headspace, which I should do now and then, but otherwise, it’s 5-6 days a week, 8-10 hours a day. I think I need to accept that this will take longer than assumed, which is fine, really. I just like to see progress. And I really do need to carve out my weekends — I’ve got plants coming to put in the ground. I’m all vaccinated and the weather is getting nicer — I should maybe think about seeing other human beings in person. And I need sunlight. Hahaa…
One unrelated thing going on is this: A couple of years ago I bought this sweet-ass Iron Maiden Spitfire with the idea that my brother — who puts together military plane models in his spare time — would put it together for me. I finally dropped it off to him a few weeks ago and he’s super into it, which is great! The idea was to get it done and hang it in my office as 1) a commemoration of that tremendous 2019 show, where I finally got to see them live and the almost-scale Spitfire for Aces High blew my mind; and have a nice thing that my brother will have basically made. He’s going all out, doing Battle of Britain research — he’s actually changing up the bottom design to be more historically accurate, and he just suggested the other day to get a ME-109 Messerschmitt to create dogfight in my office (and so he can play around with various model-building techniques!), which I absolutely approved. So, eventually, I will have Eddie in his Maiden Spitfire taking out a Nazi flying above me while I work.
Good times!
Lee Harper Oswald 