Monday 6 August 2012

Over the line... but the race is far from over!

I feel like I've run a marathon these past few months, but now I've finally got over the line I have to immediately start contemplating the next round already. I am, of course, talking about re:VOX, my magazine about all things Ultravox related. and I promise you that's all the (seemingly) obligatory Olympic metaphors dispensed with now!!

Since the unplanned year delay between #14 and the new super-sized, magazine format #15 (a few months ago now), I'd been planning to begin (now, very belated) photo coverage of the 2010 Ultravox tour in a similar manner to what we previously did for the 2009 tour previously in the magazine. But with so many photos to choose from, thanks to so many kind folks allowing me free reign to use their shots, it took me a good while to get every their material filed away in concert sequence and then to actually set out the first instalment of the final feature.

#16 of re:VOX - which went on sale at the start of last week - is the result of all this effort, and I'm really happy with the way it all came together in the end. It brings together much of the content from an issue originally planned for May (which would have centred around the 'Rockerazzi' interview with Midge Ure and Warren Cann, as featured right here) and newer material, with the cover now trailing the issue's main feature, an exclusive behind-the-scenes interview with Billy Currie on the journey they undertook to record Brilliant - the band's first new album in the line-up since 1984's Lament album!

Once again I've been very lucky to secure various interviews connected with that new album - although these are by far the only interviews in the planning stages right now - so look out for future interviews concerning Brilliant with both Chris Cross and producer Stephen Lipson, the full results of a poll conducted on the official Ultravox forum over at ultravox.org.uk (a site I definitely urge you to check out if you haven't done so before) which I just couldn't sqweeze int the present edition, and then there's the ong overdue start of Vladimir Kruglov's feature cataloguing the international chart activity of Ultravox (and most of their offshoots) since the mid-1970s.

In the meantime, well, there's plenty of other things going on! I haven't even been working on my Marvel UK book at all of late, yet some useful new material is still reaching me for inclusion into the pages of From Cents to Pence - as mentioned elsewhere on this Blog of late - for which I'd particularly like to thank Robert Menzies; a fellow comics enthusiast that I was first put in touch with by Michael Eury, when he approached us both to write features on various aspects of Marvel UK for an up-coming issue of Back Issue magazine.

Now all I need to do is keep this Blog more up-to-date :-)