This weekend marks the 6th anniversary of the first Friday NI Rocks Show being broadcast on Rock Radio NI on 27th August 2010. The 297th Show has just been uploaded to the On Demand Player – we’ve missed a few uploads over the years, mainly due to problems with my laptop! (The NI Rocks A-Z Show started a few months earlier and is currently on Show number 324). As I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to stats, I thought it was worth looking back over the first 6 years of the Friday NI Rocks Show. We’ve broadcast 50 interviews (44 in the last three years) and included almost 4,000 tracks by around 650 different artists on the playlists.
Read more: FRIDAY NI ROCKS SHOW - Review of the First Six Years
“Breathless” is the fifth album from British melodic rock band Dante Fox and it is released on 26th August via the AOR Heaven label. The band formed back in 1989 but didn’t release their debut album until 1996. They’ve been regulars in the line-up for Firefest and the Hard Rock Hell festivals over the past few years and I’m looking forward to catching them at the HRH AOR Festival in March 2017. The track “Young Hearts” was included on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 29th July.
Local band Maverick release their second album, entitled “Big Red”, on 26th August with a launch gig being held in The Limelight in Belfast the following day. The follow up to the 2014 debut “Quid Pro Quo” is released through Metalapolis records. The lead-off single “Asylum” which features guest vocals from Jakob Samuel from The Poodles and a guitar solo from former Alice Cooper guitarist Kane Roberts was included on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 15th July. Maverick’s lead singer David Balfour was my guest on the Show on 5th August when we played 4 tracks from the new album. Check out the interview with David here - http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/interviews/2785-ni-rocks-interview-with-david-balfour-from-maverick.html
Souls of Tide are a Norwegian band who release their debut album “Join The Circus” through Mighty Music (part of the Target Group) on 26th August. I played the lead-off single “She’s Dead” on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 17th June and again on 19th August. That is undoubtedly the best of the 9 tracks on the album, but the others are worth checking out too.
Read more: NI ROCKS Recommends "Join The Circus" by SOULS OF TIDE