Bob and I used to fancy ourselves inventors. We designed our own video game — Vanguard 2 — but we had our sights set much higher than just Atari’s throne. Unfortunately many of our designs were thrown out over the years, but some fragments survive. I know I had designs for 10 more video games, though they appear to be lost. What was preserved indicates something far more ambitious.
According to the evidence at hand, we weren’t trying to be the next Bill Gates. We were trying to be Tony Stark. Alongside innocent designs for video game watches, are sketches for weaponized spacecraft, aircraft and submarines. We were little weapons dealers!
It’s hard to pin an exact date on these designs but they are likely from 1984. It appears I was working with a couple shell company names: “Lado Industrial” and “Perseus Industries” are two. Spelling is inconsistent throughout but you can get the gist of what I was going for. Let’s have a look at these designs.
The Kid Looking to Weaponize Space: The Perseus Industries 9000 (“P.I.N.T.”)
This spaceship resembles an oversized engine pod from a Y-Wing starfighter. It is armed with rockets, lasers and proton torpedoes, apparently. The landing gear is clearly designed after the F-104 Starfighter’s.
Also note that there were options. For those with more expensive tastes, add on the detachable laser pod!
The Sea Was Not Safe from this Little Captain Nemo: Unnamed submarine craft
Missiles, torpedoes, lasers and radar dot the surface of this heavily armed sea-beast. A work in progress, it remains unnamed and unfinished. Still deadly.
On the back of this paper, and almost too faint to read, is a note for our school principal: “Dear Miss Beale, thank you for letting us have an Oktoberfest party, and thank you for inviting Miss Oktoberfest.” They were Oktoberfest crazy at that school. They would hammer that Bible into us and give me shit for wearing a Judas Priest shirt…but sure, have Miss Oktoberfest come to the school.
The Kid Wants to Light Up the Sky: Perseus Industries King (“P.I.K.”) war jet
I’m not sure how well this this would fly. Two laser turrets (ventral and dorsal) plus a forward facing laser makes this a heavily armed plane. It doesn’t look particularly aerodynamic or stealthy. It’s purpose was to punish!
The Weapons Dealer in Your Home: Lado Industrial satellite TV system
Deviously, I named my home electronics company Lado Industrial. Can’t have a weapons dealer selling video games to kids. I was smarter than I thought I was! One of the neighbours at the lake had a satellite dish and boasted that he could watch any major league baseball game he wanted. This was clearly the future, the high-end of the TV experience, and I wanted in.
I created a sketch of the dish, the base mechanism, and the remote. Note that the remote has a speaker/microphone and calculator functions. While it may appear advanced, it is still a wired remote.
The Kid Had Ambition: The Watch that Can Do Anything
I feel like Indiana Jones with only half the map. This watch was not designed with Bob. I was over at Allan Runstedtler’s house, and his dad had this crazy computer paper. Sadly this drawing was torn in half and only the bottom remains. Many details are lost, such as the name of the watch, and what company name I was planning to sell it under. However, many details remain, and they are funny as hell.
Ignoring the horrendous spelling, let’s run through the features.
Double strap
Lifetime guarantee
5 video game cartridges included: Defender, Pong, Pacman, plus exclusives Space Chase and New Slot Racers
4 controllers included: 2 joysticks, 2 paddles
Pinball attachment
“Super battery” and recharger included
Built-in printer (“data readout”)
Built-in disc drive
TV plug-in cable
AM/FM/CB/shortwave radio
Earphone
2000k built in, 16k add-on available
Detachable keyboard
Guaranteed to play “every game exactly the same as the arcade”
Blank cartridges available to copy games
And a strategy book (for strategies)
PLUS BONUS – We’ll give you a Pacman key chain free!
All this for just $299.00! That is $200.99 off the original retail price!
Even in 1984 dollars, that’s a steal for all that stuff. The watch would have been huge on your wrist, and the controllers and keyboard tiny by comparison. There was no way anyone would be able to play a four player video game on a watch. It’s also comical that with 2000k of storage built in, all you can add is a mere 16k expansion pack. I guess the real hook was that it played “every game”, and “exactly the same as the arcade”. With the video game cartridges included, it’s clear that my watch is primarily a gaming system.
“How cool would it be if I could sit there playing a video game on my watch without the teacher noticing,” I might have thought. With the included ear bud, you could still get sound effects.
One visionary touch is the included pinball attachment. This meant you could actually play Baby Pac Man — the video game/pinball hybrid that could only be experienced in arcades! Well, with my watch, you could play it at home. When I said “every video game” and “just like the arcade”, I was not kidding around. I took that stuff seriously.
I was an ambitious kid with the streak of a warmonger. I was a little Tony Stark in the making and the teachers should have been worried about that rather than a Judas Priest T-shirt or an obsession with Kiss. All the clues were there. Look at this one final drawing.
This school assignment came with a pre-drawn airplane cockpit. It is captioned “If you could fly your own airplane, where would you go?”
Mrs. Powers used to say to us, “You are the worst class I have ever taught!” She was good at the guilt thing. I understand that she continued to tell subsequent generations that they too were the worst class she has ever taught. With the benefit of hindsight, she was the worst teacher we ever had.
I had her two years in a row. Grades seven and eight. We were the worst class she had ever taught both years. Coincidentally, also the worst two years of grade school. A couple years later, my sister had her. She was still guilting and shaming the students when my sister had her. She was the epitome of old lady Catholic school teacher clichés.
We were not particularly worse than any other class. We had our bad apples, that the teachers didn’t seem to know how to contain. My time with Powers coincided with my discover of heavy metal music: Kiss, Priest, Maiden. Wearing my Judas Priest shirt to school was one of the biggest mistakes I made in the 8th grade. Powers gave me a good scolding in front of everyone else, who found it hilarious. She must have thought I was going bad too. I will always resent Powers for teaming me up with my nemesis Steve Hartman in gym class. The guy had been picking on me since grade two, and she thought we’d get over it by doing gymnastics together? The fact that I even had to touch the guy was disgusting to me. Why did she have to do that? Isn’t that borderline abusive?
In the 8th grade I had enough with Hartman and fought him one night after school. He brought friends; my only backup was Kevin Kirby. He was just there to enjoy the show, he didn’t care who won. But I managed to get Steve Hartman to leave me alone for the year after that night. That was pretty much it for his career in bullying; he never had a comeback though not without trying.
Kiss really did a lot to get me through the Powers years. My year of discovery for Kiss was 1985, the Asylum period. Not the greatest entry point, but I quickly found myself drawn to better albums like Hotter Than Hell and Creatures of the Night. It was Mrs. Powers who presided over the school retreat to Mount Mary. Possibly the loneliest week of my entire childhood as I bunked with every kid who ever tormented me. But we had to go; Powers scared everyone in class by telling us that any student she had that skipped the Mount Mary retreat ended up “dead or on drugs”. Bringing your own music was forbidden, so I memorized as much Kiss music as I could, to replay in my head when the going got rough.
Sex-ed was a joke of course. I remember the usual school films with animated cells dividing, and sketches of genitalia. The more we learned the less we knew. But at least we got to sit there watching a movie, so the teacher didn’t have to explain anything herself. Rock Hudson died of AIDS that fall, but none of us knew exactly what AIDS was. She asked us if we knew. One kid answered, “It makes you get old and die.” She responded, “Well, it makes you look old, yes.” We learned that much, and that you could get it from a blood infection. That’s what we learned. Can’t give this bad batch of kids too much graphic information.
Do you want to know the truth? Maybe Powers was right. Maybe our year really was the worst batch of kids she’d ever taught. Some of them, at least. Our only consolation was that she if she thought we were bad, she was going to find future generations were worse. If she thought I was heading down the wrong path with Kiss and Judas Priest, I wonder what she thought of Marilyn Manson or rap! She thought we were bad? The 90s were still to come!
One thing that struck me from that time that will always remain is this. Our family did not go to church much, but frequency in church visits didn’t seem to correlate to how good of a person you were. My sister and I were good kids. Some of these other kids that went to church every week were real assholes. Just an observation.
I hope that Powers did end up with worse classes than us. She deserved it.
Bob and I went to the mall a lot. Stanley Park Mall was kind of epicenter of the neighborhood. Though it didn’t have a record store of the caliber of Sam the Record Man downtown, it had an A&A and a Zellers where you could find all the big releases and a few singles. It had a grocery store, which meant just about every neighbour bought their supplies at the same place. The Zellers store stocked anything else you needed. There was a liquor store. Two banks. We didn’t need to go elsewhere very often.
It was a nice short walk. We used to take a short cut through the apartments at the very end of Secord Ave. But they fenced up the shortcuts. Sometimes Bob and I would go that way and jump the fences just out of spite.
“They can’t stop us from going this way,” we said.
We were little assholes sometimes, but we had a good time doing it.
The Little Short Stop was an important store. That’s where I would buy my rock magazines. Hit Parader, every single month. I never missed an issue from some time in 1987 through 1990. One thing we loved doing was leafing through seeing ads for all the rock albums that were due to come out. “New Ace Frehley!” I exclaimed upon seeing an ad for Second Sighting. The ads would often tell you names of the forthcoming singles. The ad for Open Up and Say…Ahh! by Poison highlighted the track “Good Love” as a song to watch for. Maybe the marketing for that album changed midway?
I eventually stopped buying Hit Parader, and switched to other mags like Metal Edge. The reason? I always suspected there was something up with their interviews. There was a sameness to them, no matter who was answering. Then, Sebastian Bach from Skid Row got in some serious trouble when an audience member at a concert threw a bottle at him. Injured and enraged, he made the incredibly stupid mistake of throwing the bottle back, and hitting an innocent girl instead. Hit Parader fabricated an interview with Bach where he was quoted as saying “That’s why rock stars have lawyers, man” or something to that effect. The quote was used against him in court.
Not to deflect blame for the incident away from Bach, but I couldn’t support Hit Parader any more after that. Not to mention, I was disappointed to realize that many of the rest of their interviews also had to be fake. I gave away my collection many years ago.
In 1988, however, Hit Parader was my Bible. That, and WWF Magazine, which was equally fake. I always left that store with both magazines if I could. If I couldn’t, the Zehrs store often had the WWF Magazine issues that I needed. Some pop and chips, and we were all set for Short Stop.
WWF Magazine was devious. They had the monthly publication, but also many periodical specials, and I had to collect them all. There was the official Wrestlemania book. Another one for Summer Slam. Royal Rumble. Survivor Series. My mom used to say that the World Wrestling Federation got a lot of money out of us! I would also buy the Toronto Sun the day after a major wrestling event. They had the most complete coverage, often with full colour photos. I may still have an old Toronto Sun from that time.
Then we were off to browse the music at A&A. We’d look at the charts and see if any bands we liked were up there. Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was for about a week. I was pleased when I saw Priest’s Ram It Down on the chart later that year. We’d shop around, but I rarely had enough money for a new tape. Bob did — he had a job.
But browse we did, usually looking for Kiss tapes that we had never seen in stock before. Or Europe. Or Ozzy. Whitesnake, Cinderella, AC/DC, Def Leppard, all of our favourites. Cassettes were like crack to us. We were always searching. Something “rare” would be a must-buy.
Bob would often save his money and buy five tapes at a time. He took chances on stuff I never heard of, like Fifth Angel. He would caution me and make sure I was making the right purchase. He was somewhat surprised when I got into Bon Jovi and decided I wanted to buy Slippery When Wet. He wasn’t really into them that much. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked me one night at the Zellers store. I was sure.
“Have you ever seen this one before?” we would ask each other. The Bon Jovi cassette single “Wanted: Dead or Alive” was one I had my eyes on for several months at that A&A store. You just did not see it very often, so when I had the money, I grabbed it. It was worth it for the incredible acoustic version of the song. Bob didn’t buy singles as often. He valued a full length for his money, but he made exceptions for bands like Iron Maiden. You couldn’t find Maiden singles at A&A though. You had to go to Sam’s for those. Bob wold trek there on his bike. Fortunately he sold his Maiden singles collection to me when he did finally let them go.
One of the most distinctive features of the old Stanley Park Mall that people remember is that it was shaped like a big “O”; like an oval. We would walk around and around. Just talking, looking at the magazines I had purchased. Or the tapes he just bought. Discussing everything going on in music, in the neighbourhood and at school. Because the mall was such a central location for so many people, we’d always run into schoolmates or neighbours. Sometimes a girl that I liked, but I never had the courage to talk to any.
The mall has changed so much and the “O” is gone. All the good stuff is gone. A harsh reminder of the passage of time. But I can still retrace my steps.
Bob was a fast walker but I could keep up. You didn’t waste a lot of time on your way home from the mall. You wanted to get down to business of listening to the new music, or reading the new magazines. That was a special kind of Saturday in old ’88.
Bob had a blue and yellow BMX bike, so I had to have a blue and yellow BMX bike.
Bob had a leather jacket, and so I had to have a leather jacket.
Bob had an electric guitar…so I had to have an electric guitar.
Early in 1988, Bob bought his first and only guitar. It was a jagged, black Stinger with a whammy bar. It had two double coil pickups. He had strap locks so he could twirl his guitar over his shoulder if he wanted. And I had to have all these things too.
Bob bought his guitar second-hand from a guy who said “it used to belong to the guy from Helix”. Of course there was no way to verify this so we never treated it as fact. The first weekend he had it, he invited me over to check it out. How hard could a guitar be to play? They used to teach sheet music in grade school, so I thought “piece of cake, I can play guitar”.
I told my parents that I was getting a guitar, and to them it was just another thing that Bob had, that I had to have too. And since Bob was two years older and had a part-time job, they’d be paying for this guitar that I insisted I was getting. Bob and I went out on our own one afternoon, to East End Music in downtown Kitchener. We browsed, got the help of the man working (probably the owner) and I picked out a generic white guitar. It had what I needed — the humbucking pickups and whammy bar like Bob had.
“The black and white guitars will be a cool contrast,” we both thought.
I really wanted that guitar. I thought it was just meant to be. Bob and I were going to form a band. This was the first step. We already had a few band names picked out.
“We’ll be back,” I told the guy as we left. I was really excited. Upon arriving at home, I proceeded with begging my parents for the guitar. My dad wasn’t happy, especially when I explained to him that we already told the guy that I was coming back for it.
“Oh no,” he moaned. But they agreed, as long as I took music lessons. That seemed like a pretty sweet deal! My dad got out his cheque book, asked the man, “What can you do for me here?” and bought me the white generic instrument that I couldn’t live without, at a slightly reduced price! I was the only one who was happy with the outcome.
It was at this point that I discovered that guitar was really hard.
Look closely in this picture and you can see the black cardboard “air guitar” that I made, and our old Atari 2600 console.
Sure, I could pick out the first six or seven notes of the “Detroit Rock City” solo, but not in time. Bob and I figured out how to do a simple version of the “Wasted Years” intro, but couldn’t play the song any further than that. I saw a kid at school playing acoustic guitar, and he did something with his fingers that I couldn’t. He laid his index finger on the fretboard, and played multiple strings at once — the skill of chording that I had yet to learn.
My mom found a teacher that did housecalls. It was perfect — my sister was learning keyboards from him. Gary Mertz was his name, a keyboard player by nature but also able to teach guitar. Bob would come over on Saturday mornings, and take his lesson after Kathryn and I had finished. Gary could teach three lessons in one stop, and I believe there was a fourth kid in the neighborhood that he taught as well. After lessons, sometimes Bob and I would hang out and listen to music, or go to the mall.
The first lesson I really learned about guitar is why you don’t want a whammy bar. I spent most of my time tuning that thing, and replacing a set of strings was a nightmare. “I’ll never buy another guitar with a whammy bar,” I said after buying a second guitar with a whammy bar.
The reason I bought that second guitar was due to an accident with the first. I left it lying upright, leaning on a bench. It got tangled in a cable, and when my sister got her keyboard out to practice, the cable yanked on the whammy bar. The guitar hit the bench and the headstock broke in two. It was made clear to me by both Gary and my parents that this accident was my fault. But Gary found a guy who would fix it.
A broken guitar is never as good as it was brand new. A couple years later I bought my Kramer flying V, which became my preferred instrument. It too was a white guitar, and so I said to Bob: “My gimmick is that every guitar I own will be a white guitar.” He thought that was cool, because two of my favourite players, Adrian Smith and Phil Collen, frequently played white guitars.
The fact of the matter is, some people can play instruments, and some people can’t. I went the full distance before admitting that I can’t. I modified my first axe with some cool stickers. Bob and I both bought “super slinky” guitar strings thinking it would help us play fast. For my guitar strap, I chose a cool faux-snakeskin thing. (I didn’t want animal print — too 1984.) I had an electronic tuner, a suitably heavy ancient tube amp with a reverb pedal, and a collection of different picks. Gary tried to make my mom feel better about my difficulty. “It’s not as easy as the keyboard,” he explained. “If I dropped an ashtray on this key, it’s still going to make the right note. A guitar won’t.” But eventually, I called it quits. It turns out that my sister got all the talent.
Bob didn’t think he was learning anything from Gary, and he quit several months before I did. He had a new interest now: sailboarding.
“Oh I suppose you’re going to want a sailboard now!” said my mom with a warning tone in her voice.
But I didn’t follow Bob this time. Sailboarding was the first thing Bob was into, that I had no interest in. I toiled away at guitar a little longer, thinking now I could be a solo artist. I wrote some lyrics and recorded some ideas on cassette. Half of my ideas were played on the keyboard using the “guitar” voice, because I just couldn’t play guitar.
My first guitar, the one bought in February 1988 at East End Music in downtown Kitchener, with the repaired headstock, was sold to an older lady that Gary was teaching. I’m sure she was able to get more music out of it than I did.
RECORD STORE TALES #911: The Pros and Cons of Rediscovery
Ever have an artist that you like listening to, but have neglected for many years? It happens. Maybe they appeal to you only when you’re in certain moods, or you have forgotten why you originally liked them. Or perhaps the albums got buried in a corner and you forgot about them. There are numerous reasons why any serious music fan might not have heard an artist they like in a long time.
Whatever your reasons are, I assume they are good ones. When I neglect an artist for a long period of time, I blame it on the haphazard way I’ve ripped my CDs to my digital library. An ongoing project due to the thousands of albums in the house (and more arriving every week), I have not done it alphabetically. I tried doing it that way, but it was tremendously monotonous, so I resumed “ripping what I feel like” instead. And if I didn’t feel like listening to somebody, I didn’t rip it, and often forgot about it.
I’ll give you an example: Joe Satriani. Recently I was in the mood to listen to all-instrumental music for a day. I went to my Satriani folder and only found five discs inside. I knew I had more, but for whatever reason, they never made it onto my hard drive. I had guesses as to why. They were albums I wasn’t as familiar with. I obviously ripped the familiar stuff that I wanted to hear rather than the stuff I needed to spend time with and grow into.
“I forgot about this song,” I mumbled during “Up in the Sky” from Crystal Planet. I remember buying that CD. It was 1998 and I was living with T-Rev, and I was excited about new Satch. I wanted to touch base with my instrumental roots that began when I bought Steve Vai’s Passion and Warfare back in the summer of 1990. I also made sure we carried Satch in-store. It sold well enough for us, but I remember being underwhelmed listening to it. I couldn’t distinguish a lot of the songs, and I found it a bit overlong. I guess I rarely revisited it for those reasons.
Getting out Crystal Planet again, I might not have been wrong, but there are some cool songs buried within. The title track has a really cool rhythmic, metallic riff. “House Full of Bullets” For ballads, “Love Thing” is pretty sweet. There is good stuff here that I missed out on for a few years due to neglect.
Other artists that I have recently dove back into include Steve Vai and Jethro Tull. Undeniably, two more challenging artists. Their music is not designed for simplicity. I’ve always found Vai’s Fire Garden difficult to digest. A single disc, it was originally intended to be a double, but still contains the same music because Steve discovered it would all fit on a modern CD. It’s dense. As such, it never made it onto the hard drive. Until now. Same with Tull’s A Passion Play.
There’s a negative side to this rediscovery as well.
Upon playing these old Satriani, Tull and Vai albums once more, I started looking up their discographies. Reading about the albums I had, and the ones I didn’t have.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Satriani has a box of all his studio albums plus a bonus disc!”
“There’s a Thick As A Brick deluxe box now!”
“I still need to get an original vinyl Flex-Able Leftovers to get all the tracks!”
Don’t worry. I didn’t order all that stuff. The only purchase I made was an RSD reissue of Satriani’s first self-titled EP. Original copies go for $500, but I found a reasonably priced RSD copy. It was within budget so that’s on its way. And that’s it. I didn’t go hog wild.
There’s a wily fox that’s been prowling the grounds up at the lake. This weekend I caught my first real sight of him. I saw him twice in one day. He has no fear of humans. He is usually carrying prey in his mouth. I’ve named him Reddy, after Reddy Fox from the classic children’s cartoon The Green Forest.
The first time I saw the fox, I was on the front porch rocking away as I often do. The porch did a lot of rocking this weekend. The star of the show was the new album by Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen. The debut Smith/Kotzen CD is turning into an early summer favourite. In particular, the song “Running” is quite incredible. I didn’t know how well the two very different singer/guitarists would mesh. Like cream and coffee. Glowing review to come.
Styx, Kiss, Queen, Ace Frehley, Rush, and Marillion all saw a lot of porch action this weekend. I was playing one of them when the fox ran past again, this time up close and personal. I saw a flash of red and then the movement. He was swift. He moved with the steady determination of a wild animal completely disinterested in its surroundings. He was within six feet me of when he strode past. It made a hacking sound. It did not care that I was there, nor anyone else that he galloped past on his way to wherever he was going.
On neither appearance did I have any chance of grabbing a picture. There was no way. It happened in two seconds. There only chance would have been if he walked past during the rare instances I was running my lake cam. But he never did. I know I’ll see him again. His blatant disregard for humans means he’ll be back. He wasn’t phased by the Schnauzers barking at him either. He’s like a Borg, only interested in one thing and that’s where he’s going. So long as you’re not in his way, he’s completely disinterested. He moves swiftly with no hesitation and no pause. It was an interesting thing to feel so completely outside of nature at that moment.
I’ve been coming to this place for almost five decades. I missed a few summers, but a fox is a rare sighting indeed. We’ve had plenty of rabbits, porcupine, skunks, and even a few deer and one bear. Foxes are elusive. Not this guy though.
I doubt I will ever be quick enough to get a picture of that fox, but I will make sure to keep my eyes open for a sighting. At least we know he’s not afraid of the sound of music. I have the new Styx on deck for next weekend. Let’s see what happens.
RECORD STORE TALES #909: It Was Back in the Summer of ’83, There’s a Reason I Remember It Well
Part 1.
Put yourself in my 10 year old (going on 11) shoes. Imagine the summer of 1983. We were surrounded with nothing but the coolest stuff. The A-Team was huge. Michael Knight was riding high. There was a new Star Wars coming. There were even two new varieties of Coke: Caffeine Free Coke, and Caffeine Free Diet Coke. I didn’t know what caffeine was, I just wanted to try them all.
The first sign that we had a cool year ahead of us was when my mom came home with a new box of cereal one day. It was probably Cheerios; regular or Honey-Nut. On the front: “STAR WARS BOOKLET INSIDE!” This must be in advance of the new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the…what? The title had been changed to Return of the Jedi. Less edgy to be sure. We learned that George Lucas changed it because Jedi do not take revenge.*
These cereal box booklets were our first look at some of the iconic new images from Episode VI. Speeder bike troopers, Jabba the Hutt, and the unfinished new Death Star. This image surprised me the most, even more than Jabba’s ghastly physique. It didn’t make sense that the Empire would build a brand new Death Star, when the first was destroyed so easily. But that was our first glimpse of what was to come. We couldn’t wait to get the new toys. I had dreams of anticipation building towards the release of the movie.
Next into our lives came the official Marvel Comics adaptation, which of course told the entire story before we saw the movie. We waited for crowds to die down before going to see a new movie. I had the single issue “Marvel Super Special”, my best friend Bob Schipper had the four-issue limited series. About half way through reading the comic, I stopped myself in shock.
“Teddy bears?” I gasped. “There is no way George Lucas would put teddy bears in Star Wars.”
But he did. He put teddy bears in Star Wars. Fortunately, the Ewoks were cooler on screen — fierce but funny warriors that I could accept if not embrace. It just seemed so…sudden. Calculated. Even as children, we sensed this. Jedi was the most “kiddie” of all the films, with the cutesy bears and burp jokes.
Then came the day we finally saw the movie in theaters. I think we went with my schoolmate Ian Johnson, although my sister remembers that as our second time. I know we joked around with him before the film — what if the whole thing was a big tease and they never found Han Solo? We laughed at the idea of the Millenium Falcon flying around for the whole film, and never finding Solo. Making you have to wait ’til the next movie…or the next…before Han finally came back. Of course, we knew that wasn’t going to really happen. We knew this was the final movie in the trilogy. (We didn’t foresee we’d have to wait 16 years to get another Star Wars, or 32 years to get to the “what happens next” part.)
I can’t remember exactly how I felt through the film. Awe at Luke’s cool new Jedi look. Confusion as to how I was supposed to take Vader — the villain I hated — as redeemed. I legitimately hated Darth Vader. Could I forgive him? Not at first. “Look at his eyes,” said my dad. “He was good again.”
We universally loved the speeder bike chase through the woods. The busy space battle that eventually goes into the very superstructure of the Death Star. And yes, Han Solo’s return. Finally, we had use for our Han action figures again!
Oh yes, the action figures. The Return of the Jedi wave was the best of the series yet. We started getting our first new figures from the series around the same time my cousin Geoffrey rolled into town.
Part 2.
We both loved and feared when cousin Geoff came to visit. So full of energy. Much more than me. We had great times, but usually tinged with a hint of destruction. This is a kid who gave himself the nickname “Alligator”. 1983 was one of those wild summers. We had the best times with Geoff, but I still came home with an injury.
It began with new toys. My mom took Geoff, my sister and I to Stanley Park Mall. We each got to pick one new Star Wars figure. It was unanimous who we thought was best. We each decided on the new Luke. What a figure! A cloth cloak, a laser pistol, and a lightsaber were packed inside the plastic bubble. Three accessories! Unprecedented. Then, as told in Record Store Tales #653:
We waited on a bench while my mom did her banking.
“Come on let’s open these,” said Geoffrey. My sister and I always waited until we got home.
Geoffrey ripped open his Luke.
“Why are you opening that now? You’re going to lose the gun. Just wait until we get home. This is our last stop.” I attempted to reason with my cousin but he had Luke out of the package.
Within the first five minutes, he lost the gun. Before we made it home, he lost the lightsaber too.
“I told you so,” was something I relished saying to him. My Luke, by the way, still has all his accessories 35 years later.
Geoff’s grandparents on his dad’s side owned a huge piece of property in the country with a swimming pool, and the most amazing landscape to explore. Grassy fields gave way to trees, and I don’t think we ever hit the end of the property when we went walking. It simply went on forever. Any time we went there, it was a treat. We spent a few days at the prorperty that summer, swimming and running pretending we were Jedi or superheroes.
The house had an amazing “back yard”. There was a steep downwards incline, which you traversed via a series of stairs and landings. To us it was huge! It seemed like you were climbing down a mountain. At the bottom: the swimming pool and all the land you could run through for hours.
There was a radio and a barbecue. I remember hearing “Sister Christian” on the radio for the second or third time ever. I didn’t know the name of the song, or the band, but I heard neighbours playing it on their stereos. I assumed the song was called “Motorhead” by Motorhead because on a fuzzy radio, that’s sure what it sounded like. “Motorhead! What’s your price for flight?”
We had a great time swimming whenever we felt like it, and playing Star Wars the rest of the day. Our figure collections were growing. By the end of the summer, I had an Imperial Guard and Kathryn had her first Ewok, Logray the “medicine man” of the tribe. Lando in his new disguise had also landed in our collection. The figures really were outstanding this time, with more attention to detail and accessories.
But you can’t play Star Wars forever (especially when one of us has a Luke with no weapons) and so we explored the countryside. As described earlier, my cousin Geoff had a lot more energy than me, and physics tells us that energy cannot be destroyed, merely transformed. He transformed his into force. We were playing some sort of game in the grass, involving running and hiding. At one point Geoff spotted me and came barrelling my way. I dove out of his path into a bush. I thought I had escaped the pain, but the pain was only beginning.
The skin on my hand was starting to sting and bump, for I sought shelter amongst the stinging nettles.
It was bad! My aunt got some creams and bandaged up my arm. My hand was numb for hours. And we were going to see a movie that night!
Part 3.
There were no cineplexes. Our family movie tradition was going downtown for dinner and a flick. My mom remembers the restaurant well: “It was owned by Tommy Chaggaris, who owned the Fairway restaurant at Fairview Mall. The restaurant was called The Chaggaris’.”
They made really good chicken. Cousin Geoff used to simply call it “Tommy’s Chicken” when we would take him. My mom continues: “Dad knew Tommy Chaggaris quite well, and he always treated us like royalty. He was very wealthy and owned restaurants and strip malls all over the city. His wife lives across the street from friends of ours. He is long gone. A really nice guy.” This is where it gets funny. Sometimes Geoff would simplify the name and tell people “We went to Tommy’s place for chicken!” I guess there was a strip club in town also called Tommy’s, so that story often needed extra clarification.
The plan was to see Return of the Jedi again, this time with Geoff. However, we were told by the adults that the sound in the theater where Jedi was showing was really bad. I didn’t care, neither did Kathryn or Geoff, but the adults didn’t want to spend money on a movie and not understand the dialogue because of dodgy speakers. Fair enough, so we chose Superman III instead. I had the novelisation, but now we were going to see the latest chapter of Superman. One of our other favourite franchises of the 80s.
We knew it was getting poor reviews, but what else was playing in 1983? War Games, Octopussy and Trading Places were a little more mature than we were. And nobody wanted to see Jaws 3 in 3D! So Superman III it was, partly by default and partly because how bad could a Superman movie really be?
Kind of bad. But I liked Richard Pryor**, and he made me laugh in Superman III. Kathryn and I both liked the part where he got drunk wearing the gigantic foam cowboy hat. We did not like the real villains. We preferred Lois Lane to Lana Lang. We would rather have not seen Superman turn evil due to a synthetic form of kryptonite. We didn’t get the scene where Clark Kent fought Evil Supes. Was it real or was it metaphorical? It was weird, is what it was to us.
We came back to the beautiful house in the woods and discussed the movie. We never accepted that a computer could challenge Superman, but that was the big climax. Superman vs a computer built by Richard Pryor. A computer that seemed to be able to improvise and turn people into computer zombies at will. And had weird video game-like displays with sound effects taken from the Atari Pac-Man game.
“The worst Superman,” was our unanimous vote. But we got to see it — always a treat in itself. Even if a movie was bad, going there was still a treat.
It wouldn’t have been a proper summer without an injury, so I’m glad Geoff helped me check off all the boxes in 1983 (and a few other years!). We had a blast. Spending all day with Star Wars action figures or in a big swimming pool with the sun on our backs and Caffeine Free Coke in our hands. It was the last summer of the Star Wars era. Toys changed, and when Geoff returned in 1984, we were onto something new. Something that was More Than Meets The Eye. But there was a definite shift. 1983 closed a chapter. With Star Wars having drawn to a close, the vacuum had to be filled. At the same time, I was getting older and discovering new interests. In 1984, the favourite contender was an American rock and roll band out of Los Angeles called Quiet Riot.
I still cannot really let go of the fact that Geoff lost Luke’s gun and lightsaber within minutes of opening him. Those things are going for like $80 now!
*Revenge of the Jedi caused a problem for the folks over at Paramount, working on Star Trek II: The Vengeance of Khan. In order to avoid problems, they changed the title of their film to The Wrath of Khan.
** At that point, Pryor’s career was shifting to younger age groups. He had a revelation in 1979 after a trip to Africa, after which he ceased using the “n” word in his routines. 1982’s The Toy exposed kids our age to Pryor. Ironically, The Toy was directed by Richard Donner who also directed Superman: The Movie. Yet Superman II and III were credited to Richard Lester, who geared them in a slapstick comedic direction. This is one of Superman III‘s defining traits.
RECORD STORE TALES #908: Practice Practice Practice
Time for another confessional!
After our amazing interview with Paul Laine a little while ago, I finally have the confidence to say that I feel like a good interviewer. I didn’t always feel that way. My very first interview, with Eddie Jackson of Queensryche, was 20 years ago. That was a great interview, but I didn’t think I was a good interviewer yet. I felt like I needed a few more under my belt first. My next interview didn’t go nearly as well, and I stopped pursuing them.
Here’s the truth. I don’t care how stupid this sounds. You go and interview Paul Laine yourself if you think this sounds stupid.
When I was younger…I used to practice interviewing rock stars in my room.
Paul Stanley. Ace Frehley. Bruce Dickinson. I made up questions and I practised asking them. I worked on my cadence and imagined loose, fun interviews. I pictured myself improvising followup questions. I practised!
This continued into my 20s. Listening to albums. Reading interviews. Thinking, “I could do better than this.” Pondering the questions you really wanted to know the answers to.
I’m happy that I’m now well past the point of practising. Only experience can be my guide now. If this shtick comes naturally to me, it’s only because I practised at it for years!
These days, I like playing music at the lake that takes me back in time. Maybe that’s the curse of getting older. Everything reminds me of something else. Since that’s the case, I might as well make the most of it. If I’m having a good time at the lake, there is nothing better than music that reminds me of having a good time at the lake.
I set the scene with a very relaxing drive, to the 80s tunes of Kim Mitchell’s self-titled EP, plus Shakin’ Like a Human Being, and The Sport of Kings by Triumph. It was golden.
Instead of diving right into the nostalgia pool right away again upon arrival, I officially started the weekend with some music that is new to me: Coney Hatch and Andy Curran. My current favourite Coney Hatch tunes are “First Time For Everything” from Outa Hand, and “She’s Gone” & “Wrong Side of Town” from Friction. Arriving Thursday night, these tunes, along with Curran’s “No Tattoos”, led our evening on the porch, watching the sun set. Not only did the tunes get us psyched for the weekend, but also next week’s LeBrain Train. Andy is our guest again, so I am preparing once more.
I closed the night studying up for the next day’s episode: the Nigel Tufnel Top Ten Judas Priest albums. This “remastered” episode was an update on one that Harrison and I did on Facebook Live a year ago. I re-watched the episode from the previous year, very much enjoying myself. Harrison and I had a great time the first outing, though the second one surely topped it!
When I’m at the lake, I try to keep the volume to a reasonable level. I like to take a walk to the end of the driveway and down the road and check the levels. A little music at the end of the driveway is OK but I don’t want to hear myself down the road. However, I said “to hell with that” for the rest of the weekend, when the neighbours had a loud party on the Friday night.
“I hope they enjoy ‘Detroit Rock City’ at 6:00 am,” I said.
So that’s how my Saturday began: Destroyer, cranked. Destroyer has never been my favourite Kiss album by a long shot, but for some reason it just clicked with me that morning. The cool breeze coming off the lake, the birds and squirrels bickering over my head; and Kiss Destroyer on the speakers. Things you don’t think would go together, but in my brain, actually do. I would have played Destroyer at the lake as a kid — many times. The difference was, now nobody was telling me to turn it down. Apparently that “if it’s too loud, you’re too old” thing doesn’t apply. As I get older, I love it loud.
After Destroyer came Rock and Roll Over, Dynasty, and the complete audio to the video Exposed. This included all the studio tracks from the music videos, all the live tracks exclusive to the video, and even that little nugget of Paul and Gene harmonizing on “I’ll Be Back” by the Beatles. As a kid, I made something similar on a cassette. I recorded all the live stuff and “I’ll Be Back” from the VHS tape and made an album out of it. I left off the music videos. Today, I ripped all the music from the DVD directly to mp3 and made a double album out of it! I sat there in wonder listening, imagining what my younger self would have thought of such an audio miracle.
That’s a lot of Kiss though; solid Kiss with no other bands breaking the streak. When I did finally need an intermission from Kiss, I chose Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind. I actually bought that album at the lake in the summer of ’85, at an old record store that used to exist on the main street.
As far as volume goes, keep in mind I’m blasting my music on a $24 pair of speakers from Amazon. The guy partying across the street must have had something stronger because I could identify “The Impression That I Get” by the Bosstones easily from my seat on the porch.
“I hope they like Star Wars,” I said as I cued up The Empire Strikes Back on my Disney Plus.
I had another revelation while watching Empire. Objectively, it could be the best Star Wars, but because nostalgia is my thing, I flashed back to 1980. 1981. 1982. 1983. The golden era of Star Wars fandom. For a long time, at that ripe age, we were left with two major cliffhangers. What would happen to the frozen Han Solo, and was Darth Vader lying about being Luke’s father? Hard to believe but we spent years — an eternity of a child’s age, a significant fraction of our lives — not knowing the answers.
We also had to spend this time making up things to do with our Han Solo figures. He was frozen in carbonite at this time. Sometimes I took my Solo figure and froze him in ice in the freezer. We used our imaginations. Empire was such a huge part of our childhood. For me the Empire era ran from age seven to just before age eleven. It was the Star Wars for which I had all the collector’s cards (first series), the soundtrack, the “story of” record, the comic, the novel, colouring books, and just about everything else you could buy. The bedsheets — check. Dixie cups — check. Burger King glasses — also check. We had a good chunk of Kenner figures from that era. We had everything we could possibly get our hands on.
Except the movie itself. That, we could not recreate on a whim. We brought our toys, our comics and our cards to the lake so we could re-imagine the movie. But we could not watch it.
That was a luxury that was not lost on me as I sat on the porch watching the Battle of Hoth. I smiled ear to ear knowing this. Something unimaginable during the actual Empire era. Though, we did indeed see The Empire Strikes Back at the lake. And it wasn’t the special editions. We saw the original, at the drive-in. It was in a double feature with a bicycling movie called Breaking Away, which we slept through. My sister slept through most of Empire, too! She was only three.
I took a break in the middle of The Empire Strikes Back to take a dip in the water. But the Sooners had come.
“Sooners” is how my dad refers to the people who show up to go to the beach for day. I wondered what “Sooners” meant so I looked it up. He must have got it from one of his cowboy movies. Sooner: “a person settling on land in the early West before its official opening to settlement in order to gain the prior claim allowed by law to the first settler after official opening.”
I don’t see how that applies to the beachgoers, but the name stuck.
Anyway there were a bunch of Sooners at the beach. There was Man-Bun and his two girlfriends, and a family of seven who parked their bikes right in front of our place. I know my dad would have had a fit. The bikes were well out of the way, but it’s no fun trying to back your car out of the driveway with any kind of obstruction, so I get it.
The Sooners weren’t as bad as the renters. They had a huge dog — the size of a small pony — that kept going after Jen any time we walked down the path to the beach on our own property. They’d scold the dog but not put him on a leash. I say “him” because his name was clearly Frank. Who names their dog Frank? Seriously.
I don’t know who held the party that night. The salvos of US-grade fireworks began when I was sleeping. Jen says they were still going off at 1 am. I say “US-grade” fireworks because I know the difference. There are the kind you can buy in the convenience stores here, and there are the ones you can’t. This was the stuff you can’t. On and on and on it went. It seemed to be coming from the renters’ place. When I went down to the beach the following morning, their firepit was still smouldering. Late night party fire?
What could I do? I woke up and blasted Aerosmith. I played them while packing the car, on the car system, doors open. I hope you like Toys in the Attic.
Sooners and renters aside, summer has gotten off to a tremendous start. Maybe next time, I’ll play all new albums and make some new memories. It doesn’t particularly matter — the setting is conducive to to anything you want to listen to. And now that I can bring my entire music collection with me in my pocket, I am limited only by my own whims.
A year ago today we got the message that you were gone. My first thought was “at least he is not in pain anymore.” I didn’t like that you had to suffer so much. I’ve seen enough cancer in this life.
My next thought was for Grandma, and Mom, and Aunt. They still miss you and talk about you. Aunt says that it will be weird coming home to Waterloo without you around. She says she used to like having her morning coffee when only the two of you were awake. I can picture you guys sitting there quietly talking, and maybe even laughing a little. That’s how I want to picture it, anyway.
I have a bunch of your CDs with me. I really liked Jackyl. I was surprised to find it in your collection. Looking at your discs here, I have so many questions. Why Jane’s Addiction? Why the second Garbage album, and not the first? Somebody here went to painstaking care to make you a mix CD, but why did she include “Who Let the Dogs Out”? I’d really like to know your thoughts on that one!
Since you’ve been gone, I followed my dreams and started a YouTube show. I chat with friends about music and I interview rock stars. So far I’ve talked to two former members of Helix — a band we used to discuss in the old days. You knew them long before I did. Now here I am talking to them. You were a part of my history with that band. We also did an entire episode on Led Zeppelin. That was another band you liked long before I discovered them. You thought it was cool when I started picking up these old bands you had in your school days. Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple.
I still don’t like sports. There’s something we never agreed on. Even being married to Jen and watching all this hockey, baseball and football, I still don’t like sports. I understand them a little better. I could converse with you about hockey now. It wouldn’t be the topic of my choosing, but I could do it.
We spent last summer quarantined between here and the cottage. You used to love that place. Long hair, no shirt, cutoff jean shorts. One summer you were there for about three weeks straight. I hope you would like what Kathryn has done with it. She’s kept everything intact. It’s not as manly as it was in your day, but everything is still there. It’s a lot quieter. We all got older!
If it wasn’t for this damned virus, we had an idea for a tribute last summer. Maybe we can do it this summer, or next summer. I wanted to buy a turntable for the lake, and play some of your old records in the back yard like you used to. I kept putting it off, and putting it off, because we can’t socialize. It’s been a weird year, man! Grandma really wants a hug. I’ll give her a big one soon, don’t worry.
Speaking of worry, she used to worry about you so much. Though we all miss you, at least she’s not worrying about you anymore. I know she’ll appreciate it when we can finally get together as a family again. Tell Uncle Don stories in the living room. Cutoff shorts in the summer, badminton raquet in one hand and a Labbatt’s in the other! Right?
I don’t drink beer, but I think if you were here right now, healthy and young again, I’d have a beer with you. I’d think I’d like that.
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