Natasha Scharf's Blog

Disclaimer: This post is about going vegan. If you’re not interested, please move along!

One of my strongest childhood memories dates back to when I found out that the chicken on my plate came from the hens I’d seen at a local farm. I would have been about two years old at the time. I remember being horrified and I refused to finish my dinner. By the time I was 12, I was spending my pocket money on vegetarian food and by 19, I had given up eating eggs and dairy products as well.

My transition...

Regular readers of my blog may have noticed that I wrote for the TeamRock brand. On the eveningof Monday, December 19, the media started reporting that TeamRock had gone bankrupt and that everyone – staffand freelance contributors – had been immediately suspended without any pay. I was working from TeamRock’s London offices when the administrators arrivedand it all happened very quickly. At around 4.30pm, two menfrom FRP Advisory came into the office, toldus all that the company had gone bank...

Halloween greetings from London, England – it’s my favourite day of the year!

I’ve spent the last few months raiding the stores for Halloween goodies and once again, TK Maxx/Homesense has had the best pieces in. I’ve found cobweb and skull-printed tumblers made from actual glass, spooky skull lamps, the most amazing skull-decorated dressing table mirror, a Dracula cookie barrel (which I’m using to store spaghetti) and even a silicone baking spatula with spiders all over it. Yet again, I wish...

Simone Simons and Mark Jansen give the lowdown on their new album The Holographic Principle

Epica will be releasing their seventh album The Holographic Principlevia Nuclear Blast on September 30 and it’s the symphonic metal six-piece’s most ambitious creation to date. Nearly all 12 of its songs are based around the idea that everything in the universe could be a computer-generated hologram. “It’s a serious theory,” says founding guitarist Mark Jansen. “Scientists have come up with this hypot...

Last weekend I was in Helsinki and this weekend, I’ll be inLondon’s Rough Trade East to chat with The Cure’s co-founder Lol Tolhurst about his latest memoir, Cured: The Tale Of Two Imaginary Boys. I’m really enjoying reading the book and can’t wait to interview Lolat one of my favourite record stores.

The event takes place at 2pm on Saturday 24 September, it’s completely free and there will also be an audience Q&A afterwards so come on down and say ‘hi’!

Last weekend, I was invited out to Helsinki in Finland for an exclusive preview of Nightwish’snewlive DVD, Vehicle Of Spirit. There was even time to catch The 69 Eyes in concert and pick up a copy of frontman Jyrki 69’s Rock’N’ Roll Juicer book too. I had an amazing time and wrote up this report of the DVD screening for Prog Magazine.

Read on…

Nightwish showcase their Vehicle Of Spirit live DVD in Finland.

It’s just after lunchtime on a cloudy Saturday in September whenProg joins a group of...

Epica singer Simone Simons loves Game Of Thrones and Gladiator. But don’t let her near a toilet bowl with a Morticia Addams dress…

Singer, artist and blogger Simone Simons was catapulted from unknown vocalist to Epica’s leading lady and symphonic metal pin-up in the early 00s. She’s sung on every one of the Dutch band’s album, has guested for Kamelot and Leaves’ Eyes and today balances life as a musician and a mother. As Epica prepare to release their seventh album, The Holographic Principle,...

Last week, I went to Rebellion punk festival in Blackpool for the very first time. It was brilliant so I wrote about some of the highlights for Teamrock Online.

++++++++++++++++++++++ What happened when thousands of punks descended upon a British seaside town? 10 reasons why Blackpool’s Rebellion Festival was the dog’s bollocks.

We came, we pogoed and we celebrated 40 years of punk at Rebellion Festival, the UK’s biggest dedicated punk event. For the first time in its 20 year history, the fes...

Just taking a quick breather from writing my next (top secret!) book to sharesome news.

A while ago, I was approached by the best-selling author Martin Roach about being on the cover of a new book on oral histories calledTribe: Made in Britain: A Personal History of British Subculture. I’m excited to say it’s out now and it’s my very first book cover! I’m really looking forward to sitting down to read it.

Martinalsointerviewed me for his Dr. Martens: A History of Rebellious Self-Expressionboo...

Ex-Nightwish singer Tarja Turunen is proving her critics wrong with a pair of new solo albums

“The whole thing was such a shock, because it came out of nowhere – I never expected anything like that, and neither did my husband,” says Tarja Turunen, talking to us on the phone from Berlin. She is remembering the moment, a decade ago, when she was publicly sacked from symphonic metal giants Nightwish. “The Earth was shaking, everything was shaking, and we were both crying for two weeks.”

It’s...