Record Store Tales

#973: “Let’s Get Rocked” – The Wait for Adrenalize

Part Twelve of the Def Leppard Review Series

RECORD STORE TALES #973: “Let’s Get Rocked” – The Wait for Adrenalize

Before the internet, the best way to access your rock news in Canada was to buy magazines and watch the Pepsi Power Hour.  We had all the US magazines plus M.E.A.T and some of the best rock coverage with MuchMusic.  You’d be negligent in your rock and roll duties if you didn’t buy some magazines.

I remember buying one at the end of the 80s, the turn of the decade.  It might have been Metal Edge or something of a lower tier.  (You bought what was on the shelf when pickings were slim.)  But they had a column by a psychic who was making rock and roll predictions for the coming decade.  Stuff like “Will Jon and Richie break up?”  What interested me the most was what she predicted for Joe Elliott of Def Leppard.  The biggest rock band in the world, she claimed, would get only get bigger.  Joe’s next album would outsell Hysteria, and he would get involved with some important causes.

Was she confusing Joe for Bono?  Cool if true, but outselling Hysteria?  Hard to imagine.

A few things were known about the next album at the start of the new decade.  They’d be trying to produce it without “Mutt” Lange for one.  “Mutt will be involved,” said Joe, but in a different capacity.  The goal was to make a “quick” album — one year instead of several.  They had one song earmarked from a B-side called “Tear It Down”.  They also had some unfinished ideas left over from Hysteria such as the ballad “Tonight”.  As kids, we imagined an album less produced than Hysteria, but hopefully just as good.  I had actual dreams of anticipation at night, imagining the new album cover sitting there on the shelves.  Continuing with the “-ia” naming convention, the next album was said to be titled Dementia.  A title they dropped in favour of something less negative, when once again things went down the toilet.

Rick Allen’s car accident was extremely unfortunate, but what happened this time was tragic.  Steve Clark, always the band’s riff-master and shape-throwing classic rocker, was gone.

The guitarist had been suffering from his addictions, and this time a deadly mixture of prescription pills and alcohol was enough to end his life.  January 8 1991, “Steamin'” Steve Clark was no more.

The band didn’t know what to do but carry on.  Record the the album as a four-piece.  Dedicate it to Steve.  Don’t even think about replacements until it’s necessary.

And so the fans mourned, and waited.  As the band toiled away, now producing with Mike Shipley, we anxiously awaited news.  Any news.  A few song titled leaked out:  “Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad”, “Stand Up”, “Tonight”, “Tear It Down”.

And then, over a year after Clark’s death, listening to the radio one snowy afternoon:  Q107 out of Toronto, announced:  new Def Leppard.  Coming right up.

My sister and I huddled around the radio.  We may have popped in a tape to record it; I can’t remember.  We didn’t need to since it was about to carpet-bomb the nation with radio and video play.  “Let’s Get Rocked” was here!

And it was…

OK.

It was OK.  It sounded like Def Leppard.  It didn’t push the boundaries in any fashion.  It was safe, straightforward, and simple.

“Well, that classical section with the violins was different,” I said trying to see the bright side.

“Yeah, but that was just one short part,” answered my more realistic sister.

Through the years of anticipating a new Def Leppard album, we imagined some growth.  Maybe not as drastic a transition as they made from Pyromania to Hysteria, but something at least.  The one-time biggest band in the world shouldn’t just spin their tires musically.

“You know what, I’m gonna let it go,” I said.  “They’ve had to deal with so much, and when Steve died, they just needed to get an album out.  They can grow on the next album.”  (And boy did they!)

With that attitude, I counted the days until I would trek to the mall and finally get the new Def Leppard in my hands.  Now with the title Adrenalize, and with “Let’s Get Rocked” climbing up the charts, it was time for Leppard’s return.  A long time coming, if not the way it was planned!

 

Previous:  

  1. The Early Years Disc One – On Through the Night 
  2. The Early Years Disc Two – High N’ Dry
  3. The Early Years Disc Three – When The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Live at the New Theater Oxford – 1980
  4. The Early Years Disc Four – Too Many Jitterbugs – EP, singles & unreleased
  5. The Early Years Disc 5 – Raw – Early BBC Recordings 
  6. The Early Years 79-81 (Summary)
  7. Pyromania
  8. Pyromania Live – L.A. Forum, 11 September 1983
  9. Hysteria
  10. Soundtrack From the Video Historia – Record Store Tales
  11. In The Round In Your Face DVD

Next:

13:  Adrenalize

#972: Snowfort Hippies

RECORD STORE TALES #972: Snowfort Hippies

2022:  the winter that snow came back in a big way! The sheer size of the snowbanks brings me back to the winter of ’85, in my old neighbourhood.  The snowbanks on the corner rival the ones we had in my youth, something I have not seen in many years.  And I remembered the snowfort that George Balasz built on that corner; a regal thing indeed.  The most palacious snowfort I have ever occupied!  And even this story works its way back around to music.

1985 was the year I got seriously into hard rock.  The Pepsi Power Hour was my favourite show and I was just absorbing all this new music through my neighbours.  George had an excellent LP collection and he’d always let me tape whatever I wanted.

He had a house on the corner, and in the winter the snowbanks built up as high as I could stand.  That was the year he built the ultimate fort.  As I remember it, the fort had plywood roof supports, and four rooms inside, lined up in a row.  You could squeeze four or five kids in there.  My dad was always afraid we’d get taken out by a wayward errant car, but it never happened.  He didn’t like us hanging out with George (thought he was a pervert) but he really didn’t like us hanging out in that snowfort.

George ran an extension cord out to the fort so we could listen to tapes on his ghetto blaster.  We had a conversation about Judas Priest.  Defenders of the Faith was their latest record and I was well familiar with the music video for “Freewheel Burning”.  But I was just learning the basics and I had a lot of questions.

“What’s a hippie?” I asked George.

He didn’t really know, but acted like he did.  His authoritative answer was “Hippies have long hair.”

“Well then what is Ian Johnson at school talking about?” I asked him.  “He said he didn’t like Judas Priest because they’re a bunch of hippies.  But Rob Halford doesn’t even have long hair.”

“You’re right,” said George.  I was happy to know a few things like the names of some of the members.  George or Bob Schipper gave me my first Priest poster, with the five of them standing in a row in the Defenders-era costume.  I thought Dave Holland looked the coolest because of that moustache.  I taped a copy of the album, but Priest songs like “Eat Me Alive” were still a bit on the heavy side for me.

I wonder what Ian was on about, with that hippie comment.  He probably had no idea what the word meant either.  Priest might have been considered hippies in the early 1970s, when they were wearing kaftans and denim floods.  They abandoned that look a long time ago and were really known for their leather and studs.   Meanwhile, Ian Johnson ditched the metal for new wave, by his own admission, in order to find a girl.  His opinions and stories changed regularly.

Though my dad worried, and this irritated me, we had good times in that snowfort.  George was a bit of a local punching bag, a strange guy slightly older who shoplifted and read porn.  He seemed desperately lonely some times, and maybe he had to be if he was hanging out with all these younger kids.  He was the oldest teenager in the neighbourhood and it didn’t seem like he had a lot of friends at school.  I could identify with the latter.

As the snowfort hippies bantered about Priest, one teaching and one learning, the boombox would be moaning out our favourite songs.  We talked about how cool it would be to put in a TV in the fort, but a warm spell eventually caved in the roofs.  Although George undertook a mighty rebuilding effort one afternoon, the fort was all but done for the year.

But not done in my memory.  As I drive around the corner, I smile remembering my dad’s warnings about safety.   I play some Defenders of the Faith and raise my coffee to George, now long gone himself.

To the good times, my snowfort hippie friend.

#971: Facebook Memories

RECORD STORE TALES #971: Facebook Memories

While I’m sure that “Facebook Memories” are Zucking up my brain in some way, in this brave new Metaverse…I kinda like them.

For those of you who prefer to stay out of the Metaverse or social media in general, “Facebook Memories” are a daily feature that shows you what you posted in the years prior.  While not every day is solid gold, I find that most days have at least one cool memory that I would want to post again.  Something funny, something cool…occasionally something sad.

The early years of Facebook memories seem to be nothing but me posting what I’m currently “rockin’ to”.  Dear God there were a lot of those “rockin’ to” posts.  Interesting nonetheless especially when I happen to be rockin’ to the same artist on the same day years later.  There were also a lot of early video blogs that were not very good (but were very young).  In that tradition, as I write this now I’m rockin’ to Slash Puppet’s Studs & Gems.

I didn’t start using Facebook on a regular basis until 2012 when I launched this site.  I found that most of my hits were coming from that platform, but not Twitter, so I made a choice and stuck with it.  Memories start picking up in 2012.

In the winter months, I see a lot of complaints about driving conditions.

Frequent memories of co-workers pranking my office.

In 2016-2017, nearly daily postings about the shenanigans of one Donald J. Trump.

In January, with memories from different years, it seemed like I was constantly sick.  The flu, the man-cold, whatever.  And it also appears that each time it was the “worst one ever”.  This does not bode well for the next time I get sick.

Also in January, in the year 2018, come the bad memories.

But I still want to remember them.  Not necessarily first thing in the morning with my first Nespresso, but I do want to see them.  I don’t want the minutia lost.  Maybe I won’t always feel that way, but I won’t deny that we are still grieving.  And it helps the grieving process to see some of these old electronic thoughts.

Of course, this means Zuck knows my entire life story for the last decade-plus, but so do you.  I made a choice a long time ago to write personal shit in public.  At the end of the day I don’t think I’m interesting enough to attract unwanted attention, and what’s done is done.  While the Metaverse expands I may have regrets, but at present I’ve made some friends doing what I do.  I’ll take it as a win.

 

 

NOTE:  The LeBrain Train will be on Saturday night rather than Friday!

#970: Soundtrack From the Video Historia (with Tim’s Vinyl Confessions)

Part Ten of the Def Leppard Review Series

Original review:  Historia (1988 VHS)

RECORD STORE TALES #970: Soundtrack From the Video Historia

Love is like a bomb (b-bomb b-bomb bomb)…

December 1988: The Zellers flyer.

Zellers was a popular Canadian retailer with a decent music department.  They folded several years ago after a slow decline, but once upon a time, they were a central “anything” store for families all over Canada.  Anything but groceries anyway; Zehrs had that covered.  We’ve talked about Zellers numerous times here, as they were the best store at our local mall.  Whether you were buying toys, a new bike, or school supplies, they had kids covered.  Meanwhile the adults spent time in housewares, clothing, kitchen goods, and automotive.  In the 80s, the era of “Club Z”, Zellers did not suck.  They even had a restaurant in the store.

Zellers’ music department sold both albums and equipment in the same area.  Needed a head demagnetizer or a record cleaning kit?  Batteries, blank tapes, new decks?  All there for us kids to gaze at with wishes in our eyes.  The selection of cassettes had us constantly flip-flip-flipping.  Meanwhile the clerks would be playing music unique to that department, while the rest of the store got Muzak.  I first became exposed to the concept of a single B-Side thanks to somebody there spinning “Ride Into the Sun” by Def Leppard.  I bought a lot of my Judas Priest and Kiss tapes there.  I saw Poison on the shelves at Zellers for the first time.  (I thought Rikki was hot before I learned the terrible truth!)

In fact, because of Zellers and that very single (which had “Hysteria” on the A-side), I began frantically collecting everything Def Leppard that I could find.  Zellers bears 100% responsibility for this story we are about to unfold.

My growing Leppard collection had many gaps, but there was one that I wanted to patch up immediately.  It gnawed at me.  It was “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, the remix with the extended intro used in the music video.  It wasn’t on the album; it wasn’t on the single.  It wasn’t available on any known audio formats.  Radio stations didn’t play it.  The only place you could hear it was on your TV.  I kind of preferred that mix, with the long intro.  It had more vibe.  I remember hanging by the radio hoping to tape it, but was always disappointed when they played the album version.  The best copy I had access to was the 1988 Def Leppard home video, Historia.  It was a comprehensive home video, and had both mixes of “Sugar”.  But I couldn’t make a good taped copy to listen to; all I could do was dub to a cassette in mono.

One day I came home from school, and the Zellers flyer was sitting on the kitchen table.  I flipped to the music section, and there it was:  Soundtrack From the Video Historia.  A brand new Def Leppard release; a “greatest hits” if you will!  They had it for sale on cassette.  I reasoned that it had to have that remix.  If it was the soundtrack to the home video, then it had to have that remix!  I would have wanted it anyway, being a “new” Def Leppard release.  The possibility of the remix changed it from “want” to “must”.

It was kind of odd that none of the rock magazines mentioned this new release.  Nobody talked about it on MuchMusic.  That seemed very unusual for a band of Leppard’s stature.  They were the biggest rock band in the world in 1988.  Why wasn’t this new compilation album mentioned anywhere else?  That was worrying, but on the flipside, once I had it, I’d own a Leppard album that none of my friends had.

Later that week, I trekked to Zellers with my best friend Bob.  I looked in the Def Leppard section, but they didn’t have the soundtrack there.  New releases?  Nothing.  I went up to the counter, and there it was!  Sitting out for store play!

“I’ll take one of those please, Def Leppard Soundtrack From the Video Historia,” I said to the clerk.

“It’s not for sale,” he quashed.  He took it off the counter and put it behind him.  He wouldn’t even let me look at it.

Not for sale?  The hell?  It was right there in the flyer, $8.99 or $9.99 was the going rate back then.  He refused to sell it to me.  It was sitting in front of me under my nose; I could have reached out and grabbed it.  Whatever had happened, it managed to get into the Zellers flyer, but it was promotional only — not for sale.  It was meant only for them to play in store, but not to sell.  I was shit out of luck, and I went home brokenhearted and empty handed.

Now here’s where things get freaky.

That same week, all the way in New Brunswick Canada, Tim Durling (future author of the book Unspooled) saw the same ad in the Zellers flyer.  He got just as excited as I did, but there was one catch.  Living in rural New Brunswick, his closest Zellers store was an hour away.  It was Friday night.

“I pestered my father, ‘we gotta go to Fredericton tonight’,” says Tim.


Tim tells the story.  This happened live on the LeBrain Train Nov 23, 2021!

His disappointment might even have exceeded mine, as he returned home without his precious treasure.

“The poor girl working behind the counter,” he said.  “I was such a little shit.  I said ‘I want this tape right here!'”

Isn’t it incredible that two guys who didn’t know each other had the exact same experience at the same time?  And that we later put two and two together, and realized we had this bizarre experience in common?  It really happened, not a figment of my imagination.  The ad was real, and screwed somebody else’s hopes and dreams too!  But how did it come to be?

We have two theories.  I think it was a simple cock-up, a tape got put in the flyer before they realized it wasn’t for sale.  Tim thinks some jerk did it on purpose!  We will never know.

When Historia was reissued and updated on DVD accompanied by In The Round In Your Face on a single disc, it was revised to include three bonus videos from later in the band’s career.  We will get to that when we arrive at the Euphoria era.

 

Previous:  

  1. The Early Years Disc One – On Through the Night 
  2. The Early Years Disc Two – High N’ Dry
  3. The Early Years Disc Three – When The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Live at the New Theater Oxford – 1980
  4. The Early Years Disc Four – Too Many Jitterbugs – EP, singles & unreleased
  5. The Early Years Disc 5 – Raw – Early BBC Recordings 
  6. The Early Years 79-81 (Summary)
  7. Pyromania
  8. Pyromania Live – L.A. Forum, 11 September 1983
  9. Hysteria

Next:  

 11. Live:  In The Round In Your Face DVD

#969: Picture Discs

RECORD STORE TALES #969: Picture Discs

Picture discs – in this case, vinyl records – will be the subject of tomorrow’s episode of the LeBrain Train (don’t miss it).  If you have ever seen a playable record with an image on one or both sides, then you have seen a picture disc.  If you’ve played one, you know the quality of the audio can be dicey.  Today picture discs are quite common on store shelves, but they used to be much rarer.  What is the history of the picture disc, exactly?

The very first modern picture disc was 1969’s Off II – Hallucinations.  This German compilation disc from Metronome featured the Doors and MC5 among other current artists.  In the 1970s, Elektra records experimented with a five-layer disc consisting of vinyl film over a paper image over a core of traditional black vinyl.  Difficulties with the materials (particularly the paper) and manufacturing led to inconsistent audio quality.  Eventually the process was refined and picture discs today can deliver acceptable audio over cool artwork.  But the roots go further back.  Etched discs aside, the first true picture disc recordings were actually picture postcards!

We begin in the early 1900s.  Rectangular pieces of cardboard, with a transparent celluloid record glued to one side, were the first “discs” that you could play with a needle on a gramophone.  Later versions had the recordings etched into special transparent coatings.  These kinds of records could be mailed or even included in magazines and cereal boxes.  Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, regular circular picture discs began to emerge.  Some were used to spread political propaganda.  And yes, that means there is such a thing as an Adolf Hitler picture disc.

Picture discs disappeared for a while during the war era.  Vogue Records attempted a revival in 1946 but released only around 100 records before folding due to lack of interest.  From that point on, picture discs were dominated by children’s records.  One unique variety even included crude animation on the record as it spun, if you looked at it through a special mirrored eyepiece.

When picture discs re-emerged in the 70s, popular music and soundtracks took over.  The standard cover art would traditionally be on side one, with the back art and track listing on side two.  There were variations but generally this is what you’d find on a normal everyday picture disc.

And they are normal, and everyday items now.  Most record collections have at least one.  What are your favourite picture discs?  Tomorrow, John Snow from 2Loud2OldMusic will join me as we show off our records.  They are always eye-catchers, and some occupy some real points of pride in our collections.

 

#967: Dilemmas of Buying

RECORD STORE TALES #967:  Dilemmas of Buying

Mixing friends with work is always a tough balancing act.  When you work retail, it’s even harder.  The friends come to you, and they’d like to do business with someone they are familiar with.  Who wouldn’t?  At the Record Store, it was particularly difficult to maintain a stable counterbalance when buying used CDs from people who consider you to be a friend.

One thing always said when training new staff on buying used CDs was that “every customer thinks their CDs are gold.”  They don’t really understand why certain ones are worthless to you.  When buying from the customer, we went into detail explaining the why’s and wherefore’s of the offer, breaking it down disc by disc.  “These ones I can’t take because I already have two or more copies of each right now, and the other stores are well stocked too.”

When it’s a friend coming in to sell their discs to you, they don’t necessarily expect any special treatment, but they do expect you to “do your best” with your offer.  And that wasn’t always possible.

Upper management really kept an eye on my interactions with my regular customers.  They often complained to me that I paid too much for stuff when it was somebody I “preferred”.  That may be true in some instances, but I believe that upper management were too focused on dollars and cents, and not maintaining good relations with a regular customer.  A customer — somebody who spent money in our stores or supplied us with used stock that we in turn sold and made a profit on.  The managers were always hammering us on COGS – Cost of Goods Sold.  We had targets to aim for, and strategies for buying stock.  Unfortunately, this ran contradictory to “doing your best” when buying stock from somebody who knows you.

Just because somebody considers you a friend doesn’t mean they won’t go somewhere else to sell their discs to get better money.  They will.  They did!

“Come on Mike, this was twelve bucks when I bought it from you!  You can only give me three?”

“Fine, fine, I’ll give you four.  Just don’t say anything.  The bosses really hound me if they see me giving more than I should.”

Another factor is that every customer felt their CDs were in great shape even if the store didn’t.  That was another source of conflict.  We had a regional manager who was so picky that she would deduct money from a customer’s total for the lightest hairline scratches, even off the actual playing surface of the disc.  When you answer to someone like that, it was hard keeping your regulars happy with your offers.

And they really did watch me.  More than once they gave me shit for treating my regulars better than they thought I needed to.  Conrad, for example.  The guy bought in so many Japanese imports.  I don’t know how he had so many, but I tried to give him the maximum.  He could have taken them downtown, but he came to me.  He chose me because we both liked heavy metal (especially Bruce Dickinson) and both understand the value of Japanese imports.  He pissed off management because if I wasn’t working, the person who was usually offered him less, which he would complain about.

To me it didn’t matter that my COGS would take a hit by offering Conrad top dollar.  What mattered more was keeping Conrad loyal.  Where in Kitchener are you going to buy Japanese imports?

At Encore Records, that’s where, if Conrad thought he wasn’t getting enough money.

I’m sure, given the opportunity, the old management could run off a litany of reasons why I’m wrong.  But the fact is they had their own preferred customer.  They called him “Scottish Man” and only a limited number of employees dealt with him because he expected top dollar.  Now, upper management would always tell you that “Scottish Man brought in better stock and was more pleasant than gum-chewin’ Conrad.”  That sounds like a bias against heavy metal and chewing gum to me.

Just my opinion.  Just my opinion from my position at the front counter.

Let’s just say that if Conrad was bringing in rare Van Morrison and Stones imports instead of Axel Rudi Pell and Helloween box sets, their opinions might have been different.  With or without the chewing gum.

#966: Crossing the Line

As hinted in the past, there are many Record Store Tales that have gone untold.  Some I have been asked not to share.  Some I’ve waited years to write, in hope that the past two decades will put some distance between the events and the people concerned.

RECORD STORE TALES #966:  Crossing the Line

It took time for the world to catch up to my needs.  As an introvert, I hadn’t had much luck meeting girls.  I said stupid things, I put my foot in my mouth, I didn’t know how to introduce myself.  I’d tried going to the bars with friends, I’d been set up on dates, but I had no success.  Thanks to the internet, I was soon able to make a better first impression, online.  There I could take my time with my words and hopefully make a connection with someone.  It was the summer of 1999, when I met a local girl named Jen online (not the one I married, I must like the name).  We got along great so she decided to meet me in person.  I was not hard to find, working at the local Record Store.

Convenient, yes.  Smart, no.

Though I was at the end of my shift and it was OK for me to chat, my boss did not like the looks of Jen.  She was exceptionally tall, and worked as a bouncer at Oktoberfest because she could physically handle herself.  But that wasn’t the boss man’s problem.  His issue was that she had a piercing in her bottom lip.

I know, right?  In 1999, a labret piercing wasn’t as common, and my boss absolutely hated piercings.  He flat out told us once that he would not hire a guy that might have been fully qualified for the job because he had a ring in his nose.

He warned me against “crazy girls”, and then proceeded to tell one of our customers all about it behind my back.

The customer that we called “Tony Macaroni” was in one day and wanted to check out some newer metal releases.  (I was always trying to sell him on Bruce Dickinson who he found to be too “Satantic”, thanks to the Chemical Wedding album.)  Tony said to me, “So your boss tells me you’re dating a…” he paused looking for the appropriate words.  “A different kind of girl.”  He probably meant to say “freak” or “weirdo”.

“Huh?” I responded in confusion.  Jen and I never actually got to dating, but I knew what was up.  The boss was telling Tony about this “freak” he spotted me with in the store.  I guess he found that amusing enough to share.

I really should have spoken to the boss then and there about privacy and overstepping his bounds.  But I found him intimidating, and so I said nothing.  As a business owner in charge of dozens of people, he certainly should have known better.

The funny thing is that I’m still friends with that Jen.  We never hooked up romantically, but she’s a solid human.

The next incidents happened in 2003.  Again, he involved himself in my dating life.  I had recently turned 30 and for the first time in my life, was getting turned down by girls in their mid-20s for being “too old”.  29 was fine, but 30 was apparently over the top.  Unable to turn back the clock, I was not happy when this started happening.

I had one weakness back then.  I liked to talk.  Some of the other store managers were friends, and I would periodically call them up and ask for advice.  The boss absolutely hated when we talked on the phone to employees at other stores.  It meant that during the phone call, there were two people not working.  I did this too often and got caught.  The next day he pulled me into the office for a chat.  Then I made another mistake.

The correct course of action would have been to keep my mouth shut and accept a slap on the wrist.  Instead, I opened up.  I told my boss about how I wasn’t enjoying turning 30, how I just found a gray hair, and how this girl I was seeing decided to break it off because she was 24 or 25 and her parents wouldn’t like that I was 30.

“What’s her middle name?” he asked me.

I could not remember her middle name.

“Well she couldn’t have meant that much to you if you don’t even know her middle name.  What are her parents’ names?” he continued.

The meeting ended with him handing me a slip of paper with a phone number written on it.  I consider this to be the second time the line was crossed.  “Give these people a call, it’s counselling”.  It wasn’t an EAP program, it was a piece of paper with a phone number written on it and I felt very uncomfortable.  Legally and ethically, no lines were crossed.  But I left that meeting feeling pressured.  Later on, he did follow up and asked if I called the number.  I had tossed the paper out.

The third and final time he crossed the line with me, it was unambiguous.  I have no idea what his issue was this time, because I only heard about it after the fact.  Behind my back, he had called my parents!  My parents!  He called them to tell them that Mike was “used to doing things the old way,” and not adapting to the “new way”.  I am not sure exactly what he was on about.  There were lots of possibilities.  Maybe it was the time I did some employee reviews on the “old” forms because I didn’t have any of the “new” ones.*  Or maybe it was when I got piercings of my own.  Nobody knows anymore, but when he made that one phone call, he went a step too far and my dad isn’t quick to forgive.

Over the years, I’ve been accused of being unfair and too harsh towards the store ownership.  I don’t think so.  Not when you know the context.  Best thing I ever did for myself was quit.

* That was my fault.  The copier was right next to the office bully‘s desk so I probably neglected to copy the new forms out of avoidance.

#965: The Collector’s Disease

RECORD STORE TALES #965: The Collector’s Disease

There’s no question I have the disease of a collector.  It’s undisputed and quite obvious.  I like to have not just one of a thing, but many.  I couldn’t just start with one Kiss album, I had to get more.  The goal was to get them all.  Having one GI Joe figure wasn’t enough.  You had to have as many as you could afford.  It’s marketing genius that this common psychological flaw was exploited guilt-free for so long.  Where did it start with me?

Perhaps my collector’s nerve was first tickled by Lego.  The more you get, the better stuff you can make.  Every year, new pieces were introduced.  In 1978 they launched the “Space” theme of Lego.  Prior to that came the new “Technic” pieces.  Right as I was hitting the perfect age for creating things made of Lego, they upped their game in a way that completely meshed.  I remember getting quite a few Space sets and several Technic too, including one where you build an 8-cylinder engine.  All you needed were more pieces to fully realize your creative visions.

At the same time, Star Wars had hit theatres and we were starting to collect the action figures.  This planted a seed.  Cleverly, Kenner included pictures on the back of every figure package:  Each Star Wars figure, numbered in a checklist style.  This was cribbed from trading cards, like Topps — another Star Wars merchandising brand we tried to collect.  Something about a checklist is an itch that begs to be scratched by certain personality types.  Hasbro recycled the checklist gimmick with their in-pack Transformers catalogues in 1984.

As I’m happy to recount the tale, I discovered Kiss in 1985.  Their new album Asylum was out.  The next door neighbour George had a bunch of rock magazines, and one of them (perhaps Faces) had a big full page Kiss ad.  The famed “Accept No Imitations” Asylum ad.  Simple branding, like Coke or Pepsi.  The “real thing”.  They were really promoting the new Kiss in North America as the 20th in a series of records, including the four solo albums, two live albums, and Double Platinum.  Laid out in two rows at the bottom, checklist style, were all 19 of the previous album covers, including their release dates.

Like bells going off in my head, the collector’s itch needed to be scratched.

Gene Simmons is a lifelong comics reader, and he knew as well as anyone that Marvel had a monthly checklist near the back of each book.  He would have had many trading cards in his youth and was surely familiar with the concept of a checklist.  Whether that’s a connection or not, that Kiss ad really set off the fireworks in my brain.  I stared at it, studying each individual album cover, and the frequency of release.

I’ve detailed, many times, my process in first recording all the Kiss records from George or Bob.  The desire to have a complete set, buying as many as I could find while recording the rest.  The need to include the “forgotten” Kiss Killers album in the count.  I displayed all my tapes, either recorded or originals, in order by release date, just like the ad I had seen, except my taped collection numbered 22, including Killers and Animalize Live Uncensored.  Eventually in highschool (1987 precisely) I discarded the recorded copies and acquired a complete set on tape.  In the Record Store years, the process would repeat on remastered CD.

But wait….

While all of the above is the truth, and nothing but the truth, it is not the whole truth.  Kiss were not the first rock band I sought to “collect”.

Before I had that Kiss epiphany with the checklist, I can remember having a specific earlier conversation.  It would have been Easter of ’85, several months before the September release of Kiss Asylum.  My mom asked me what I wanted for Easter, and I told her “the new Quiet Riot” because “I want to have all their albums.”  I thought they only had two, and it would be an easy collection to complete.  But there it was:  the desire to have “all” of something.

Strange how the concept of collecting only latched onto me in some ways.  Atari games looked pretty on display in their coloured boxes, but we had no desire to get all the games.  Just the “good” ones.  Even with comic books.  I would buy issues of current books off the newstands, but did not go back to buy older issues, because they could get insanely expensive, and numbered in the hundreds.  Since comics always referred back to previous and concurrent issues, they really made you want to buy them all to get all the backstory.  But I didn’t — couldn’t.  This is exactly why Bob preferred only to buy limited series, like movie adaptations.  I guess my collector’s desires only extended as far as I could reach, in a monetary sense.

Today, musical artists exploit this common need to collect at lengths never before seen.  We’re still out there, trying to make it through an adult world, but now we have disposable income.  It used to be you’d want all the albums, and if you discovered single B-sides, you wanted those too.  Then it became the bonus tracks, the deluxe editions, the super deluxe editions, and all the different colours of vinyl you get for just about every release these days!  That’s how they get us.  Next thing you know, you just dropped a grand or two on a Gene Simmons Vault, or $800 on a Judas Priest box set.

And we go along with it, time and time again.  Once the itch has been scratched, and the soothing radiation of a complete collection rolls over you like waves…the itch inevitably returns.

And so it ends?  It never ends.

 

#964.0: The Year in Review – Part One

RECORD STORE TALES #964.0: The Year in Review – Part One

Today, some reflection.  Tomorrow, the lists!

While certainly not the worst year of my life so far (2018 takes the crown there), the latter half of 2021 was pretty poopy here at LeBrain HQ.  There was plenty of new music, which we will discuss in greater detail tomorrow when we run down the Top 11 Albums of the Year.  Great music in fact; some deeply impactful albums and important reissues.  I also didn’t think that 2021 would be the year for new Guns N’ Roses music, or for me to get a 42 CD Judas Priest box set.  But here they are!

2021 started off strong.  We had an amazing series of great interviews on the LeBrain Train.  More on those for tomorrow’s list.  Not to be outdone, John T. Snow hooked us up with one of the best interviews I’ve ever been involved with, which was Paul Laine.  But for me, by summertime burnout had set in.  I’d been doing the LeBrain Train without missing a single week since lockdown began in March 2020.  Sometimes doing two interviews in a single weekend.  Sometimes I got stood up by a rock star, sometimes I got stood up by the same rock star twice.  By the end of the summer, I needed a break.  Badly.  It was harder and harder coming up with guests, as we slowly emerged from our Covid cocoons and resumed life.  I had to pull the brakes.

Then I had a flood in the house.  I had to cancel an interview with with Jack Frost and take a more extensive break from everything.  Trying not to snap, I bought a Metallica box set to cheer myself up.  Great way to boost myself while crippling my bank account at the same time, but I won’t complain.

Personal highlights of the year:

  • A fantastic summer at the lake
  • Meeting and interviewing some true rock greats
  • Collaborating with creative friends like Meat, Harrison, Tee-Bone, Rob, Kevin and John Snow
  • Getting back into the movie theater
  • Record-high hits and views

Personal lowlights of the year:

  • Then the hits and views took a nosedive
  • Burned out
  • Grandma in the hospital, flood, mental breakdowns
  • Lost people
  • Moved offices, twice
  • Omicron

Other interesting happenings included making an enemy out of John “J.D.” Roberts, an aborted attempt at doing re-runs on the LeBrain Train, and Harrison’s baffling stance on Queensryche.

This isn’t much of a “year in review” post.  Nothing commemorating the many musicians and celebrities we lost this year.  Nothing talking about all the great tunes we discovered.  This is not the way the year was supposed to end!  It remains to be seen how this plays out next year, but at least we still have our Friday nights together.  The LeBrain Train will roll into January, because it looks like we need the LeBrain Train once again!  When I “pulled the plug” back in August, I did it with the George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” meme.  Because I knew Covid wasn’t really over.  I knew the mission wasn’t really accomplished.  What I didn’t know was just how badly things would get by the end of the year!  I really didn’t think we’d be isolating again this New Year, but that’s exactly what many of us are doing.  For the second time.

Big day tomorrow:  The end of year lists, and the LeBrain Train New Year’s Eve special.  Because Covid needs its ass kicked once and for all, and since we’re all doing the best we can under difficult circumstances, we deserve a night to party.  See you tomorrow.

 

 

 

#963: Birthday Man

RECORD STORE TALES #963: Birthday Man

At some point in the mid-80s, I realized my little sister had crappy birthdays.  She was a December 28 baby and it seemed she got decent gifts for Christmas, but only boring dresses and clothes for her birthday.  So I decided to invent a new character to the pantheon of imaginary gift givers:  Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy…and now, enter Birthday Man.

The only problem was at that young age I didn’t own any money.  So I’d re-gift little things for my sister.  “To Kathryn, From Birthday Man”.  She believed in Birthday Man for as long as I could find pencil erasers or pens or other assorted “gifts” for her.  She did question me as to why none of her friends had heard of Birthday Man.  She seemed to be the only one.

Even as we got older though, I wanted to make sure she got good things for her birthday.  It did appear in my experience that kids with birthdays around the “big holiday” seemed to get shorted.  So I tried to outdo myself every year, getting bigger and grander birthday gifts for my sister.   I hope 2021 is no exception!

So happy birthday to Dr. Kathryn Ladano.  Hopefully we can see you soon.  Enjoy some takeout, Nintendo and the company of furry friends.