Happy Anniversary to my beautiful soul mate Jennifer. Every day gets better and better, and you look younger and younger! I don’t know how you do it. Meanwhile I’ve turned into a grey-bearded old man with a bad back and lactose intolerance, and you still keep me around! Must be love. It’s the only possibly explanation why you live in a house full of Transformers, CDs, and records.
The last six years have been the happiest of my life. Thank you for being the puzzle piece that was missing all that time.
Love you, sweetie. Here’s one of the songs we danced to six years ago, on the best day of my life.
In 1996, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Juno Awards, a box set titled Oh What A Feeling was released. It was four CDs loaded to the gills with Canadian music, from all corners of the country and all styles of music. It was a great set and one which sold regularly in our stores. The original run of the set sold out briskly. We had a hard time keeping it in stock new, and a few years later, used copies were somewhat scarce. We sold it at a very reasonable price of $19.99, used.
We had one customer, who I never gave a name to except for “Eastern European Guy”. He had an accent and broken English so that worked for me. He pulled Oh What A Feeling off the shelves and asked to listen to it on one of our six crappy listening stations. I popped in all four CDs, handed him the headphones and remote, and left him to listen.
One thing that always pissed me off was people who constantly need help on the listening stations. It’s not hard. Volume controls were right there in front of you. The remote was like any remote that people would have had at home. People who couldn’t figure out how to skip tracks pissed me off. How do you listen to music at home? I didn’t get it.
Eastern European Man motioned with his hand for me to come over. “This song…there is a problem with it. Listen please.”
“Hey, I have an idea. Let’s stick the lead guitar player behind the bassist for this video.”
I placed the headphones on my head. It was track 1, disc one. “American Woman” by The Guess Who. I listened for a few seconds, nodded my head in approving time with the song, and removed the ‘phones.
“Sounds good. What problem are you having?” I asked as politely as I could manage.
“This song…there is strange sound. Listen again.”
I placed the headphones back on. Dah da da da da, dah da. American Woman, stay away from me-hee. Sounded fine. I heard no strange sounds. I told him I heard nothing unusual.
“There is a sound…ticking sound. Tick tick tick. Listen please.”
I put the phones on for the third time. Finally I got it. I heard the ticking. It was the cymbal.
“Oh, OK, I get it. Yeah, that’s not a defect. That’s the drummer playing cymbals.” I made a drumming motion to get my point across.
“No, no. There is ticking sound. Tick tick tick. This not right.”
I explained again, “I hear the ticking sound you’re talking about. It’s part of the song. It’s the drummer playing cymbals, it’s a percussion instrument, like this.” I made the drumming motions again.
“I not like. Can you order me other copy?”
Man, I freaking hated ordering shit in when I didn’t have to. There was nothing wrong with Oh What A Feeling. If I ordered in a copy, it would be coming from another store in our chain. We carried this item as a used item, but they were all going to be the same. When we brought in this item from another store, we wouldn’t make any money on it. The store that sent it to us gets the sale. So, even if he buys it which was not guaranteed since the next copy would have the same tick tick tick, I would be losing the sale.
He insisted. I ordered in the box set, we called him, and inexplicably, he bought the new one even though they were identical. He never even returned it, which I completely expected.
Later on, the same man came in and picked out Bruce Dickinson’s album Balls To Picasso to listen to. Once again, I brought him over to the listening stations, and left him to listen. Once again, he signaled me over with a hand gesture. I made my way to home wondering what the hell could be wrong this time.
“Did you put in correct CD? I know this singer. This is…not him.”
I put on the headphones and turned it up. It was Bruce singing “Cyclops”, track one.
“This is the right CD. This is Bruce Dickinson,” I told him.
Puzzled, the man said, “He changed his style!” Well, win some lose some man. I left him to listen once again. I got back to my work, I had lots of customers to deal with that day. About 10 minutes later, he motioned me over once again.
“The player…it not working.” This happened quite frequently. Our stuff was used and abused by the lowest scum and passersby who needed to kill 10 minutes while they waited for the bus. Tire kickers. They like to try things, but not to buy things. Eastern European Man was not one of these, he did buy things. However our stuff took a lot of abuse from others and was always on the verge of failure.
Attempting to joke around with him, I put on a happy voice and said, “Oh, did you break it man?”
Not understanding the humour, he answered, “Ehhh…perhaps.”
He bought the disc. After a while, I never saw him again. It’s funny. You dread people like this coming into your store, and you having to wait on them hand on foot when they want to listen to something. You hate them constantly signaling you over when you’re busy with other customers. But, then you miss them. You miss that eastern European accent because hey, he might have been annoying but at least he wasn’t a dick, and he did buy things. He might have treated you like a servant to him, but technically that’s what you were. You might have been a manager but to these guy you’re serving them, and they’re the customer, and that’s it, and I don’t begrudge it anymore.
But what happened to him? Did he return to Eastern Europe? Did he go online and start listening and downloading there? Who knows. After all, I never caught his name. He was just Eastern European Man.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m getting closer to the end of the line with the Record Store Tales. These are some bits and pieces I had lying around that I never managed to make full stories out of. Below are four memorable characters from the Record Store days. It’s funny how even 20 years have gone by in some cases and I still remember these customers.
1. Richard the Indian. I don’t like making racial jokes, but Richard the Indian (nickname applied by himself) liked to make them, and always about himself! Richard had a First Nations Status card, which he had to present to us to be exempt from the Provincial Sales Tax. He used to joke at the front counter about his barely-working Discman: “This Discman must have been made by Indians, it already broke!” He was a nice guy, but I always felt like I couldn’t laugh at that joke! You know what I mean?
2. “Oops There It Is” Kid. This kid came in every week for a year, looking for the song “Whoomp! (There It Is)” by Tag Team (except he couldn’t say the name right). Being a kid, he wasn’t allowed to spend money, so he could never buy one of the albums we had. Then one day, we got in a whole bunch of cassette singles on clearance, including “Whoomp! (There It Is)”. It was a buck or two. You should have seen his eyes when we finally got a copy in that his mom would let him buy! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a happier kid.
3. Hammond Organ Man. I think this may be the same customer that I referred to as Jaded Rock Guy. The reason he was also known as Hammond Organ Man was that he refused to believe that one of our store managers even knew what a Hammond organ was (even though she did). I don’t know why that’s so hard to believe.
4. Johnny. This guy was a burn-out from my old highschool. He was in the same class as the store owner. In mid ’94 he was always coming in asking, “When is the new Cult out?” We hadn’t seen any release dates at all, but every week he asked the same question. “When will the new Cult be out?” Finally my boss answered him, “Next week,” just to see what Johnny would say. His eyes went wide. “Really? Can you hold one for me?” My boss told him he was just kidding, but he stopped asking about the new Cult album. Then when it finally came out in October ‘94, he hated it! He bought it from me new and sold it to me used.
By popular request, here’s a story about loaning your CDs out to people who don’t appreciate or take care of them properly.
Really, I should have learned my lesson in Grade 12. I loaned my brand spanking new cassette copy of Van Halen I out to this kid at school, Jamie. He was a nice kid, so I didn’t have a problem with it. What I did have a problem with was the condition in which he returned it: without the cover! How could he possibly have lost it? He did eventually find it and return it to me, but he didn’t seem to understand why it mattered. Who does that? Lots of people, I’m afraid.
At the Record Store, I befriended a customer named Len, who I actually went to highschool with, but didn’t know until after. We had the same group of friends who were all into the same music. I turned Len onto Marillion and he began borrowing my Marillion discs to burn. What upset me was when I loaned him my limited edition copy of Anoraknophobia. Remember how Marillion put out limited edition digipack versions with bonus discs? If you pre-ordered, your name would make it into the CD. My name is there inside Anoraknophobia, and the followup Marbles as well.
Len returned my copy of Anoraknophobia – a sold-out limited edition – with a crease in the spine. Probably from trying to photocopy the booklet. I wasn’t happy and I told Len I wasn’t loaning out my CDs anymore. He was sorry he had done it, and understood that I was upset, but that didn’t take the crease out.
Later on, I bought a condo. I moved into the same building as a friend of ours, somebody we all had met via the original record store location. Her nickname was “San Francisky” – a long story that involves my dad and his inability to pronounce things correctly. She was a nice girl most of the time, but very pushy. I have issues with people who try to persistently try to push me around, so I had begun to distance myself by the time I moved in.
A few weeks after I moved in, she came down to my unit. She was having a party upstairs. She needed some music.
“Do you have any Beatles?” she asked me.
“Yup, I have the Red and Blue albums. They’re excellent. The Red one probably has all the songs you’d want for a party.”
She asked me about a couple more CDs. Van Halen was one. I got them out of my CD tower.
“You’re going to take care of these, right? And you’ll return them tomorrow morning?” I asked pointedly.
“It might not be tomorrow morning but I’ll bring them back, of course.”
I knew how this girl took care of her own CDs. I had bought enough used discs from her at the store. She always bitched when I told her the discs were scratched up. She never put them back in the case, and left them out all the time. Knowing her ways of handling discs, I added additional instructions.
“I want you to be careful with these discs, and put them back in the cases when you’re done. I also want you to make sure nobody else touches my CDs. Only you. I want them back exactly as they are.”
She gave me this flabbergasted expression. What she said next was the sentence that ended what was left of our “friendship”:
“What do you care if they get scratched?! You work at the store!”
That was it. I told her I wouldn’t loan her the CDs if that was her attitude. She went upstairs in an angry huff, and we never socialized again. I ran into her now and then, and she was always bitchy. The friendship was over.
I really had no regrets about that. One thing about me is that if you want to be my friend, you have to accept me as-is, quirks and all. You don’t have to understand them, but you have to accept them. Nobody can change me. The only person who will ever change me is myself, and taking care of my property is one thing that doesn’t need changing!
RECORD STORE TALES Part 312: Reader Poll – Coming to a Close
Folks,
Sharing my Record Store Tales with you these past two years has been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. It took me years to finally start publishing them, but all good things must come to an end. The seemingly bottomless well of Record Store Tales is now almost dry. I’ve plundered papers, hard drives, journals, photos and memories, but it was inevitable that eventually I’d run out of good stories to tell.
Sure, there will always be an occasion when I say, “That reminds me of a Record Store Tale!” and I’m inspired to write some new content based on those memories. When that happens, I’ll post it. However, I do feel the need to wind down the Record Store Tales and get on with the ending, which was already written a long time ago. I like to write so much more than just album reviews. When the Record Store Tales are concluded with the proper ending, I want to continue the storytelling. Music and retail will remain the main focus, it’ll just be from the other side of the counter.
The problem is…I don’t have a title.
“Record Store Tales” and…what? “Post-Record Store Tales”? “Record Store Tales: The Next Generation”? “Record Store Tales: The Other Side of the Counter”?
I invite you to come up with better titles than these. Submit ideas in comments below. There are no guarantees I’ll use your suggestion, but if I like it, you can be the person who names the next chapter of my story.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 311: Record Store Gallery IV (Shite Photies)
This is what it’s come to in this crap-fest known as Record Store Tales: Another batch of semi-embarrassing photos of a much younger and thinner LeBrain. These are from a party circa 2003 or so. I can’t remember the names of anybody in these photos except one, which is Jesse Villemaire (last photo), the owner of Thrive tattoo studios in Cambridge. I can’t remember a single other name!
Long time LeBrain readers will recall that vintage Marillion tour shirt (that I don’t fit into anymore) from Part 126: The Marillion Shirt.
This subject came up in discussion a few months ago: Did you used to draw band logos on all of your stuff? Sure you did! If you’re reading this blog, then you’re a music lover, and all true music lovers have scrawled a logo on something at least once.
I found a single page with dozens of my old hand-drawn logos. This goes back to my first days at the Record Store! Some are good, some are shite, some aren’t even the real logo! I think the TS “bone” logo looks pretty good, and I’m going to give myself props for using obscure versions of the Kiss and Helix logos.
Penmanship: something we all learned in school, forgot, and don’t think about anymore due to the advent of the computer. Very few jobs today require good penmanship. What might surprise you is how important penmanship was in the CD store days.
In the early days, buying and selling used CDs, we maintained a manual log. Every CD we bought was logged, along with the seller’s name and identification. Every CD had to be named. We couldn’t just write down “15 CDs”. You had to write down each title. “Puff Daddy – No Way Out”, “Dance Mix ‘96”, “Titanic OST” (original soundtrack), and so on.
One of my staff had very, very “girly” writing. You know what I mean – each letter looks like a balloon animal. It was mostly readable, but apparently not to the police detective who used to collect our log books.
“Can you read this?” he would ask me, trying to make a point. “Can you please tell this person to print legibly?”
“Well, I did speak to her about this a few times. That’s her handwriting, that’s about as neat as it will get. She really is trying.” The detective was not happy.
One afternoon, he called me, really pissed off. He had absolutely had it with the bubbly balloon writing. He asked me to read off every single title that this person had written down in the log. Admittedly there were a couple that I could not make out. He went through this exercise largely just to make his point. He did it again the following week. He picked the longest page from the log book that he could find, and I painstakingly read every title to him, one by one.
“Are you sure about that last title?” he would interrupt. “You say it says ‘Metallica’? That’s an M?”
Then a week later, we went through the same exercise again. He made his point. Eventually we switched to a computerized log system, which they had been pushing us to do for a while. That at least ended the long phone calls with the detective, trying to read the girly balloon letters.
My own handwriting is pretty shit, but according to him it was better than big balloon letters!
RECORD STORE TALES PART 308: The Cottage in the Woods
As bad as the stress used to get, there was always one place I could return and truly recharge my batteries: the cottage.
I’d pack a dozen or so CDs (tapes in the early days) and go on long walks with my Discman. Eat some steaks. Check out the water, rivers and funky bridges. The phone never rang. Heck in the early days there were no phones here. No cable TV, no wi-fi.
Today, I created, edited and posted the video you’re about to see in one day, entirely at the cottage. How unimaginable to me back then.
I tried to re-create the experience of being here visually — probably the most peaceful place in the world. I hope this gives you a taste. Enjoy
I can only say so much about this subject, for hopefully obvious reasons. I can say this: Yes, I have had to testify in court, in a case of stolen CDs.
It was the Monday after Mother’s Day, in the year 2000. It was a long, ongoing case, a break and enter. I had forgotten all about it. I had made my written statement a year prior. The store had done nothing wrong. We did everything exactly as we had to, when dealing with a situation like this. As per the instructions of the police, we took all the correct ID from the suspect when buying the CDs, and followed all the correct procedures. When dealing with stolen goods, the police actually preferred us to buy the goods rather than send the person away. That way, they get evidence.
Unfortunately since I was the buyer this time, I was a witness and was therefore subpoenaed to testify. Two of my co-workers from other stores also had to appear in court. I was the only one who decided to wear a suit and tie for my appearance. The other two came in jeans and T-shirts.
“Mike!” laughed Cam. “What are you wearing a suit for? You look like you’re the one on trial!” I looked around. Indeed, the only people who seemed to be dressed as nicely as me were the people who were on trial and their lawyers! And I didn’t look like a lawyer.
“I thought you had to wear a suit to court,” I said in ignorance.
Without going into details, here’s what I remember:
– Cam got a parking ticket because there wasn’t any parking available.
– We spent hours waiting in a room that looked like school class room. Hungry and unable to leave, we decided to order a pizza. We pooled our cash together but didn’t have much left for a tip. I remember that the delivery guy threw the extra coins back at us.
– A year after the incident, I couldn’t remember what the guy looked like. I remember him being big, and bald. That was not enough to satisfy the court that I could recognize the accused. My testimony was all but useless.
I remember reading in the paper a short while later that the defense lawyer got his client off. It wasn’t really a surprise to me.
I only had to go to court twice, both for this one case. The experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The store had paid cash for the CDs we bought from this guy, but we never got compensated for them when the police took them as evidence. In my experience, we only ever got compensated once, and that was just for four CDs. Although we always cooperated with the system, and made sure we always followed procedure, we got burned too.
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