This autumn presents three challenges. One is familiar, two are new. One is really bothering me.
CHALLENGE THE FIRST: Seasonal Mood Disorder
Hello fall, my old friend. I wish you’d fuck off again!
CHALLENGE THE SECOND: Kitchen renovation
Loyal readers will recall that our kitchen and bathroom were ripped apart last year after a leak in the building. Now it is finally time to redo the kitchen. Next week, this begins with a consultation and estimate. I’m not looking forward to all the disruption, but we’ve put it off long enough. Any survival tips?
CHALLENGE THE THIRD: Dental surgery
I never had my wisdom teeth out until well into my 30’s. I have one left. Now that one is starting to cause problems. It is also impacted against another tooth and neither can be saved. They both have to go. The surgery is scheduled for September 28. They have to knock me out. I’ve never been knocked out in my life. They advised me to take five days of rest afterwards. I’ve never done that before either.
To say this has been freaking me out is an understatement. Fear of the unknown. Oh, sure. I “know” everything will be fine. That’s not how anxiety operates. It ignores what you “know” and focuses on all sorts of “what can go wrong” scenarios. Whatever your brain can dream up. I have a pretty creative brain. I’ve imagined every scenario from a broken jaw to never waking up. You name it, my brain has already come up with it.
I have support and I have strategies. One strategy I have been given is to make fun plans for the five days that I will be out of commission. A Lord of the Rings marathon is one possible plan. I have also planned a series of posts called “Teeth Week”. All songs about or relating to teeth. I’ll visit my parents and go for fall walks.
Much like the kitchen reno, this is long overdue. Short term pain for long term gain on both, we hope. Thinking of the benefits. Toothaches gone would be a plus. A nice kitchen would be a plus. Trying to focus. As a result, I haven’t been focused on writing and may have to put some projects like the Def Leppard series on temporary hold. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t mind telling you I’m scared.
RECORD STORE TALES #1011: The Principle of Moments, 39 Years Apart
A short while ago, the Contrarians did a discussion on Best Albums by Artists Who Left a Band in Their Prime. Uncle Meat participated in this discussion, and selected Robert Plant’s 1983 album The Principle of Moments for his pick. As most readers know, Uncle Meat has done a lot of music discussions but has never had an album to show off like other participants tend to have. He decided to do something different for this special episode, and went looking for a used CD copy to show.
The Meat Man took a walk over to Encore Records, who did have a copy in stock. Meat was pleased, purchased the CD and brought it home with him. Only then did he realize something very unique about this specific CD purchase.
Meat originally bought the album back in 1983 on vinyl, at Sam the Record Man in downtown Kitchener. He actually went in looking for Metal Health by Quiet Riot. Approaching the counter, the legendary Al King was working that day and was opening a box of new arrivals. “New Robert Plant is in,” he said. So Meat bought that too. A lifelong love affair with The Principle of Moments had begun.
Meat realized that he bought The Principle of Moments in 2022 from the same man who sold it to him in 1983: Al King. Today Al works at Encore, still selling great music to the masses, a public service we are grateful for. But what are the chances? 39 years apart, the same man sold the same album to the same guy. Different format, different store. Same album, same two guys. One in a million?
Welcome to this “Behind the Scenes” instalment of Record Store Tales! Just a quick update on music, writing, and other assorted goings-on! The soundtrack for me writing this is the new Marillion album, An Hour Before It’s Dark. Great album.
Things are rolling on, and we are enjoying our summer. Together. Jen and I have not spent this much time together in years. I’m happy to report that we still enjoy each other’s company. I have to tell you, I don’t miss the show. The LeBrain Train – remember the LeBrain Train? Instead of broadcasting to YouTube every Friday night, we’re enjoying the sunset. I’m sorry if that’s hard news, but I don’t miss it. I can’t help how I feel. On the other hand, as many of you know, I tend to get depressed in the fall and winter. I like to have strategies to cope with the depression, and for the last two years, that has been the LeBrain Train. So, I am certain that when winter rolls in, I will need the show back. It won’t be the same — I want to keep things fresh. The Meat Man and I have been discussing ideas. We will be back at some point in time. I know that because I know my depression will eventually return. The show, and you the viewers, help me cope.
Be patient. It’s not time yet. I will know when it feels right. Summer is short in Canada. We only get so many weeks, and before too long the days are short and the temperatures cold. I know some of my pals, like my good buddy Aaron, love the winter. All I can say is there are times I’m envious.
I’ve been posting daily, keeping a steady pace, but don’t be surprised to see “filler posts” pop up now and again. Kind of like this one. For me to sit down and spend two hours listening and writing every single night — it’s just a hard pace to keep up. You’ll know the filler posts when you see them! I was thinking of doing a “Sheik Week” – an entire week of posts dedicated to the tweets of the Iron Sheik.
Views are down, comments are down, but I keep on keepin’ on. Music and writing. It’s what I do. What I have done for most of my life. I’ve been branching out. Fiction is refreshing. The ways the words flow so easily when I write fiction, it’s remarkable! Writing a music article is hard work. Finding out the facts, confirming the details, describing the music…sometimes I feel like I am running out of words. I don’t have that problem with fiction. It’s so refreshing. You have already read The Adventures of Tee Bone Man, we have seven chapters now, and we are building the story into something huge. You’ll see. In my spare time I have also been writing “sexy fiction” that is not for public consumption. I have been inspired and the words flow easily. It keeps things fresh. I enjoy writing fiction. I need to find more ways to incorporate fiction with my musical writings here. I will figure it out!
In the meantime, I will be continuing to report from the lake with fantastic photos, rocking videos, and stories of our musical roadtrips. Jen and I met 17 years ago and I’ve never felt closer.
It has been a great summer. And it ain’t over yet.
RECORD STORE TALES #1008: Backstreet’s Back (in stock)
Little known fact, people: did you know that in the United States, the Backstreet Boys had a second self-titled album, with the same cover art as Backstreet’s Back? It’s true, and I know it’s true because I once had about 200 brand new sealed copies in the trunk of my car.
The 1997 self-titled Backstreet Boys (as opposed to the 1996 self-titled debut) was a compilation. It contained hits from Backstreet Boys and Backstreet’s Back. Some of the tracks were slightly remixed, others not. I acquired this box while dating “JJJulie”, the girl that dumped me while I was on the road opening a new store in Barrie. For the record, I don’t blame her for dumping me. I was miserable working that job. I only blame her for not waiting until I was in the comfort of my own home instead of a strange hotel room.
JJJulie and I dated for two months in 2003. If I recall the story, her mom owned one of those book clearance businesses. The kind of business that buys and sells old overstock from other chains. JJJulie must have got the box of discs from her. Unable to move the product, she gave it to me. Our store was crammed full of Backstreet Boys. I think I might have given her 10 bucks for the whole box. Then it sat in my trunk for months.
I did find some use for the box of BSB. We were allowed to carry two copies at a time in our bargain bin. We paid $1 to $2 each for bargain bin CDs. I sold two copies to the store for $2 each. I kept track of them. Any time we sold a copy (every few weeks), I would sell another $2 disc from my box to the store, for the bargain bin. That went on for a year or so. I probably moved about 20 copies from my box before I quit. Not a huge profit, but some small change for me. The store would have made double what I did with their markup.
I did all this on the sly. The owner would have said “No more Backstreet Boys!” I had to do some things on my own, even if they helped the store in the long run, simply because the upper management tended to throw one word at me repeatedly: “No”. They wouldn’t have complained at the 200% markup when the discs eventually sold, but they really had pickles up the ass. So, anytime I looked at the sales reports and saw that a copy sold, I went out to my car, grabbed another Backstreet Boys, and sold it to the store for $2.
When I eventually quit the store, I had an almost full box of BSB still left. I didn’t know what else to do with it, so I put it in the dumpster. Backstreet’s back…where they belonged! In the dumpster.
According to my Facebook memories, on this day in 2009 I was listening to a massive all-encompassing Kissathon. This was done so I could review all the albums before the release of Sonic Boom. The first run of Kiss reviews here on this site came from that 2009 Kissathon. By coincidence only, this past weekend was a mini-Kissathon, started on Thursday night with some music we don’t play as often in the car.
1. Crazy Nights (1987). Even the underdogs deserve some love. Listening to this album inspired me to write a new Record Store Tale about the experience of hearing it for the first time. You see, for me this album was unique. I got into Kiss in 1985 just as Asylum was released. In two years, I collected, listened to, and absorbed all the Kiss albums to a degree only a kid that age can. Crazy Nights, therefore, was the first “new” Kiss album to come after completing my journey through their discography. And unlike Asylum, it was different. I spent a morning writing up the impressions I had in 1987. As for the car trip, we laughed at some of the terrible lyrics and obvious musical attempts to copy Bon Jovi, but it was an enjoyable listen.
2. Dynasty (1979). After the Paul-dominated Crazy Nights, I wanted to hear something with all four guys singing lead. There are very few albums like that, and only three with the original lineup: Love Gun, Dynasty, and Psycho-Circus. I went with Dynasty this time. A short but very energetic listen as we passed through Palmerston, Wingham, and Whitechurch on the way to the cottage.
3. Gene Simmons (selections from) (1978). Once we hit Lucknow it was time to put on an album for the last 20 minutes or so of our drive. Gene Simmons was under-represented in our first two choices. Only two Gene songs on Dynasty, and only four on Crazy Nights. The Demon needed some love, and I wanted to expose Jen to some of his more…ahem…questionable material. We played a lot, some good some bad. The good: “Radioactive”, “Mr. Make Believe”, “See You Tonight” “Always Near You/Nowhere To Hide”. The bad: “Burnin’ Up With Fever”, “Tunnel of Love”, “Living In Sin” and…yes…”When You Wish Upon A Star”. I remember back in the old days going to the lake with my parents. Sometimes they’d let us listen to an album on the car deck instead of our headphones. My dad praised “When You Wish Upon a Star”. “Finally, a good song!” he said. Good song perhaps, but not a good vocal performance! I explained to Jen how Kiss fans were shocked and flabbergasted when Gene’s album was finally released.
As the gentle strains of Pinocchio completed their final crescendos, we pulled into the driveway at our humble place in paradise.
Our little furry friends the chipmunks began visiting, as did a pair of blue jays that I named Domaso Garcia and Lloyd Moseby. These blue jays were brave little birds and I managed to get a little bit of footage up close. However by Friday morning the calm turned to distraction! I worked on completing an upcoming list, my second collaboration with Jonathan Lee. If you recall, Jonathan and I ranked all the Kiss albums from worst to first a short while ago. Now we are finishing up another comprehensive pair of lists, on another band we both love (and you do too). When they are ready, the lists will be revealed…but not until they are ripe! I had to work on my list while the chipmunks and blue jays made annoyances of themselves, distracting me from my rock and roll duty. Therefore the peanut supply was cut off for the rest of the weekend, especially when the chipmunk ate his way through the bag.
Unlike the last several weekends, this one was fairly uneventful. We did get in a good swim, and some footage of crystal clear waters. Listening to Kiss (and then Judas Priest) on the porch, working on writing, playing video games and cooking meals. In fact the only “new” thing that really happened this weekend was the cooking of the Saturday steak.
For the first time we tackled a 2″ thick tomahawk steak. It was actually 2 1/2″ at the thickest point. It was fun to cook but the fat content caused lots of flame-ups so it was a matter of taking care. Jen thought it was the steak of the summer.
Traveling home was uneventful, until we passed Listowel (home of the original Helix). At this point, traffic was heavy. An impatient pair of blondes in a red jeep decided that passing cars the conventional way going to take too long, and so they went onto the gravel shoulder, and passed three cars including myself on the right. I gave ’em the horn as they endangered my life, and they didn’t even look over. I imagine the inside of their jeep smelled like Patty and Selma from the Simpsons. They had that kind of look.
A few miles down the road, I had an opening so I went for it and passed them, flipping them the bird as I did. They didn’t seem to notice, but they remained stuck in the line of traffic for the rest of the ride home. I never saw that red jeep again. This all happened to the tunes of Raise Your First and Yell by Alice Cooper. The exact song they passed me on was “Chop, Chop, Chop”.
We came home tired and had some naps. Funny that even though the weekend was less active than others this summer, we were just exhausted. I was too wiped out to work on a video, but hopefully that will come. In the meantime I’ll just sleep and wish upon a star.
Every so often, a thought or a memory has casting my mind back onto the old Record Store Days.
You probably don’t often think about a job that you quit almost 20 years ago now. Then again, you probably didn’t work in a Record Store.
It was the Dream Job. I always wanted to work in some way with music, and selling CDs was pretty high on my list. It truly was everything I had hoped for. I acquired hundreds of rare treasures, out of print CDs and things I never knew existed. I got them with a discount, and I got to listen to music every day. Lifelong friends were made. That’s something I never thought would happen from a workplace.
The Record Store also put me back in touch with friends I had seen in years. The Store was located at the local mall, the epicenter of the neighbourhood. Banking, groceries, and everything you needed could be found at the Mall, and so a lot of the people I went to school with drifted in through my doors. Some managed to stay in touch since then, thanks to social media. I would not trade those connections for the world.
I know a young fella who now works at one of the many stores that I did time in. It was one of my least favourite stores, in fact. I hated working at that location. The customers were not, shall we say, the upper crust of society in that neighbourhood. But the kid loves his job! Have things changed, or did I get it wrong? That’s what I ask myself sometimes. Did I misrepresent those years in Record Store Tales? Was I unfair?
The first two years were really awesome. I looked forward to going to work every day. I got there early and stayed late. There is no question that the fun atmosphere changed when we started to expand. 10 years later I was having panic attacks. Too many years of a retail job that was treated with as much urgency as a doctor’s or a lawyer’s. Family came second. Performance was everything. Weakness was inapplicable.
I never looked forward to work anymore. I still got there early, but that was more to take my own time opening. Get ahead on some things. Listen to music. Fill orders. I still do that today in my current job. I arrive early, and slowly and casually start getting stuff done before we’re officially open for business. Make a coffee. Read some news. Answer emails, before the phone starts ringing. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but the boss told me, “If you worked at IBM, coming in early to do extra is considered bad work habits.” I distinctly remember him saying that. I simply could not win with them. It was a record store, not IBM! Who cares what IBM do? They don’t buy and sell used CDs from the public.
I’ve said before that there were cliques at the Record Store, and I stand by that claim. I never felt like I belonged. I was the only hard rocking sci-fi nerd with severe social anxiety. I wasn’t hanging out with the right people at the right bars, because that’s not my thing. Being invited out to the bar doesn’t count. I. Did. Not. Fit. In. I stand by that. And I maintain that people in power did let their personal lives leak into their work life.
No. Upon reflection I feel like I was fair in my previous assessments. I will say that I am guilty of one thing in my writing. Once I knew that people at the Record Store were reading, I let that influence my writing too much. Too often, I wrote with that knowledge in the back of my head, whether consciously or unconsciously. Perhaps that was unavoidable.
Too many cooks spoil the brew, Wanna be the king of the world, Yeah, and too many jailers makin’ the news, Wanna be the king of the world.
The office Bully and I had to work together frequently. I’ve worked for a lot of managers over the years, but she was the worst, even worse than the guy who stressed me into a nervous breakdown. He didn’t mean to do it; he was just a shitty manager. Office Bully on the other hand was malicious, as I have described in the past. She was not capable of separating her personal life from her job, and because I was friends with her ex-fiance, I got the shitty end of the stick every time. I felt like there was a constant tug of war over me. I had a target on my back, as others noticed. “She doesn’t treat anyone else like she treats you,” said one colleague.
I will never forget one morning working together in the store in the late 1990s. She decided to test me. Test my knowledge. Of her. Of her taste in music.
Usually the staff picked the tunes for the day. I asked her what she wanted to listen to while I went to collect music for the day’s store play.
“Pick something I like,” she said. Jesus Christ. Pick something she would like? What the hell did she like? I knew she was testing me. Testing me on how much I knew about what she liked to listen to. How much I’d been paying attention. She liked to play these games. We weren’t supposed to be friends; I just wanted to do whatever I had to do to be treated like a human being in the workplace.
I knew she liked Bjork, the Band, soul music, and…I drew a blank. Frankly it was none of my business what the hell she liked. Not part of my job.
I decided to hedge my bet. We had a five CD changer, and instead of picking two CDs for me and three for her, I picked five for her and hoped I got some right. Based on the fact that she liked old soul music, I thought I’d try more oldies. American Graffiti soundtrack? Maybe there was something on there that she liked? It looked pretty good. I put the five discs that I picked into the changer and hit “play”, crossing my fingers and toes that I got it right.
A few songs went by without comment. So far so good. Then came an American Graffiti track into the shuffle. That’s when she spoke up.
“You picked this, for ME?” she interrogated.
“No, I picked it for me,” I lied. Dodged a bullet. Barely. I lived to work another day.
The Bully’s friends will say something predictable, like “That doesn’t sound like she was testing you, that sounds like she just wanted you to pick the music for the day.” I would respond, “You weren’t there.” I heard the tone of voice. I knew the game being played. It would have been obvious had anyone else been there. “You picked this, for ME?” That was the tell.
But I got away with it and to this day I really could not give a shit what kind of music she liked. She certainly didn’t respect my tastes — once she told me only one person at my store (the one she was friends with) had good taste in music.
Why would you ask someone with poor taste in music to pick your CDs for you? She was playing games as usual, as always.
2018 was, shall we put it mildly, an interesting year. It was the summer that wasn’t. The year I spent the best months of the year driving to and from Toronto, at first waiting for a miracle, and then waiting for the inevitable. When my beloved mother in law finally passed away in September of that year, at least she left the pain behind.
Her decline at the end of the summer was rapid. Before she got too sick, she insisted that I still go record shopping with Aaron as we used to do annually. “You go and have a good time.” She had no way to know how important that was. That one record shopping excursion changed everything for Jen and I that summer. A discovery I made on that trip impacted the whole rest of the summer. That discovery was Blotto.
I’ve talked numerous times about how the skillfully comedic sounds of Blotto made the summer driving tolerable. I’ve trumpeted the merits of Blotto ad nauseum, but it cannot be overstated how important that music was to us at that time. And I had no real idea what I was buying. I just knew Blotto had one song in the 80s – “Metal Head” – that I saw on MuchMusic as a kid. But I didn’t think they were a metal band. They had a bald guy and a guy who looked like Revenge of the Nerds. They sported funny names like “Bowtie” and “Cheese”. For the sake of personal musical history, I wanted “Metal Head” in my collection. So there in the basement of BMV, with Aaron at my side, for a mere $8.99, I acquired their important album Combo Akimbo. It was the best decision I made all summer.
What I got was a nine-track comedy-rock album that kept us in positive spirits as we drove up and down Highway 401 all summer. And what is amazing is that I can play the album today and still feel the same things.
The bad memories are still there. They bubble to the surface. I can see myself behind the wheel, stopping and starting again all the way to Toronto. I hear Jen singing along next to me. But the pain is manageable, and the positive feelings outweigh the bad.
Of the nine songs, there was always one that made us laugh the most. That song was “It’s Not You”. Not only is it a catchy song with a cool guitar lick, but the lyrics are hilarious. I’m glad that Blotto was not tainted by the summer of 2018 and I can still enjoy their music with a huge grin on my face. That’s the gift. All too often, because acquires the feelings of the times you hear it, and if those times weren’t good, it’s hard to get around. Fortunately that didn’t happen with Blotto. I feel only good feelings, especially when I play “It’s Not You”. I can’t help but smile, every time.
This is something that’s not easy to do, It will hit you like a bolt from the blue, After last night, I have to tell you we are through.
When we’re alone, everything is OK, But it’s never gonna stay that way, When I take you home, your family has so much to say.
I try and I try, to be cool when they start, But girl, they’re the ones who are tearing us apart.
It’s not you! Don’t blame yourself It’s not you! No-one can help. It’s not you! I can’t be your man. It’s not you! It’s your family that I can’t stand. And it’s driving me crazy!
Your mother wants to know if I am on drugs, Your brother shows me his collection of bugs, Your aunts don’t like me and your uncles are a bunch of thugs.
Your father coughs and blows smoke in my face, He still believes in the superior race, He says if he were president, the world would be a better place.
I try and I try, to ignore them for our sake, But girl, I’m afraid it’s too much for me to take.
It’s not you! Don’t blame yourself It’s not you! No-one can help. It’s not you! I can’t be your man. It’s not you! It’s your family that I can’t stand.
There is no future baby can’t you see, Picture in your mind how it would be, All of us living in relative misery.
I try and I try, to be cool when they start, But girl, they’re the ones who are tearing us apart.
It’s not you! Don’t blame yourself It’s not you! No-one can help. It’s not you! I can’t be your man. It’s not you! It’s your family that I can’t stand.
It isn’t you, It’s only your family, Don’t take it personally, It’s just all those little things, Like when I come over to your house and your father tells me “Don’t park in the driveway, ‘cause your car gets oil on the new white pebbles,” and then when I go inside the house, the cat jumps on my lap, and gets hair all over my shirt and pants, and your grandmother sits the newspaper and gets it so wrinkled and bunched up that I can’t even read it, and your sister brings out her scrapbooks and wants me to look at all of her prom pictures, I mean, who cares! And your brother wants me to help him with his science project, dissecting frogs, ick, what a mess, and I go into the bathroom to wash my hands, and all they have is soft soap, and my hands smell like coconuts, and I can’t dry them on those little guest towels, so I gotta wipe them on my shirt, which is already covered with cat hair, and then when I come outside, your father corners me, and wants to tell me all the jokes he read in Playboy magazine….
RECORDS STORE TALES #1003: Animalize Live Uncensored
36 summers ago, I taped Kiss Animalize Live Uncensored off next door neighbor George. I recorded the video (which he recorded from a rental) onto a VHS, and the audio onto a 90 minute blank cassette. For that summer, Animalize Live was my Kiss live experience. I only had Alive on vinyl, which wasn’t portable. I didn’t have Alive II yet. My cassette copy of Animalize Live was constantly in my ears all summer.
I knew every word of every Paul rap.
“Detroit let me tell ya something just between you and me. That baby had the longest fuckin’ tongue I ever seen in my life!”
“Paul, what are you doing with a pistol down your pants?”
“Eric may look like a baby, but he’s built like a man.”
Paul did a striptease, and the guys hung the panties that they were thrown by girls in the crowd from their microphone stands. The concert dripped of raw sex and I was like a kid in shock. I had never seen anything like this before. I didn’t even know if I wanted to! But there it was in full glory, Paul Stanley telling stories about his “Love Gun” and me sitting there watching it multiple times a week. The summer I had mono. I couldn’t do much else. I watched a lot of videos and a lot of them were Kiss.
Listening today, I remember every note of every solo. Paul went first with a guitar solo. Bruce Kulick, the new kid, was standing in for Mark St. John and didn’t even get an introduction or solo. Eric’s drum solo was second, and Gene’s bass solo last. I liked the bass solo. It actually seemed more musical than the other two. Its simplicity is one thing…but I was humming the bass solo hours later.
I still know every vocal divergence each song takes in this live incarnation. Like old muscle memory. And you know what? There’s something to be said about 80s Kiss. They were playing things faster and Eric Carr added his own unique elements to Kiss, as did Bruce. On some songs the speed works. I was just thinking that if they came out playing “Creatures of the Night” this fast today in 2022, people would lose their minds.
On my Walkman, I went for cottage adventures with this concert in my ears. It was the worst recording possible; a cassette copy of a VHS copy of a VHS copy, in mono. Bootleggy as hell. But there I sat in the grass, as Paul Stanley told us of the women who wanted to “mother” Eric Carr. And I had no idea what, specifically, “mothering” Eric Carr meant. I knew it meant sexy times of some kind, but…nope, right over my head.
Animalize Live Uncensored was my Alive III from a time when we didn’t think we’d get an Alive III. Or at least, I didn’t. It was several albums and several years before we did get one, and Eric was gone by then. I liked it. I still do.
RECORD STORE TALES #1002: The Best of the Best of the Best
It has been unknown numbers of years since the last time I had a four-day summer vacation. Long overdue! Full of great music, great visuals, and so hard to come back from. My heart aches, but I have been diligent and made a video of the memories, as I always do. The theme of this week’s video: wildlife! Lots and lots of animals. 18 minutes of video paradise: the best of the best weekend I ever had.
As usual, we departed the hot city on Thursday night, to the sounds of great rock and roll. Heavy metal, in this case. This time I chose Iron Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son for the trip. The entire album plus the B-sides bonus disc. Musically genius, lyrically dicey. I used to think the words were so deep. “Seven deadly sins, seven ways to win, seven holy paths to hell and your trip begins…” I used to imagine Bruce’s lyrics were so deep. Now I think he was just making up cool sounding phrases. We all know what the seven deadly sins are, but there are no “seven ways to win”, nor “seven holy paths to hell.” I used to give him credit for knowing the exact meaning of everything he sang. What are the seven ways to win? Don’t ask Bruce, I don’t think he knows! But it all sounded cool, and I must have spent childhood memorizing this whole album, because I sang the whole way to the lake. I conclude the concept is fun, but without depth. If there is any depth to the album, it comes on the last song, Steve’s “Only the Good Die Young”.
So I think I’ll leave you, With your bishops and your guilt, So until the next time, Have a good sin.
That resonates, but the overall album is just a tale. Just a comic book. On the other hand, I could be like Liam Gallagher with Oasis lyrics. “Just because I don’t know what they mean, doesn’t mean there’s no fookin’ meaning in them fookin’ words!”
80s Maiden continued on the porch all Thursday night. All 80s, all Bruce. Nothing but. Then we watched Thursday Night Record Club with Brent Jensen and Alex Huard, talking about Judas Priest’s British Steel. Switched over to Priest on the front deck the following morning. And then to Journey, for an upcoming episode of Tim’s Vinyl Confessions, on the excellent new Journey album Freedom. I used my show notes to complete my upcoming review. It will be ready shortly after the show debuts. And you’re going to love the show we taped. Trust me!
As the days meandered on, we encountered all sorts of wildlife. There was a cheeky chipmunk that was climbing all over us each day, looking for treats. There was a raccoon hanging around the back door, smelling the blueberry pancakes I just made. Birds, birds, and more birds. And Schnauzers! We saw the return of our UFO! We kept our eyes on the skies, and there may have even been a flying squid! (What?)
Indoors and outdoors, there was plenty to do. No wonder four days flew past. We did retro gaming, watched Ant Man, had a belated birthday party, and cooled off in Lake Huron. We observed the sun set, and then the moon a few hours later. We have photos and video of it all.
By the time Monday rolled around, nobody wanted to go home. I spent my final four hours on the front deck editing away. It took that long to edit down 95 minutes of footage into the awesome 18 seen below.
Please enjoy the lengthy but entertaining video, and the awesome memories that go with it. I wish we could stay forever. At least with the videos, the memories remain and will not fade. The accompanying music comes from Tee Bone Erickson, Dr. Kathryn Ladano, Max the Axe and the Seagram Synth Ensemble. And it’s all good. I worked damn hard on this, because making videos like this does a lot of good for me when my seasonal affective disorder eventually kicks in. I worked hard on it for me, but also for you, because beauty is universal.
The best sun (and moon) sets in the world. Magical music. Awesome animals. The best, of the best, of the best weekend ever!
mikeladano.com 