RECORD STORE TALES #1110: Happy Winter Memories Vol. 3 – Rocking the Basement

To an unsporty Canadian kid, growing up in a cold climate had its disadvantages.  I didn’t give a fuck about hockey (to coin a phrase from Gord Downie), and nobody likes to shovel.  The only good thing about fall and winter to me were Christmas and the return of my TV shows, like the Transformers and GI Joe.  Otherwise, it was like hibernation.  There were a lot of things I wanted to do and could only do outdoors, so I passed the time inside with my music and shows.

In a sense, winter was the best time for my friendship with Bob Schipper to flourish.  In the summer we’d be outside a lot, riding bikes or hitting balls.  Or, just getting into trouble as we often did.  During the colder months, we spent more time being creative.

A typical Mike & Bob winter Saturday morning would go as follows:

Around 10 AM, Bob would pop by my place.  Our creative Saturday mornings would usually happen at my house.  Bob’s parents were more strict than mine, and we could listen to music in the basement.  The basement was the best place because that is where the big TV with the VCR was.  That was where MuchMusic lived.  My VHS collection would grow video by video, week by week.  The Pepsi Power hour ran twice a week (“Molten” Mondays, and Thursdays) and I would collect music, clip by clip, on my VHS collection.  It would be my responsibility to show him what was new in music.

We did not always agree!

Savatage struck me from the moment I saw “Hall of the Mountain King”.  It was the riff, the singer, and of course the little guy running through the caves looking for the king’s treasure.  I had to record it.  I thought Bob would really be into this song.  It had a lot of what we both liked:  nice, heavy melody metal with a screamin’ singer.  Disappointingly, he was not as impressed as I was.  He thought the video was less than great, and the singer not as impressive as I hyped him.

On the other hand, one viewing of “We Came to Rock” by Brighton Rock had him hooked immediately.  In this case, singer Gerald McGhee really did blow him away.  That scream at the end of “We Came to Rock” made his jaw actually drop.

If music videos were not on the menu that morning, I would bring my “ghetto blaster” downstairs and we would play whatever newest tape one of us had acquired.  If it was a good one, we’d dub each other a copy.

Then, out came the paper and we would get down to creating.  We were very much into drawing military vehicles, cars, and muscle-type men with warrior’s garb and jagged guitars.  Our self-portraits were always masked, muscled, and flexing.

We would fantasise about being on stage.  We’d picture the drum riser, and why not have it elevate?  We would both be singers and guitar players, sharing lead duties from song to song.  It had to be democratic.  We came up with cool melodies and song titles.  Mostly though, we sang our lyrics to other peoples’ songs.  Of course, I can’t repeat the lyrics to anyone.

The two of us had enough creativity to power the world for decades.  If only we had the technology to do the things we really wanted to do!

Still, it was in that basement during the coldest of months that Bob and I amassed binders full of drawings and cassette tapes full of our goof-offs.  I kept everything I could.  Of course, some things couldn’t last forever, such as the cardboard guitars or silly sketches.  As unofficial archivist, I kept a lot.  I have almost all my VHS tapes with those special music videos.  When I play them, the memories return.  These things matter to me.  They show a snapshot of the best childhood anyone could have.