Martin Popoff - Ye Olde Metal: 1976 (Book)
http://www.martinpopoff.com/

Rating:  B+

Having penned well over twenty books, musicologist Martin Popoff takes his extensive knowledge of all things music yet another step further with his latest series of books entitled Ye Olde Metal. The foundation of this undertaking is to thoroughly examine the essential classic hard rock albums of yesterday, with a few underappreciated gems and surprises thrown in along the way. Popoff successfully achieves this through his own extensive interviews with many of the key players who were involved in the creation of each record.

While the first two volumes covered the years 1968-1972 and 1973-1975 respectively, this book is the first to devote its entire contents to one specific year which is 1976. The reader get the inside scoop on such nuggets as Ted Nugent’s Free For All, The Scorpions’ Virgin Killer, Kansas’ Leftoverture and one of the biggest selling albums of all time, Boston’s self titled debut. However, as good as those tales are, and believe me the thirty plus page coverage of Free For All is almost worth the price of the book alone, it’s the long lost treasures that Martin  has included which will really appeal to die hard music fans and make this book worthwhile. For example where else are you going to find detailed accounts of Max Webster’s first album, Teaze’s debut, the second Moxy record (all great Canadian bands by the way) alongside Angel’s Helluva Band and the first record from Starz?  Well, you’ll find it all within these glorious pages that’s where. Martin weighs in with his own opinions on each album, plus you get piles of related trivia along with his brilliant in depth interviews.

Sure this book is mainly targeted at rock nerds everywhere; you know the ones who probably still pore endlessly over the album art, liner notes, adding these various bits of information into their personal rock encyclopedia of knowledge. That’s what’s great about it, and in fact I see a person like that everyday when I look in the mirror. Get your copy of this immediately as numbers are extremely limited.