“I want to do something new this weekend,” goes the eternal complaint. Even with Lake Huron in front of us, and a lush green paradise all around, sometimes I still moan about doing the same things every weekend.
There is so much you can do, but only a couple days to do it all. It’s easy to fall into comfortable habits and just…relax. However, the cottage is too special to just relax. Surely, I’ve had some of the best sleeps of my life there, but you don’t want to sleep your day away, as easy as it can be.
As always, we started the trip on the front porch. We always like to listen to music on our night of arrival, as the sun sets. This time, we chose Prince’s Purple Rain, which I didn’t own last year. This music was new to the cottage, and it was an absolutely incredible experience. I danced around the porch to “Computer Blue”, but the sun was setting just as Prince began singing about the “Purple Rain”. It was a surreal experience hearing Prince sing “Ooo, ooo, ooo,” as the orange and pink clouds slowly let the sun sink beneath the horizon. It felt like Prince was there in the forest somewhere, just out of sight.
New thing #1 achieved: “Purple Rain” at sunset.
We always like to experiment with food. Believe it or not, we have not made homemade burgers at the lake in decades. Why? My dad used to hate cooking them, as they’d fall to pieces on the grill. Not anymore. Thanks to a tip from my good buddy Thuss, we now are making our own homemade burgers. The secret: Freeze them. Once frozen, those patties stay together and do no break apart. For our first batch, this was our successful blend:
Lean beef (Jen wanted extra lean but I said no)
Ground thick cut bacon
1 egg
Bread Crumbs
Parmesan flakes
Salt
Pepper
Paprika
Chili flakes
Minced fresh garlic
Minced fresh onion
Ketchup
Mustard
Olive oil
I don’t know how much of that we could actually taste, but it was fun and the result was juicy and perfect. And then next batch is already in the freezer waiting to be cooked up, with a new set of ingredients including local beef.
New thing #2 achieved: Perfect homemade burgers on the grill.
But wait, there’s more! Thanks to a new, deep cast iron frying pan, we also fried our own french fries. No more oven baked fries, or air fries! Only the real deal. They were crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and perfect all around.
New thing #3 achieved: Golden brown french fries.
To quote ZZ Top: I AM your burger man.
“My charcoal’s getting red hot, Put your order in my hand, Won’t you let me show you what I got, Sizzling in the pan.”
I woke up on the Saturday morning as I often do, bright and early. It was damp and cold with not a single human to be seen, myself excluded. It’s a good time to spot wildlife. There have been bears in the area, but I did not see one. Instead, I saw a red canid coming up the path from the beach. A fox? I had not seen our local fox up there in at least a year. This animal had the gait of a fox, but not the bushy red and white tail. This animal had a thin, bony tail, and its frame was larger than a fox.
It was a coyote. My first coyote sighting, ever. I’ve heard them at night, but never seen one in the fur before.
New thing #4 achieved: Coyote sighting!
I knew there was no way I’d be able to grab my phone in time. I simply watched the confident, unafraid animal stroll down our little dirt road as if he was the only one in the world.
Of course, all of this would pale in comparison to the Aurora Borealis. I’d never seen the Northern Lights before. I did my best to describe the experience, but words and pictures do not capture the awe. It felts as if we were all under a huge electric dome. It is something I’ll never forget even if I never see it again. It began suddenly and dimly, before the lights were all you could see anywhere, in every direction. The lights reflected off the waters, and created beautiful patterns in the ripples.
New thing #5 achieved: Aurora Borealis
New experiences are not always possible at the lake, nor are they always necessary. Sometimes it’s enough to just sit on the porch and watch the days go by. After 52 years of coming to the exact same location, to have so many new sights, sounds and flavours in one weekend was unexpected.
The cottage is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get!
52 years of coming to the cottage, since my very birth, and there are still new things to see.
I used to think I was too far south to ever see the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). Certainly it has never happened before. However, we are heading into a Solar Maximum, which means a high point in the sun’s 11 year cycle of activity. The sun’s magnetic field is a twisty turny-thing, and every 11 years, it gets twisted up into an increasingly excited state, and the sun ejects massive eruptions of particles into the surrounding space. When our Earth eventually collides with the charged particles, they create brilliant shows of light in the sky. There are both northern and southern borealis, and in northern Canada, people can see the lights easily. Where I live in the southern tip, we never see the lights!
May 10, around 10:15 PM, the lights came to visit the shores of Lake Huron.
Jen and I headed down to the beach, as the Boston Bruins were getting mauled by the Florida Panthers. I kept my eyes north, assuming that was where I would see the lights. Disappointed, I shouted back at Jen, “There’s nothing yet.”
I noticed something as I looked back at her. The sky was “hazy”,
“Is that it?” I asked Jen as I looked straight up. There was a cloudy streak across the sky.
Then I looked south and saw the horizon glowing green. The northern lights were not coming from the north! They were all around us, in every direction, like a glowing curtain! It was not at all what I expected to see.
The light show peaked for about 15 minutes, on a very cold night. The lights shifted and changed, ever so slowly, so that you barely noticed. You could stare at a band of green until it faded and was suddenly replaced by swirls of red. The moon was a sharp crescent and it cut a hole through a band of green, as did a handful of bright stars.
Photographs and videos, of course, only tell part of the story, and only insofar as technology can capture. The real colours and the subtle wispy cloudy bands we saw are lost in photos.
Directly overhead appeared to be the center of it all. Radiating out from a central point were bands of cloudy white, like a celestial starfish. Jen and I pondered this and wondered if the solar particles were hitting at that point.
I wish I had been listening to “Purple Rain” at that moment. It did almost look like purple rain at times.
Jen and I had a moment on the previous night, listening to “Purple Rain” during sunset. It was an uplifting, somewhat surreal moment to hear Prince soloing and singing over the sight of the glowing sky. Imagine if we had it playing during the borealis!
The bone-chilling cold of the Kincardine night cut our visit short, but I can now say I’ve seen the Northern Lights.
I never say this, but this time it’s true: Our first weekend at the cottage was absolutely perfect. Without a hitch. Exactly as planned, right down to the last detail. And loaded with new music!
The road trip began at 5:15 on Thursday night, April 25. Traffic was heavy, but not as heavy as the music! (We may need to look for another route out of town next time, as it took us almost half an hour just to escape Kitchener.) I had decided early in the week that the first road album of 2024 had to be Invincible Shield by Judas Priest! I had no doubt it would be one of the best road albums of the year. So confident was I, that I packed up my copy for Friday night’s Grab A Stack of Rock – Top 11 Albums to Play with the Windows Down. And I was right. “Crown of Horns” was the singalong track, though there were no duds. The album comes to a natural close on “Giants in the Sky” which has a classic Priest ending, but it’s not over yet! The bonus tracks give you a little extra road play, with a second ending in “The Lodger”. Brilliant album that kept us energized for the drive.
Priest couldn’t take us the whole way. When the Invincible Shield had ended, we moved onto Bruce Dickinson’s Mandrake Project. I haven’t had the time to absorb it yet, but Jen really enjoyed the album as we pulled down our little dirt road and into the driveway.
Everything was exactly as I left it back in October.
Taking my speakers out of storage, and making myself comfortable on the cool front deck, I chose the first porch album of the season. I didn’t want something as heavy rocking. Nor did I want something mellow and acoustic. This calls for the Arkells!
“We got gas in the tank to go all night,” sang Max Kerman from my porch. I danced away to this perfect evening. Rally Cry is the album I connected with the least last summer, being more political and less personal. This time it hit all the right spots, scratched all the itches, and began the season on the right note.
Jen noticed that I was joking around and more giddy than usual.
“Because I’m happy,” I said. “I feel alive again. This is what I had been waiting for.”
Friday was forecast as a summery, sunny day. We started early by picking up the first steaks of the season at the Beefway. We chose one porterhouse and one ribeye. This is our place to buy meat. There’s nobody better around. We stocked up on fish, pies, bacon and cooking oil. I had duck for lunch, and hot dogs and hamburgers in the evening.
For now, it was time for the main event: the first Grab A Stack of Rock from the cottage! It was a 3 PM afternoon show, and Jex was on board with his Top 11 Road Songs, in contrast to my album picks. Once again, everything went really well! Though Jex was late with work (the only unscripted thing about it), it will go down as one of my favourite shows ever. The roaring fire in the background was something new. I love playing with my visual setting, on Grab A Stack of Rock, at the cottage. Thank you Jex for an amazing start to the year. I hope we can do more, but even if we can’t, I got to do the fireside show that I had hoped for. Scratch that off the list.
The rain began Saturday, but it only got warmer. Another day on the front porch was in order, but first we went into town to see what was new.
We hit up a thrift store. I keep seeing all these guys on Facebook buying everything they can at thrift stores. I don’t know what they do with the CDs afterwards. Do their play their new Trisha Yearwood albums? Do they try and flip them? I found nothing in the gospel and country that they had, except for one signed CD by an unknown artist. The Facebook people would have bought them all; I chose none. I don’t buy for investment and I don’t really need a lot of music “on spec” when I barely have time to enjoy what I own.
Saturday was a weird day. It’s hard to explain exactly what happened, but as the day went on the feeling got more intense. I was having Deja Vu feelings every few minutes. It wasn’t specific memories, just…overall feelings. They were usually centered around people from my childhood, but I don’t know why. I would be cooking steaks in the back yard, and having Deja Vu feelings from grade school, but I was unable to nail down any specific memories. It was just a weird feeling like, “I have done this before,” but unable to identify a specific memory. I just felt like it was childhood. It intensified at dinner time. Perhaps the aromas of the cooking brought me back to Saturday dinners at the table, with steak and corn. Our steaks were perfect.
I mentioned earlier that everything went down without a hitch. That is not entirely true….
The Toronto Maple Leafs shit the bed. We shall not discuss this. It is not a good subject.
Otherwise, everything went perfect. I was starting to feel sad on Sunday morning, as I did the dishes and packed my bags up. Deciding what to bring back home and what to leave behind, I felt sad.
“Not this time,” I said, and I fought it back.
We played Kiss on the way home. Unmasked, Rock and Roll Over, and Asylum. These albums of childhood happiness drove the sadness away, and I woke up Monday morning feeling good.
This year’s first weekend at the cottage was a diametric contrast to 2023, which ended prematurely when I decided to go home early.
2023’s first weekend began with anxiety, as my former co-host was focused only on her solo show, and did not seem to care at all what I was doing. That weekend was not just supposed to be my return to the lake, but also hers. This is where we met (online) and bonded. I could not wait to return and do it again. She couldn’t seem more disinterested. She began stripping online that weekend, and I knew the friendship was all but over. I knew that was a road I could not follow, and I knew she wanted me to, even though she refused to come right out and say it. The writing was on the wall, that cold and rainy weekend. Within seven days, the friendship had ended, as I knew it would. She would never join me at the cottage again, even though we had spent six months planning it.
Not this time.
2024 is off to the right start. Even if Jex can’t do as many summer shows with me this year, we accomplished what we set out to do. An amazing weekend was had. The music we road tested passed the gauntlet, and we are ready to get on with the summer.
Rediscovering music can be just as good, if not better, than discovering it in the first place.
I’m not sure why I segregated these records from my collection. When we brought “Mum’s” music home with us after she passed, I stuffed these nine albums in my closet, without assimilating them into my proper collection. I’m sure there were reasons, but today I welcome them with open arms.
Mum liked Canadian music, soundtracks, and the classics. Not so much classical, but classics like…well, you’ll see.
I made this video instead of writing a story, because I wanted the camera to capture the emotions of seeing these records. I went in unspoiled. I didn’t look at the records in advance, because I did not want to spoil the surprise. It has been years since I looked at or played any of these albums. These not were the only albums of Mum’s that we kept. Elsewhere, mixed into my collection properly, are the Beatles, Gordon Lightfoot, and The Buddy Holly Story.
Please enjoy this emotional look at Debbie’s Records.
As the Klingons (and Stooges) say: Qa’pla! (Success!)
I’ve been checking out the weather forecasts for weeks. There hasn’t been a clear, beautiful Saturday to go to the lake. Even this week, the forecast was for flurries and cloudy skies. That all changed Thursday, when the weather was looking like sun and cloud. When Saturday finally rolled around, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Jen, my dad and I bundled up and headed to the lake for the first time in over five months.
Now I’m not saying everything was perfect; that’s not how it goes in cottage country. Winter always does some damage, it’s just a matter of how much. One lady across the road had a cedar tree down. That wasn’t our issue; ours was pest related! There is an animal living under the shed, perhaps a skunk? There was a drowned mouse in the toilet, and the mice had gotten into the spice cabinet. Virtually everything has to be tossed. They really seem to like the smell of garlic. My garlic olive oil had its cap gnawed clean off. My sister had it even worse. She bought a dozen mouse traps, and every one was full.
There was also an issue with the internet. It should have been connected, but we fiddled and fiddled around with no success. It turns out, Rogers cancelled the service by mistake! My dad was trying to cancel his home service, but without success. Now we know why. Rogers cancelled the cottage service by mistake! I phoned home to tell my mom, who quickly sussed out the problem. By the time we left the cottage, internet was restored.
The stage is now set for my favourite thing ever: cottage episodes of Grab A Stack of Rock! Though nothing is planned yet, it’s definitely happening.
Road tunes – April 6 2024:
Alice Cooper – Goes to Hell
Alice Cooper – School’s Out
Alice Cooper – Greatest Hits (miscellaneous tracks)
RECORD STORE TALES #1120: Coming Soon: Opening Season…
Opening weekend rarely goes as planned!
Soon we will be returning to open up the cottage for another season of sun, sand, swimming, and Grab A Stack of Rock! We hope this season’s opening day goes without a hitch. The last two didn’t! Shall we recap?
2022
2022’s trip up was serenaded by John Williams’ soundtrack to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This was appropriate because we first saw that film in 1989 at the cottage.
It was a lovely opening day. The drive up (just my dad and I) was uneventful. Our arrival was marked by peace and quiet. Sunny, warm, and a perfect morning to spend outdoors.
I never accompanied the family to open the cottage in my Record Store days. Usually I was working. If I wasn’t working, I was spending my free time going on dates with girls. That was pretty much it. Work and dating. The cottage wasn’t interesting to me in those days. It’s a different story today. Now I spend my whole winter dreaming of opening day.
In 2022, we made good progress and by late morning, I started burning up old scrub and branches that had fallen during the winter. I gleefully wandered around, scooping armfuls of pine needles and twigs into a roaring fire.
There was only one issue, and it was one I should have dealt with long before. My glasses were loose. I had them adjusted once, and they slowly loosened again over time. They were prone to falling right off my face if I looked down. I should have had them fixed long before, and I should have been more careful about what happened next.
I scooped into my arms another pile of pine needles for the fire. My glasses dropped into my arms as I tossed the flammables into the fire. My glasses went with them. They melted in seconds, though I frantically searching the ground in futile hope for several minutes before giving up.
The panic set in shortly thereafter!
I phoned Jen at home to see if she could locate my old pair. No luck. I sulked on the couch for a while, dreading the coming days with no glasses. Then I thought to check my car’s glovebox.
Behold! An old pair of glasses were still in the glovebox, thank God. I was able to drive home, and continue to live my life relatively normally.
Dad and I drove to the sounds of Jon Lord, with his Concerto for Group and Orchestra, featuring Bruce Dickinson singing the second movement. After this, I selected Johnny Cash’s American III: Solitary Man. My dad could have driven in total silence, though I never could.
I had a bad feeling this time. Joelle the California Girl had promised to be my support over winter, as I dealt with seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D.). She had a “Ragnar” marathon from April 14-16 2023. In the weeks preceding, video and audio messages from her all but dried up, even though I was still creating them daily for her. She sent a video message from the marathon on the Saturday, but there were a number of red flags. There was something wrong with the video message she sent, and the two that followed. None of them began with her customary “Hi Mike!”
“Is she sending these video messages to everyone?” I asked myself. Things began falling apart from that point. My spider senses would not stop tingling, and even though she had promised to show up for the Grab A Stack of Rock shows from the cottage, she didn’t attend or even watch one of them. Not even one. This shadow loomed heavy over the season as it began in 2023.
The bad vibes continued as we drove home. I almost got a speeding ticket, my first in over a decade. As he was pulling us over, the cop got a call for an urgent accident. He told me I got lucky, as he returned my license to me and drove off. I switched up the music, first to Gordon Lightfoot – Complete Greatest Hits. I had no way to know that Gordon would be gone a mere two weeks later. I followed Gord with the Goo Goo Dolls – A Boy Named Goo.
Fortunately these bad omens did not impact the incoming cottage season. 2023 was as good as ever.
2024
And now, we we plan our return in 2024, we have plenty of new music from Judas Priest, Bruce Dickinson, John Williams, the Arkells, and much more to enjoy at the cottage. What will the first album be as we drive up again? We’ll see soon enough!
RECORD STORE TALES #1117: I Admit It: I Miss My Cassettes
Hey, it’s me, the guy who has talked about how much he hates cassettes, again and again ad nauseum. I don’t know why, but I’m feeling a lot of nostalgia for tapes these days. While CD remains my go-to format, with vinyl in second, I am now on the lookout for old 80s metal cassettes that still play well. What the hell happened to me?
It’s true that I have a lot of bad memories about cassettes, to go with the good. I have my own system and language when it comes to my collection, but I abandoned cassette back in 1995 because the sound quality wasn’t there and got noticeably worse the more you played the tape. I considered cassette to be a “soft copy”, with the longer-lasting CD and vinyl being “hard copies”. You simply have more control in keeping those two formats in good shape. Cassettes are another story. It’s just magnetic particles stuck to a ribbon, and every time you play it, those particles wear off bit by bit. In effect, you wreck your favourite tapes fastest because you simply love listening to them! There were other complications. Different decks played at different speeds, with my “ghetto blaster” playing the slowest and most warbly. I had two Sanyos and then a Sony, and the Sanyos were by far the worst. Only my Sony Walkman was able to play almost every tape in my collection at something close to the right speed. Once I learned to drive, I found that the car deck could play pretty much anything, but it did eat a few tapes too. It was like every time you wanted to listen to music, you had to pick the right equipment and cross your fingers. I remember wrecking a copy of Black Sabbath Tyr by accidentally pushing two buttons at once on my Sanyo. This created a loud squeal right during the start of “Anno Mundi” that was impossible to ignore. Playing tapes was like walking a minefield sometimes! I always prayed that nothing would go wrong.
CD solved most of the problems I had with cassettes. Heck, even the artwork was back to being a square! Cassette cover art was either cropped or “pan-and-scanned” (to coin a phrase) to make a square fit into a rectangle. Everything about CD was better. Bonus tracks, better sound, longer life, larger (and square!) artwork…even the ability to skip through songs in an instant. What wasn’t there to prefer? And why the hell do I miss cassettes right now?
It’s all nostalgia. There was something about buying a new album on cassette, and being basically forced to listen to the whole thing. There was a certain appreciation for the album, with an actual side break, that connected us to the vinyl age in a way that CD did not. Or, maybe it was just the glory time of our youths that made it feel that way. The act of closing the door, pressing “play” on a new tape, and laying on your bed to listen with intent. How often is music just background noise in our modern lives now? How frequently do we sit and spend time just listening to the music while staring at the packaging today? Are we listening, or are we multitasking? I’m multitasking right now, listening to Trilogy by Yngwie J. Malmsteen on my speakers.
I picked that recording for a reason. I got on cassette from my grandma in 1987. It was on Capitol Records and it played for shit out of the box. Many Capitol tapes did around 1986-87. my W.A.S.P. and Iron Maiden all had similar problems, which them priorities to upgrade on CD when the time came. I know not everybody likes Yngwie. Some find him grating. He does take some adjustment, but imagine listening to your first Yngwie on a slow, warbly cassette.
I do miss some things though.
I miss opening up a new tape and seeing what colour or design the shell was. Usually they were black, but as the 90s progressed they were frequently clear. Some were white, and my Helix was glow-in-the dark! With CD there was the occasional thrill when we got a picture disc, but soon that became the standard. The clunky cassette, with its little wheels and windows, was physically just cooler than a CD and you didn’t have to be as careful.
The lyric sheets were easier to read. All you had to do was unfold the J-card and lay it out. CDs often had pages stapled into a little booklet that you had to hold open. Cassettes may have had smaller print, but the paradox was that the format made it physically easier to read!
Cassettes were perfect for the pocket. You could easily slide a couple (maybe even three) into a jacket pocket. CDs never fit right and if you got one in your pocket, it was a tight fit. And jewel cases were easy to crack and break.
That’s another thing! Cassette cases had their weaknesses too. They could crack like a CD case, and the little arms could snap off. However this is far more common on the CD case, which also have those annoyingly fragile teeth that hold the disc in place. Cassette cases were just slightly more sturdy than their CD counterparts.
Finally, cassette spines were wider and easier to read. Period!
I do miss cassettes. I have better equipment today, and though not an audiophile setup, I get by. There are some releases I’d like to have on cassette again, or for the first time. I guess I’m a changed man. I’m not the format snob I used to be. However, if they start jacking up the prices of cassettes the way vinyl is today, we’ll have to talk again.
Oh, the boss is coming! You better look busy, They’re not paying you for nothing!
— ARKELLS
If there’s time to lean, There’s time to clean.
— THE BOSS AT THE RECORD STORE “The Beat Goes On”
They used to call it “fucking the dog”. I don’t know what vernacular the youth of today use, but that’s what we used to call slacking off on the job: dog fucking.
I have known some expert dog fuckers in my day. I know one guy who had taken it to a fine art. I won’t tell you any details about this fine young man, except to say he was a maestro of dog fucking. He was the Bach, the Beethoven, of slacking off on the job. Let’s call him Smart Guy. He truly was a smart guy, which is one reason he was able to get so much paid free time at work. He was no dummy. But man, he had a system!
Smart Guy had a different boss from me. Everyone liked him. He was pretty grounded for a guy who was destined for big things. He worked in a small room, with a friend of mine. Because of this, I heard things and that’s why I can tell this story.
I learned from Smart Guy that Honda Civics were very popular with his age group because they were easy to customize. I had no interest in this, but I took interest for the sake of conversation. I’d stroll into their room, and Smart Guy would be on eBay looking for Civic parts. Maybe a fender, maybe hubcabs, maybe a spoiler, I don’t know. He was always shopping for car parts.
He was also very tech-savvy. For example he figured out how to send coded messages to my printer, in an effort to freak me out. He was also very playful. He printed out numerous pictures of clowns and hid them all over his room. Sort of a calling card for after he left. I had to find all those clowns when he eventually did move on to bigger things!
So how did he get away with it? By being a fast, efficient worker, and always having one project complete at all times — just not handed in.
So, if his boss walked in and he was fucking the dog, he’d just hand him a completed piece of work. “I’m all done this project, here you go!”
“Oh, thanks Smart Guy! Great. OK, I’ll leave you to your work.”
My time in music retail was relatively long, considering how taxing on the soul it can be buying used music from the public on the wrong side of town. I started in July of 1994, in a small store in a small mall in Kitchener, Ontario, called The Beat Goes On. We sold some used, some new. In 1996, I began managing a new store that was a slightly different format: 95% used, with a small Top 40 chart of new CDs. I stayed there until early 2006. 12 years total, with 10 in management. Over those 12 years, I witnessed so many changes to the way we did business. Join me for a journey through time.
Ah, 1994. I had just start dating a new girlfriend. Motley Crue had come out with their John Corabi album, which was easily my favourite disc of the year. I wore cowboy boots to my job interview with the boss man at the Record Store. I was hired and nervously stepped behind the counter and did my first transactions.
We had a huge cash register, and still took cheques. Credit cards were processed with one of those imprint machines that made the satisfying CHK-CHK sound when you imprinted the card. Then began a long process of writing in dollar amounts and getting a signature. Today, one tap and you’re done! When we got a debit machine, it used the same phone line as the actual store phone. When someone called the store, it would interrupt your debit transaction if you had one going. You usually ended up with two impatient customers that way: one on the phone and one in front of you!
Our stock was part CD and part cassette, but tapes were on their way out and we only bought and sold used CDs. The reasoning was it was easier to check a CD for quality visually, looking for scratches. We carried only those two formats, until one day in November 1994. Pearl Jam came out with Vitalogy in 1994 on vinyl, two weeks before its cassette and CD releases. The first vinyl I ever sold. We only stocked five copies because nobody was buying vinyl back then. We probably should have stocked 15 or 20, because we were surprised with demand. People who didn’t even own a turntable wanted it for its collector’s value and larger artwork.
Boyz II Men were big. TLC were bigger. Soundgarden and Nirvana were dominating the rock charts. My kind of music wasn’t popular and wasn’t encouraged to be played in store.
Tastes changed rather quickly for some of these bands. Boyz II Men made their way into the bargain. Thence came Puff Daddy, Mase, and of course the posthumous albums by 2pac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. On the rock side, upstarts like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Creed and eventually Nickleback replaced Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains on our charts. And then came Crazy Town, and by then, it felt like there was no coming back. Rock was a cartoon. A “fuck”-laden filthy cartoon.
The job behind the counter became easier. By 1996, our inventory was computerized. Cassettes were gone; it was 100% CD. You could look everything up with a simple search. Before, I had to physically search the shelves to see if we had inventory. Of course, we soon learned that just because something pops up on the computer as in-stock, that actually means nothing. Human error was a huge problem and I was as guilty as everyone else, if not more so! Putting the wrong disc in a CD case upon sale was so easy to do. Not every customer realized they bought something with the wrong CD inside, and we didn’t always get them returned. We ended up with many missing or mis-matched CDs, and also missing cases due to mis-filing or theft.
Soon customers wanted to look things up on computer terminals by themselves. They also wanted to see what our other stores had in stock, as the we franchised out and grew. These complicated problems were eventually solved with a little thing called the World Wide Web.
Having internet access at the store in the year 1999 was unimaginable to me of 1994, who had never even been on the internet yet.
Of course, the advent of the internet brought with it an unforeseen danger. Soon our very existence would be threatened. No, I’m not talking about computer viruses or Y2k. Those had little impact at all. Something else did: Napster.
Napster changed everything. Soon we were carrying so much more than just music, to make up for the decline in sales. Bobble heads, action figures, books, video games, headphones, and so so so so many CD wallets. Sometimes the toys and action figures wouldn’t have anything to do with music, like the Muppets or the Simpsons. (Those were carried because a certain regional manager personally liked those shows.) Osbournes merch was popular. Kiss had many different toy options available. Metallica had a cool stage playset. Macfarlane figures either sold out, or sat around forever. We stopped carrying blank tapes, but had a variety of CD-Rs available instead.
I recall the boss resisted carrying CD-Rs for a while, because he thought it was counterproductive to our business of selling music on CD. However eventually it became a case of a dam giving way to a flood. It was “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” and blank CDs were now being sold by brick or spindle. Remember bricks and spindles full of blank CDs?
We also sold CD cleaning kits and tended to stay away from snake-oil CD fixing “solutions”. Instead, we had a couple of guys who fixed CDs with a grinder and wax in their garage. Eventually we began fixing the discs ourselves using the same method, but actually improving upon the solution by using soap instead of wax. I’m not sure how the original guys took that, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pretty at all.
Competition was always fierce. We had an HMV store at the mall across the street from the store I managed. We had a Cash Converters pawn shop buying and selling CDs and video games in the same plaza as us. A few years later, a Best Buy opened next door, and their prices were often lower. DVDs began to take up a huge share of our sales, and we now had to make room. Additional shelving was installed. Then we ran out of space again. New formats like SACD and DVD-A started to infiltrate our inventory. Things became really, really complicated compared to the store I managed in 1996.
There are a million stories. I remember one guy buying an SACD, and coming back wanting to know why the “Super Audio” light wasn’t lighting up on his player. How the fuck should I know? I’d never even seen an SACD player at that point. The guy actually wanted me to write a letter to Sony and ask them on his behalf. Yeah, I’ll get right on that sir, after I serve you some fresh Grey Poupon on a charcuterie board.
Technology, transactions and inventory may have changed shape, but one thing never did: the customers.
When we first opened, we had a single disc CD player and tape deck to play music in store. There was a TV for MuchMusic, but it was usually on silent while we played CDs in store. If a customer wanted to hear a CD, we had to open it for them and play it on the store speakers. They’d signal me when to change tracks. In 1996, we have six five-disc changers, each with a dedicated set of headphones, for customers to list. We had another five-disc changer for store play, and eventually one for an outdoor speaker we had. The six customer listening stations took a dedicated person to serve on weekends. We had to retrieve the CDs from behind the counters and load them into the players. We often had to assist the customer in the operation of the machines. And they broke down, frequently. Some days towards the end we only had two working stations at a time.
Our first store was in a mall with a licensed restaurant. We had a few drunks. The other stores I worked at were in strip plazas. We had a few stoners, potheads, crackheads and gang-bangers.
Ahh, the good old days when it was just drunks!
One thing we never delved into in my time was selling CD players. We didn’t want to dip our toes into that kind of thing. Today, they sell turntables at my old store. We also, strangely, never sold batteries which people frequently asked for. I guess margins were so low it wasn’t worth it. I never lasted long enough to see the vinyl revival happen. We only sold a few things on vinyl in time. The aforementioned Pearl Jam was one. Soundgarden (Down on the Upside) was another.
The change that impacted me most had nothing to do with formats, or technology. It didn’t matter that I now had two shelves full of Sega and Nintendo games. The biggest change was in heirarchy behind the scenes. I started as a part timer with one boss. I was promoted to manager, with one boss, and several peers at other stores. Then, suddenly, I had two bosses. Then there were three, and the worst thing about the third is that we were all told “they’re not your boss, they’re here to help.” That was false. Three bosses, and there was now an in-house accountant and other periphery people that seemed to get yelled at less than I did. I’m sure it’s clear from this story that the winds of change did not bring me happiness. Instead they chipped away at the job I started with, and diluted the “music store” I managed into a music/movie/game/knick-knack store. I was attending manager meetings in big hotel board rooms. There were marketing people and franchisees, and nobody ever seemed truly happy on the inside. 110% was demanded of us, but we had no reason to be invested in what boiled down to a bad retail job that caused a lot of stress.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change, and there was one change I was happy to witness: In the late 90s, Black Sabbath reunited. It was a happy return, though they had their trailer hitched to a nu-metal Ozzfest which wasn’t my cup of tea. Music began to shift until one day in 1999, something truly remarkable happened. We didn’t know how long it would last, or what the new music would sound like, but Iron Maiden reunited with Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith. Judas Priest were a few years behind them, getting Rob Halford back in the band. Suddenly, classic metal was back in a big way. Bigger than ever. It was not waned since. I was happy that I got to see this process begin at the end of my days at the Store.
My boss used to say that I resisted change. I don’t agree. No sir. I embraced the good stuff. The computers, the internet, the website, fixing CDs, the abandonment of certain formats (cassettes and VHS) when they were fading away. The things I struggled with included the diluting of the store with all these other products like video games. I started there because I loved music. Fortunately I also loved movies, so when DVDs began to take over a large section of the store, I was cool with that too. When Grand Theft Auto was upon us, I had no passion. Then came the addition of more upper management, and increased demands on our personal time and investment in the Record Store life. Monthly manager meetings dragged on for hours. We’d leave scratching our heads why this wasn’t just covered in emails. We had zero autonomy and little say in what we did. I remembered a time when I loved my job. There was no love there anymore.
The happy ending is this. When I quit that job, I rediscovered my passion for music. Music was fun for me again, not just something playing in the background as I worked.
RECORD STORE TALES #1114: Music Groups / Party Poopers
They say it’s not about size, but I do have a pretty big music collection. I guesstimate at around 6000 CDs at present. Because my goal in collecting music is to acquire physical copies of “all the official tracks” by the bands I like, I do have a lot of rare discs in my collection. Primarily, Japanese imports with bonus tracks. I don’t go out of my way to buy multiple copies on multiple formats (though I still do) and I don’t shell out big bucks for anything if I already have all the tunes. I don’t buy cassette reissues, I don’t worry about vinyl variants. I just want a physical copy of “all the official tracks”, be they remixes, live, or whatever.
Because I have so many rare CDs, twice in 2022, Tim Durling asked me to guest on his show Tim’s Vinyl Confessions. We did two episodes on rare CDs (#351 and #390). I showed off a number of my imports, but because my music is so scattered around the house (a whole other story), I missed a few. Some I didn’t even think of. I mean, I could have grabbed every Japanese import in my house, but instead I grabbed a few dozen of the closest ones with obi strip intact. They just look cooler that way.
Fast forward a year to summer of 2023. While relaxing one Saturday afternoon at the cottage, I was ambushed by Tim and John the Music Nut, as they tried to coerce me into buying some Y&T CDs. Their methods worked, and I ordered Black Tiger, UnEarthed Vol. 1, and the DVD On With the Show. However, Tim was flabbergasted when the subject of “Go For the Throat” came up. “You need the 2006 reissue of In Rock We Trust,” cautioned Tim, “because, aside from the Hear N’ Aid CD, it’s the only place you can get that track on CD.”
“I have Hear N’ Aid on CD,” I responded.
“WHAT?” Tim was absolutely floored, flabbergasted, and perhaps a little betrayed that I had never brought this fact up before.
Hear N’ Aid, of course, was a project produced by Ronnie James Dio in 1986 to raise funds for famine relief in Africa. It was released on cassette and LP, with a 7″ and 12″ single too. There was a documentary on VHS, and sources report there was even a very rare CD single in Japan (found on a Japanese music auction site). In 1986, there was no compact disc release.
This changed in 1994 when a limited Japanese CD was released overseas. It was deleted again shortly after.
“Mike…that has to be one of the rarest CDs you own! Why didn’t you show it off on my show when we did rare CDs?”
The Music Nut concurred that it was very hard to find on CD. It didn’t occur to me. I acquired it for about $15 many years before, from “Gum Chewin’ Conrad”, a customer of mine at the Record Store who always sold Japanese imports (no obi, unfortunately). I also had a cassette (in a Thunder Bay landfill now) and vinyl, but the CD was the only thing they cared about. A few days later I posted about it on Facebook, and Reed Little from the Contrarians immediately jumped into the comments, remarking on my rare treasure.
There must be some issue with record labels and estates, considering the artists involved. The Hendrix estate is already a tangled affair, and there was a Jimi song on the album (“Can You See Me”). The album also contains rare live Kiss, Scorpions, Accept, Dio, Rush and Motorhead. The song “Stars” recorded by the supergroup Hear N’ Aid, had members of Motley Crue, Dokken, Journey, Dio, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, Blue Oyster Cult, Queensryche, Night Ranger, W.A.S.P., Y&T, and solo artists such as Ted Nugent and Yngwie J. Malmsteen. Even Spinal Tap were involved. You can imagine, this must be why Wendy Dio has struggled so long trying to reissue the album.
In recent months, I began dipping my toes into the murky world of Facebook discussion groups. The best, by far, is Jamie Laszlo’s Let’s Get Physical. I enjoy the Rock Candy Magazine group. I also joined a couple Facebook CD collector groups. The experience was, to say the least, mixed.
I discovered one property that I will declare as an axiom: there is always a party pooper in any Facebook music discussion group.
Disclaimer: When I collect, I don’t care so much about value. I care how much I spend for music I want, but not resale value. I am also not an audiophile and tend not to get along well with diehard audiophiles.
I decided to post my Hear N’ Aid CD in the Rock Candy music group and see what the reaction was. My caption was “Some folks say this is the rarest CD that I own,” which is 100% true. Folks do say that.
There were over 500 reactions, and only two negative comments. Negative comments, sadly, are as constant as the north star.
“It’s not that rare,” said the first Negative Nancy. “There are copies on Discogs right now for as low as $50, and there are 17 copies available.”
Thanks. Go buy one, then.
The other Negative Nancy wasn’t happy with the sound quality on the CD. He complained there’s a low hum throughout the disc. He showed me some kind of graph. I told him I was very happy with my disc, and I enjoyed listening to the music and never noticed a hum. He told me I never really listened.
I get it, everybody wants to say their two cents. Most people were very cool and posted pictures from their own collections. From about 500 reactions, there were about 10 to 15 people who owned the album on CD. Most had vinyl, cassette, the single, or a VHS tape.
I left one CD collector group immediately, when all the comments were either focused on value or sound quality. I stayed in another group, despite two weird comments.
“Crappy pic…more disc, less face next time,” said one guy who couldn’t read the title and never heard of the zoom feature.
“This CD is mastered from the LP,” said another guy who had no evidence for his claim. “Wendy Dio doesn’t own the masters and the reissue will also be taken from vinyl,” he insisted.
Weird folks in some of those music groups, I’ll tell you. The audiophiles reminded me of dealing with those types in my Record Store days. Guys who could hear things I never could, and get angry because I couldn’t. Music collectors are by and large an amicable group of nerds, but there’s always one or two ready to rain on your parade.
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