The wizard???

Recently German radio station WDR 2 had a big competition in which listeners could vote for the 200 best bands of all times. I have to say I didn't really pay attention to that, I expected the usual suspects to win and some of today's popstars to fill the rest of the list, after all listeners were supposed to vote. Since Blind Guardian has never been a radio band I was pretty surprised when somebody told me that we were in this top 200, we made it to number 121, so thanks to everybody who voted for us :) And thanks a lot to WDR 2 for chosing a very representative song to play for Blind Guardian... All the bands were featured with a typical song of course, "Satisfaction" for the Rolling Stones, "Wish you were here" for Pink Floyd or "Highway to Hell" for AC/DC... Of course they didn't choose a recent song for us, they preferred something that was released in the middle of the 90's... which would not be that bad, if they would not have decided to pick a single B-side, and on top of that a single B-side that is not even a Blind Guardian song... So if you should listen to WDR 2 and somebody anounces Blind Guardian, don't be surprised if you hear our cover of Uriah Heeps "The wizard"...

How it should be...

Somebody please show this to Hollywood...

So much for playing live...

... at least for this year ;) The festival season was awesome for us, we had about everything, from storms, pouring rain, replacement keyboarders, replacement backliners, freaking amplifiers, completely out of tune guitars and the very first (and hopefully last) freejazz improvisation on stage, but most of all we had a lot of fun thanks to you guys. Next on the list is working on the new album which will keep us busy until next year, but as soon as the album is released we will be on another world tour, and of course we will also come back to all the countries that we couldn't visit on this years festivals, so see you all next year.

Don't panic, there is hope...

I guess you are all bombed with daily news about the swine flu, this lethal threat to mankind, the plague of the 21st century... But don't panic, there is good news, the disease can be cured, there is a remedy that can help you in case you are infected, you won't have to die... there are some slight side effects though as you can see on the pic showing a survivor, but hey, you can't have it all ;-)

Fan or Freak?

I have always been a huge Star Wars fan, I watched the movies (specially the original trilogy) a billion times, listened to the audiobook versions and the imperial march is my handy ringtone, but I guess there is always somebody out there that can top such things. As a kid I also had tons of Star Wars toys, actually I still have some, but seeing this guys pictures of his home (is he living in a museum???) made me speechless and a bit envious :-) If you click here you can check out his blog and see much more than just this pic that I posted here. I have to say I really think he does it with a lot of style, his home doesn't look like the average geeks place that is just plastered with merchandise, it really has much more of a stylish museum and he definitely owns some items that I would kill for :-) But well, on the other hand I don't even want to think about how much money he spent on all that stuff, I checked out the online shop where he buys a lot of his things and prices up to 18000 bucks are not really what I would be willing to invest in a single Darh Vader statue, no matter how cool it looks like. I just wonder if this guy is a relative of George Lucas, a very successful stock broker or just son of very very rich parents...