Record Store Tales

#977: “Love Is Hell”

RECORD STORE TALES #977: “Love Is Hell”

In my 20s and early 30s, I used to think I would love nothing more than I love music.

It’s an easy conclusion when people let you down, but a good song never would.

When love hits you for real, everything changes.  You have to redefine everything.  What once seemed crucially important now seems trivial.  What used to have your undivided attention now competes with something nearer and dearer to the heart.  It happens.  There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact it’s a good thing to have in your life.  I don’t think Paul Stanley will mind that there’s something more important to me now than a collection of songs.

Love is heaven, and love is hell.

Love is hell when the one you care for is sick and it kills you inside every time to see them hurt.

Love is hell when their suffering stabs you in the heart and leaves you in agony.

Love is hell when there’s nothing you can do about it.

Epilepsy is hell.

It’s hell for the person who has it and it’s hell for the people who care.

Epilepsy is hell when you see someone in a seizure and can do nothing until it has run its course.

Epilepsy is hell when someone falls and you’re too late to stop it.

Epilepsy leaves marks.  Sometimes, you don’t even know where they came from.  “You must have fallen,” I said to Jen.  But when?  How could she not know?  Purple bruises decorate her chest, her arms, even her face.  People see bruises and they judge.  They assume.  They look at you funny.

I would have done anything to catch her fall.  But how can I when I can’t be everywhere all the time?

The facial bruise stares back at me, and it makes me turn my head.  I can’t look at it.  It’s horrible.  It makes me want to break down and cry.  How could this have happened?  But there’s nothing I could have done.  I wasn’t there and she has no memory of it.  We can only guess and sometimes that leads the imagination to come up with far worse, far scarier scenarios.

Even when the seizure is over, the afterburn can go on for hours.  Sometimes it’s like sleepwalking.  She’s completely unaware of what’s going on, but she’s able to unlock a door and leave the house.  It’s happened before, at least three times.  Once I found her wandering the hallway, bumping into a wall.  Once she left the house in the middle of the night and I only realized she was gone when the phone rang.  She was trying to buzz herself back into the building, terrified.  She had no idea how she got out there.  The third time, I noticed the house had gone quiet and she was nowhere to be found.  I discovered her walking in a daze up King St., in the cold, with no shoes on.

I’m usually able to stop her.  No mean feat; she’s strong.

Yesterday was awful.

I was working on a project.  I heard her coughing, and I ran out into the living room.  She was fine, just something went down the wrong pipe.  I admonished myself for panicking.  But then, 10 minutes later, there was more noise, like mumbling.  I ran back into the living room to find her in a full-blown seizure.  Her lips were blue and she was making unintelligible sounds.  It passed quickly and she laid down on the couch to rest, completely zonked.  Then the worst came.  The next sound I heard was the door opening.  Sure enough, she was on her way out again, unaware of her situation.

I don’t know how, but I somehow managed to race out there and position myself between her and the already open doorway.  It is like a blur to me now and I have no idea how I did that.  It was teleportation, or a miracle. I slammed and locked the door and kept myself jammed against it.  Even in her dazed state, she kept unlocking the door and reaching for the knob.  She kept repeating, “Sweety, I have to go,” but could not respond to questions.  She had no idea she had no shoes on.  I stood there in front of that door for a solid 10 to 15 minutes, as she tried to move me out of her way.  I resisted, but she is strong, and I was terrified that if she pulled at me and I didn’t budge, that she would fall backwards and hurt herself worse.

The neurologist wants me to try and get video of these kinds of episodes.  How??

I struggled, wrestling with her, trying to keep her hands away from the door knob.  She cried in pain when her wrist twisted in my hands.  It was the worst feeling in the world — for me.

After what seemed like millennia, she grew weary or perhaps forgot what it was she was doing.  She went back to the bed, to sleep it off.  It took almost three hours of sleep for her to return fully to normal.  Or at least, whatever passes for “normal” when this is the life you have.

My “normal” now is a constant state of alert.  I am always listening.  I have to be.  It’s a constant state of anxiety that rarely subsides.  It is the life I live now.  It’s like when the Starship Enterprise is at yellow alert.  I’m at yellow alert almost all the time.  I go to red alert when she’s in danger.  Red alert happens every few weeks.  It seems like I’m rarely in condition green.  We have a system where she’s supposed to text me every 30 minutes when she’s out alone, which helps keep me calm.  It’s not perfect but what else can I do?  You could say “just don’t worry about things you can’t control”, but after 10 years of conditioning, my nerves are shot.  It’s hard to make a plan for your night, let alone your life, when this happens.

But here’s the thing.

Love is hell, but the truth is, it is also heaven.  The good always outweighs the bad.  I would not trade my place with anyone.  I am where I want to be.  With the person I love.  Through good and bad.  Sickness and health.  That’s what we swore to, and that’s the way it is.  If this is my life, so be it.  I just have to learn to live with it, and I’m trying every day to get a little better at that.

#976: Thank You! Happy 10 Years, Record Store Tales!

RECORD STORE TALES #976: Thank You! Happy 10 Years, Record Store Tales!

I don’t want to rehash the story again.  I just want to say thanks!

Thanks to my buddy Aaron, who I first met in 1996 at the Record Store I managed.  When I first started writing Record Store Tales, I sent him the earliest chapters to proof-read.  (This is back when I was calling the whole story “Rock, Rock, ‘Til You Drop” and I was going by the pen-name of…dear God…I was going by the pen-name of “Johnny Cock”.)  Aaron encouraged me to keep going.

Then my sister, Dr. Kathryn, twisted my arm to start posting the stories instead of just talking about it.

Finally former radio dude Craig Fee, wherever he is today, gave me the last push I needed to get going on WordPress.  He sent me a link and an email saying, more or less, “just do it”.  So I clicked the link, and began posting.  It’s really that simple.  I clicked a link, cut and pasted the first chapter, and hit “publish”.

On March 9, 2012, the newly re-dubbed Record Store Tales Part 1:  Run to the Hills quietly premiered right here on WordPress.

I had almost no audience except Craig and Aaron.  Not even HMO, our Heavy Metal Overlord, was reading yet.  That is, until May 7 2012.  Everything changed at that point and suddenly, the hits went crazy!  If not for May 7, I probably would have lost interest years ago.  If there’s one way to commit me to a project…it’s to tell me to quit.

So:  Thank you to all of the above, and to all of you, new or old!  I hope you enjoy what we’ve done here and where we’re going in the future.  If not…too bad!

Rock, Rock, ‘Til You Drop indeed!

This Friday, we will be celebrating 10 years of Record Store Tales, and mikeladano.com, on the LeBrain Train.  Please join me!  If you would like to appear as a special guest, let me know in the comments.

#975: The Artwork of Sarge

RECORD STORE TALES #975: The Artwork of Sarge

As I’ve learned more about my friend Sarge since his passing, I’ve discovered something that comes up over and over again.  Sarge just wanted people to be happy.  He didn’t have to agree with them.  Whatever made them happy, made him happy.  He encouraged people to be individuals and find joy in their own skin.  I guess that’s one reason why he was such a great body piercer.  He was also an artist, as some of these pictures I’ve rediscovered prove.

During the period I knew him, I had a couple different online handles.  One was “Purpendicular” or just “Purp”, and I don’t need to explain to you where that came from.  After a brief hiatus I used Dewey Finn, a reference to Jack Black’s character in School of Rock, before reverting back to Purp.  Sarge made all sorts of art in that period for me, without me asking at all.  There were the infamous “Purp Ate My Balls” shirts.  There was also the artwork he made below.

My face on a Wheaties box, and why not?  The other day someone asked me if I’d ever wanted my face on a Wheaties box, and I said with a wink, “Already been there, man!”

And below, my face on a British tabloid.  And again why not?

With Sarge gone I’m so happy to be able to resurrect these bits of art that he did just for a laugh.  His laughs, and mine too.

Rest in peace my friend.

#974: I Was a Bit of a Jackass

RECORD STORE TALES #974: I Was a Bit of a Jackass

Part of my process, after breaking up with Radio Station Girl in 2003, was simply to explore new things.  Music, piercings, and movies.  Moving on, adapting, becoming a new me, and resurrecting parts of my old self as well.  The immature inner child that persists.  As kids, we weren’t bad boys, but we did get into mischief and play pranks.  I always felt that if we had access to a video camera back then, we could have been Tom Green before there was a Tom Green.  But we didn’t, and Tom Green was the real pioneer in that regard.  And he took things way further than we did.  Still, Green reminded me of me when I was younger.

It’s not a controversial statement to say that Jackass, particularly Bam Margera, owe a debt to Tom Green.  Green was pranking his parents before Margera was on MTV doing the same.  Where Green did it with a coy faux innocence, Margera’s version of the same was with manic violence.  Jackass turned everything up several notches.  As soon as a copy of Jackass: The Movie entered the store where I worked on used DVD, I grabbed one.  I was curious.

Soon I was hooked!

I could remember taking shopping carts for a ride when I was teenager.  Early teenager.  When Bob started working at the grocery store, he told me “Do you know how much those carts cost?  $1000 each.  So from now on we return them.”  Before that though…yes, we sure did give them a spin in parking lots.  Parking lots were empty on Sundays and you could do just about anything.  We never took serious tumbles like Johnny Knoxville and crew, but we did race them around a bit.  I could live vicariously through Bam, Steve-O, Knoxville, Ryan, Ehren, Dave, Pontius, Preston and Wee Man.  They could do the things I thought were funny but would never do myself!  I killed myself laughing when Johnny rented and destroyed the car at the smash-up derby, then refused to pay for the damage.  Just the absurdity of it all.  You know that everybody signed waivers and got MTV reimbursements after the fact, so all’s even-steven in the end.  In other words it’s OK to laugh.

Another reason I dove hard into Jackass:  girls that I thought were pretty cute seemed to really like them (especially Bam).  So if I was into Jackass, that was something I had in common with the cute punk and goth girls I liked.  I also took style pointers from the guys.  I had piercings and a couple tattoos, and I had one photo with curly blond hair that I thought looked just enough like Ryan Dunn.  I bought wristbands and shirts at Hot Topic and skate shops.  I dyed my hair frequently.  I looked the part.

Visiting my parents regularly was something I really enjoyed doing after moving out and getting my own place.  I liked to watch movies with them.  Rather, I enjoyed making them watch things of my choosing.  And so it happens that I tricked them into watching Jackass: The Movie with me.

They liked documentaries, so I told them that “Jackass is a documentary about stuntmen.”

I just re-watched the movie recently to refresh my memory for this story.  Calling it a documentary was a bit of a stretch, but calling it a documentary about stuntmen was really pushing it.  There are stunts, yes, but there was also poo, pee, puke, and bottle rockets firing out of Steve-O’s anus.

My mother was not impressed.  “I hated it!  I don’t like crude things,” she insists.

Jackass was indeed crude, with the climax being a prank involving Dunn sticking a toy car up his ass and then getting a hilarious reaction from an X-ray doctor.

“That kind of humour to me is not very intelligent,” says my mom, correctly.  It’s fact it’s quite anti-intelligent.  But that can also be escapism.  My mom didn’t see it that way.

I asked her which sketch she thought was the worst.  “The only one I can remember is the guy pooping in the toilet.”

Ah yes!  Dave England walked into a hardware store with a newspaper in hand, sat on one of the display toilets, and took a dump right there.  This is funny?  My mom didn’t think so.  But as kids, when we were dragged out into hardware stores by parents for (seemingly) hours on end, did we not sit on those toilets making farting sounds?  I bet we did.

That’s the side of me that Jackass appealed to.  The inner child, the immature side that still laughs when someone farts in a movie.  That’s OK.  What makes you laugh could be very different and that’s OK too!  I needed to get back to that a little bit, and rediscover my childish side after having my heart crushed by a Radio Station Girl.

Just don’t share this side with your parents.  Trust me, they won’t get it!

#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.