Record Store Tales

#996: “These are really big in Europe”

RECORD STORE TALES #996: “These are really big in Europe”

Summer 2003

I was working for a stretch at our newly opened Mississauga location.  It was deader than dead, but many of the managers had to take turns running the ship until we had a trained staff.  There were always staffing problems like people not showing up for their first shifts, and I don’t think the manager lasted a long time either.  Kind of a nightmare, as many store openings were back them.  This store sat in the middle of a medical strip plaza.  Dentists, pharmacies, that sort of thing.  Across the street was a vacant field.

I think there was a barbershop or something in the plaza, or hair dresser if you will.  This one Mississauga kid came in to check us out.  He was related to someone who worked at the hair dresser.  He was into dance music and had lots of questions.

“Do you buy CDs?  My cousin is a DJ and he has a lot.”

“Yes we do, get him to bring them in and I will go through them and see what we can use.”

“He has really cool dance music.”

“Right on, yeah, bring it in and I’ll have a look.”

“How many can you take?”

“Well I’ll have to have a look first, but you can bring in as many as you want and I’ll sort through them and let you know.”

“How much can he get for them?  He has really great dance music that’s hard to find, he bought them on import from Europe.  These are all artists that are really big in Europe.”

Egads.  That was never something I wanted to hear.  Dance music that was “big in Europe” usually sat for months on our shelves because, well, Canada is not in Europe.  I went through the spiel.

“Well we offer between $1 and $7 cash each for CDs, and 20% more for credit.  It’ll depend on what kind of shape they’re in, what they retail for, and if we have any in stock already.  So bring them in and I’ll have a look.”

“So, like $5 each then?”

The kid did indeed have a lot of questions.  Eventually he was all questioned out, and returned a few hours later with a big box of CDs.  As promised, mostly dance music from Europe with a couple American and Canadian titles sprinkled in there.

“OK, give me an hour or so and I’ll have these all priced out for you.”

“Can you give me an idea?”

Jesus.  “No, I haven’t even started looking at them yet.  If you want to go and grab a coffee, I’ll need about an hour to sort through these.”

There was absolutely nowhere to grab a coffee nearby, I just needed him our of my hair.

I sorted through the discs, and most of them were in pretty bad shape.  Scratched, with some damaged booklets.  We always offered less for scratched discs because we had to pay a third party company to buff the scratches out.  We had already nickle-and-dimed the third party CD fixers to death, but we generally deducted $2 from the offer for discs that were scratched.  Plus a lot of these were older titles, and that meant the fad was often over on them.  So the kid wasn’t going to be getting full value.  I was sure that would be easy to explain to him…not.

I had no idea who many of these artists were.  Mississauga was definitely more into dance music than the more…eh…white trash of Kitchener-Waterloo.  But this was not a busy store, and we really had no idea what was going to sell or sit for years.  I looked the artists up, disc by disc, and passed on the majority simply because I could not find out a single thing about them.  The thing about buying discs like that was that I was always second-guessing myself.  The last thing I wanted was to get in shit for buying shit!  I played it on the safe side and decided to take a small token number.

I called the kid over and went through his discs stack by stack.  “The ones back in the box I can’t take — they are just too damaged, too obscure, or both.”

“But this guy here is really big in Europe right now.”

I had to be blunt.  “Yeah, I know, but this isn’t Europe and I have a really hard time selling stuff like this.”

“Lots of people are looking for these man.”

“I’m sorry but I just can’t give you anything for those.  I just can’t find out anything about them and sometimes obscure dance music can sit for years.  A lot of these are from the 90s.”

The kid was clearly disappointed but I went on.

“These ones here are a bit scratched but I can fix them up.  These here are worth $3 each and these are worth $2 each.”

“$2 what?  My cousin paid $40 for that one at HMV.”

He could very well have been right…back in 1997.  I had no way of knowing what its present value was.  I kept going.

“These ones are in great shape,” I said trying to butter him up.  “I can give you $5 for this one, $4 for this one, and $2 each for these because I have a couple copies already and could only buy these for our bargain bin.  All together, I can give you $47 cash or $55 credit.”

“$55 that’s it?”

“$55 credit,” I corrected.  “Or $47 cash.”

“What’s credit?” the kid asked.

“That’s if you wanted to buy something in the store, I’ll give you $55 to spend here.  Or you can have $47 cash.”

“That’s all I can get for these?  If you take them all you can have the whole box for $150.”

Blunt time again.  “Man, I can’t even stock them all, some of them are in un-sellable condition.”  But not too blunt.  I couldn’t just say, “Kid, these are all crap.”

“But they all play fine, my cousin’s a DJ.”

Of course he is.  That’s how they got so banged up.

“It’s not about how they play, it’s also about how they look.  We want to sell our customers CDs that look and sound new.”

“So all of these CDs behind you are brand new?” the kid continued to interrogate.

“No, they’re used, but if everybody’s been doing their job right, they’re all in mint or near perfect condition.”  I paused a moment and threw him a bone.  “Listen I’ll round it up to an even $50 cash but that’s really the best I can do for these.”

The kid took back every disc except for the one I had offered $5 on.  He sold that title to me, and walked with the rest.

And that’s how you spend over an hour working for a measly $5 of inventory!

 

 

$5 Polymer Note - Bank of Canada

 

 

 

 

 

 

#995: Terminology

RECORD STORE TALES #995: Terminology

All of us music-heads do it:  we like to celebrate the anniversaries of our favourite (and occasionally not-so-favourite) albums!  But how do you like to say it?  That’s up to you.  Is there a right and wrong way to do it?

I’ll tell you one thing you’ll never hear me say:  “This album dropped on this day…”

I do not use the word “dropped” to refer to an album release.  I know that’s what the kids say today.  That’s precisely why I won’t say it.

A lot people say “Celebrate the anniversary of this album’s release today…” which is perfectly fine.  No issue.  Lots of big words that my fat thumbs have trouble typing on my phone though.

So I choose something simple and easy for my fingers to mash out on my phone while I’m eating my Cheerios.  I choose to say “Happy birthday to this album!”

I don’t write long album birthday posts.  Instead I simply paste the link to my review (when applicable) and post “Happy birthday!”  I figure the review has most of the info if anybody cares enough to click it.

Two people have questioned my use of the word “birthday” in this context:  rock journalist Mitch Lafon, and one loyal LeBrain Train viewer who you might be able to guess.  I get it, I really do.  Wishing “happy birthday” to an album?  Is an album “born”?

According to Merriam Webster dictionary, the word “birth” can also mean “to give rise to”.  Even so, I like to have fun with words and use them in ways not always intended.  I’m also not the only person to wish a “happy birthday” to an inanimate object.

Look, it’s real simple.  I won’t say “dropped”, and I don’t like the word “anniversary” (or typing it with my thumbs).  I’ve chosen “happy birthday” for my album anniversary celebrations, and I think most people understand “Oh, he means it must have been released on this day.”  I find a lot of arguments in the music community comes down to what I consider semantics.  You’ll see all kinds of debates on what “metal” really is, or what qualifies members of a band as “original”.  We care about these things because we’re music fans.

Admittedly, for me to type “Happy birthday!” on social media for an album, instead of a proper sentence about its release, is an act of laziness.  But social media itself is an embodiment of laziness so I won’t apologize for that.

How do you post about an album’s anniversary?  Are albums “born”?  Does anyone actually care about English anymore?  Let us know in the comments.

#994: An A5 Canada Day

RECORD STORE TALES #994: An A5 Canada Day

From Jen and I here at LeBrain HQ, we hope you had an excellent Canada Day.  For us, we did things a little differently this time, and it turned out aces!

First, I awoke early and began work at 6:00 AM on two separate projects.  Musically:  the hinted-at, overdue Kiss project that I have been working on and must be finished!  This is a collaboration with new contributor Jonathan Lee.  We have taken on the challenge of ranking all 24 Kiss albums, and we (coincidentally!) wrote about 3650 words each.  We were in synch with verbosity, but not rankings!  The final lists will be dropped simultaneously in two posts on July 5, next week!  It was Jonathan who challenged me to take him up on this project and I think you will like what we both came up with.  It took a few hours to format everything right, but by the end of the morning, I had the lists ready to rock.

In conjunction with this, I was seasoning my new cast iron pan.  This had to be done in preparation for our Canada Day dinner’s main course:  a genuine Japanese A5 wagyu steak from the Miyazaki prefecture.  This expensive piece of meat is unlike I have ever cooked before, and I had something of a sleepless, anxious night overthinking it.

By morning, I had a plan.  The wagyu was going in the cast iron pan with some butter, garlic, onions, peppers, portobello mushrooms, and asparagus.  Therefore I needed to season the pan in the oven beforehand, and I spent several hours on that while also working on the Kiss lists.  For never having done it before, I think it turned out pretty well.  Its surface became smoother, and water beaded off.

In the afternoon we headed over to my parents house to use their new barbecue.  You see, having never cooked wagyu before, we decided to bring some backup steaks.  I was going to cook them on the barbecue the normal way, while doing the wagyu in the pan.  Meanwhile, Jen was roasting veggies in the oven with enormous amounts of butter and hand-diced garlic.  The garlic was intense, but to die for.  Her potatoes, carrots and asparagus were amazing.

Timing was everything.  We started at 4:00 PM with the veggies.  By 4:35 the barbecue was warming up for the backup steaks.  Meanwhile, the cast iron pan was warming up in the oven.

Finally, the moment I had been waiting for all week.  The moment that kept me up the previous night.  The moment of truth!  The wagyu was, as all the Youtube videos promised, delicate to the touch.  The fat began melting as soon as I touched it.  Although everyone seems to have different rules about it, I elected to keep the wagyu in the fridge as long as possible to minimise the premature melting of fat.  Then I seasoned with salt and pepper to taste.  In hindsight I could have gone a teeny tiny bit heavier on the salt and pepper, but you can always add that after the fact as well.

The cast iron came out of the oven and onto a hot burner.  Into the pan went a generous amount of butter and my veggies including several cloves of garlic.  A few minutes later, things were smelling wonderful and I flipped the steak – not before touching the handle of the pan with my bare hands though!  Fortunately it had cooled enough that I didn’t burn myself.  These new cooking techniques take some getting used to.  After a couple more minutes I removed the wagyu from the pan, and let it rest.  When sliced, it was somewhere between rare and medium rare, which was what I was aiming for.  Meanwhile our backup steaks were also ready at a perfect medium rare.  It was 5:00 by the time everything was done and rested.

 

A wagyu steak is a sharing steak.  It is simply too rich to eat like a normal steak.  I served up some portions for each of us, and we delighted in eat bite.  Some went with carrots – Jen’s favourite combination.  I enjoyed the wagyu with the portobello mushrooms, or a clove of garlic.  Because it is so rich, we tended to pair it with other things on the plate.  The cast iron did a nice job of creating a beautiful caramelizing on the vegetables.  The wagyu had a great sear.  The pan also cleaned up easily afterwards.  No stick.  I must have seasoned it right?

We barely touched the backup steaks (they will go into another meal) and we finished just over half of the wagyu.  This is what I expected.  I wonder what that wagyu will become tomorrow?  A stir fry, most likely.  Wagyu stir fry.  Looking forward to it — and many more meals with my new cast iron pan.

Having enjoyed wagyu at one of the best steakhouses in Toronto, my own steak stacked up well.  I would rank them just about equally.  Theirs had more seasoning, but our side dishes surpassed theirs by far.  Miles.  No comparison.  Our sides were incredible.  Modesty?  This is me being modest!  And all told, our meal was about a third of the price of the steakhouse.  With  more steak and more leftovers.  Jen and I both worked hard Canada Day, and it paid off.  Best meal we ever made, and we did it as a team!  She picked up all the meat, veggies, and even the pan.  We timed everything perfectly.  It went so well that we determined we don’t need backup steaks next time.

With the Kiss project, Stranger Things, and a massive dinner taking up my time, it was the end of the Canada Day before I realized, “Hey, I haven’t listened to any Canadian music today”.  So my friends, here’s some Max the Axe.  Turn it up.

#993: IAM

RECORD STORE TALES #993: IAM

Rest in peace, Shannon Larratt.  Rest in peace, Rachel Larratt.  Both gone now, hopefully to a better place.

In the decades before the WordPress community, there was one place I could go to feel like I belonged.  In 1999, a Toronto native named Shannon Larratt created a community.  He called it “IAM” – “I am” – and it was a place for tattooed and/or pierced individuals to feel welcome.  You might remember Shannon and Rachel from their brief cameo in the Kevin Smith movie Clerks II.  Remember the “freaks”?  That was Shannon and Rachel.

I joined in the year 2000 and began making new friends, close and far.  Sarge was on there.  The Legendary Klopeks were on there.  The Lizardman was on there.  Dan Slessor from Kerrang Magazine, though Kerrang was still in his future.  It was growing, and growing fast.

IAM was different.  Shannon ensured it was not just a safe place, but also a cool place.  You could pay for a membership, or just submit stories and photos for credit.  I did both, but mostly paid, because I wanted to support the community, as did most people.  It’s hard to describe just what made it so special.  It was set as my home page on my browser.  I even had an app in the toolbar that notified me when I had new IAM messages.  I’d open my window and in front of me would be a grid of photos — the most recent IAM profiles that posted updates, in the form of a blog or photos.  It was always exciting to see a friend or girl that I liked post an update!  Or someone who had not been around a while.

There was one character named Raynutz.  He had no visible piercings or tattoos (the one and only qualifier for membership), and his was the very very last profile on the grid (which you could skip through page by page).  This meant it was one of the oldest since his first post was his only post.  All he had was a mullet and a pair of Ray-Bans.  Nobody knew the story behind Raynutz.  I always suspected it was a joke test account made by Shannon, but he would never tell.  Raynutz became pure legend by not interacting with people at all.  Hundreds of messages were sent to his inbox; nobody received a reply.  This eventually led to Shannon selling a “Raynutz Ate My Balls” T-shirt.

Sarge told me he knew the identity of Raynutz, but could never reveal it.

The Raynutz Ate My Balls shirt eventually inspired Sarge to create the popular Purp Ate My Balls shirt, with my face on it.  I went by the name “Purpendicular” after a favourite Deep Purple album.  At one point, I deleted my account after a bad day at work, but I received so many “what happened?” emails that I decided to come back.  I decided on a fresh start with the name “Dewey Finn”, named after Jack Black’s character in School of Rock.  As such, I decided to create a discussion forum called “School of Rock” where each day I would prepare “lessons” for the “class”.  Obscure rock trivia stuff, like listing all the Black Sabbath singers right down to Dave Walker and Rob Halford.  It became so popular that the School of Rock forum was one of the site’s most popular, third only to Shannon’s and my own personal journals!  At least for a couple weeks, I topped the charts!  I learned quickly that keeping up that pace was impossible and eventually I slid down the charts, but usually remained in the top 20.  It was fun and a precursor to becoming LeBrain.

What about that journal?  You guessed it — those journal entries formed the basis of many of the original (and ongoing) Record Store Tales.  Unfortunately I lost many of them when I deleted my Purpendicular profile and started Dewey Finn, and I wish I hadn’t.  I posted reviews, record reviews, and all sorts of personal stuff that I wish I still had.  Incriminating evidence against the people at the Record Store who were making life miserable for me.  Actual records of the days that “the bully” decided not to speak to me for three weeks at a time.  Customer stories galore.  Writings of what I was listening to and when.  I had so much good shit in there!  I posted minimum five times per day, with lists, pictures or stories.  One of my biggest regrets is hitting that delete button.  I remember Shannon wrote some funny code into it.  When you confirmed you wanted to delete your IAM page, the text came back, “Your IAM page is now deleted, throw your computer in the garbage.”

They had big BMEcons in Toronto.  People would come from all around the world.  They’d get tattooed, pierced, suspended, drunk, high, who knows!  I didn’t go, but I do know it was a good time with music and fellowship.

My interaction with Shannon was minimal, and none with Rachel, who continued on with the site after he passed.  Now I have heard that Rachel is gone too.  It seems surreal.  We lost Sarge earlier this year too.  Fortunately most of us are still around.  Mike, Liz, Shoe, and RooRaaah (those are all real names not aliases) are still my friends.  Shoe used to live in England, and now resides in Toronto, but I still have an old mix tape that she sent me from the UK back in 2002 or 2003.  Mix TAPE.

The only elephant remaining in the room might be the question “didja meet any girls there?”  I refer you to Record Store Tales #909:  2000 Dates and the girl I dubbed “Guelph #2”!  There were others — the girl that dumped me while I was in a hotel room in Barrie Ontario was an IAM girl.  The last of them was Thunder Bay Girl, who I swear to this day probably dumped all the hundreds of cassettes that I gave her into the landfill.  I was 30 and she was in her early 20s and I was learning that age did matter.  It was a lot of fun hanging out with these girls with hardware in their nips but I was emotionally in an unhappy place and I eventually realized that dating these young goth girls wasn’t the answer.

Here’s something interesting though.  In those IAM days, I thought that I hadn’t really figured out who I was yet.  But there I was the whole time:  the music-mad journaling guy, documenting the minutia of life.  And the Record Store Tales will continue on.

“Purp Ate My Balls”

#992: Long Weekend of The Lizard, Water, and the Scales of Justice

RECORD STORE TALES #992: Long Weekend of Lizards, Water, and Max

We rolled in Thursday night and it was so hot that we cranked open all the windows.  And that was it with any kind of warmth!  The rest of the weekend was cold, windy and required long sleeves!  Regardless of the hot and cold reception we received, I watched Brent Jensen and Alex Huard discuss Appetite for Destruction on Thursday Night Record Club outdoors as planned.

The music on the road up was, as always, good!  We started with Saigon Kick’s The Lizard, in anticipation of Friday night’s big interview.  It was tremendous fun to listen to such a great album, 30 years young, in the car.  Upon conclusion we played a tape of Max the Axe’s first gig with the present lineup, recorded August 4 2017.  Five years of Meat, Dave, Mitch and Max creating music together.  While the years have made them better, the live cassette of the first gig is good enough that we hope it will form the basis of their first live album.  The setlist consisted of eight tracks from the then-unrecorded Status Electric album, a Black Flag cover later finalized for Oktoberfest Cheer, and the Max classic “I Don’t Advocate Drugs” with Meat singing lead for the first time.

All Friday and Saturday, music took over the cold front porch.  It is hard to type with frozen fingers.  I am working on a major Kiss project that I will not reveal yet, but in preparation I played a ton of old Kiss on the porch.  Lick It Up, Creatures of the Night, Hotter Than Hell, Paul’s solo album, and plenty more.  When the Kiss was concluded, I moved on to Judas Priest (Point of Entry).  As always, it was a magical retro soundtrack that acted as a mental time machine.  I would have been playing those same albums back in ’87-’88.  The big difference being – I was stuck in my room!  Now the porch is my room.

One thing for certain. I would have loved it if I had the technology to do stop motion animation in 1987. All I had were my Transformers toys, comic books and imagination. Now I have that plus cameras and computers. I spent several hours working on animation. Let’s face it: It’s just an excuse to play with toys as an adult!  There’s nothing wrong with that and it was damn fun, especially with Judas Priest blasting in the background just like they would have in the 80s.

Saturday night we went for some nice walks and I shared stories of the old days.  No phones, no cable, no digital music back then.  The only way to was to haul all my physical music, and associated players, up to the lake to enjoy.  And enjoy we did.  Nothing has changed there except convenience and sound quality.  Playing the music that I bought at the cottage originally sure brings the memories back.  White Lion’s Big Game and Jon Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory were two such albums that I spun again in the old original setting.  I bought ’em both in Kincardine on cassette.  Hanging out with Bob Schipper and picking our favourite new tunes…great memories!  I remember putting the sticker for the JBJ cassette on the bottom of the top bunkbed.  Jen and I talked a lot, and perhaps there’s a number of stories there to tell in the future.

Three days came and went as quickly as a cool summer breeze.  All I have left now are the photos and videos to keep the memories fresh.  You can watch them now too, all edited together to the sound of a new remix of “Scales of Justice” by Max the Axe!  I think it’s the best cottage video I’ve ever made.  What more could you want?

#991: You Shook Me All Long Weekend

Jen and I took a Friday off so we could make a long weekend at the lake. With three days to ourselves, good food and good music were a given!

Music for the road trip up:

  1. Ace Frehley – Bronx Boy
  2. AC/DC – Power Up
  3. Deep Purple – Deep Purple

Upon arrival, I spun the usual Kiss on the porch, until 9:00 PM at which point I tuned in to Thursday Night Record Club with Brent Jensen and Alex Huard, discussing AC/DC’s Back In Black.

We filled the weekend with food (pork chops, steaks, trout, and veggies) and more music (lots of Kiss and Iron Maiden).  We enjoyed a few nice walks in the cool summer air.  Yes, it was a chilly one, but we still managed a game of Monopoly on the back porch, in the open air.  Our money never blew away once!

What did blow me away?  Listening to Iron Maiden’s Live After Death on the back porch.  It was like 1986 all over again, but only if 1986 had digital quality sound on the back porch!  We also played some music for Grampa Winter, who would have cranked Kenny Rogers’ Greatest Hits and “The Gambler”.  Except he did it on vinyl with some big old speakers mounted on the front of his bunkhouse.

Friday night I did an excellent live show with Rob Daniels and Harrison Kopp, showing off some incredible collectables.  This enabled me to do some stop motion with my new phone/camera, which turned out really cool.  The new camera is also finally capable of capturing some of the majesty of Kincardine sunsets.  I was impressed with the results and intend to use it frequently all summer.  Another feature is slow motion, which I used to capture some fire and waves.

It was over all too quickly.

Music for the drive home:

  1. Peter Criss – Out of Control
  2. Peter Criss – Let Me Rock You
  3. Criss – Cat #1 (Half)

I can’t explain why I chose those, but every once in a while, you need to listen to some Peter Criss.  So I did.

Please enjoy the video of the weekend, all the sound of Max the Axe, below.

#990: Cleaning the Door

RECORD STORE TALES #990: Cleaning the Door

In 2005, near the end of my sad reign as Record Store Manager, I was working at the head office branch.  There was a door in the back of the store that lead to an office space with several desks, and a warehouse area for supplies.  It was like the Great Wall.  On one side sat the the elite who laughed as they made the decisions, what stock we were carrying, and other sundry details that came down from on high.  On the other side, we the rabble that worked behind the counter serving the unwashed public.

Or at least that’s how they made it feel to me.  The cold detachment.  It was always unnerving when you could hear them discussing your store behind the wall.

Either way it was clear by 2005 that I was the old guard on my way out.  Management was unprofessional, and some of us couldn’t help noticing that other stores got away with things that mine didn’t, perhaps due to personal relationships.  This is not only my observance but that of others in the know.  So I knew the deck was stacked against me until I eventually made my move to depart.

One thing they were always bitching about was “your store is messy/dirty/disorganized”.  There was the incident with the glass front display case that had fingerprints on it for example.  Other “preferred” stores were the same or worse, but didn’t catch the grief that I did.  So I decided to try an experiment and see if they’d notice.

The only door to the back office was filthy with fingerprints when I took over that store.  You know how the area around a doorknob gets blackened with the dirt and grime of the years since last painting?  I was shocked, because I inherited that store from someone who seemed to be more preferred than I was.  One week I decided to scrub that door, and surrounding wall, clean.

Anytime management were not around that week, such as the night shifts, I would get out the cleaning products and scrub.  It took a few days, but eventually I got all the black off the door and wall.   They were as fresh as the day they were painted.  The grossness was gone.

I waited for someone in management to notice, but notice never came.

A week or two later, I asked someone if they noticed I had cleaned all the grime off the door?

“Mmm,” came the only reaction.

“Fuck this job,” was my own silent response.

#988: I Gotsta Get Paid

I get this alot.

“How much did Def Leppard pay you for your assistance?”

The initial reaction from a lot of people that I get is that I should be compensated monetarily for sending Def Leppard a bunch of live versions of their tracks.  Their intellectual property; songs that they wrote, performed and toured.  All I did was download them for free when they were offered, over 20 years ago.  I imagine a lot of people did.  The only thing I did differently was burn them to a CD so I could keep them forever.

It was suggested that I should have asked for $10,000.  I’ve even been told that Leppard should have let me have some copyright action so I can play the songs on my show without getting a strike.  My show didn’t exist when I sent them the tracks, and I can’t even imagine how that arrangement would work out.  (Short answer – it wouldn’t.)  But I wasn’t going to hold these tracks hostage for some kind of deal.

When I was initially contacted about the Def Leppard live rarities in my collection, I was eager to contribute.  Anything I could do for one of my favourite bands.  I just wanted to help Def Leppard make the best box set they could.  The concept of compensation never entered my mind.  But I was compensated, with a free copy of the CD Collection Vol. 2, and a big huge thank-you in the liner notes.  Additionally they credited my website so they could direct curious traffic straight to me.

Since that time, I’ve maintained contact with my label insider and have enjoyed our chats about what’s coming, what’s impossible and what we wish for.  I value that relationship and enjoy our “off the record” conversations about what’s going on behind the scenes.

I never felt entitled to compensation.  I didn’t write the songs.  I didn’t record them.  I just sent back the files that I downloaded from Def Leppard in the first place.  To see my name in that special thank-you credit was more than enough!  How many people do you know personally who were credited in a box set by a band as big as Def Leppard?  And that’s forever.  Long after I’m gone, my name will still be in there.   That is reward enough for me!

#987: The Summer Awakens

RECORD STORE TALES #987: The Summer Awakens

It’s official:  the earliest swim on record for any summer at the lake is May 13!  If you don’t believe in global warming, then I can tell you that past weekends in early May, we were snuggled up in jackets and long pants.  This year, early May was as warm as early July used to be.  What an incredible weekend.  Clear and sunny until late Saturday.  By then we were indoors waiting for the Toronto Maple Leafs to once again exit the playoffs in the first round.  But I’m jumping head of myself!

Traffic was light but the music was heavy.  Albums for the drive up:

As expected, both were awesome on the road.  There was no clear winner.  Interestingly, Jennifer liked “Roots In My Boots” by Scorpions, which I considered a bit of a throwaway.  Regardless, both albums did well on the highway and rocked us safely to the cottage in two hours.

First music on the porch:

  • Kathryn Ladano – Open

Not a new release, but since the good Doctor was next door, it felt right to serenade her with some of her best music!

From there we settled in with the first hot dogs of the year, and I began to prep for my show that night (Top 11 Star Wars movies) by watching The Phantom Menace.  10 years ago, the only way to do that would be to bring a DVD and watch it on the laptop.  If we wanted to watch a Star Wars movie 30 years ago, we needed to bring the tape and a VCR!  Everything is so easy now, but dependent on a good internet connection.  That connection enabled me to do the first cottage show of the year, and a success it was.  I experimented with some new lighting and it worked way better than last year after sundown.  A successful show — and one of the best we’ve ever done.   Certainly one of my favourites.

It’s always hard to sleep after a caffeinated show like that.  I got four or five hours, and was up and at ’em early Saturday.  It was so quiet.  Most cottagers have not opened yet — their loss!  They were not able to listen when I rocked Kiss on the front porch on Saturday.  Kiss albums this weekend included Dynasty, Kiss, Hotter Than Hell, Peter Criss, and Rock and Roll Over.

I made fish for breakfast (trout) and went to go pick up my new bass from neighbor Donna.  Her brother was Don Simmons of Helix, and this bass used to belong to him.  It is my honour to play it on the porch in his memory.  Although I use the word “play” very loosely.  I have never played bass before and can only “barely” play guitar as it is.  It took some time to get used to the size of the body.  Even the neck felt huge.  But it sounded great and really rumbled the porch.

I made chicken and steaks on the barbecue and burned up a bunch of old wood — without losing my glasses this time.  After being on my feet all day Saturday, I took it easy in the evening, missing the bright orange sunset.  I had been on my feet all day and it felt good to rest up in the evening.

We departed for home early Sunday.  Albums for the road home:

These albums, Priest especially, gave me some serious retro vibes, as if I had stepped into a time machine and was 16 again.  I had this happen numerous times last year, and I wrote about that feeling in multiple previous chapters.  It’s a very intense feeling, as if I was no longer living in the year 2022, but had stepped into 1987 again.  It felt as real as the steering wheel in my hands.  Looks like this summer will be no different.  Lots of flashbacks in store!

An excellent start to what I hope will be an amazing year.

#986: Forbidden Fruit

RECORD STORE TALES #986:  Forbidden Fruit

Even without the nostalgia, it sure seems like the second summer at the Record Store was an endless string of perfect sunny days.  It certainly was that on this occasion when I walked with confidence into the Record Store for my shift.   The hottest artists on the charts at the time were TLC, Boyz II Men, and Bryan Adams with “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman”.  The source of the mojo in my stroll came from the company I kept that day.  I was accompanied by the girl I liked and her kid.  My ladyfriend and I were not dating, but to use the parlance of the times, she was smokin’ hot.  She was seeing a guy I knew, but she confided in me that had she met me first, she wouldn’t be dating him at all.

File that under “things nobody had ever said to me before”.

We had been hanging out and shopping that afternoon as friends, but the truth was, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I knew it was just a matter of time before she dumped my buddy.  Because I’m not a complete backstabber, I tried to talk her up to his positive attributes.  In fact at one point she asked me to stop defending him because I was making it really hard for her to dump him.  OK!  I’d done all I could.  Had she met me first, she wouldn’t even be dating him.  The words rang in my head!  Would this be the summer that I could answer the question “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman” in the affirmative?

I was in the midst of my angriest of angry phases: 1994-1996.  But that summer was an island of happiness.  Still, I had gone absolutely mad for the doom, gloom and aggression of Black Sabbath, and was still in the middle stages of “collecting them all”.  I had ordered the rarest ones, Seventh Star and Born Again on CD from Japan (never came).  I had a CD copy of Headless Cross coming in and just got Technical Ecstacy on cassette.  And they had a brand new album coming too, reuniting the Tyr lineup.

The exact date might have been June 20, the day of release for Black Sabbath’s Forbidden.  I remember that our store received no CD copies, although I think we did get some on cassette.  What I do know is that we drove up to Waterloo to get it at HMV, and she was with me.  But I had a 5 o’clock shift back at the Record Store, and she gave me a ride.  Tom was working behind the counter that day.  After my ladyfriend departed, I distinctly remember Tom asking me a question that was also filed under “things nobody had ever said to me before”.

“How do you meet such hot chicks, man?”

I laughed and tried to say something cool.  The truth was I was tearing up inside because A) I’d never met one like her before, and B) she was going out with someone else!

I saw the ways guys looked at her.  I remember walking around uptown Waterloo with her, on our way to the Huether for lunch and a milkshake.  She was wearing a bikini top with an unbuttoned shirt loosely around it.  A creepy dude glanced and made a comment as we walked.  She was definitely the kind of girl that attracted lookers.

But I knew I had a chance.  I continued to be the friend.  I helped her out when she needed a babysitter and I drove her around when I had the car.  As the cool friend who worked in a Record Store, I hooked her up with music for her and the kid.

One weekend at the cottage, the phone rang.  A rare occurrence.  It was for me; a rarer occurrence.  It was my buddy Aaron, who was well aware of the situation with the girl and was in my corner.  Aaron always called me “Geddy”.  He still does!

“Geddy?  She dumped him.”

No way.  Finally!

“What’s your next move?” he asked me.

What to do now?  I was going to wait.

I got home and there was a message on the machine from my buddy.  “Mike, don’t call anybody else.  Call me first.”

On the phone, he told me of the Great Dumping.  It was hard for me to have sympathy knowing the other side of the story already.  If he didn’t mooch so much, if he didn’t hang out doing nothing all day, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.  But I couldn’t tell him that.  He had a plan to win her back.  I told him how sorry I was, but I sure didn’t tell him that I was going to make a move.

Eventually.

I waited a long time.  My birthday arrived; I had a murder mystery party and she came over to celebrate with me.  A guy hit on her at my house!  The birthday passed and I still had not made a move.  It was like some kind of emotional paralysis.  In fact I’d never asked a girl out before and had no idea what the hell to say.  I’m notorious for tripping over my words.  Finally, she confronted me.  On the phone one night she said “I’m not going to ask.  If you don’t, somebody else will.”

I asked her if it was lame to ask somebody out to dinner or a movie.  She said no, so I asked her out to dinner or a movie.

She seemed relieved that I finally asked.  I think she had everything for the first date pre-planned.  She told me instead of just dinner, how about dinner in Toronto after a day on Toronto Island?  I had no idea what that entailed but it all sounded great to me.  I got her flowers, first time I had ever done that too.  I had no idea what I was doing.  I bought them too soon and they wilted so I got more.  But it was a fun day and one of those magical, youthful memories that only get warmer with years.  The funny thing, even though I asked her out, she organised all the details and even drove.  Our relationship was a lot like that.  She showed me things she liked and hoped I would enjoy.  I remember listening to Loreena McKennitt with her.  Harp music; very different from metal, but not so different from Blackmore’s Night which was only a few years away.  But she didn’t care about my Iron Maiden.  And she really disliked my Kim Mitchell.  It wasn’t meant to last.  I got three months.

“Nothing you can do will hurt me, I am indestructible.”  That line from Black Sabbath’s “Kiss of Death” really resonated during the angry years.  It wasn’t true though.  The island of happiness was over and I was pretty was wrecked afterwards.  Took a while to recover.

We had a fun summer, but I needed to be with someone who didn’t want to change me or improve me.  Who demanded that I mature.  Who liked me as I am, warts and all.  Fortunately I have that now, even with the added mileage I’ve clocked since then!  That’s real love.