It is inevitable, even in this digital age, that things get lost! I’ve been writing about music since the early 1990s, with my first music reviews posted in 1994. All of that stuff is gone now. My earliest reviews were unpublished, just saved onto a disc or printed out and given to friends. Those discs are long gone now, 5 – 1/4″ floppy discs that went corrupt, and later on 3 – 1/2″ floppies that met the same fate.
The very first review I posted was of the first three songs from Motley Crue’s self-titled album in 1994. It was posted March 15 1994, the day of release, with a full album review that followed. These were posted on a local computer bulletin board called the Wanderer’s Rest, run by a guy named Sheldon Parkes. Incredible that I still remember his name 30 years later, but there are minimal records left. The Wanderer’s Rest had a problem with its users, who tended to be antisemetic. I bailed out, and posted Black Sabbath reviews on another board, called Arrakis. It was run was a local home-schooled kid name Doug Pretorius. Naturally, all those reviews are lost now. Amazing how I can remember these guys’ names. I met Doug once or twice for a few minutes, and never met Sheldon at all. It would have been interesting to see how bad those old reviews were! I know my Motley review has not changed in praise or enthusiasm. I liked it just as much upon release as I do now. I followed it with a review of Quaternary. I remember praising the industrial flavours of some of the tracks, and the aggressive lyrics.
In the early 2000s, I began posting my reviews, rants and lists on a website called IAM, under the name Purpendicular. Unfortunately all those reviews were lost when I deleted my account in 2004. I don’t remember much of what I posted, but I worked on the content and I know there was some good stuff that I would have re-posted here, if I still had it.
In early 2006, I met and interviewed ex-Helix guitarist Brent Doerner. That interview is still intact, rescued from a Maxell XLII 110 cassette. Another tape was not so lucky. A year or so following this, I talked to Brent’s live band, including guitarist Shane Schedler, now-retired drummer Brian Doerner (then doing double duty in Saga), and the late Ralph “Chick” Schumilas on rhythm guitar. I lost the tape, and the interview was never transcribed. I felt like shit. I remember I wore a suit to the interview, which Brian asked me to take off as it made him uncomfortable!
I can only remember one quote from the whole interview.
Me: “So Brian, I heard that you were singing lead vocals on ‘Billy Oxygen’ on the last Helix tour, is that true?”
Brian: “Yah, so??”
I then went on to praise the song, and told him how happy I was that Helix were playing it live again. That is unfortunately all I can remember. Maybe I’ll find that tape one day, though I have tried mightily. I could swear it was on a red TDK.
Even in the digital age, things get lost if you don’t own control of your context.
I recently lost two great interviews that I did with some incredible rock stars, because they were not on my channel, and that channel doesn’t seem to exist anymore. On September 23, 2021 I interviewed Greg Fraser of Brighton Rock and Storm Force. Andy Curran and Sean Kelly both dropped by for an episode that you could have called “This Is Your Life Greg Fraser”. The Storm Force guitarist dropped tons of knowledge and great stories. What a loss! If I had known it would disappear, I would have downloaded it for my own records. The other lost interview was with Slik Toxik’s Nick Walsh, which I called a “bucket list” interview. This one happened on November 17, 2021 and included great stories about Nick sending his audition tapes to Ratt and Jimmy Page. All lost forever now.
If I ever do another interview for a channel that is not mine, I will download it, and re-upload it to my own YouTube channel as an unlisted video. That way, it’ll always be available, even if it’s not publicly available. I will still be able to watch it and use it for research.
So, as we mourn the loss of content both great and insignificant, we look to the future and saving these things properly. Loss prevention tactics for the digital age.
In the last five years, my world has changed drastically. We lost Jen’s mom, we’ve lost friends, but on the positive side, we’ve also lost weight! The world has gone through a transformative pandemic, but one constant is Aaron KMA, a man I have not seen since 2018. I am happy to report that Aaron is still out there being Aaron – bearing gifts and warmth as always!
We met halfway, at the Elk & Finch in Southampton Ontario. He brought his son, who I’ve never met before, but has good taste in hamburgers. We sat down to some amazing food, including the best smoked salmon I’ve ever tasted in my life. This is it: as good as it gets.
Food aside, I knew Aaron would arrive bearing gifts, and as usual, he did: Books, CDs, and more. Let’s have a gander, shall we? Let’s go through the contents of Aaron’s gift bag bit by bit.
Not pictured, there were four bottle of Iron Maiden’s Trooper beer! Not pictured because I didn’t think I should pull out liquor of my own at a restaurant. You understand of course! You are probably familiar with this acclaimed brew already. That made up a lot of the weight of the gift bag. Much of the rest of the weight was taken up by books. One book specifically.
The big one is The Art of Classic Rock by Paul Brushkin, with foreward by Alice Cooper. Aaron has showed this off on my show before. We also have rock magazines (with CDs)! Other reading: Gods of the Hammer by Geoff Pevere, the story of Teenage Head. The “Hammer” in this case is Hamilton Ontario. Keeping a punk vibe, Aaron also gave me Perfect Youth: The Birth of Canadian Punk by Sam Sutherland. Finally, it’s The Story of Tommy which is really gorgeous!
I’m very excited about the music. I actually didn’t own a copy of Garbage’s self titled debut, until now. This one is signed by all four members, and lo and behold, it’s dedicated to Mike! Just a coincidence I assure you but how cool is that? I now also owned Backwaxed by Anvil, which I was missing until now, and now I also own the Hip side project Stripper’s Union.
I get more and more excited the further we go!
These Hot Wheels are really cool. I think I need to open them. The Yellow Submarine (Beatles) is groovy. The USS Enterprise though…I just enjoy swooshing those ships around. This Enterprise is NCC-1701 from the 2009 film Star Trek, directed by JJ Abrams and starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk. (I have to be honest, I prefer Paul Wesley’s Kirk from Strange New Worlds, which I am trying to get Aaron to watch!) I enjoy these very much, and this is not the first time Aaron has found an appropriate Hot Wheels to gift me.
Onto the shirt, which was actually the first item in the bag. Jeff Woods is legendary in my circles – he is THE Legend of Classic Rock. Jeff Woods even contributed to the Sausagefest countdowns a number of times. Aaron, however, isn’t a radio listener and isn’t intimate with the works of Mr. Woods as I am. Yet Aaron found this shirt, thought of me, and put it in the bag. I am thrilled. This is a shirt I would have bought myself anyway!
Finally…
I just loved the Sheik. I have always loved the Sheik. He was one of the greatest villains in WWF history. We talked to Spenny about the Iron Sheik back in May on Grab A Stack of Rock. And now I have a little loveable stuffed Sheik of my own. I couldn’t be more happy. This is the kind of gift that just screams “Mike”.
Aaron, it was a delight to hook up again and finally meet your son. I hope we do something like this again soon. I could go for some salmon again. And the coffee was great too.
RECORD STORE TALES #1076: Weekend Listening At Home
When I have time and the inclination at home, I like to go through dusty corners of the CD collection and finally get them ripped to PC. I take my hard drives with me everywhere, so my music collection is always portable. This weekend I took some deep dives, and sampled the sweet exotic fruits of the E section, a sampling of K’s and L’s, and some new arrivals too.
First of all, the newer stuff.
I’m going to have to re-review Morning Report by the Arkells again! Turns out, I made a mistake in my original review. I said that the deluxe edition had three bonus tracks, but I was wrong. I didn’t realize that there was another bonus track inserted as track #2, between “Drake’s Dad” and “Private School”. This makes all the difference in the world to the sequencing. Now we get “Knocking At The Door”, a new single, as the new track #2. Since “Drake’s Dad” and “Private School” were my two least favourite songs, having something of much higher quality between them really helps the flow.
I always buy something after doing a show on Grant’s Rock Warehouse. This time, it was the Stone Gods. I’ve acquired the single for “Burn the Witch”, which comes with two awesome non-album songs: “Breakdown”, and “Heartburn”! “Breakdown” is exactly like Thin Lizzy, to a tee, except with Richie Edwards on lead vocals. “Breakdown” is of equally high quality, a light and humorous tune about Pepto-Bismol and Gaviscon. Expect a review at some point in the future.
Finally, I sampled some April Wine, from Over 60 Minutes With…All the Rockers. People ask me “Why do you not own any April Wine?” I said “I never grew up with April Wine, my friends didn’t like them, so I never bothered.” Well Tim Durling said I need April Wine. I will evaluate this at a later date, but I have some April Wine now.
The next batch of discs was from the last part of the E section, five discs that had escaped ripping to the PC all these years. It could be 20 years or more since I have last played some of these. Earth, Wind & Fire, nothing need be said here, that’s essential. I was surprised at the quality of Elf, as boogie-woogie isn’t usually my thing. The Rik Emmett CD is cool because it has 2001 live versions of some of his old Triumph classics. Episode Six runs the gamut from quaint to psychedelic. “UFO” is one cool such song, a spoken word bit over drums, that reads from UFO sighting reports. But that’s Ian Gillan and Roger Glover on the front cover, yes indeed! Finally, the Eric Singer Project (ESP) was the weak link in this batch. Just a bland covers album to me.
Next, over to the K section. I noticed that none of my Kula Shaker music was on PC, and I have a lot of Kula Shaker. That’s the entire collection below, in fact.
Look! The 2 CD edition of debut album K with a cool remix of “Tattva”. Two CDs of “Govinda” singles with B-sides and remixes. “Grateful When You’re Dead/Jerry Was There” CD single with two non-album tracks. The highlight of me of these was “The Leek”, a quiz show style radio appearance by bassist Alonza Bevan. (A distant cousin of Roger Glover, in fact.) Really funny stuff. To me, anyway! Two CDs of “Hush”, the Joe South cover (also covered by Deep Purple Mk I) with lots more non-album tracks. Then we have the Summer Sun EP, which has four of the previous B-sides and two songs I didn’t have elsewhere. The second album, Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts spawned a CD single called “Sound of Drums”, both of which are here. More non-album tracks on that as well.
Well, it turns out, I still love Kula Shaker! Like, a lot. That Britpop sound, mixed with 60s psychedelia and far Eastern influences just tickles my fancy. There were a couple tracks I really loved, but none more than “108 Battles of the Mind” from the second album. What a cool, manic track that definitely benefited from the Austin Powers era.
One thing about Kula Shaker that needs to be addressed: the stellar musicianship. These guys can jam! Special notice to drummer Paul Winterhart who is absolute monster. Incredible band. Once I start re-absorbing these songs back into my memory, I may have to catch up with what they’ve been up to since 1999, where my collection ends.
Continuing through K, and into L, the listening continued on Sunday morning.
Kyuss is a band that I don’t think was summed up well by compilation. I will have to dig further. I have their split EP with Queens of the Stone Age, which has “Fatso Forgotso” on it, but I think Kyuss were an album band. The two Kulick albums are excellent. Corabi is on Transformer, which is signed! I didn’t know I had a signed copy! The James LaBrie solo disc also sounds great from what I sampled! Very Dream Theater, in a good way. Some heavy, some soft. Then we have Life Sex & Death, also called LSD. Their gimmick was their lead singer “Stanley” who was supposedly homeless (but wasn’t). This 1992 album is one that needs more exploration. What I heard was heavy, gritty and riffy while retaining some melody. To be further examined in the future.
As far as I got on the weekend, this just scratches the surface. Look at all this stuff that is still sealed in my collection. Time or inclination just haven’t lined up with the proper mood yet. Some are newer arrivals, like Metheny, Hollywood Vampires and Eric Carr. Others have been sitting around for years. The Kiss compilation may as well stay sealed for collector’s purposes, but The Boxed Life by Rollins…that could have been waiting a decade on these shelves. The Garth Hudsons have been here since 2020. The Etta James and Beatles since 2018. They were in Jen’s mom’s collection.
Wish me luck as I continue to delve into these unheard corners of my collection. What would you be playing first if you stumbled onto these discs?
RECORD STORE TALES #1075: Epileptics Will Say the Darndest Things
As a person with seizures that cannot be controlled by medication, my wife Jen has an interesting life. The seizures are not as bad as they were several years ago, but they still happen regularly a couple times a week. Lately they’d been pretty mild. There was a series of them recently that left her unconscious for hours, and she fell three times that night (twice off the bed), but those nights are unusual. We always must remain vigilant, and pay attention to any signs of coming seizures. My job is to make sure she’s safe and doesn’t fall or hurt herself.
What is a seizure? Unusual brain activity can be triggered by flashing lights, or even stress. This causes Jen to lose consciousness, and sometimes flail her limbs about. If she’s standing, she falls. She makes utterances that sound like anything from gibberish to laughing to choking. Worse things happen too. It’s scary. Not gonna lie. Some people are surprised how calm I seem when they hit. It’s just experience.
We have learned in our almost 20 years together that you have to have a sense of humour. When funny things happen, they happen and it should be acknowledged. For example, after a seizure, Jen’s vision can be extremely distorted and magnified. She can see details that I can’t, and sometimes things appear incredibly close. So, when she stared at my nose and proclaimed it “pointy and triangle-shaped”, I had to laugh. That has to be written down and remembered, because that’s objectively funny.
Recently Jen had an “aura”. Not quite a seizure, but with similar effects. Jen is conscious, but in a daze, with similar sensory amplification. It can be scary for her so I like to just rub her shoulders and talk her through it. On this particular night, the aura struck just before a hockey game. I tried to have Jen engage with me, instead of staring off at something scary in the distance.
“Who’s playing tonight?” I asked, gesturing to the TV.
“Team,” she responded simply. It was the best she could do under the circumstances.
“I know our team [the Leafs] are playing tonight, but who are they playing against?”
“Shitty,” she answered. I chuckled despite the circumstances.
“Montreal?” I asked her. The Canadiens are her most hated team.
“Other shitty,” she replied.
“Oh! Ottawa!” I laughed.
She nodded in the affirmative.
And so, I’m writing this down so we’ll always remember. You have to laugh! Yes, the aura left her dazed for hours afterwards, but it is important to find the humour in it. You can’t let this disease beat you like that.
So laugh! Find the funny things in life and remember we’re still breathing.
RECORD STORE TALES #1074: Have You Played Atari Today?
The Atari 2600 might have been the dominant video game system in our childhood lives in the early 80s, but it was far from “the best”. Intellivision offered better graphics. Colecovision was also impressive, and had a pretty good home version of Donkey Kong. Atari had a greater breadth of games available, though its graphics were pitiful by comparison. Atari boasted the blockiest graphics on the market! Did we care? Well…yes! We did care about graphics, but we also wanted all our favourite games on one system: Pac-Man, Asteroids, Defender, Space Invaders, Centipede, The Empire Strikes Back, Frogger…all of them. Though it should be noted, it was the parents who chose the video game systems in the neighbourhood, and price was also a major factor.
Domo arigato, parents of Owen Avenue, for spoiling the shit out of all the kids.
We had a 2600. The Schippers had a 2600. The Szabos had a 2600. George Balazs had a 2600. The Morrows had a 2600. The only kids that didn’t have a 2600 were the weirdos (just trust me) across the street, the uber-religious Dolph family, who had a Commodore Vic 20. With so many families in the neighbourhood owning the same systems, borrowing games was commonplace. The typical length of a game borrow from a neighbour was three days. Just enough time to get pretty good at a game, and often enough, to get bored with it as well.
No, those old Atari games didn’t have a lot of longevity. Most of them got a little monotonous after a certain number of plays. The games barely had any memory at all, so things tended to get…repetitive, shall we say. Most Atari video games just got faster as you played, repeating the same screens and obstacles. Eventually, you got fed up and died. Then you pulled out the cartridge to put in something else, because you were sick of that game!
The truth is, as iconic as the Atari was, we were often disappointed with their actual adaptations of the games. We did our research. We read reviews in video game magazines, and we watched reports on TV. We all knew in advance that we would be disappointed in E.T the Extraterrestrial well before we received it for Christmas in 1982. But we tended to get the games anyway, because we liked to try the games ourselves…and sometimes the choices weren’t really all that great! Occasionally, the low rated games like Combat and Adventure were our favourites. E.T., not so much. I know we received E.T. for Christmas….
Christmas! Atari and Christmas…they went hand in hand. Every Christmas, my uncle and aunt from Stratford would come to stay over. There was a nice finished room in the basement with a pull-out couch bed. Unfortunately…the Atari and TV were also down there! Which meant, when my sister and I inevitably woke up at, like, 5 AM to see what Santa got us (Atari games), we had to wait and wait to go downstairs to play them. Often we’d wake them up by constantly checking to see if they were awake.
So many disappointments back then! Pac-Man? That goes without saying. Beyond minor things like the annoying clangy sound effects and messed up colours, they also changed the layout and orientation of the maze. Usually Pac-Man’s escape tunnels are on the sides. Atari put them on top and bottom of the screen, which really felt wrong. It wasn’t…terrible…I mean, Pac-Man was still eating pellets, being chased by ghosts, before chasing them after eating a power pill. Same idea just…really poorly executed.
E.T. was all but unplayable at anything but the easiest difficulties, without agents and doctors chasing you. It was also extremely annoying, as you searched a large multi-screen play area for your phone’s pieces and the location of your spaceship’s eventual landing pad. The landscape was dotted with pits. Aren’t they all? Common problem in the suburbs. E.T. constantly falls in these pits, costing him energy when he levitates out of them. What, you don’t remember that scene from the movie?
Here’s the thing though. It was ironic that even though actor Henry Thomas was pictured on the box for E.T. the Atari game…Thomas himself was contracted by rival Intellivision, selling their system in TV ads! This irony was not lost on my dad, who thought we should have bought the system that Elliott himself was hawking on TV.
Indiana Jones’ Atari adaptation fared marginally better. Now this was a game we were able to beat, thanks to a detailed step-by-step instruction booklet. Yet…the game had no relation whatsoever to the movie. Oh sure, your character kinda looked like Indy with a brim-hat shaped head, but…when did Indy need to find a grenade to throw at a wall exposing a cave? When did he need to retrieve an Anhk (Vinnie Vincent fan?) to…oh shit, you know what? I cannot remember the convoluted plot to this game! There were caves with weird cells you could get trapped in. There was a cliff over a jungle, filled with thieves and tsetse flies. There was a black market where you could buy bullets and the all-necessary shovel to eventually dig for the Ark of the Covenant. There was also a “lunatic” there who would kill you instantly if you passed him. Eventually you find the map room, which has a narrow walkway you must not fall off, and if you are in the right spot at the right time with the right item activated, eventually the sun will come out and illuminate a specific mesa on a map that is concealing the Ark! You remember the mesa scene in the film, right? Indy must jump from mesa to mesa using his whip, an annoyingly frustrating task. Then, he must parachute off the mesa, and maneuver past an annoying treebranch, into a little hole in the side of the mesa. There, you must…dodge aliens…and go to the bottom of the screen where there is a mound of dirt. If you have acquired a shovel, then you can dig for the Ark. Just like in the movie.
It took us forever to beat some of these games. Of course, most Atari games back then didn’t have endings. Most just kept going on, getting faster and faster until you “died”. Some that did have proper endings included Adventure (another bizarre and primitive quest game), Haunted House, and E.T.
Despite the numerous…ahem…pitfalls of trying to find a decent Atari 2600 video game, there were some exceptions: A handful of truly great games on that primitive system. Many of these were made by another company called Activision. Activision typically made the best 2600 games, and had a really cool unified line of box art. Best of all, their video games were original concepts. Pitfall was one of the best games for any system of the era. A huge side scrolling adventure and treasure hunt, this game saw “Pitfall Harry” seeking gold and diamonds in the jungle, trying to navigate a series of obstacles such as fire, scorpions, rolling logs, quicksand, and alligators. You could try taking a shortcut through the tunnels below, but you’ll get there eventually just by falling through a pit! Activision really had a hit with Pitfall, but there were so many more. Chopper Command had you piloting a really cool helicopter, taking out both ground and air enemies in a side scroller where you had full control. River Raid scrolled upwards without any control on the player’s part. You had side-side freedom of movement, and a lethal forward gun. The necessity of stopping for fuel was a unique and challenging aspect. There was a clever game called Dolphin that involved the concept of sonar, and listening for tones to know your next move – which you must make in an instant. Many of these games came out later in the Atari’s life. That system really had legs. We were still playing it into 1986. Eventually, the Nintendo NES supplanted it.
Graphics and simplicity aside, the Atari 2600 had one weakness we don’t often hear about. It is generally said that the Atari had the superior controller over the Coleco and Intellivision systems. Intellivision had a sleek controller with a directional disc instead of a joystick, Coleco’s joystick was stubby and uncomfortable. Atari’s was just right. It fit perfectly in your hands, with a smooth-moving rubber-covered stick and a single “fire” button. Definitely the easiest, if simplest, of the controllers. But it was not sturdy. Inside that rubber outer shell was a fragile plastic skeleton. It only took my cousin, Captain Destructo, one visit to destroy two controllers. They were never the same after that. You could try to fix them, glue the inner frames back together, but the joystick’s response became mushy, as the frame flexed more easily in the weak spots. Eventually they’d break again. I think we went through six joysticks in total, including some third party models.
The Atari didn’t just have joysticks. It also had paddles – basically a wheel and a button. These paddles were wired in pairs, so some paddle-based games could have up to four players. Warlords was one such Atari game. The paddles were used for rapid side-to-side motion necessary for pong-like games such as Breakout. There was an addictive variant called Circus that was a lot of fun as well.
Then we had Star Raiders, the game I saved and saved and saved up to buy. The first cheque I ever wrote might have been for Star Raiders. It was expensive because it came with a third controller: a number pad. We always imagined what Atari could do with that number pad in new games going forward…but they never did. Star Raiders was a first person shooter that had you defending yourself from TIE Fighters and “Zylon” (Cylon) Basestars (I’m not kidding), while managing your shields, and warping in and out of different zones. As you take on damage, your shields, weapons and sensors can malfunction. Hopefully you have enough energy to warp to homebase and get repairs, before the enemy fleets destroy it! Though the combat scenes could be difficult, and annoying asteroids were frequent, it was an immersive game. The hum of your engines, the glow of your shields…the game did the best it could for what the Atari 2600 was capable of. In many respects this was a highpoint for the whole system.
The many hours and Christmases spent in the basement playing Atari peaked at the end of 1984. December 26th, in fact. While playing Atari in the basement, my best friend Bob “The Reset King” Schipper introduced me to something new called Iron Maiden. Life was never the same after that. Video games took a sudden back seat to cassette tapes.
Still, even after music took over, Atari had a comeback later in the 80s when I acquired Activision’s excellent simulator, Space Shuttle. By this time, I was in highschool. This intricate little game was impossible to win without paying exact attention to the instructions, and taking the precise steps in the correct order as needed. Just like a real shuttle launch. Landing it was even harder! Once you got the hang of it though, you couldn’t help but beam in pride at landing a space shuttle!
Even though Atari’s successor, Iron Maiden, taught me not to waste my time searching for those wasted years, I don’t look at those days in the basement playing Atari to be wasted time. While my skin may have grown pale playing Armor Ambush in the dark, I had a damn good time. And what’s wrong with a kid having fun and creating good memories in his own way?
I decided like Aaron to cover an hour in the morning, so it’s not too different from the programming he heard. If I had done an afternoon, there would be some LeBrain promos on Marko’s show, but I chose the Midday Lockdown with DJ Patrick Dynamite.
PATRICK DYNAMITE 10:00 – 11:00 Aug 12 2014
Oasis – “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
Station ID
Def Leppard – “Pour Some Sugar On Me” (single mix)
Patrick announces Kiss/Def Leppard show tonight, and upcoming songs. “Here’s Kiss from ’79’s Dynasty, thanks for rockin’ with Dave.” Knew the album and year – bonus. (The computer doesn’t always give them this info because it often pulls songs like this from a greatest hits CD.)
Kiss – “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”
Station ID for morning show (5 seconds)
Big Wreck – “A Million Days” – great guitar solo often mistaken for Steve Morse! (CanCon)
Patrick announces contest to win tickets to Alice In Chains/Monster Truck next week. Also meet and greet!
COMMERCIALS: Funny clip from morning show, Tim’s, car loan, auto parts, lawyer, Athletic Club, Waterloo Brewing Company, Seagram coolers, station ID.
Trooper – “We’re Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time)” – first song I could skip. (CanCon)
Station ID for “new rock” – Theory of a Dead Man.
Theory of a Dead Man – “Drown” – crappy post-grunge. (CanCon)
Patrick announces chance to win the last Dave FM Backyard Bash for the summer. Party for 20 plus a new patio set.
LEGENDS OF CLASSIC ROCK with Jeff Woods – Eric Clapton throws a legendary party in ’79: the Beatles reunion that never was, because Lennon didn’t know.
The Beatles – “Come Together”
Station ID (5 seconds)
Three Days Grace – “Chalk Outline” – more crappy post-grunge. (CanCon)
Patrick – recaps the last songs, announces Alice Cooper concert on Halloween in Kitchener! Pre-sale info available for Dave FM members.
COMMERCIALS: Dave FM ride to end Multiple Sclerosis, debt resolution, Subway, auto sales, Fido, drivercheck.ca, Moxy’s, an evening with Alice Cooper, station ID.
Do you ever spend so much time looking at numbers that you start to go bug-eyed?
In the Record Store Days, my entire tenure there from 1994 to 2006, all the in-store bookkeeping was done manually on paper. The last bunch of years there, we even had Microsoft Excel, but had to balance our books manually. The books themselves were these big blue ledgers with green pages. We tediously wrote down the purchases and sales on the pages, totalling up the weeks, and ultimately the month.
Sometimes balancing the books at the end of the month was straightforward and easy. Other times, it was a case of adding up the same column again and again. Usually a manual calculator, it seemed on a bad day, my fat fingers always inputting a number wrong. I could add up the same column a dozen times before adding it correctly. Is it just me? Or is adding up one big tall column of hand-written numbers with a calculator sometimes a tedious task? Please answer yes, because this whole story will end up like egg on my face if that premise is wrong.
Sometimes it was easy to find the error. I’d look at the difference between my total and the number I was trying to balance with, and try to find that somewhere. Sometimes it was as simple as mistaking a handwritten 4 for a 9, or writing down the same number twice on two consecutive rows by mistake. It happens, but I was really good at find discrepancies. I daresay I was better at it than most, but some days I was just baffled and could not get those damn month-end numbers to balance.
On one, and only one occasion, I gave up and asked for help.
I was working one afternoon in the late 90s with a part-timer when I flat gave up. Tired of adding up the same column of numbers over and over again, I asked him to check my math. There was nothing in that book he wasn’t allowed to see. He saw the numbers at cash-out every night, and the weekly totals were written out as we tried to beat that week’s sales from the previous year. There was nothing in that book he didn’t see in his daily job.
“Could you do me a favour? Every time I add up this column, I get a different number. My eyes are sore just looking at it. Can you add it up and see what number you get?”
He said sure and started adding.
It was then that the boss known as the Bully walked into the store. Just my luck.
“Is he doing your books for you!?” she accused with mouth agape.
“No, he…” I began.
“MIKE. YOU CAN’T ASK YOUR PART TIMERS TO DO THE BOOKS FOR YOU! THAT IS NOT THEIR JOB!”
“I know that, I just…”
“IF I TELL JOHN ABOUT THIS HE WILL FLIP OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?”
“No, I’m doing the books, I just needed…”
“THAT’S BULL! I SAW HIM DOING THE BOOKS WITH MY OWN EYES!”
“No, he’s just adding up one column for me that…”
“NO ADDING ANYTHING! YOU ARE NOT TO ASK YOUR PART TIMERS TO DO THE BOOKS FOR YOU! THEY ARE NOT YOUR PERSONAL SERVANTS! THAT IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS!”
“OK but that’s…”
“I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!” And off she stormed into the offer in the back. It was on my annual performance review.
RECORD STORE TALES #1071: Hot Town, Summer in the City
Setting: The 1980s. Southern Ontario.
Our summers always began with a week at the cottage. For a kid, being out of touch with friends from home, not to mention the latest happenings in WWF wrestling and music videos, it was a challenge! We took everything we had for granted back then, and what kid our age didn’t? The cottage was not a place I looked forward to going. I didn’t like the isolation. Sometimes I wonder if I’d dislike cottage vacations today as much as I did then, if we didn’t have high-speed internet and all the entertainment and connection that it brings. Literally the first thing I do when I arrive at the lake is connect to my family and friends and tell them we’ve arrived safely, often with a photo or video. But back then….
For me, the summer excitement didn’t begin when we arrived at the lake. It began when we got home from that first week’s vacation! I’d race into the house and check my mail. Would it be comic books straight from Marvel? Or a cassette from Columbia House? Mail was the most exciting thing about coming home, and it sucked when there was no mail!
Next up: check the VCR. Did the many hours of WWF wrestling that I had programmed record properly? Usually not! Programming a VCR was tricky back then, and you had to count on power failures resetting everything. There were many times that I would come home to find no wrestling! Other times, it would record like a charm. If successful, the morning after returning home would be spent watching the wrestling I missed.
Speaking of the almighty VCR, the week spent at the lake would mean I missed at least two installments of the Pepsi Power Hour. What videos and interviews did I miss? I preferred not to think about it. In the summers, there was a lot of metal that I missed. I didn’t want to set the VCR to record whole shows – I was compiling music videos and interviews, ad-free.
After the July holiday, I’d come home with some new music purchased at the lake, and want to show my new albums to my best friend Bob. In 1989, one that I was particularly enthused about was The Headless Children by W.A.S.P. It took Bob some time to believe me when I said it was great. Later that year, the ballad “Forever Free” convinced him. Meanwhile, Bob would be filling me in on anything important happening in our neighborhood. It wouldn’t be long before we were back at it, getting into mischief in the summer of the city.
Our interests changed as we got older and more independent. Bob was driving by the summer of ’90 so we could go virtually anywhere we wanted to. We made excursions downtown to buy music! There we had Encore, Sam the Record Man and Dr. Disc all waiting for our dollars. Today it’s just Encore, who have moved twice but is still alive! The longest serving record store in Kitchener still lives today. I can recall bringing home treasures such as Rocka Rolla by Judas Priest. Vinyl, of course – cassettes were impossible to find of that oldie. The idea was, if you went downtown, you wanted to score something that you couldn’t get at the mall. It had to be something special. A single, an import, a record you couldn’t buy on cassette in these parts. The city had record stores, but so did the cottage. What the cottage didn’t have was Sam’s, Encore, and Dr. Disc. No access to music that was hard to find. Coming home to the city meant buying rarities.
We rocked hard and we played hard. Summer meant basketball, baseball, and tennis. Usually with music blasting! Sports weren’t my thing but they were a thing that we did. Hours spent at the park. In driveways. In backyards, playing. Or we’d be getting into trouble, exploring the nearby woods on our bikes. We did a lot of exploring. We came back scraped and bruised, and it was awesome. Constantly exploring!
Occasionally we’d go to the waterpark at Pioneer Sports World, which no longer exists. I can still smell the chlorine! One thing about summer in the city, you can smell the chlorine from nearby pools. Chlorine always smells like summer. Of course, for non-chlorinated water fun, we set up sprinklers at home. One summer, we built an obstacle course in the back yard with lawn chairs and sprinklers. Only we understood the rules, but it was a race against the clock! My new digital stopwatch was timekeeper. Just couldn’t get it wet!
Sprinklers gave way to water balloons. Bob and I would go to the store and buy a few bags of balloons. We made such a mess! Parents would be furious about the wasted water and rubber fragments all over the yard. Those rubber bits always took a while to clean up. Parents did not enjoy water balloon days at our house.
The next door neighbor George was always a misfit. One day Bob and I decided to hurl water balloons at his bedroom window. The barrage of water was never acknowledged, but I do recall Bob and I remarking how dirty his windows were! The water revealed years of accumulated dirt on his screens.
Playing outdoors was the thing. Parents didn’t want us in their personal spaces. In the olden days, we would have played GI Joe or Lego in the yard. Later on, we’d grab our guitars, amps, tape decks and power cords and record! Whether on the front patio, or in the garage, we recorded a lot of garbage. It didn’t matter how bad it was, just that the record button was on. I have seven cassettes called “Mike and Bob…” littered with garbage we recorded!
Bob and I would raise hell for a month or so, but then it was time again. My dad usually had two weeks of vacation booked for August which would be spent at the lake. Sometimes he’d go home for a day and bring us our mail, but there was rarely anything good. The two weeks of isolation in August was worse than July because the weather was wet and cold. Worst of all, the TV would start showing “back to school” ads. Now that was something in the city that we didn’t want to return to. By the time we got home, kids were already sporting their new “back to school” haircuts, and had new shoes waiting for the coming year. All we had left was Labour Day and then back to the daily fall grind!
Time changes everything. Once Bob finished highschool, he was allowed to drive to the cottage. No more friend-less holidays! Then we got phones, cable TV, and VCRs. (There are actually three VCRs in storage at the cottage right now!) When these things changed, so did my attitude. Now I’d rather be there, than anywhere else in the world!
I wonder if Bob’s up for a garage jam session this summer!
RECORD STORE TALES #1070: Guilty of Vinyl Abuse (1987) – Kiss Killers
Not much backstory here to tell! I was a bored kid at the cottage, away from my best friend Bob. We had an ongoing (and absolutely terrible) series of comedy sketch tapes called Mike & Bob. The video you are about to watch contains some audio from Mike & Bob Vol. II, and some explanations as to what you’re hearing.
We did a lot of really bad sketch comedy but some of the listenable ones were parody ads. In this one, I advertise Casablanca Records & Tapes…for those who don’t have money to buy the best. I abused my copy of Kiss Killers in order to do this. My only excuse is boredom.
That summer, my sister’s friends were renting the cottage next door. They figure in at the end of the video, if you choose to go that far….
RECORD STORE TALES #1069: A Tale of Three Seizures
It happens every few months. Clusters of seizures, wreaking havoc on our mental health and chaos in the house.
We had a great weekend, but a weekend without seizures of some kind is very rare for us. We made it all the way to Sunday morning without an event. Although I didn’t witness them all, I counted three seizures on Sunday morning.
I figure there was one before 2:00 AM. I woke up around then, and I found my Lego trumpet player smashed. Jen had no memory of doing it, but she did manage to pick up most of the pieces and put them all aside somehow. The final missing piece was found in the morning. They only way we know a seizure happened was because the Lego was smashed, returned, and she had no memory of it. It’s a bit like piecing a mystery together from the evidence left behind.
The second seizure happened before 5:00 AM. I am certain that Jen could not get into the bed, because I was sprawled over the whole mattress. I went looking for Jen. Not on the couch. Not on the spare bed. Not on the parents’ bed. I lit up all the lights in the house and called for her. Not in the bathroom. That’s all the rooms. I went back into the spare room and she was on the floor. I assumed she went to bed in the spare room due to lack of options, had a seizure and fell off the bed. It was very difficult to wake her up and get her into a proper bed. She was uninjured.
Third seizure was the one I witnessed. I was outside working on the porch. In between songs, I heard unpleasant noises coming from the bedroom window. I looked in and Jen was convulsing. It took her approximately three hours to come back to reality after that seizure. And a lot of cleanup that I won’t get into. Suffice to say it was a tiring and difficult morning for me.
For Jen it was a day of sleeping. She spent most of it in bed. I spent the morning watching two of the greatest sequels (with two of the greatest sequel soundtracks) of all time: The Empire Strikes Back, and The Wrath of Khan. I wasn’t in the mood to be outdoors. I wanted to be in where I could better monitor Jen’s recovery.
Incidentally, we have a pretty good idea of what caused the seizures this time. She missed her meds the previous day. That’ll do it.
We try not to let these things ruin our weekends. We had a great five days at the lake, regardless of Sunday being a writeoff for Jen. We made the best of it. We had a tomahawk steak for dinner, but I was just wiped out afterwards and called it an early night.
Nobody said it was easy. But we don’t quit either. We don’t give up on each other. We’ve been through enough this year already. This wasn’t even a roadblock or an obstacle in our lives. Once it’s over and done with, all that’s left is to write the Record Store Tale.
mikeladano.com 