Introduction of Fuse Wire

During the seventies there was a clear boundary between Rock and Hard Rock. By the end of that decade the upcoming New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) changed that musical landscape completely, and has set the pace for the things to come…..

In those days several Hard Rock & Metal magazines were founded in order to inform the Fan base; of which I also became part of.  Eventually together with a good friend we started a magazine called “Zwaartekracht” (later we changed the name into “Metal Europe”) to provide fuel for the fire in order to meet the heavy demand from the Fan base. Those times were very exciting for us. We were interviewing our favourite artists, visiting concerts and even had the opportunity to review albums before they got officially released and available in the record stores.  News spreading and sharing was mostly based on:  the physical distribution of magazines, by word of mouth and by meeting each other at local record stores and concerts.

The first editions of our magazine were compiled on a Xerox-copier machine, but became quite popular in the underground despite the poor printing quality.  The result of increased sales meant that we could finally afford to go to a professional printer. This made it possible for us to really expand the market. Every edition of our magazine had to be more special and better. We therefore invested a lot of the profits from previous sales into the next issue. Colour printing however proved to be too expensive at that time, so all the photographs were taken in black & white. During that period I was a student and had no cash to buy a camera, so I borrowed the camera from my dad or sometimes from some other family friend. Most of the time there was still a film in the camera so I had to process that first before starting with my own film. 

Those were the analogue days. Now with the high-tech possibilities of digital cameras and mobile phones means that now, one is no longer dependent on the grace of the stage lighting engineer.