671. 7 Song Friday featuring Ace Frehley!

                         Here is our 7 Song Friday to the late, great, Ace Frehley!  It wasn't easy to narrow it down to seven songs, but we picked some great ones!

Memorial- RIP Ace Frehley 10-16-2025

            Here is a small tribute to the legendary and influential Ace Frehley.  There are better tributes out there, I know.

KISS - Talk To Me RIP Ace Frehley

                    Ace Frehley passed away today, due to a fall a few weeks ago.  He was the first lead guitarist I ever learned about, and he will always been one of my favorites.

Happy Birthday, Ace Frehley!

Ace was born in 1951 on this date.  To say he was a guitar influence on me is rather pointless, as regular readers can easily tell.  I have come to appreciate his guitar playing even more, since his solos fit the songs.  They are not just pointless noodlings or scales over and over.  I am glad he is still writing and rocking.  I hope he has a great day and a great next year on this, his adopted planet!

Ultraman Ace

 

Ultraman Ace is such a fun show.  It isn't as serious as Return of Ultraman but it is so much better than Ultraman Taro.    The monsters get a bit ridiculous on occasion, but the stories are generally good.  This was the first Ultra show I watched completely, at least after the original.  I have always loved the way Ace looked, though it is easy to tell that head piece is a little awkward for the stunt actor to move around in at first.  It had to take some getting used to.

Ultraman Ace Blu Ray review

The picture and audio quality are great.  This was the first Ultra series after the original that I ever watched all the way through. So it's a sentimental favorite.  I can't believe that was almost 30 years ago now, in raw Japanese with no subs.  Who knew we would get these Blu Ray sets with English subtitles?  I know I say that a lot, but it's still amazing to own these sets (I'm not buying Taro, no way no how.  It's too silly).  As stated, the VQ is great, so good that strings and wires are visible for monster and mecha at times.  That never bothers me, since I love the hand made effects, rather than sometimes soulless CGI ships and effects.  Seeing real miniatures is just amazing these days.

KISS - New York Groove Happy Birthday, Ace

  

Well, he actually turned 70 yesterday, but this is a great video of the band during their reunion concert.

Ultra Beams!

 This is a combination ray from five of the Ultra Brothers.  I'm not sure which series it is from, but since Taro is not there, it's probably from Ultraman Ace.  I have this Blu Ray series, but haven't been able to watch it yet.  I have tried to watch Ultraman Taro, but it's so silly I can't get into it.  I doubt I will buy many of the other sets, expect maybe for Ultraman Mebius, as I did quite enjoy that series.

Happy birthday, Ace

One of my top five favorite guitarists of all time. While I can't quite play like Ace, I tend to stand like him. I love the way his guitar playing sounds and I always thought he brought an unique view to KISS.

Happy Birthday Ace

Ace Frehley is 63 years old today.  I hope he has a happy and healthy birthday.

Ultraman Ace vs monsters

a lovely montage set to the full length Ultraman Ace theme song. you get to see a wide variety of monsters and aliens, as well as the fighting techniques Ace uses to battle said menaces. some of the monster here are a bit sillier than what has gone before, but there are quite a few well designed ones.

Ultraman Ace vs. Black Satan

Ultraman Ace vs Black Satan and an alien I don't know. good scene here.

Ultraman Mebius and the Ultra Brothers

I really enjoyed Ultraman Mebius' series.  nice to tie in the Showa Ultra series in a fun way.  this is a fan made video from the movie, which is pretty good, except for the megalo-titano-ultra monster at the end of it.  too much cg is not good.

Happy Birthday Ace!

I know most people choose "New York Groove" or "Shock Me" but I love this one from Unmasked.  it's such a great power pop song.

Happy birthday to Ace Frehley, one of if not the major influence on my guitar playing.

Ultraman Ace again

the opening episode featured some really cool shots.  nothing action packed, just very dramatic- such as this one, where Ace introduces himself and the brothers salute him for it.  it's quite cool.

Ultraman Ace

this is one of my favorite Ultras, battling a monster called Vakishim (or some variant of that):



I bought what I now know is a bootleg version of that monster when I visited Atlanta,GA in 1987.  can hardly believe I had no idea there were more than 6 Ultra Brothers then.  that's just hard to believe now.  Ace gets to use his version of the ever cool "shredding halo" here!

Ace

remember when we found out there were other "English" Ultra series?  we all knew that Ultra 7 was dubbed in in Hawai'i, and then again for Turner, but suddenly we discovered there were Malaysian dubs of the various series in English.

sort of.  heavily accented English, for sure, but at least it was true to the story and once you got used to the accents you could understand the "English" as spoken.  of course, some of the translations were interesting... "formed a giant do-nut" from Ultraman Taro was one of the funnier lines.

I really enjoyed watching those few tapes that made it over here, sometimes in poor quality- transferring a PAL tape to VHS doesn't always look very good, really. 

Ultraman Ace was the first dubbed show I saw.  I had previously watched the entire series in Japanese, the first complete Ultra I had seen since the original.  he's always been a sentimental favorite for that reason.

the 8 episodes I have in English now are the first for and 25-28, which is a good selection overall.  I believe someone redubbed the English over the then current Japanese VHS tape or possibly a laserdisc copy, though they still have suffered from being several generations away from their original versions.  who knew computers would eventually make quality a lot easier to control?

Ace is zapping the first monster he fights, Verokron.  not one of my favorite Ace monsters, but not as silly as they started getting later on in the show.