WIZARDS AND WARLOCKS OF FIRETOP MOUNTAIN

Y'see, I will be kicking off the new year in style. After moaning for ages and ages to Mrs.Elk that Sweden is possibly not the place for me as the punx here are for the most part very cold, busy, self absorbed and elitist - which really does not give us a good punk scene. I have told her many times that the scene I came from in the UK (and other countries that I visited) was a lot more kind of like this:

"You like punk? Awesome me too! Do you have a band? We'll gig trade! I buy you a beer and if you come to my town I'll show you around and you can stay on my floor. Here's my email address, what was your name by the way?".

I was discussing moving countries on the Organise & Arise forums and, of course got a few invites from the punx over there of "if you wanna check out (insert town/country here) you can stay at mine for a bit". Well, anyway it inspired us to pop over to Dublin for the new year where among other things we will meet some of the guys from the band SICKENER, who are personal faves of mine. The first night is a gig out by the coast featuring the band WIZARDS OF FIRETOP MOUNTAIN and true to the style I enjoy....well, check out the poster...

Does that say "bring your own after party booze, courtesy of the management"?....yes it does. People, this is what I am talking about. Awesome =)

Anyhoooo - the band name, buck me wideways what a great name! I explained to Mrs.Elk it was from "The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain" one of (if not the) first "Choose your own adventure" style books where the main character was the reader and choices were made by turning to different pages. "you are in a maze, you come to a fork, if you go left turn to page 11, if you go right turn to page 23" and so on.

¤insert video clip of Peter Griffin playing Fighting Fantasy book in bed that I can't find¤

Anyway you will see a theme in my life here where as all my geeky friends were playing these "Fighting Fantasy" books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, I had found my own series in the form of the "Grailquest" books by JH Brennan.

I found these to be much more enjoyable as they were almost a parody of the whole genre, and you were the same character in every book - Pip, helped by your talking sword Excalibur Junior and Merlin. The books were a lot more versatile, at times having things such as a map with adventure paths listed instead of the usual "turn to this page" stuff. (Yes I really did just find one such map online! Click to enlarge and you'll see page numbers on each house.)

There were 8 books in the series, Bolt Thrower nerds might like to know that the 6th in the series was called "Realm Of Chaos" released in 1986, three years before the Bolt Thrower album. We know they were nerds, possibly the influence?

Well anyway, I first bought a GrailQuest book in 1984, the first one "Castle Of Darkness" while on holiday on the Isle Of Wight (oo the jabs you need for that!)

I guess I must have given it away or sold it several years later, possibly in the early 90s when I sold a lot of my stuff. Anyway....many years later I found this book in a 2nd hand shop and remembering the fun from them I bought it again. What I didn't realise was that...it was the same book, as in mine I had as a kid! I had coloured in some of the pictures with felt tip and filled out the pages where you were meant to fill out things.

Great stuff! Always on the look out for more.

Wizards Of Firetop Mountain - if they have t-shirts I'm getting one!