RECORD STORE TALES #1048: Covid Chronicles 2
Day Two
I slept for hours! Lost track of how many hours. In the morning I was still testing positive. Jen is still negative. In the afternoon, my sore throat went away, leaving me only tired and achey.
Monday will be a sick day from work. I am hoping to go back on Tuesday. Only the test will tell.
How it happened, I can’t fathom. I haven’t done much except go to work, and I have limited contact there with anyone. Jen has been to the hospital a couple times, so my current theory is that she brought Covid home from there without getting sick herself. I’m positive, she’s negative.
My health has been all out of whack lately, with a nasty stomach bug the week before. Stress levels are close to all-time highs. I’m triple-vaxxed, but I had a panic attack the day I was supposed to get a booster and never did the fourth.
So here’s the Covid Chronicles, check ’em out and see how I’m doing.
RECORD STORE TALES #1048: Covid Chronicles 1
Day One
I woke up Saturday morning bright and early with creative juices flowing. In a long and effortless spurt, I completed 7000 words of Tee Bone Man vs. Edie Van Heelin’, some of my best fictional writing to date. It took a few hours, and several spins of Night Ranger’s Greatest Hits, to finish. I had a tickle in my throat, but felt fine otherwise. Tired, yes, but I only had four hours of sleep, so that was to be expected.
I tested myself shortly after lunch. I was shocked when the line filled in immediately and strongly. Covid? No way! It didn’t seem possible. It still doesn’t.
I went to go lie down and caught a couple more hours of sleep. I talked to a few people and got some advice. Everyone said to hydrate. I placed an order with a convenience store for a few gallons of Gatorade, and some ice cream. Why not? Why not enjoy something, while I still can. We ordered drumsticks. What a delight. I hadn’t had drumsticks in years! This one had to be the best I’d ever tasted. The saltiness of the nuts, the sweet of the chocolate and caramel, and the perfect creaminess of the ice cream. Suck on that, Covid.
Jen made steaks and carrots for dinner. They too were also great. I had the leftovers for breakfast this morning and they still tasted great.
At present, everything smells and tastes normal. I have some mild body aches, a dry throat, and some fatigue. I also haven’t slept much; I caught about five hours and two more hours in a couple spurts last night. I’ve been up since roughly four in the morning. It’s not that Covid is keeping me up, it’s that I feel relatively normal and my creative juices are waking me up. I had a really productive day yesterday and my brain wants to continue that today, though I want to try and stay horizontal for most of today.
I’ll test again later and keep you posted as best I can.
RECORD STORE TALES #1047: A Pretty Good Day
The worst and most tiring kind of days at the Record Store were the ones with customers bringing in endless boxes of discs for us to buy. These took up a lot of time and counter space to keep organized. I hated it when multiple customers with multiple boxes arrived at once. All you could say is say “leave your name and number and we’ll get through these as quickly as possible. It could be a couple hours.”
Some customers understood, some did not. That’s retail.
By contrast the best kind of days were often the ones without the pileup of CD boxes. If everything came in at staggered times, that was ideal. Even better if all the discs were in good shape. Icing on the top of the cake if the customer wasn’t a jerk about pricing. Everybody assumed their discs were worth solid gold. To be truly the best kind of day, customers would be bringing in good stock that you wanted for yourself! Whether it be a new release or something rarer from a back catalogue, those were the good days. You’d slap your name on a post-it note, stick it to the CD and claim it for self-musical enrichment.
I may have mentioned this a couple times before: the Big Boss Man hated when we bought stock for ourselves. But that was 50% of the reason people wanted to work in a music store. The best of days were those when the Big Boss Man and his underlings were not around!
One factor that didn’t affect whether the day was good or bad: who I was working with. I liked virtually every single person that worked in my store. There were one or two who made me pull my hair out, but they never lasted very long. I was very fortunate to have good working relationships with just about everyone in my staff. I tried to show my appreciation by buying them CDs or dinner.
Speaking of dinner, one of the best days I had was in the late 90s. A Jack Astor’s restaurant opened in the plaza across the street. I was working one afternoon minding my own business when a guy showed up at my door with a “Jack Attack”. I was shaking my head “no” as if to tell him I didn’t order any food, when he explained it was all complimentary! A bucket of wings and six bottles (bottles! Not cans!) of root beer. He dropped off a menu with ordering instructions for delivery. That was a very good day. I was working alone, but I left a couple bottles of pop for the night shift. (A couple. I was thirsty.)
I liked working alone, but eating a meal on a lone shift was tricky. Even the best of days were food-free days. The boss absolutely hated when we ate meals at the counter, but where else was there to go? We were working alone, we couldn’t leave the store. We couldn’t go into the back room to eat for 15 minutes. So most days, at least the ones working alone, were junk food only. Chips, pop, candy bars, pepperoni. That was it.
But combined with good tunes and no bosses, a pretty good day!
WARNING! This is not a pretty story. A sequel to #686: Puke!
Jen was super sick on Thursday. She had eaten some Indian food from a place that was new to her, and it wasn’t good. We both assumed it was food poisoning. Until Friday night.
I was scheduled to go live at 7:00 PM. I messaged the guys at 6:40 – “I just barfed”. Usually I’m just “one and done” when it comes to barfing. Not this time. I was prepared to go on with the show, but 10 minutes later I barfed again and got hit with the chills. I cancelled.
By 8:00 PM I had barfed five times. This never happens to me. Clearly, Jen didn’t have food poisoning the previous night. Whatever stomach bug she had, I now had it too. Five pukes in 80 minutes – that’s a new record for me. The last few were closer to painful, dry heaves.
I asked Jen to place a Skip the Dishes order with a gas station or a Little Short Stop – get me Gatorade, ginger ale, and water. (We scored here – we ordered and paid for small bottles but they sent big two-liter ginger ales.) I began sipping the sweet, cold, soothing beverages as soon as they arrived, and they were the most incredible sips I’ve ever taken.
The farts that came with this sudden illness were unreal. Easily and by far the most wretched and lingering smells I have ever produced, and that is saying something. Putrid, foul, rotten. My wife is a saint.
Despite sipping the drinks, I was so thirsty. Constantly thirsty. I was sipping every five minutes. Obviously dehydration set in. I barfed again at 10:30, but I then changed my strategy a bit. When I was a kid, my dad wouldn’t let me drink anything when I was sick, so I wouldn’t barf it back up. This time it was different. I drank Gatorade and ginger ale in earnest until I could feel my stomach was full.
The next three barfs were nothing but water, ginger ale and Gatorade. They came out easily, in mad gushes, and amazingly still tasted good. The red Gatorade puke still tasted exactly like red Gatorade. Because it was pure liquid and nothing else, it was effortless to bring up and I was in no pain (unlike the dry heaves). When I was done throwing up, I re-hydrated immediately and repeated the cycle a few more times. My final puke was around 4:00 AM on Saturday, my ninth. Another record. But I didn’t have any dehydration or associated pain/discomfort. A win.
I’m feeling a lot better now, just sore. Very sore. My joints are sore and mostly my chest.
I tested Covid negative, so it’s just a bug. Unfortunately I cannot go see my grandma in the hospital today because of this, and she is lonely.
Rest today, back to work tomorrow.
Wish me luck.
The original title for this chapter was “My Sister, Age, and How Things Change”. It was originally Chapter 8.
RECORD STORE TALES #1045: The Lost Chapters: Doctor Kathryn
My sister had some distinct musical phases. Early on, she decided that she was going to like most of the music that I liked. At first that meant Quiet Riot, Kiss, and Motley Crue. Motley Crue was her favourite, but not for the right reasons. They were her favourite because a) Nikki and Tommy were really tall, and b) they both had spikey hair.
There was further evidence that my sister was bordering on wimp territory. One was that she didn’t like W.A.S.P. In fact she hated W.A.S.P. I’m not sure if it was Blackie Lawless’ voice, or if it was the fact that he drank “blood” from a “human skull”. Either way, I liked W.A.S.P. a lot, and if she didn’t like them too, this demonstrated an unhealthy streak of independence.
Then, the proverbial shit hit the fan. (We didn’t have air conditioning back then, just fans.) One day in 1985, she decided that she liked The Pointer Sisters. And Cyndi Lauper. And Corey Hart. She always liked Bryan Adams, but I forgave her this. Bryan wore jeans and T-shirts, so he was still firmly in rock territory, even if he wasn’t heavy metal. (I didn’t find out for a while yet that Bryan did in fact have some metallic roots. He wrote several songs with Kiss, including the heaviest material on the Creatures Of The Night album.) The music that Kathryn liked was incorrectly labelled by us as “New Wave”. We didn’t know that New Wave was a term usually used for bands like Blondie, Devo, or the Talking Heads. We just assumed all crappy pop music with synthesizers was New Wave. And New Wave was bad. Very very bad.
Back then, life was simple. Life was black and white. Whatever MuchMusic’s “Power Hour” played was good. Everything else was bad. The only exceptions to that that rule were Kim Mitchell and Bryan Adams. I’m not sure why Kim was an exception, except that he and long hair, and that I liked him, and so did the next door neighbour. If you wanted to boil it down further, stuff with guitars was good. Stuff with keyboards was bad. And the stuff Kathryn listened to didn’t have any guitars, just lots of keyboards, fake synth drums and people with really silly clothes and hair.
There were a few exceptions. I had never known a Van Halen without keyboards, so I accepted them. They were clearly a heavy metal band. The Power Hour played them all the time, David Lee Roth had wicked hair, and everybody was talking about that guitar player. Even if I didn’t know the difference between a guitar and a bass, and thought that Michael Anthony was in fact Eddie Van Halen, I decided that Van Halen were cool. You were allowed to like them. Eventually I sneaked ZZ Top into the list of music that was allowed as well, because one of the neighbours said they were like Van Halen.
So if the music Kathryn liked was bad, and the music I liked was good, you can imagine the arguments. They were glorious and often ended in physical injury and/or destruction of property, and not just by me.
Her awful taste in music even held back my own progress. She liked Bon Jovi first, therefore I had to dislike Bon Jovi—until they released that damned “Wanted: Dead Or Alive” song. The song was so good, so undeniable, I had to let Bon Jovi into my life. I still think it’s a fantastic song, well written, well played, with some beautiful 12 string guitar. (Another reason Bon Jovi didn’t make the grade at first was due to their keyboards. This does not explain why Europe did make the grade. There were many inconsistencies.)
Kathryn’s rebellion worsened. Her taste in music declined. I won’t even begin to list some of the awful music she listened to, but I will say that she bottomed out in 1990 with New Kids On The Block, MC Hammer, and Vanilla Ice. Obviously, this was a person who had no clear idea about integrity within music. However, like a junkie who hits rock bottom, she eventually started to rise up again, with a little encouragement from Her Loving Brother.
The turning point was when Vanilla Ice cancelled his Kitchener tour date in early 1991. His reason stated was that he was too big a star to play a town like Kitchener. There was an instant hatred for the man all over town. Kathryn sold her Vanilla Ice tape immediately.
There were some other clear signs of improvement. A newfound obsession with Cheap Trick was good. Sure, they weren’t metal, but they were definitely rock! Hell, they even worshipped Kiss within their song lyrics. I happily encouraged this love of Cheap Trick, and even bought her Cheap Trick tapes. I think most of her Cheap Trick collection was courtesy of moi.
Rod Stewart came next. I feel that perhaps Rod snuck in the door due to his enormous hair, but I didn’t care. Rod still had a rock pedigree. I encouraged her love of Rod. I asked her questions about him and his music. It was like carefully manipulating a mentally ill person back to health, and I was succeeding in a marginal way. I felt that she’d never come all the way back to metal, even though she owned tapes by Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Poison. Yet I was satisfied with the progress we were making.
Now, 15 years later, I own Rod Stewart, Cheap Trick, Bryan Adams, The Payola$…all music that she introduced me to. She got the last laugh. I’ll never admit that she was always the smarter one (I can’t, since she never understood any movies we watched) but I’ll admit that she got the better of me on this one. We even attended concerts together. It started with Blue Rodeo, then we saw Jann Arden and Amanda Marshall. While I still won’t own any albums by Arden or Marshall, they both put on excellent shows. Blue Rodeo blew us both away and now they’re one of my favourites. I’ve never seen any band more often than Blue Rodeo, and I’ll argue that they’re Canada’s best band, with Rush as a close second.
Even my parents get points. They sure hated “Big Balls” by AC/DC, but now I own more Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot than they do.
Now, I certainly can’t allow Kathryn to come off as the winner in this chapter. So here’s a punch in the arm for you. There, now we’re even.
I don’t know what I was collecting these quotes for, but I found them on a hard drive recently, and so here are my favourite quotes by Eddie Van Halen!
“I can’t read music. Instead, I’d do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize – out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, ‘Very interesting interpretation!’ I thought I was playing it right.”
“The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.”
“It’s music theory, not music fact”
“If it sounds good, it is good. Who cares if you didn’t do it modernly.”
“To hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is.”
“I destroyed a lot of guitars trying to get them to do what I wanted, but I learned something from every guitar I tore apart, and discovered even more things.”
“Music is for people. The word ‘pop’ is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I’m just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I’m cool.”
“David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C’mon – Van Halen doing ‘Dancing in the Streets’? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else’s music.”
“It’s all about sound. It’s that simple. Wireless is wireless, and it’s digital. Hopefully somewhere along the line somebody will add more ones to the zeros. When digital first started, I swear I could hear the gap between the ones and the zeros.”
“If you have a great-sounding guitar that’s a quality instrument and a good amp, and you know how to make the guitar talk, that’s the key. It starts with the guitar and knowing what it should sound and feel like.”
“Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let’s put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don’t.”
An expansion upon #579: Entering the Asylum
RECORD STORE TALES #1043: Music From the Elder – Winter 1986
As much as we teased him, and as much as he may have deserved it, George Balazs was something of the elder statesman of music on our street. An awkward kid with big glasses, big hair, and knobby knees, George was an outcast from every group. Yet, George was passionate about music to a degree that pushed the rest of us further in as well.
George fancied himself a bass player, and Gene Simmons was his idol. He posed like Gene, he sang like Gene, and just really wanted to be Simmons. He surely gave it a shot, but to most of us, he was a joke. An awkward, porn-obsessed older kid who dressed in the full metal regalia with studded wristbands and bandannas. What he did have going for him was a pretty good record collection.
I don’t know where he got the money, working at Long John Silver’s down the street, but George always had a steady stream of new records coming in. Sam the Record Man, Dr. Disc, or Encore Records was his supplier. George always had a hustle going on, selling old comic boys or toys. He always felt like he was making money, even though he was buying the comics at retail price and selling them for half that. I got my entire GI Joe collection from him that way. George was acquiring complete collections of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Lee Aaron vinyl. Kiss was nearly complete: By the start of 1986 he finally acquired Kiss Killers, and only needed Double Platinum and The Elder.
George always made it well known how good his Kiss collection was. We all knew what he needed. He made sure that was publicly known.
Meanwhile, I was in grade eight, a miserable year of fake friends and emboldened bullies. There was a newer kid in class, named Joe Ciaccia (pronounced “chee-chaw”). In casual conversation, Joe boasted that he already had a complete Kiss collection. I suspected he was lying to impress me, but I pressed him on it. If his was complete, maybe he’d sell his copy of The Elder to George. I was being selfless here. Even though I had started getting Kiss albums myself, I was thinking only of George. I knew George would allow me to record it, once acquired.
I informed George that I knew someone who had The Elder, and George nearly leaped out of his shoes.
“WHO?” he asked.
“Joe Ciccia, this kid at school. He says he has all the Kiss albums.”
“Bullshit,” said George. “There hasn’t been a copy of The Elder for sale in this town in two years.”
“Well he says he has it,” I insisted. I was instructed to broker a trade, and so I did.
On a slushy Sunday afternoon in the dead of winter, I loaded up my Sanyo ghetto blaster with batteries and my Kiss Asylum tape. With Bob Schipper and George Balazs, we trudged off in the snow, blasting “King of the Mountain”. I can still remember holding that stereo as steady as I could, while Eric Carr pounded out the drum intro. Asylum was their newest album, and my copy was only a few months old.
George was adamant that we were going to Joe Ciccia’s place, and not leaving without The Elder. The address and time were set up. “I don’t care what he wants for it, I’m not leaving without that record.” The Elder was all but legendary. None of us had heard any of the music, except George, who had seen the music video for “A World Without Heroes” once. He loved the song. He could not wait to get that record in his hands and on his platter! No matter the cost.
It wasn’t a long walk, it just took forever with that slush all over the ground. It was a wet, dark Canadian winter day, and we were on a mission.
Joe lived on Breckenridge Drive, the same street as Brian Vollmer and Ian Johnson. Joe was about to inherit a certain crown from Ian – the king of lies.
We arrived at Joe’s apartment and buzzed. No answer. Buzzed again. No answer. It became clear that, as I had suspected. Joe was all talk and no Elder. We waited outside in the cold a while, but there was no sign of Joe. We were at the right place at the expected time, but Joe was hiding. As expected, George was partly crushed and mostly pissed off. Joe dodged me at school the next day. George kept pestering me to arrange a second hookup with Joe, thinking he still had that copy of The Elder that he wanted so badly. I realized Joe was full of shit and told George my unfortunate opinion. The record was not there, period. Joe was telling stories, trying to act cool and impress me at school. Then he got caught in the lie, not realizing that George was going to go apeshit and do whatever he had to do to get this record, and he hid. This was after going so far as to arrange a trade and giving me the address. He really went all the way before his lie could take him no further.
George did get a copy of The Elder a short time later, and he still taped me a copy. It was a strange album to me, with a lot of music that didn’t sound like rock, but I liked it because it was Kiss. Songs like “The Oath”, “I” and “Odyssey” were immediately appealing.
What happened to Joe? He was one of the first kids to have a girlfriend at school. I seem to remember it being quite scandalous for our little Catholic school. He was making out with Sharon Burns, a girl we’d known since Kindergarten. Then we graduated and I never saw him again.
When I think of Joe I’ll always remember him for two things: the colossal Kiss lie, and making out with Sharon on a religious retreat at Mount Mary. Things you just never forget.
RECORD STORE TALES #1042: Gaby Baby
Sunday, February 5th, I received a “friend request” on Facebook. I always check the people out before I say “yes”, and this guy had four mutual friends with me, all music people. While that’s not a guarantee the person is not a flake, it is usually a good minimum standard. I accepted his request and went out to coffee with our friends Scott and Ellen.
Shortly after, while drinking my large regular Tim’s, I got this request via instant messenger:
He requested the mp3 files for the self-titled 1992 Deadline EP. In return he offered to send me mp3 files from a different band with the same name from Europe.
I thought about it a moment, but I really hate it when strangers just request music files. I have a disclaimer on my “About” page here: I do not “share” (IE: give away what does not belong to me) music files. Check Discogs for other copies. Long time readers know that in the past I shared one Iron Maiden file and then was bombarded with requests, to the point that I had to delete the Iron Maiden review that it was related to, and re-post it. That’s what happens when word gets out that you have something and will share it.
I sent him the following message. Short, but cordial enough.
His reponse to me was anything but cordial.
“Friend”. And one of the best music collectors in the world! Who collects…files. Files.
On Monday my Youtube channel was bombarded by downvotes and comments by a channel called “the best of Hard & Heavy”. Same guy. You could tell by the Deadline content uploaded the previous day.
I sent him the following message and was promptly blocked.
“You are not good to live”. He was reported on both Facebook and YouTube for harassment.
People, don’t be a Gaby Baby. Just don’t. This is no way to make friends, or find music. I will continue my policy of not sharing music files. Because hey…it’s somebody else’s music, not mine.
Not everyone watches Grab A Stack of Rock with Mike and the Mad Metal Man (though you certainly should!) and some of the tales told deserve a re-telling.
In 1991-1992, I got seriously into Star Trek: The Next Generation. There were a lot of reasons. I was now in university, and there as always a stereotype that university intellectual types all watched Star Trek. I liked that and went for it. Gene Roddenberry’s passing certain revived my interest, as did the final Star Trek film with the original cast, The Undiscovered Country. With the original having taken their final bow, it was a pleasant surprised to see Leonard Nimoy return as Spock on the two-part TNG episode “Unification 1 & II”. Like anything else I find myself suddenly interested in, I bought all the manuals, model kits, and collectables I could get my hands on. I shaved my sideburns with the Starfleet delta shape, per regulations. I was always a fan, but now I was a Trekkie. Not Trekker. I find that word cumbersome. Trekkie.
Walter Koenig (Chekov) did a few appearances on the Canadian Home Shopping Network selling overpriced Trek goodies. We were glued to the screen the whole night. Koenig was always one of the most fan-friendly of the original cast and you couldn’t help but like him. The network were hawking stuffed Tribbles, phasers, communicator badges, and all sorts of Trek goodies.
The badges were the TNG style, and you could get them in two ways: with a soundcard that made the familiar trilling sound when you tapped the badge, or a cheaper version without. Our parents relented and bought my sister and I each a communicator. We didn’t even want the soundcard. We just wanted the pin.
Four to six weeks later, the overpriced pins arrived and we were thrilled with them. They held secure to your shirt or jacket, and looked legit.
Dr. Kathryn struggled with math at school, and needed a boost of confidence for her exam. We both wore our badges to school that day. I told her, “Pretend you can talk to me any time you need math help.” A small thing but helped her combat the nerves.
Star Trek, always a source of positivity in this world.
RECORD STORE TALES #1040: The Tag Jar
As your typical mall music store in the 1990s, we had the usual magnetic tag security system. The idea was fairly simple. At the store entrance there was a magnetic detector that you had to pass through. Our merchandise was tagged with these little magnetic strips, about an inch long. If you passed one of these strips through the detector by the door, a loud siren would be triggered. It was one of several loss prevention methods we used.
There were two ways to utilise the security tags. One was to double up with a re-usable security case. These cases locked the CD into a longer “long box” length package. This package was tagged on the inside with the magnetic security system. At the front counter, a special key would unlock the security case. You’d then put another CD in there and re-use it. The other method involved tagging the CD or tape itself, in an inconspicuous place on the spine of the cellophane. In this case, a special magnetic device behind the counter would “de-tag” the disc. It was not totally reliable so you wanted to use the device three or four times, running it over the tag. You wanted to make sure you properly de-tagged the item before the customer left the store.
Since no customer liked setting off the security alarm, it was heavily emphasized: make sure you de-tag! And we had a jar where you had to pay a dollar if you were caught checking out a customer without de-tagging. The boss warned us: everybody screws this up, it’s just a matter of time until you do. I was like, nahhh man, not me. I was hired in July and my first dollar went into the tag jar before Christmas.
The money in the tag jar went towards paying for our annual Christmas dinner. The boss invited one of his personal friends to join us, which in hindsight seems weird. It was a nice dinner though, and we worked hard earning it. My first Christmas there was a busy one and we were both buying and selling discs the whole time, all at one little tiny counter.
The security alarms were loud. You could hear them down the hallway of the mall, all the way down to the Zellers store. That’s how I got caught one time. I was hoping the boss didn’t hear me while he was out doing his bank run, but he did, and I had to pony up my dollar. I couldn’t remember if I de-tagged the guy or not, which meant I probably didn’t. But sometimes I swear it was just that the device wasn’t de-tagging properly. Some box sets also had two or three tags on the shrinkwrap. There were multiple ways to screw it up.
Thieves always find ways around your best security measures, and ultimately the tags were not worth the cost and were phased out in future stores, in a new and innovative way: ditching new product almost altogether in favour of a 90% used strategy. But that’s a whole other story.
mikeladano.com 