ROCKNATION CD SAMPLER ISSUE 23 CD SAMPLER ISSUE 23 | Page 3

ROCKNATION ISSUE 23

Helix has 6 limited pressing Re-Issue’s coming out on Perris Records.
The Cds are 500 pressing only “Back For Another Taste”, “Live in
Buffalo”, “Rockin’ In My Outer Space”, “half ALIVE”, “It’s A Business
Doing Pleasure” & “B SIDES”.The CDs are available online and CD
stores. They are also available for downloads please tell us about that.
I’m re-doing the Helix website over the past six months. Part of the re-organization has been to list all the CDs that I own for digital download on the site.
As well, I’ve been going through the hours and hours of film I have from over
the band’s career-everything from inside the studio on our very first album
Breaking Loose in 1979 to the Ian Gillan Tour in 1990 in Europe to the Alice
Cooper tour a few years back. It’s truly been a labor of love and a massive
undertaking. As for the re-issues from Perris, I’m extremely happy about that.
It’s not really practical for me to do it myself as it would be too expensive, so
for a record company to re-release them helps keep the music out there in
the public eye. The real money today is in playing live; having the music still
available for fans helps to feed that and keep it going.

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Brian Vollmer with Danko Jones

You are also recording a new track for a new best of CD called “ROCK IT SCIENCE” also available on Perris Records.
What can you tell us about that song?
The song is called “(Gene Simmons says) Rock Is Dead. The idea for the song came from a recent interview Gene did where
he voiced the opinion, “Rock didn’t die of old age-it was murdered”. He then went on to say that young musicians should give
it up before they even start. A lot of people, including myself, disagreed with that statement. Anyways, I thought it was a great
song title, so I took it to Sean Kelly, whom I wrote Vagabond Bones and Bastard of the Blues with. He agreed with me and
before you know it, had the song pretty much completed. Ironically, the very theme of Gene’s statements are reflected in the
way we plan to market this track. Sales of full length CDs have really fallen in the last couple of years and there has been a
huge shift to singles, much like when rock and roll first started...Back then acts like Elvis would release singles to radio, and
when they had enough hit singles then they put together an album. Nowadays, with Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc. people
have short attention spans and the single is making a big come back. Fans are less likely to get into the “meat” of an album
and explore the secondary tracks. So for us, we decided to concentrate on marketing (Gene Simmons says) Rock Is Dead as
the only new track on this disc, which is an advantage of sorts, as it allows us to concentrate on working the song at Canadian
radio along with an accompanying video without worrying about the cost of producing a new full length CD, which would have
cost much more money and probably have the other songs on the disc lost to obscurity. In the future we’ll probably follow this
game plan-release a single with an accompanying video and concentrate on working just one song. Once we release 8 or 9
singles then we’ll put together an album.
What Helix plans do you have for 2016?
Lots. The musical landscape has also changed dramatically in regards to live gigs as well. Nowadays we play mostly festivals and casinos. The bar scene has gone the way of the DoDo bird. So far this year we’ve played the Monsters of Rock Boat
Cruise and this weekend we’re heading out to western Canada for two sold out casino shows with our old friends KICKAXE.
Festival dates this summer have us playing from
coast to coast with everyone from Vince Neil
(Mattawa, Ontario) to The Cult (Thunder Bay) to
Quiet Riot (Kitchener, On). I’ll also be working
constantly on the new Helix website and planning
another website for what I teach-the old Italian
method of singing called Bel Canto. I’m one of
the last people in the world to teach it in it’s pure
form.

Brian & Lynda Vollmer with Tom Mathers at Sweden Rock