RECORD STORE TALES #1239: The Black Widow

From the very start of Record Store Tales, to the present day I have been quite emphatic about one fact: My parents did not place any conditions or prohibitions against any kind of music we listened to as kids. We had nosey Catholic neighbours who did on their kids, but my mom and dad were cool. My dad liked that Iron Maiden sang historically accurate songs about World War II, and other conflicts such as the Crimean War. My mom had a younger brother, my long-haired Uncle Don Don, who liked Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper. What I was bringing home, Van Halen and Quiet Riot, wasn’t much noisier or frightening. We’re talking degrees of separation. I had it easy. I wouldn’t have the collection I have today if they didn’t give me free reign over my entertainment.

That doesn’t mean they weren’t paying attention.  They saw stuff on TV about “Knights in Satan’s Service”, and my mom did ask me if that’s what KISS stood for.  I remember getting really huffy and saying “NO, it’s just a word!”  She believed me and let me go.  I think my parents always knew that rock stars did well by generating their own controversy.  They witnessed the rise and fall of Elvis Presley, and the explosive career of the Beatles, all accompanied by screaming teens, shaking hips, and suggestive songs.  I think they knew I wasn’t going to die on a toilet like Elvis just because I saw David Lee Roth getting arrested wearing nothing but a towel in the “Panama” video.  I don’t think they believed in Satan, so much as thought I would go to hell because I saw Ozzy Osbourne dressed as a werewolf in a music video.  Maybe it would have mattered if I spent all my time watching videos, but I went to school and did my homework like every other kid.  They just preferred Tears For Fears to Tesla.

I can really only remember a handful of talks about music.  Once was the question about the meaning of KISS, and one was about the death of Randy Rhoads.  I was quick to correct my dad when he said he “probably died of drugs”.  “He wasn’t on drugs, but the pilot of the airplane was,” I said.  I never got in shit for playing any music.  Only the for the volume at which I played it.  I played “Big Balls” by AC/DC at the kitchen table one time.  Never a word!

There was only one instance in which my mother was simply not impressed with my music.  Not at all impressed.  It involved the aforementioned Alice Cooper.

I had this second cousin on my mom’s side, Danny.  He was a bit older and into all kinds of heavier rock.  He was into Alice Cooper, and played me “The Black Widow” in the Winnebago he arrived in.  Summer of 1986.  The bit with Vincent Price doing his Vincent Price thing really grabbed me.  I loved Vincent Price.  Alice had a big comeback in the 80’s, with Constrictor, Raise Your Fist and Yell, and Trash.  He was once again in the news, but this time for his remarkable return to the forefront of popular rock artists.  It was in this climate that I began collecting his music.  My mother knew who Alice Cooper was.  It was she that gave me Welcome to My Nightmare for Easter 1991.  It was weird, and some things were decidedly un-rock…but I loved it!  One thing I enjoyed about Alice Cooper’s music is that he constantly forced me to re-define my conceptions about what rock was.

I was still in highschool, and my mom was still doing my laundry for me.  One night I was in bed, lights out, with music rocking me to sleep as it did every night.  Welcome to My Nightmare was still fresh in my collection, and that’s what was playing when she entered my room that night with a basket of laundry.  “The Black Widow” was mid-song.  She missed all the cool Vincent Price stuff, which I’m sure she would have approved of.  No, this is what she walked in to:

“He stares with a gleam, with a laugh so obscene,

At the virgins and the children he’s deflowered.”

“DID HE JUST SAY VIRGINS AND CHILDREN ARE DEFLOWERED?” asked my mother with a volume in her voice you rarely heard.

I mumbled something about Vincent Price and didn’t attempt to defend the lyrics.  I said something about he’s singing about spiders and that’s all I could muster.

To her credit, nothing more was said, and when Alice Cooper came out with his new album Hey Stoopid that summer, she bought a copy for my birthday.  Today, she knows the Coop is a man of high character, and approves of my selection!

RECORD STORE TALES #1232: Let the Music Do the Talking? The List of Bands that Made it…and Some that Didn’t

At the end of the day, does it really matter why we got into a band?  Just as long as we did discover any particular group, if it turned into true love, then the “hows” and “whys” really don’t need to be defended.  They can be interesting stories, or even just an anecdote, but if you got into Kiss because you thought they looked cool, or Iron Maiden because of Eddie, it really doesn’t matter.  It’s the fact you love Kiss, or Iron Maiden, that matters.

So, here are some stories and anecdotes that may give you a glimpse at how shallow I was as a metal kid in the mid-1980s.  Image mattered more than music sometimes.

I had a list, an actual list, of the bands I “liked”.  If I “liked” a band, that meant I’d be interested in getting an album, and would record any music video I found on MuchMusic.  I still love all those initial bands that I “liked”.  Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., Twisted Sister, Helix, Kick Axe, Kiss, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Dio, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Van Halen, ZZ Top, Triumph, AC/DC, Accept, Lee Aaron, and oddly enough, Kim Mitchell were all in the original lineup.

I remember hearing about a band called Hateful Snake.  I didn’t know who they were, except they were supposed to be good.  They had a cool name at least.  As it happens, Hateful Snake were a Toronto band that got some video play on Toronto Rocks in 1983.  Toronto Rocks was the pre-MuchMusic show of choice before the Pepsi Power Hour existed.  All the kids watched it, and it had a huge influence in my neighbourhood.  The Hatedful Snake video for a song called “Are You Ready” was low budget but incredibly fun, and you can hear the band had potential.  With a New Wave of British Heavy Metal sound and feel, and a capable lead singer with that high voice, I get a Diamond Head feel.  Brian Simpson was the voice.   They also had the chops, as the lead guitar player shreds a cool AC/DC style solo while snaking his way down Yonge Street in Toronto.  I would have liked Hateful Snake, had I ever seen the video.

I never did see it.  Hateful Snake were all but a blip in my world.  Just a pair of words whispered from one rock friend to another and eventually to me, without ever having a chance of catching that music video.  Still, I added Hateful Snake to my list of bands I liked, on a tentative basis, just to beef it up a bit.

It was a pretty exclusive club, and all but one artist (Kim Mitchell) would be classified as “heavy metal” at the time.  Now those of you who have been reading since the beginning know that Styx was in fact the first rock band I ever liked; what happened to Styx?  In my exclusivity, I removed Styx from the list and excised my copy of Kilroy Was Here from my collection.  That’s why I don’t have it anymore.  It probably got filed with my parents’ records and sold at a garage sale, because they don’t have their records anymore either.

It was a game changer when MuchMusic entered the music video game in 1984.  Suddenly, there were more bands:  Other bands joined in as I discovered their music, such as Killer Dwarfs, Thor, Autograph, Loudness, Armored Saint, Anvil and Queensryche.  Loudness and Queensryche may have been the first metal groups I discovered on my own, without the help of my friends in the neighborhood.  There were some bands that definitely did not make my list.  Venom:  Far too heavy.  Motorhead:  Heavy, and scary.  Metallica:  Mythical.  I never had the chance to hear their music, because they didn’t have any music videos.

Given that I was sitting there in my basement watching music videos, it is inevitable that some bands made my list for trivial reasons.  Superficial, even silly reasons.

Aerosmith:  Joe Perry had a transparent plexiglas guitar in the music video, and I never saw anything like that before in my life.  I knew Bob Schipper would love it.  I hit the “record” button on my VCR.

Sammy Hagar:  The Ferrari!  “I Can’t Drive 55” was also a hilarious video, but it was the car.

Cheap Trick:  The five-neck guitar that Rick Neilson wields in “The Flame”.  Five necks!  I had to have that in my VHS collection.

David Lee Roth:  He had removed himself from my list when he did “California Girls” and left Van Halen.  This wasn’t rock!  But he got himself back in when I saw him in the smokin’ “Yankee Rose” video.  If Roth didn’t return to rocking, he wouldn’t have been on the list.

Lionheart:  This British band made it on the list as one of the first “side project” expansions to the list.  The band included Dennis Stratton, the guitarist who appeared on the first Iron Maiden album and in the “Women in Uniform” video.  That allowed them entry onto my list, the first of many such expansions.

Yngwie J Malmsteen:  Reputation alone.  The announcers on television said he was the next big thing, so I thought I better get this guy on tape.  He could play.

The exclusive club that was my list grew and grew.  Today it’s not so exclusive.  Yet, like a band, there’s something about those original members.  Listening to the original member bands of my list is always a rich, nostalgic experience.  I tend to back to the originals a lot.  Any chance to relive the golden years, if only for the length of an LP!