I’ve been working hard at growing my YouTube channel, although since my content veers wildly from music, to toys, nature, and Coca-Cola, it’s a little scattershot. Not the best for promoting a channel, so if you’d be kind enough to subscribe, every little bit helps! Covering the cost of WordPress and Streamyard is my goal. My good friend from California, Mrs. MarriedAndHeels, has kindly been advertising her appearances on my show. But she has over 200,000 fans, so I know not everyone has seen her three episodes on Grab A Stack! What are you waiting for?
Even if you’re not into high heels or fashion, we cover a lot of ground! Mostly, we have fun, and we’d love if you checked out our shows together. Give ’em a like, give ’em a share, it all helps keep my channel and WordPress afloat.
Check out our show trailer below if you’re curious about what we do!
Her first live appearance on Grab A Stack of Rock! Over 600 views so far.
We covered it all here! Her passion for running, tea and heels! I got to pick out a pair of heels for her next event! An awesome hour and a half of fun.
The planets finally aligned, and MarriedAndHeels met the Mad Metal Mad for the first time! 400 views to date.
An epic unboxing from me, and more heels from her! I had the honour of picking out her heels again, and this time I chose wedges. Hope you like my choice! I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard as I did on this episode.
Everything I create is free. I have never asked for money for any video or story. I pay for WordPress and I pay for Streamyard out of pocket, and advertising dollars do not bring in even half of the cost. Therefore, if you’d like to buy me a coffee on Ko-fi, I would muchly appreciate.
The original title for this chapter was “My Sister, Age, and How Things Change”. It was originally Chapter 8.
RECORD STORE TALES #1045: The Lost Chapters: Doctor Kathryn
My sister had some distinct musical phases. Early on, she decided that she was going to like most of the music that I liked. At first that meant Quiet Riot, Kiss, and Motley Crue. Motley Crue was her favourite, but not for the right reasons. They were her favourite because a) Nikki and Tommy were really tall, and b) they both had spikey hair.
There was further evidence that my sister was bordering on wimp territory. One was that she didn’t like W.A.S.P. In fact she hated W.A.S.P. I’m not sure if it was Blackie Lawless’ voice, or if it was the fact that he drank “blood” from a “human skull”. Either way, I liked W.A.S.P. a lot, and if she didn’t like them too, this demonstrated an unhealthy streak of independence.
Then, the proverbial shit hit the fan. (We didn’t have air conditioning back then, just fans.) One day in 1985, she decided that she liked The Pointer Sisters. And Cyndi Lauper. And Corey Hart. She always liked Bryan Adams, but I forgave her this. Bryan wore jeans and T-shirts, so he was still firmly in rock territory, even if he wasn’t heavy metal. (I didn’t find out for a while yet that Bryan did in fact have some metallic roots. He wrote several songs with Kiss, including the heaviest material on the Creatures Of The Night album.) The music that Kathryn liked was incorrectly labelled by us as “New Wave”. We didn’t know that New Wave was a term usually used for bands like Blondie, Devo, or the Talking Heads. We just assumed all crappy pop music with synthesizers was New Wave. And New Wave was bad. Very very bad.
Back then, life was simple. Life was black and white. Whatever MuchMusic’s “Power Hour” played was good. Everything else was bad. The only exceptions to that that rule were Kim Mitchell and Bryan Adams. I’m not sure why Kim was an exception, except that he and long hair, and that I liked him, and so did the next door neighbour. If you wanted to boil it down further, stuff with guitars was good. Stuff with keyboards was bad. And the stuff Kathryn listened to didn’t have any guitars, just lots of keyboards, fake synth drums and people with really silly clothes and hair.
There were a few exceptions. I had never known a Van Halen without keyboards, so I accepted them. They were clearly a heavy metal band. The Power Hour played them all the time, David Lee Roth had wicked hair, and everybody was talking about that guitar player. Even if I didn’t know the difference between a guitar and a bass, and thought that Michael Anthony was in fact Eddie Van Halen, I decided that Van Halen were cool. You were allowed to like them. Eventually I sneaked ZZ Top into the list of music that was allowed as well, because one of the neighbours said they were like Van Halen.
So if the music Kathryn liked was bad, and the music I liked was good, you can imagine the arguments. They were glorious and often ended in physical injury and/or destruction of property, and not just by me.
Her awful taste in music even held back my own progress. She liked Bon Jovi first, therefore I had to dislike Bon Jovi—until they released that damned “Wanted: Dead Or Alive” song. The song was so good, so undeniable, I had to let Bon Jovi into my life. I still think it’s a fantastic song, well written, well played, with some beautiful 12 string guitar. (Another reason Bon Jovi didn’t make the grade at first was due to their keyboards. This does not explain why Europe did make the grade. There were many inconsistencies.)
Kathryn’s rebellion worsened. Her taste in music declined. I won’t even begin to list some of the awful music she listened to, but I will say that she bottomed out in 1990 with New Kids On The Block, MC Hammer, and Vanilla Ice. Obviously, this was a person who had no clear idea about integrity within music. However, like a junkie who hits rock bottom, she eventually started to rise up again, with a little encouragement from Her Loving Brother.
The turning point was when Vanilla Ice cancelled his Kitchener tour date in early 1991. His reason stated was that he was too big a star to play a town like Kitchener. There was an instant hatred for the man all over town. Kathryn sold her Vanilla Ice tape immediately.
There were some other clear signs of improvement. A newfound obsession with Cheap Trick was good. Sure, they weren’t metal, but they were definitely rock! Hell, they even worshipped Kiss within their song lyrics. I happily encouraged this love of Cheap Trick, and even bought her Cheap Trick tapes. I think most of her Cheap Trick collection was courtesy of moi.
Rod Stewart came next. I feel that perhaps Rod snuck in the door due to his enormous hair, but I didn’t care. Rod still had a rock pedigree. I encouraged her love of Rod. I asked her questions about him and his music. It was like carefully manipulating a mentally ill person back to health, and I was succeeding in a marginal way. I felt that she’d never come all the way back to metal, even though she owned tapes by Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Poison. Yet I was satisfied with the progress we were making.
Now, 15 years later, I own Rod Stewart, Cheap Trick, Bryan Adams, The Payola$…all music that she introduced me to. She got the last laugh. I’ll never admit that she was always the smarter one (I can’t, since she never understood any movies we watched) but I’ll admit that she got the better of me on this one. We even attended concerts together. It started with Blue Rodeo, then we saw Jann Arden and Amanda Marshall. While I still won’t own any albums by Arden or Marshall, they both put on excellent shows. Blue Rodeo blew us both away and now they’re one of my favourites. I’ve never seen any band more often than Blue Rodeo, and I’ll argue that they’re Canada’s best band, with Rush as a close second.
Even my parents get points. They sure hated “Big Balls” by AC/DC, but now I own more Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot than they do.
Now, I certainly can’t allow Kathryn to come off as the winner in this chapter. So here’s a punch in the arm for you. There, now we’re even.
I don’t know what I was collecting these quotes for, but I found them on a hard drive recently and so here are my favourite quotes by Eddie Van Halen!
“I can’t read music. Instead, I’d do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize – out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, ‘Very interesting interpretation!’ I thought I was playing it right.”
“The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.”
“It’s music theory, not music fact”
“If it sounds good, it is good. Who cares if you didn’t do it modernly.”
“To hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is.”
“I destroyed a lot of guitars trying to get them to do what I wanted, but I learned something from every guitar I tore apart, and discovered even more things.”
“Music is for people. The word ‘pop’ is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I’m just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I’m cool.”
“David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C’mon – Van Halen doing ‘Dancing in the Streets’? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else’s music.”
“It’s all about sound. It’s that simple. Wireless is wireless, and it’s digital. Hopefully somewhere along the line somebody will add more ones to the zeros. When digital first started, I swear I could hear the gap between the ones and the zeros.”
“If you have a great-sounding guitar that’s a quality instrument and a good amp, and you know how to make the guitar talk, that’s the key. It starts with the guitar and knowing what it should sound and feel like.”
“Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let’s put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don’t.”
“Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let’s put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don’t.”
What do Alien, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Flash Gordon, Masters of the Universe, The Terminator, and Blade Runner all have in common? They all bear the imprint of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to make a film version of Frank Herbert’s Dune in the mid-70s. 2001: A Space Odyssey was the definitive space movie, and Star Wars was just a gleam in Lucas’ eye. Dune, considered by many to be unfilmable, was perfect for Jodorowsky. The Chillean-French director was considered a madman, albeit one with a sky-high imagination. Of Dune, he sought to give the audience a druggy trip without the drugs. But he also sought to make so much more – “a prophet”, he described it. Something that would change the consciousness of the audience, and the future of movies. Free the imagination, the mind, the soul. He saw it as something much bigger than making a film, and so he assembled a team of “spiritual warriors” to join him in making his vision real.
His warriors included the Swiss genius H.R. Giger, known for his biomechanical style. Comic artists Chris Foss and Jean “Mœbius” Giraud were on board. (Ian Gillan fans will recognize Foss’ style from the cover of his Clear Air Turbulence album.) Special effects genius Dan O’Bannon sold all his possessions and moved to France to work with the team. Pink Floyd and Magma were assigned to do music for specific planetary settings. Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, David Carradine and Udo Kier signed on, with Welles to play the grotesque Baron Harkonnen. Jodorowsky convinced him by offering to hire his favourite French chef for his catering. As the key character of Paul Atreides, the messiah of Dune, who could he cast but his own son Brontis? The boy went through gruelling physical and mental training for the role.
The team assembled what is now known as the Dune book, an incredibly detailed shot-by-shot storyboard, several inches thick, and filled with images that found full motion and sound later on in the aforementioned films. Giger’s designs are especially recognizable, including one that foreshadows his famous Alien Xenomorph.
Jodorowsky used Herbert’s Dune as the basis for his own, but began to drastically change the storyline. Some of his original ideas were brilliant, but his ending is completely baffling. In an “I am Spartacus!” moment, Paul dies, which does not happen in the book. Suddenly his consciousness transfers to the people of planet Arrakis, who all proclaim to be Paul. The planet comes back to life, with green jungles and blue oceans appearing. Arrakis then breaks orbit, and shoots through space to share its new joined consciousness with the universe. Heady stuff perhaps, but a sharp change in direction to Herbert’s more serious science fiction style. Jodorowsky believed in his story, with an unbelievable passion. He is visibly angered at what comes next.
When movie executives told him that the film had to come in at 90 minutes, it was the beginning of the end. No, he said. Eight hours, or 20 hours, he would make the movie he needed to make! Studio executives don’t like hearing such things, and fearing budget overruns, cancelled the Jodorowsky version of Dune. His team scattered, with many such as Giger, O’Bannon and Foss meeting soon again on Ridley Scott’s Alien. The Dune project was handed to David Lynch, who Jodorowsky believed was the only other person who could have realized the movie the right way. It filled him with feelings of dread that soon turned to glee when he saw just how bad Lynch’s Dune turned out. Yet he knew, it had to be the movie executives who ruined it.
This is the story of Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary film by Frank Pavich. You will be stunned by the images that this team created, and by Alejandro’s deep passion for making his art. This is your own chance to see what might have been. Blu-ray recommended.
4.5/5 stars
Everything I create is free. I have never asked for money for any video or story. I pay for WordPress and I pay for Streamyard out of pocket, and advertising dollars do not bring in even half of the cost. Therefore, if you’d like to buy me a coffee on Ko-fi, I would muchly appreciate.
The Meat Man was always pushing. “Watch this, listen to this.” To his credit, he introduced me to a lot of music this way. He wasn’t so open to my suggestions, but Roky Erickson is a personal favourite now that I discovered through Meat, by watching the Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways series. Most of things he pushed me to watch or listen to never stuck. A few, like the Moody Blues and Roky, did stick through multiple years.
Over the Christmas holidays of 2014, he pushed again and we spent an entire day watching the Sonic Highways series. I took down his comments, and wrote eight reviews on the fly in a single day. Eight hours of viewing, eight hours of writing. I resented a lot of his pushing, but this time, the push was really worth it.
I wanted him to return in the new year to help me finish and get the series posted. What he realized then, and I did not, was that the series was already finished. It didn’t need any polishing. Sure, it could have used some more connective tissue but the key words were all there. I waited and waited for his return, but he was simply not interested in revisiting. So the reviews sat there unpublished for nine years, until I finally decided to post them now.
I’ve never written a song by song review of an album before so this was something that only ever happened once. I’m grateful that I did it and I hope you enjoy it. I owe Meat a thanks for pushing me this time. I haven’t played the album since.
Everything I create is free. I have never asked for money for any video or story. I pay for WordPress and I pay for Streamyard out of pocket, and advertising dollars do not bring in even half of the cost. Therefore, if you’d like to buy me a coffee on Ko-fi, I would muchly appreciate.
FOO FIGHTERS – Sonic Highways 8 – New York – “I am a River”
New York City. The end of our journey, and the very last song on Sonic Highways.
We’ve had a hell of an education so far. New York is the final stop, the “greatest city in America” according to Grohl. If you make it there, you can make it anywhere, says LL Cool J. Every style of music could be heard just by turning the dial. Tin Pan Alley, Billy Holiday, Woodie Guthrie, Lou Reed, New York Dolls…the scene was eternal and endless. The streets, and the recording studios, were tight and crammed with people.
CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, the folk singer-songwriter scenes all formed a potent mix of styles. The Ramones and Dead Boys emerged, as did the hip hop scene. Hip hop started in New York, in the Bronx, but soon spread to Brooklyn and Queens and Long Island. Guys like the Beastie Boys made the jump from punk rock to hip hop, because the attitude was the same. “Rap seemed like a party, and then Public Enemy came out,” says Grohl. They introduced a militancy that hadn’t existed in rap before. Chuck D was influenced by the things he saw around him in the aftermath of the Vietnam war.
Woodie Guthrie did something similar. He “wrote what he saw” which is something Dave Grohl tried to do, for a change, on “I am a River”. Dave noticed that things are all connected, the stories and the people. “I am a River” also refers to an underground river that runs beneath Electric Lady studios.
Jimmy “Shoes” Iovine became one of the most powerful men in music, and he was right there recording John Lennon and Elton John in the late 70’s. Electric Lady studios, built by Hendrix, was the place for artists like Kiss, Bowie and Zeppelin to record. But Dave chose the Magic Shop, in Soho. Owner Steve Rosenthal has a collection of vintage keyboards to use (and bands like Coldplay did use them). So did Norah Jones, Arcade Fire, and David Bowie. The Magic Shop isn’t in the nicest part of town, but it does have an incredible sounding drum room. Butch Vig recorded Sonic Youth’s Dirty there. The room even has a Neve board.
When MTV stopped playing rock and roll, the Magic Shop had to do something to survive. Now, the main income in made in another room, restoring old classic recordings for permanent storage. The future, says Steve Rosenthal, is “cloudy”. He doesn’t know if recording studios are obsolete in the face of laptops and easy home recording. The final interview presented is with President Obama, who thinks it’s more important to produce art than to consume it. “It’s all about the garage band, the juke joint, the jazz club. It’s about people rejecting what’s already there to create something entirely new.” It’s the American dream he says. Play some rock and roll, take a chance, and make it. Obama refers to “musical rivers” that connect us, bringing us back full circle.
Finally, “I am a River” closes the Sonic Highways series and album. It has a long, slow and meandering Floydian intro, and a pleasant easy melody. Dave mentions the “water” beneath the “subway floor”. It’s your typical Foo Fighters closer. It builds from quiet to more epic, with choruses of shimmering guitars. It’s nothing new for Foo Fighters, but it is basically everything you expect for a closer. A youth string section joins them to end the album in style.
As an album, we applaud the Foo Fighters for the concept and vision of what into making it. Without the TV series, however, we would have no inclination about what makes each song different. Sonic Highways would remain “just another Foo Fighters album,” all but interchangeable with the last two. That’s unfortunate.
Ko-fi MikeLeBrain – buy me a coffee?
mikeladano.com 