#411: Stop Playing ‘Beth’ – The Post-Sausagefest Countdown

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RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#411: Stop Playing ‘Beth’ – The Post-Sausagefest Countdown

Perhaps the only bigger production than going to Sausagefest is coming home from Sausagefest.  At least when you’re travelling with Uncle Meat.

As we have previous years, Uncle Meat rode up with me.  This time he slept in my car too.  This pretty much left me responsible for him.  I roused bright and early from a restful slumber on Saturday morning to evacuate my bladder.  Imagine my surprise when I found, at 6:30 in the morning, Uncle Meat, Bucky and Matt still up from the night before.  They were just starting to fall asleep when I took my morning shit.  I then went back to sleep in my tent for a few more hours.

Our Saturday morning tradition is to hit up the Flying Spatula in Flesherton for our breakfast fill-up.  Sebastien, driving his 4×4, stopped by my tent and asked if I was riding up with him.  Ready for some bacon and eggs, I hopped on board with Seb, while Meat snoozed away in my car’s passenger side seat.

My first controversy of the weekend was not waking Meat up for breakfast.  Being that he had only gone to bed a couple hours before, I thought I was doing him a favour.  Apparently not.  “Breakfast before sleep!” he said.  Apparently that’s the Meat priorities.

Saturday went off without a hitch, breakfast arrangements aside.  I will post the full 78 song countdown (plus a couple odds n’ ends) in the days ahead.  Saturday night was loaded with long bombers, such as “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (13 minutes), the live “Child in Time” from Made In Japan (12 minutes), and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (25 minutes).  The excellent countdown (dubbed “the greatest songs of all time”) ended after midnight.

Sunday morning, I found I had the most difficult job of all.  It took me an hour and a half (close to two hours) to wake Uncle Meat from his slumber.  As the others were packing up their tents and heading off into the sunrise, I found I had a passenger unwilling or unable to rouse himself.  “If you let him sleep in your car again next year, then there will be nobody to blame but you,” said Troy.

I cranked “I Stole Your Love” at max volume.  No reaction.  Tom threw a 12-pack of socks at his head (photo above).  No reaction.  I played Kiss’ “Beth”, followed by the 1988 Eric Carr re-recording.  Still  nothing.  Only when I put the car in drive and started moving it around did Meat finally decide to wake himself.  I took him on a drousy “drive of shame” to visit all the people who had no trouble waking up.  “I have a boner” he announced.  Yes, it’s true — Uncle Meat woke up with wood.

After telling us all about his boner, he kept shouting “Stop playing ‘Beth’!” even though the song was no longer playing. This continued when we pulled into our first stop, Top of the Rock, for him to get his first coffee. “Stop playing ‘Beth’!” he shouted in a barely-there voice, any time somebody was in his vicinity.

“Stop playing ‘Beth’!” he shouted, when his roomate Zack also pulled into Top of the Rock. Zack informed us, “That’s just him. He’ll just keep repeating it unless he gets something new in his head.” Zack paused and said, “Watch. Rododendron!”

“Rhododendron!” shouted Meat, parroting his roomate. “Rhododendron! Stop playing ‘Beth’!”

And that was it pretty much the rest of the ride home. A selection of brief statements, repeated ad nauseum: “Rhododendron!” “Stop playing ‘Beth’!” “Coffee!” Repeat.

The weekend more than made up for the ride home. Sebastien and I shot lots of footage, including underwater stuff with his GoPro. For the first time ever, we will be combining footage and doing the annual videos together. Be patient, this will be worth it.

Three albums I must own, after this year’s Sausagefest:

  • Trouble – Trouble (1990)
  • Rheostatics – Whale Music (1992)
  • Grand Funk Railroad – Live: The 1971 Tour (2002)

Stop playing “Beth”? Never, man! Stay tuned….

48 comments

  1. That quote was not from me sir it was from Troy, I wisely advised you to LIVE AND LEARN..he he he Meat can sleep in my car next year for a modest fee of 5000 dollars :-)

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        6. Beth I hear your order
          But I can’t cook eggs right now
          Chef Uncle Meat keeps repeating.
          The same god damn sounds.
          Just a few more hours.
          And I’ll be back in K Dub.
          I never ever want to see.
          Another dude in my car with a chub.

          ;)

          Liked by 1 person

    1. Yes! Admiring the county map at Flying Spatula, I saw your East office was pretty much due West.

      As I’m sure you know, it was a lovely sunny weeks of no rain!

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      1. Yeah you ain’t far off from here, and it was a lovely weekend. Sadly, we weren’t even here! I hope you know that our clearing out for the weekend had nothing to do with your arrival…

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        1. You could have smelled us if the wind were blowing in the right direction, believe me. It was a mixture of beer, potato chips and puke.

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        1. There’s a story about that. Peter Criss wrote it with Stan Penridge but it wasn’t up to par. Bob Ezrin took it home, wrote the piano parts, fixed the melodies etc…brought it back to Peter and said, “Is this kind of how you meant it, Peter?” So Bob Ezrin actually wrote the majority of “Beth”, and that’s why it’s so perfectly written.

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        3. Kiss is loaded with crazy stories about who really wrote and played what. Very fun and interesting to get into. For example later on, Ace Frehley played a LOT of bass, especially on his own songs. That’s why a song like “Torpedo Girl” has a much more funky and complex bass line. But these things were NEVER credited.

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        4. That’s really interesting and must indicate an excellent working dynamic among them. How intriguing that their individual contributions this way were never credited. Either they get along incredibly well or there’s been some issues since then.

          Liked by 1 person

        5. Lots of issues sadly.

          Kiss were originally formed with the idea “nobody plays on our records except us”, but on Destroyer Ace Frehley failed to show up for a session. He had a card game. So they called up Alice Cooper’s guitar player Dick Wagner to play the solo on “Sweet Pain”.

          That opened the door…any time some one was drunk, sick, or otherwise unavailable, they’d replace them on the song. This created a lot of anger and bitterness.

          When Peter Criss showed up to record Dynasty, he was too out of it to play. They replaced him on the whole record except one song. Same with the next album. And the fans had NO idea!

          These are some of the many reasons why the original Kiss isn’t together anymore.

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        6. That’s too bad! I was hoping that it meant they got along so well that they didn’t need these formalities. I guess problems are inevitable when people are too sick/drunk/winning at cards to show up. I didn’t even know that this isn’t the original Kiss lineup. (It’s true that I haven’t listened to much Kiss until recently :)).

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        7. You just touched on the biggest issue of all! The current Kiss has two replacement members wearing the old makeup. Needless to say, the original members and some fans are angry!

          I’m not though. I like the new Kiss too.

          Liked by 1 person

        8. Oh no lol — that could go to copyright/trademark…but I guess they didn’t register the images individually. ..or at all, possibly. Then there are the ethics off it all. That fight could go on forever.
          Now I’m curious about their sound before and after!

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        9. Wow Danica so many great comments today!

          The band own the makeup designs. Ace Frehley sold the rights to his in the mid -90s. Before that, Kiss couldn’t use it. If you see the 1994 album Kiss My Ass, all the pictures of Ace’s makeup are obscured. He still owned it in 94.

          Liked by 1 person

        10. Thanks, Mike!
          Too bad that instead of preventing conflict, the design ownership mapped out how the conflicts would take place.
          Interesting about the 1994 album!
          The business of rock and roll…sigh. :)

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        11. Thanks Mike!
          Interesting…the business side of rock and roll is pretty colorful. Too bad that it couldn’t just be all about the music. At least they still sound good!

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        18. I’ll get there eventually! Like our friends over at KeepsMeAlive And 1537, my goal here is to even think discuss every album I own. A monumental but very fun task!

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