Author: mikeladano

Metal, hard rock, rock and roll! Record Store Tales & Reviews! Grab A Stack of Rock and more. Poking the bear since 2010.

#814: Freestylin’ 4

GETTING MORE TALE #814: Freestylin’ 4

I’ve had a lot on my mind.  Thinking about the past, thinking about the future.

Every now and then, I’ll search for old acquaintances online.  Co-workers, customers, friends…many of them have not emerged in the new online world of social media.  At least not yet.  I continue searching.  Looking for a guy I used to work with, a coincidence of search terms led me instead to the obituary of an old customer.

I recognized his face immediately as that of “Surly Brad”, one of the very first customers I had when I managed my own Record Store location in 1996.  Brad passed away in 2011, but he wasn’t really very surly.  Is there a male equivalent of “resting bitch face”?  Brad looked grouchy but he could also pull a wide smile.  He was short and to the point, but eventually we got to know each other a little bit better.  Like many music collectors, he was picky about what he bought.  He could hear defects on a CD that I couldn’t.  I haven’t thought about Brad in years, but I don’t have any negative thoughts of him.  Just sadness.  Brad died age 47, the same age I am right now.

Rest in peace Brad.  I’m sorry we used to call you Surly.

Onto other trains of thought, I’m currently deep in the midst of my usual Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Long before I knew what it was or that it existed, I experienced it.  Ever since I was a kid.  The winters were a long, sad and lonely time.  The summers were much happier and more vibrant.  I thought for many years I just “hated winter”.  I do hate winter; don’t get me wrong, but there was more to it.  In the winter of 1998 I was explaining to a friend that I was in my “big blue funk”, a long period of (what I now call) depression.  The friend was taken aback because I was speaking of these things as if everybody experienced them.  “That’s not normal,” they said.  “Sure it is,” I retorted.

I’ve learned to deal with my big blue funks a lot better these days, though I still need to seek help.  One thing I do to try to stave off the blues is to give myself something to look forward to every day.  This can be anything from having some special food that I enjoy, to buying some new music, to watching my favourite shows.  I have to make some time to just enjoy myself a little bit every day.

Of course, buying music costs money and when you’re a collector it can get expensive!  When you can’t settle for anything less than “all the tracks”, you can expect to spend money.  Of course this is connected to another mental illness, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  I’ve had this forever too.  As a kid, I would try to collect complete sub-teams of GI Joes and Transformers.  I’d also collect music, but that was a lot more difficult in the 1980s.

The first group I ever decided I wanted a “complete” collection of was Quiet Riot.  I thought it would be easy.  I assumed they only had two albums.  How wrong I was.  There were no Wikipedia articles to refer to.  Eventually I learned about their early Japanese-only albums.  It took me about 15 years, pre-internet, to get copies for myself.

As I grew to like more and more bands, I wanted more and more “complete” collections.  Magazines like Hit Parader would run ads for mail order record stores.  They would list stuff regularly that I never heard of nor saw in stores.  All in US dollars of course.  Plus shipping!  Stuff like:

ALICE COOPER – THE BEAST OF

ALICE COOPER – DADA

ALICE COOPER – PRETTIES FOR YOU

JUDAS PRIEST – STAINED CLASS

These were not albums you could find in your local Zellers’ tape section.  I had never seen or even heard of Stained Class.

Then I would browse down to the singles and start crying when I saw things listed like:

AEROSMITH – DUDE LOOKS LIKE A LADY / ONCE IS ENOUGH

BON JOVI – LIVIN ON A PRAYER / EDGE OF A BROKEN HEART +1

EUROPE – THE FINAL COUNTDOWN / ON BROKEN WINGS

Like a cruel tease, I became aware that some of these things really existed, but on a teenage allowance, had no way to acquire them.  Or even hear what they sounded like.  I was grateful that bands like Kiss never seemed to put our exclusive non-album songs as B-sides.  Not knowing any better, I thought that was very democratic of them:  everybody had access to every Kiss song – there were no exclusives only for those who could pay for them.

Boy, did I read those Kiss cards wrong!

Many of these tracks and albums never showed up in my collection until the internet age.  But now, with access to even more information, the want list continues to grow.  It’s an expensive hobby.

Whitesnake was one of those bands that had many albums prior to the ones I knew about.  The winter of 87/88 educated me otherwise.  Meanwhile I had just acquired Slide It In.  I can picture myself shovelling the snow in the dark of the morning listening to that warbling tape.  Geffen didn’t put out the best quality cassettes in the 80s.  My copy of Slide It In ran so slow that it was almost unlistenable.  I would try to fast forward and rewind the tape to loosen it up a bit.  Nothing really helped and I never heard the album properly until I got a CD copy.  But Slide It In is one of those albums I associate with winter, shovelling snow and all of it.

I’ll make it through this winter just like all the others.  But I can’t wait for summer.  That’s when I really feel alive again.

#813: Ringers

GETTING MORE TALE #813: Ringers

There’s a sports phrase in the parlance of the profession:  a “ringer”.  It means boosting your team with a player who who’s above your league, usually with accusations of dishonesty or bad sportsmanship.  If you had a beer league hockey team, and your friend’s son happens to be Connor McDavid, and he substitutes for your usual center Big Jim McBob, then you have a ringer.

I was watching some live music on YouTube and wondered if there is a rock band equivalent.

Though it’s not considered cheating, did Queensryche pull a ringer when they got Todd La Torre to sing?  Todd is a fine vocalist who enables Queensryche to perform the old material properly; stuff with notes so high that only a young singer can really pull it off.  Journey did something similar with Arnel Pineda.  They wanted to play the original songs in the original keys, not tune them down for an older singer.

Original Queensryche singer Geoff Tate’s voice has changed over the decades.  That’s nature.  He can be hit or miss when singing the high stuff, so he tends not to anymore.  He’s able to steer around difficult notes and still play the song.  La Lorre has no issues with them however, adding some of his own grit to the screams.  Todd La Torre is 45 years old.  Geoff Tate is closer to his old bandmates at age 61.  If Queensryche were to look for another singer in his 60s, they wouldn’t be able to find one able to scream the opening to “Queen of the Reich”.

Go back in time further, to the early 1990s.  One band that absolutely hired a ringer was Poison when they acquired Richie Kotzen to replace C.C. Deville.

Without being too unkind, C.C. and Richie are not playing the same sport when it comes to guitar.  C.C. is a WWF wrestler, hammering you over the head with loud sloppy moves and tricks.  Richie is like a light boxer with heart, a fast contender with a feel for it.

When Poison picked up Kotzen, they plucked someone from the upper echelons to replace somebody who was basically still in the garage.  While it failed to win fans in the “get serious 90s”, it did give them an album that they never would have been able to create otherwise.  Eventually they were forced to bring C.C. back, but they can never perform material from the Kotzen album.  They’d sound ridiculous.

It could be argued that Kiss hired ringers with almost every replacement member in their band, from Eric Carr to Vinnie Vincent to Eric Singer and Bruce Kulick.  All of these guys are, on a technical level at least, lightyears better players than the original members.  But on the other hand, none of those replacements could capture the sheer vibe of the original band either.

Think about it.  When a veteran band loses an original member, do they ever replace them with a peer?  Very rarely.  Deep Purple replaced Jon Lord (age 61 at retirement) with Don Airey (54 at hiring).  But Black Sabbath replaced Bill Ward (age 71 today) with Tommy Clufetos (40 today).  No matter what Bill claims, Clufetos is simply in better physical condition.  He’s a ringer.

What is your take on this subject?  Are these guys ringers, or just regular hired guns?  Is there really a difference?

REVIEW: The Guess Who – Greatest Hits (1999)

THE GUESS WHO – Greatest Hits (1999 RCA)

Fun fact:  every Canadian citizen in good standing is issued a Guess Who album when they turn voting age.  Instead of that one, I upgraded to the remastered Greatest Hits in 1999.  The timing for a new compilation was right for the Canadian institution.  Though they never broke up, they had a big reunion tour in 2000.  Burton Cummings (Guess Who singer/pianist 1966-1975) and guitarist  Randy Bachman (1962-1970) had been out of the band a long time.  There was a 1983 reunion but even that was far in the past.  It was the Guess Who’s time in Canada once again, and in talking to Record Store customers, they couldn’t have been more excited if it was the Beatles.

18 tracks of Guess Who hits cover most of the well known bases.  Opening with the dramatic ballad “These Eyes” (made famous once again by Canadian Michael Cera in the movie Superbad) I’m reminded what a tremendous singer Burton Cummings is.  From the ballads to rockers like “No Time”, he could do it soulful or raspy.  Whatever the songs required.

And let’s not forget ex-James Gang six-stringer Domenic Troiano.  The Italian-Canadian guitar wiz was brought in on in 1974 and quickly aided and abetted the group in songwriting.  Only one Troiano-penned track is included here (“Dancin’ Fool”) but his slick riff is totally tasty.  (Unfortunately, Troiano is probably best known as the guy who Gavin Rossdale had to pay off to call his band “Bush” instead of “Bush X”.  Troiano had a band called Bush in 1970.)

The Guess Who were a remarkable band in their day, with a firm hand on both ballads and slick boogie rockers.  Yet their best known song, 1969’s “American Woman” is one of their least remarkable.  Written while tuning up at a curling club (look it up) in Kitchener (says Bachman) or Scarborough (says Cummings), it’s just sledgehammer rock.  Which is fine — there is nothing wrong with that kind of rock.  It’s just bizarre that it’s “American Woman” that people remember when The Guess Who had 20 or so better songs.   Check out “Albert Flasher”, a piano boogie that rivals the best of the genre.

This set is a fine listen from start to finish, and I can only really think of one rocker that’s not present — “Bus Driver”.  Otherwise it covers all the important stuff from the beginning to Cummings’ departure.*  It’s not an album for deep cuts or obscurities.  If you’ve spent extended periods of time listening to Canadian radio, you’ll know 50-80% of these songs.  If not, you hopefully already know “These Eyes” and “American Woman”.  Maybe even “Laughing” or “Undun”.  The Guess Who were always solid with just a little bit of quirk to them.  Solid bouncy musicianship, clever arrangements and lyrics, and a killer voice.  That’s Greatest Hits by The Guess Who.

4.5/5 stars

* The Guess Who continues today with a lineup including original drummer Garry Peterson and Quiet Riot’s Rudy Sarzo.

#812: Klassic Kwote – Hanson

You can imagine how hard it is finding music for people who have no idea what they’re looking for.

“Yeah, the guy wears a cowboy hat in the video.”

Can I get a little more information?

“Yeah, it was a white hat.”

Alan Jackson?  I don’t fucking know!

One day a customer walked in to T-Rev’s store and asked for a new band.  They had a new song out called “MMMBop”.

His description, which Trevor had to somehow use to figure out what band he wanted, was as follows:

“It’s a new band.  They sound like Michael Jackson.  But white.”

Hanson, ladies and gentlemen!  The white Michael Jacksons!

 

VIDEO: “Here Comes LeBrain Again” 2020 – by Uncle Meat and Iron Tom

In 2014, Tom and Uncle Meat made a video for their “Here Comes LeBrain Again” parody which I gladly used as my theme song. In 2020 that video is a little out of date, so I decided to make an updated one. Check both versions out below and let me know.

Thanks to Meat and Tom for recording the song and making the original.


2020 VERSION


2014 VERSION

Sunday Chuckle: Eraserhead

Being sick is rarely funny, but in order to survive, one must be able to find the humour in such things.

I was sick last week.  I woke up one morning with some bed-head, tried to run a comb through it, and well, this is what I looked like!  Not quite a dead ringer for Jack Nance in Eraserhead, but close enough?

 

REVIEW: Rush – Rare Rush (bootleg)

RUSH – Rare Rush (2002 home made CD set from acquired downloads)

Once upon a time there was a cool, but doomed, Rush fansite.  This site had countless downloads for free, and was shut down in short order.  While it was up, I grabbed all the studio rarities that they had, and one official live track I was missing.  This compilation is made from all of it.

The rarities begin at the start, with the only two tracks featuring John Rutsey on drums.  They are significant ones.  “Not Fade Away” and “Can’t Fight It” were their very first single on Moon records in 1973.  It’s early Rush, more rock n’ roll, and way more high pitched.  These are very basic recordings, copied from vinyl.  “Not Fade Away” is the old Buddy Holly classic, but harder and with Geddy Lee walkin’ that bassline.  “Can’t Fight It” is an original, co-written by Lee and Rutsey.  It’s a simple but busy rocker.  Alex cuts loose some solos, Rutsey goes bananas on the kit, and Geddy holds it all down with a little bit of flash.  One listen to this and you’d know Rush were going places.  There’s an electricity on the single that carried over to the first album.  They were kids but they could play.

An edit of “Bravado” from Roll the Bones sounds like a CD single was the source.  What a song.  Is it a ballad?  Who cares.  It burns.  Neil kills it with a drum roll beyond perfect, right at the start of the fade-out, which is why you need the full-length original.  It also contains one of the most poignant Neil Peart lyrics:  “And when the music stops, there’s only the sound of the rain.”

Next is the three part interview “It’s a Rap”, from the Roll the Bones era.  Alex’s portion comes from a 7″ single, Geddy’s from a rare European CD single, and Neil’s from the more common one.*  Neil’s is probably the most interesting.  He discusses the controversial rap section from the “Roll the Bones” single, which was his idea. Robbie Robertson and John Clease were two people they thought of to deliver the rap, before Geddy did it himself.  Speaking of Geddy, his interview has the best quote:  “I don’t know how we got this image.  Maybe we wore too many robes in the 70s.”

The “pre-release” tracks here from Counterparts are slightly different in the mix.  The differences are very subtle.  Some more prominent keyboard here, a less double-tracked vocal there.  “Ghost of a Chance” has unique Lifeson fills in the last part of the song.  These tracks will be fun for any fan of Counterparts (a great album).  Some of the best songs have these “pre-release” tracks.  From “Animate” through “Double Agent”and finally “Everyday Glory”, these are awesome tunes.  “Cold Fire” absolutely smokes.  Unfortunately these tracks are not as clear as others, as they came (as I recall) originally from a rare promo cassette.

An edit of “Virtuality” from the (honestly dreadful) Test for Echo album is a drag.  I don’t like to speak ill of the dead but “Net boy, net girl” is not one of Neil Peart’s best lyrics.  In the 90s there was a trend of internet-themed songs, and none of them were really any good.  Moving onto “Nobody’s Hero”, which is a “master edit” (not sure what that is).  It’s only short by about 20 seconds at the end as it fades early.

The only live track on here, “Force Ten”, comes from the very rare and expensive Japanese import for Different Stages.  It could possibly be the only Japanese bonus track that Rush have.  Much like the album itself, this track is awesome and harder hitting than its studio counterpart.

Disc 2 opens with a radio edit of “Test for Echo”, one of the best tunes from that album.  Really cool is an instrumental mix of “One Little Victory”, though it’s so fuckin’ overdriven.  Vapor Trails reduced to mp3 (especially back then) is a harsh sound.  This is very brickwalled.  But as an instrumental, it’s worth suffering through.  Compare that to the crisp “Show Don’t Tell” (promo edit) that follows.  Now you have depth and texture.

Vintage vibes return on an old “Spirit of Radio” edit — two of them actually.  One is 2:59, the other 3:23.  They crackle of old vinyl.  Consider that the original is almost five minutes!  Radio edits are what they are — chopped to cram more songs in between commercial breaks.  “Shatter the illusion of integrity, yeah.”

Some high-tech songs shake it up a bit.  “Big Money” and “Red Sector A” are edited and truncated (“Big Money” for a music video).  “Red Sector A” is missing a whole minute of music from the middle, which you definitely miss.  The edit is just yucky, as is the one at the start of “Secret Touch” from Vapor Trails.  I’m realizing that, on its own, I can listen to Vapor Trails.  But I cannot listen to them one song at a time on a mix CD like this.  That overdriven mix is too drastic for a compilation.  (This is why Rush remixed tracks for their own Retrospective 3 album.)

“Time and Motion” is a “work in progress” pre-release, and it’s harder to listen to than the album version from Test For Echo.  More enjoyable is an edit of “The Pass” (Presto).  This brilliant, minimalist Rush tune was the start of a new kind of sound for them.  An awkward edit of “Tom Sawyer” cuts the song down to 3:32, a real shame.  Here’s thing:  “Tom Sawyer” was Rush tightening things up; making them concise.  There was no fat to trim on that song.  Everything that was there belonged.  This edit is a butcher job, cuts all over the place, an absolute travesty.

Next we arrive at the remixes.  The “Punchit Scratchit” and “Rock Slamfist” mixes of “Tom Sawyer” come from a promo single for the Small Soldiers soundtrack.  They’re pretty terrible.  Nobody needed to overdub somebody going “rock! rock!” over it.  There’s a neat loop repeated in both mixes, but most fans will call these tracks “abominations”.  Don’t forget that these were done for a kid’s movie.

Saving one of the best for last, it’s “The Weapon” featuring Joe Flaherty as “Count Floyd”!  Fans of SCTV know who that is.  The 7″ single this originated from goes for about 45 bucks on Discogs.  Definitely an item reserved for those with an all-expenses paid Rush card!  It really is a treasure though, considering the importance of SCTV to Rush over the years.  Joe Flaherty on a Rush single — yes, I want that.

The compilation ends on an up note, with an edit of “Time Stand Still”; though a bit choppy.  It stands as a reminder that Rush are not serviced well by single edits.  Indeed, any edit on this set is noticeably inferior to its album counterpart.  These particular Rush songs were honed in the studio to the necessary elements already.  Further thinning did not need to happen and only hinders enjoyment.

But, they’re rare, is the thing.  And collectors live for anything different from the album versions.  It’s part of our disease.  I won’t say “go and track down these promo singles”.  No, don’t do that.  That’s expensive.  I just hope you found this information interesting.  There are definitely treasures worth spending money on, among these downloads.  But sellers know that, and charge according to what they feel they can soak you for.  It’s unfortunate but owning this stuff physically is hard to prioritise, and for that reason, most of us will have to settle for downloads and bootlegs.

 

* Neil’s interview is the only one that I own physically on CD single.

WTF Search Terms: More Sexy than Sexy edition

WTF SEARCH TERMS XLIII:  More Sexy than Sexy edition

It’s Friday so it’s time for some funny.

WTF Search Terms are those weird words that you typed into a search engine to get here.  Most of the time, people were searching for sex.  From penis pumps to the genitalia of the lead singer of Queen, here are the latest and greatest WTFs!

  • swedish penis pump for sail
  • austin powers enlarge your penis

When I wrote Record Store Tales Part 266, about a novelty “penis pump” that I was given by co-workers, I never expected the hits to keep rolling in.  And…”sail”?

  • vhs porn call for bang

None here, but in Record Store Tales Part 69 (obviously), a porn tape did show up at the store.

  • how big was freddie mercurys cock

This is a question you’re going to have to keep on googling because I do not know or care.

  • is joshua kiszka bi

Greta Van Fleet’s singer?  Don’t know, irrelevant question.

  • japanxxx.dere.fere

I know it’s dirty because xxx is in there.

  • hookers

Possibly linking up to a review for Trailer Park Boys Season 8.

  • calf suck dick

No idea.

  • mary wiseman ass

Multiple searches here.  Mary Wiseman plays the character of Sylvia Tilly on Star Trek: Discovery.  And sadly this is not the first time Mary’s derriere has made this list.

  • english lebrain sex story

My best guess is that some people think “lesbian” is spelled “lebrain”.  Otherwise I’m curious.  I’d like to read this story myself!

  • /de/video/182513/three-teen-striptease-on-webcam

This is now the second time this one has made the list.  How.  The fuck.  Does THAT lead HERE??

See ya next time for more WTFs.

 

#811: Ride the Tiger
GETTING MORE TALE #811:  Ride the Tiger
Holy Diver,
You’ve been down too long in the midnight sea,
Oh what’s becoming of me.
Ride the tiger,
You can see his stripes but you know he’s clean,
Oh don’t you see what I mean.

I can’t believe it has been this long.  20 frickin’ years ago I started talking to a metalhead in England named Dan Slessor, from Brighton.  He has since deleted his social media and I’m no longer in touch with him.  Hi Dan!  I hope you are well.  Drop me a line.

I was very happy for him when Dan told me had started writing for Kerrang!  (I still have an issue with one of his articles, and Josh Homme on the cover.)  He had achieved the Dream.  Best of all, he got to interview rock stars for the magazine:  Tom Araya, David Coverdale, Joe Elliott….

And Ronnie James goddamn Dio!

One of Dan’s signature moves was to ask bands a joke question, in hope that they have a sense of humour and it would loosen things up.  It worked with Tom Araya when Dan asked him if Slayer ever killed time on the tour bus by seeing how many pencils they could stuff in their pubes.

I recently dug up an old message from Dan.  It was just after he interviewed Dio.  And folks, I can testify that in May 2008, Dan did ask Dio if he had ever ridden a tiger.

Dan told me that while Ronnie did answer in the negative, “Dio was awesome dude – and judging by his amusement, I think I’m the first person to ever ask him if he’d actually ridden a tiger….”

Ronnie passed away only two years after that interview.  You gotta give Dan credit for that one!  I don’t know anyone else who has asked Dio that question.

Dan, I hope you are doing well and if you stumble upon this, please drop me a line, I’d love to catch up!

 

REVIEW: Dio – Live In London – Hammersmith Apollo 1993 (2014)

DIO – Live In London – Hammersmith Apollo 1993 (2014 Eagle)

The only good thing that came from Ronnie Dio’s death is the number of reissues and live albums we’ve gotten since.  One of the more overlooked eras of Dio was the “Tracy G” era, Strange Highways and Angry Machines.  Dio had just reunited in the middle of the grunge movement.  Tracy G (ex-WWIII) was not to everybody’s taste.  While he could indeed shred, he also utilized shrill noise and harmonics in his guitar work which isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.  He could, however, lend Dio a heavier edge necessary in 1993.  Add in bassist Jeff Pilson from Dokken and veteran drummer Vinnie Appice and you have one hell of a lineup.

Dio assembled a setlist with his best material, but ignoring a couple albums.  Lock Up the Wolves and Dream Evil were considered disappointments when they were new.  Even Sacred Heart is skipped over on this live album, in favour of old classics and a healthy serving of new songs.  Sabbath and Rainbow only get a song a piece.

The sound is bloody perfect, as if they meant to release a double live album all along.  Having Pilson on bass lends a heavy, low grumble and immaculate backing vocals.  Tracy G might be an acquired taste on guitar but there’s no question he could do the job.  He gets an extended solo on “Pain” that displays shredding, noise and musicality.  Vinnie Appice gets a long solo too, as part of a “Heaven and Hell” / “Man on the Silver Mountain” medley.  Eventually the band returns and they pound out a machine gun riff with monstrous Pilson bass licks.  Incidentally, it’s Jeff Pilson that captures that old Black Sabbath/Geezer Butler groove better than any other bassist Dio has had.

This is a phenomenal live album.  Sure, you can buy live Dio with better known lineups and songs.  You can get live stuff with Vivian Campbell or Craig Goldy.  This setlist is considerably different from those, and the sound is heavy as hell!

4.5/5 stars