Record Store Tales

Part 96: Aerodouche Dandy

RECORD STORE TALES Part 96:  Aerodouche Dandy

The year:  2003. Aerosmith were in town, playing a private party for Research in Motion.  I know a few people who went.  But I also know someone who ran into Steven Tyler downtown that day.  (As an historic footnote, the opening act for that party was Barenaked Ladies.  Thanks to Melvin Lapandano for that information.)

The person who bumped into Tyler was “Dandy”, one of the biggest assholes I’ve ever worked with.  And that doesn’t even bother him, he used to be proud that he was a dick.  Once he dropped his façade and showed his true colours, I had no use for the guy.  He was the kind of lazy disinterested employee who knew when he was safe to screw the pooch and when he had to work, and who to kiss ass for brownie points.  He was an expert at keeping up appearances.

The only time Dandy did anything (arguably) funny was the time met Steven Tyler downtown.  But he was still a dick.

Aerosmith’s last album, Just Push Play was pretty dismal, loaded with pop, ballads and samples.  Even Joe Perry says it’s his least favourite album.

So, Aerosmith are in town to play the private party.  Dandy’s walking downtown, acting like a douche (that part is speculation, but it’s probably true), when he bumps into Steven Tyler.  The conversation went like this.

Dandy – “Hey!  You’re in Aerosmith, right?”

Tyler – “That’s right, how are you doing man?”

Dandy – “I’m OK.  You guys kind of suck now don’t you?”

Tyler – (frowns and walks away)

Dandy – “Cheers.”

Then, to conclude the story, Dandy told me, “Later on I saw the bass player too.  But I didn’t say anything to him.  He’s just the bass player, so it already sucks enough to be him.”

What a douchebag!

Part 95: Pierced and Scarred

RECORD STORE TALES Part 95: Pierced and Scarred

When you walk into a CD store today, you might see all sorts of colourful characters.  Maybe you’ll see a mohawk, purple hair, piercings and tattoos.  Something about the music scene attracts that sort of style, and young folks in CD stores often emulate their rock star heroes.

Well, not in our store!

When I first started in ’94, the rules were clear:  No weird hair colours, no piercings (not even ears, on men), no visible tattoos.  In a music store.

The rationale behind this was that we were a mall music store – we catered to mall rats who listened to Nine Inch Nails, but also to grannies looking for the new Anne Murray.  We couldn’t scare off the old ladies with an earring.  It all came down to personality really.  The man who called the shots and paid the bills as well as the paycheques didn’t like earrings on men.  He was a pretty clean cut, physically fit, unpierced chap and earrings on men were the opposite of his vision for a record store.

I know.  I know how weird that sounds, for a music store, but rules are rules are rules.

Then in ’95, we hired a girl with a visible back tattoo, so the tattoo rule quietly went out the window.  Guys were still not allowed to have earrings.

In ’97, one of our guys spent the summer in England.  He returned in the fall with a nose ring.  He knew the policy and didn’t care.  The boss decided to bend the rule, since he had “already spent the money” to have the piercing done. This opened the door a crack.  Before too long we had girls with nose rings, guys with eyebrow rings and visible tattoos, and I decided to get my ears pierced.  I put up with a little grief over it (“Why would you want to do that to yourself?”) but the policy was no longer in effect.  We were finally starting to catch up with the rest of the world in general, and music stores specifically!  Our new policy stated that facial piercings were allowed as long as they were not “excessive”.  “Excessive” was never defined, but it was understood that a couple were OK.

I decided I wanted a lip piercing, and later on a nose piercing.  I became very active in the body modification community, making friends in tattoo shops.  (Some of those friends are LeBrain readers today.)  I never went hog wild.  To date I only have two tattoos, and one earring left.  However as I went from my 20’s to my 30’s, working in a music store, I was able to explore different looks.

By 2004, there was a rollback of the piercing policy.  Sales had been slumping thanks to downloading, and changes were made.

While girls were still allowed to keep their nose rings, guys were not.  I was given direct instructions to remove my lip and nose piercings, immediately.  I protested.  “What about our policy?  The policy states that facial piercings are allowed as long as we don’t go into excess, and I only have two, which is less than others.”

The response was, “I know.  The policy was a mistake.  We’re changing the policy back, effective immediately.”

Our Niagara Falls store owner, Lemon Kurri Klopek, was very active in his local tattoo community, and even a tattoo shop overseas, which enabled him to tour there with his band, the Legendary Klopeks.  He sent some reading material written by Shannon Larratt my way, on why allowing piercings in the work place is good for morale and good for a unique store image.  I left these reading materials for my boss, who “filed” them.  I don’t know if he read them or not.  My piercings grew in.

In the long run, this policy change was a good thing.  Don’t get me wrong – it did nothing to fix sales slumps.  It did nothing to herd in old ladies by the gaggle, to purchase Anne Murray discs.  It did succeed in making me ask questions.  One question was, “Since I can’t have the piercings anymore, why don’t I just look for a normal 9-5 job?” The piercings were already out, it only made sense to make a new resume and make some serious life changes.

Part 94: Staffing

Everybody and their little brother wanted to work in a record store.  Why not? It’s the Dream Job.

For most record stores, I imagine staffing is not an issue.  Anybody who can Google can tell you where to buy “Call Me Maybe”, today.  For us though, we were buying and selling used.  We could buy 200 discs in one average day, and might have to look at 600 just to find 200 good ones to buy, plus all our staff were required to be qualified buyers.  It was what set us apart from other stores – you didn’t have to wait for a specific person to sell your stuff.  It would usually take up to 3 months to get a new inexperienced staff member fully trained on everything, including buying.  Someone with experience in a record store might get there in a month or two.

Everybody was always shocked when they heard that.  3 months?  What the hell did it take 3 months to teach people?  A lot.  A lot of kids were looking for a summer job, but there’d be no point hiring a kid for the summer.  If we didn’t get a year out of an employee, it wasn’t worth the training involved!  That was a disappointment for many many kids who wanted to work with us for the summer.  Some just lied and said they would stick around, but bailed at the end of the summer anyway.

Here’s a brief list of things we had to tackle before we even got into buying:

  • Simple things like, how you approach a customer to see if they want help without being annoying.
  • Getting an idea of our quality standards (the highest in town) and policies.
  • Replacing cases – when and how?  You don’t want to waste fresh cases for no reason, and we replaced hundreds a day.
  • Checking and cleaning the CD before selling it – then double checking again to make sure you put the right disc in the case!
  • Looking stuff up inventory, in multiple ways – artist, soundtrack, etc.  This was challenging to those who could not spell/type.  I remember training one guy who could not type “Polyphonic Spree”.  Nope, he typed everything but.  “Polyphonic Speer” was one memorable variation
  • Looking up stuff online for more information. (We had to use Allmusic but I found Google and Wiki more useful – shame that use of Google was blocked on our system for fear of “mis-use”!)
  • Finding that stuff on the shelves once you know it’s in stock.
  • Filing CD’s away in the correct sections.
  • How to handle overstock.
  • How to do the data entry of entering new titles.
  • How to check other stores in the chain for inventory.
  • How to do cash, credit and debit transactions.
  • How to count change properly (if you wanted to balance at night, you had to teach it)!
  • What to clean, when to clean it.
  • Cashing out – how to do it, and how to balance.

Doing all this stuff took about 3 weeks.  There was a lot to remember without hammering them with buying CDs and all the different pricing schemes involved. When we taught our kids how to price discs and what to offer, we had a pretty good layout, but our pricing lookup in our computer system was limited in its usefulness.  Any time a CD got reissued, it got another listing in our catalogue. Some of these reissues might have been physically identical, so for kids to figure out which discs they were looking at was very tricky.

Our computer system had no pictures and no track lists and only a limited amount of info available.  When you get multiple versions of a disc coming in, it could get confusing.  A listing could look like this (but without the helpful but hilarious cover art):

  • Ladano, Mike – LeBrain’s Greatest Hits (1995 1 CD remaster Capitol Records)
  • Ladano, Mike – LeBrain’s Greatest Hits (remaster reissued)
  • Ladano, Mike – LeBrain’s Greatest Hits (14 tracks)
  • Ladano, Mike – LeBrain’s Greatest Hits (2002 remaster)
  • Ladano, Mike – LeBrain’s Greatest Hits (bonus DVD)
  • Ladano, Mike – LeBrain’s Greatest Hits (original)

So imagine some guy coming in with a box of CDs, and every second or third disc you look up had that kind of info for you to sift through – all different prices too!  And God help you if the CD was not listed in the computer and you had to make a “manual” decision!  And lots (lots!) of great music was not in our computers.

You can’t just teach this stuff – it has to come from experience and seeing the same thing come in over and over again.

And none of that even touches on quality.  When we looked at disc quality, we were probably the most anal store in town.  The stuff other stores would sell as “good condition” wouldn’t even make our shelves.  This was a good thing at the point of sale, but very difficult for staff members to deal with when purchasing discs from customers.  They had to look at:

  • Scratches – very carefully.  Anything visible?  How deep?  Can they be buffed out?
  • Can you feel the scratch with a fingernail?  If so, it cannot be buffed out without taking the chance of destroying the CD.
  • Top scratches – the most deadly of all scratches.  They are on the thin top of the CD and actually cut into the aluminum.  Cannot be fixed, but can be seen shining through bright light.
  • Pinholes – don’t usually effect sound quality unless massive.  Can also be seen shining through with a bright light.
  • Packaging – are all elements present?  Front cover, back cover?  Any water damage or rips?
  • Is anything missing?  For example, was it supposed to be a two CD set, but a disc is missing and case changed?
example of pinholes

example of pinholes

And that doesn’t even factor in such things as, “How many copies do we have?  How many copies do our other stores have?  Do we really need to spend time buffing scratches off a Spin Doctors disc, when another store has 4 copies?  None of this stuff can be taught overnight.

So, when kids used to ask me for a summer job, and I would say no – this is why!  I’m sorry I let you down back then, but there was no way I was training you on all this shit for 3 months for you to only stay 3 months!

Part 93.5: Recognition

Missed part 1?  Click here.

Part 2

Even though half a decade has passed, sometimes I still get recognized from the CD store today. Just two weeks ago, I was at a lunch with some friends of my wife. One guy recognized me. “Do you still work at the CD store?” he asked as I said hello to everyone. He was an old regular. Not all regulars still recognize me. An older gentleman, Charles, my best classical customer, didn’t recognize me when he bought classical discs from my garage sale last summer.

Today, I tend to get recognized not for my face but for my name. Rather, my nickname: LeBrain.

I never mentioned how that handle came to be. After winning my umpteenth 4 O’clock 4-play on 107.5 Dave FM, Craig Fee dubbed me with that name. “Mike Ladano and his massive brain…his massive LeBrain!” The nickname stuck, and that is how I became LeBrain. Next thing you know it, we had an entire “Stump LeBrain” week where I guested at the station for a week, and a full month (“LeBrainuary”) of my own 4-play quizzes.

I was first recognized in person by the owner of the local UPS store, while picking up a parcel. “Are you that guy from the radio?” he asked me. Turns out he was a fan. He’d listened to all of LeBrainuary in his store.

I was also recognized by some of the younger chaps at Sausagefest, who thought my voice was familiar. “I know that voice…is that LeBrain?” they said.

I buy a lot of stuff off eBay (you’ve seen much of it here on the blog!), and the girl at my local post office now knows me as LeBrain. She is always excited when my parcels come in. “What’s in this one?” she’ll ask.

“Oh, that one is a rare Maiden 12” single,” I’d say.

“Cool! That’s awesome!” One time, she knew one of my parcels had arrived immediately, because the seller had put a Kiss sticker on the box. I walked into the post office, and she said, “I know which parcel is yours!” with an excited tone in her voice. She explained that she heard me on radio earlier as LeBrain.

So, to Post Office Girl: Sorry, I don’t even know your name. I would like to dedicate this blog to you, and my 15 minutes of fame!

Part 93.0: Recognition

Part 1

I used to get recognized a lot, from the record store. Work in one place with customers for 12 years and eventually you start to see familiar faces in the streets. It was both good and bad.

For example, the bad: One time I was sitting in the mall, on my lunch break. With my face full of pizza, a man walked up to me.

“I can see you’re eating your lunch, and that’s fine. I’d like to see you later about returning a tape.” Like, dude? That couldn’t have waited?

That was a small minority of times. Often people that recognized you would politely ignore you, or at least be friendly about it.

I’d be walking through the mall, and some guy would nod at me. I’d nod back, not really knowing who the person was, but not letting on. One time I was walking through a park, and these two kids stopped. “Hey look! That’s the guy from the CD store!” I smiled and waved sheepishly. I was a celebrity of sorts I guess?

The most common thing would be being recognized in a rival store. Often I’d be shopping at my local HMV store, or downtown at one of the more collector-oriented places.  I’d love it when, in another store, somebody would ask me if I had a CD in stock.  I once used a pay phone (no cell back then) to call and ask, but I’d think to myself:  Really?  You think I have them all memorized or something? 

Most of the time though, it was a simple, “Hey man! What are you doing here? Checking out the competition?”

While I did sometimes “check out” the competition (comparing prices and selection), the main goal was always to find rare musical treasures.  Besides, a lot of other record store people in town had come selling discs to me numerous times.  Usually it was pretty friendly.  It was better to have friends at the rival stores than enemies.  I even had a buddy at HMV send customers my way, when he knew that something was out of print!  So, being recognized in public as “that guy from (insert name here)” wasn’t a bad thing.

To be continued

Part 92: Jingles

We’d always done radio ads.  They weren’t mindblowing, but a lot of people responded to them.  You’d get people calling every single week saying, “I heard your ad on the radio.  You buy used CDs?”  Radio ads were also expensive, so obviously you wanted to hit a home run every time.

What I didn’t know is that we had a radio jingle.  I didn’t know until I started getting prank called by kids.  I’d pick up the phone, hear a couple kids giggling, and then recite this jingle to me.  Then they’d laugh some more and hang up.  I was perplexed.  I had no idea what they were singing.  

I went to one of the people in Operations.  “These kids just called me singing this song with our store in the words.  What the hell was that?”

“Oh that’s our radio jingle.  Haven’t you heard it before?”

Hell no!  If I had I’m sure I would have spoken my mind.  Later on I heard the actual jingle.  It wasn’t…bad…it was just…not good.  Today, it still haunts my darkest dreams.

Back in the day, the boss used to always ask our opinions on our ads.  “What do you think of this one?”  We’d throw in our two cents.  As the company grew we weren’t consulted anymore.  I’m not sure who was consulted, but it sure wasn’t us!  We had no issues being honest, positive or negative, and maybe we just said “that sucks” one too many times in the past.  Either way our opinion wasn’t sought.  But mine sure was given after the fact.  When kids start pranking you making fun of your jingle, that’s probably not a good sign.

The funny thing is, Meat already came up with a much better jingle.

Him and Tom used to eat at this greasy spoon place in (I think) London.  Tom used to say, “Man, the food here isn’t good, but it’s cheap.”  Meat would respond, “Yeah, just think about the money you save on the food.”  And that turned into a jingle.

In his best Michael McDonald voice, Meat would close his eyes tight and croon, “Think about the money you saaaaaave on the food!”  It was hilarious.

So, the next logical step was, “Think about the money you saaaaaave on the tunes!”  Perfect! 

The jingle was never used.  But what do I know?  It’s not like I’ve ever had my own theme songs played on the radio…

Thanks Marko Fox for the sound clip of the first broadcast of my custom made Marko theme!

Part 91: Pull the Trigger

There were some discs that we were never short of.  We always had them.  Cheap.  Add your staff discount to that, and you could get a lot of stuff dirt cheap.  But the discs themselves were so common, they were always in stock.  Therefore they never were a priority for me at the time.  Soundtracks and compilations were a great example of this.  Last Action Hero, Super Mario Bros, these could be had for super cheap, any time, and they all contained exclusive music by cool bands like Megadeth, Anthrax, Extreme, and so on.

One disc that I never picked up before was the soundtrack to a bad horror movie called Shocker, by Wes Craven.  The soundtrack had numerous stars on it – members of Kiss, Motley Crue, Alice Cooper, Whitesnake, Van Halen, and more.  The title song was a Paul Stanley rocker performed by Paul and Desmond Child in an all-star band called The Dudes of Wrath, and it wasn’t a bad song.  There was also another Paul tune on here called “Sword and Stone”, recorded by a band called Bonfire.

(Now, here’s the interesting thing about “Shocker”, the song.  Desmond Child wrote the guitar lick, a very Platinum Blonde-esque part that is almost identical to the one in a Kiss song released at the same time, called “King of Hearts”.  And who wrote that?  Paul and Desmond Child.  It’s the same freakin’ thing.)

Anyway, long story short:  I never pulled the trigger while I was at the store.  I’m still today in the process of replacing my cassettes on CD, and this is one.  The CD was just too common, it was always in stock and I always had better things to spend my money on.  I could have got it for $4 at any point over the years.  I should have.

Look at this one, that I paid $12 for from Amazon Marketplaces.  The spine is cut as a promo.  The front is scuffed.  The CD has some scratches on it.  This is all stuff that wouldn’t have happened in my store.  Even if it was a cut promo, every case was replaced if not already like new.  Not to mention I had complete control to be picky about quality before I bought.  Not to mention that in the past, I had numerous chances to get Shocker uncut. Now, unfortunately, the disc is less common.

I wished I’d pulled the trigger back then!

Part 90: The Speaker

In any business you have to get yourself noticed.  You have to make yourself known to the people.  You see some places like restaurants and music stores with small speakers outside, playing music, letting people know, “Hey, we’re open!”

We attempted the same thing, but less successfully…I hated that damned speaker.

Somewhere we dug up the biggest oldest speaker from the 1970’s.  It was ancient, massive, and weighed a ton.  It also sounded like garbage, but was hooked up to a 5 disc changer playing the top 40.  That part was OK, because it was always better for me to have top 40 playing outside, not inside!

We all hated the speaker.  It was heavy as hell so some people had trouble putting it in and out each day.  But that was only one issue.  We also had the other problems:

  1. “That speaker is too damn loud!  Turn it down or turn it off!”  We’d get this complaint from other tenants in the plaza.  
  2. We had also our fine neighbors, restaraunts and pawn shops and so on, complain about the lack of variety.  Could we please hear something other than Big Shiny Tunes this week?  Stuff like that.
  3. Just like our sidewalk sign, it took up half the sidewalk, meaning people would occasionally walk headlong right into it.
  4. “Hey, what’s that song you were just playing outside?”  Not a bad reaction, getting people to buy a CD that we were playing.  Problem:  I couldn’t hear the outside music.  So I’d have to take a look at what discs were in the player and take a guess.  And when it’s all top 40 crap that sounds the same, well, that could take a while!

I hated polluting the quiet mornings with Much Dance, I just wished one day somebody would have stolen that damned speaker.  Hah, fat chance.  Not only was it huge but who the hell would have wanted it?

That’s our speaker right there dammit!

Part 89: Pranks 3.0 – The Case of the Disappearing Mars Bar

MARS

RECORD STORE TALES PART 89:  Prank 3.0 – The Case of the Disappearing Mars Bar

 

Rewind to 1994.

It was just one store, and just the three of us:  Trevor, myself, and the owner.  We had an awesome comraderie back then, and it was based both on mutual respect and humour.  At the time I doubt there would have been a better more knowledgeable staff at any store in town than us three.

But we joked around a lot.  It wasn’t beyond us to “tag” another one with a magnetic security tag somewhere on their clothing, setting off alarms everywhere.  It was all in good fun.

I showed up for work one night with a small bag, just a soda and a Mars bar inside.  I always came in early to check out what was newly arrived.  As I unpacked, my boss looked at my sorry excuse for a dinner and admonished me.  Always health conscious, he asked me about the Mars bar and if I knew how much sugar that was and so on.  “How can you eat this crap?” he finished.  I chuckled; I was 22  and hadn’t given it any thought.  He was mostly just ribbing me anyway.

Meanwhile, the boss was going through the cash register to decide what we needed in terms of small change.   Then, he sent me to the bank to do the change run, before he packed it in for the day.  When I returned with the change, he left me with instructions for the evening and departed.  I went about my business picking out discs to listen to that night.  (Based on the period I calculate with 97.8% certainty that one of those titles would have been Superunknown by Soundgarden, Balls to Picasso by Bruce Dickinson, or Jar of Flies by Alice in Chains.)

It was a slow night, and a couple hours later I had the munchies.  My Mars bar…it was gone!

I looked everywhere for it.  It could have fallen behind the counter.  Or maye I left it on top of a pile of discs?  No luck.  It didn’t turn up.  I know I brought it because I talked about it with…with my boss!

I had fallen victim to the classic “Steal the Snacks” game.  It wouldn’t be the last, and it’s a game I took to playing myself.  I love the way he blindsided me with the health talk on the Mars bar.  I didn’t even see it coming!

Part 88: The Only Time I Called the Cops

October.  These two shady, shady guys came in looking for the new “Limp Daddy” (Limp Bizkit).  After buying “Limp Daddy” they told me they had a van full of stereo equipment, good prices, did I want to buy anything?  No thanks!  I’d seen guys like this around before, selling stolen speakers and car decks.

They came back later in the day to buy more stuff, in total they dropped about $200 in a day.  They were just buying whatever crap was on the charts that they had heard.  They were buying discs like they didn’t care.  Good for sales, yes, but I had this vibe that they would be back.

Sure enough a couple weeks later they were back to return the discs they bought.  They had been opened and played.

“I used my boss’ money to buy these, and he doesn’t want them, so I need my money back.”

Now, this wasn’t the most unique reason I’d heard for returning discs, I’ve heard much more original reasons over the years.  (“I got five of these for my birthday so I need to return all of them”, “I found this”, “I’m not allowed to have this”)    But I guess this guy’s boss was pissed about him spending the money on discs.  Maybe he should have thought of that before he spent his boss’ money.

And knowing that this guy sold stolen car stereo equipment for a living, I’d hate to meet his boss.

I explained our return policy and told him that once he’s opened the wrapper and kept it for two weeks there was nothing I could do for him besides buy it back used, at a greatly reduced cost.

“Can’t you just re-seal it and sell it again?” he asked.

“No, because it’s not new anymore.  It’s used.”

“Well then what are all those sealed discs I see behind you there?” he persisted.

“Those are brand new, I can’t just seal up a disc and sell it for $16 man!”

“Oh man, my boss is going to kill me.  You have to do something for me,” he moaned.

“I wish I could, but really after this much time…I mean my boss would kill me too.”

“You have to give me the money back.  I’m not leaving until I get it,” he threatened.  I never did too well with threats at work.  I don’t like people getting my back up against the wall.  It doesn’t work with me.  Threatening me was the one way to make sure I don’t give you what you wanted.  Any chance of him getting even a dime out of me just ended.

“Well, I guess if you want to stay, we’re open ‘til 9.  You’re going to have to move though.  I have other customers that need to pay.”

He really, really didn’t like that.  His buddy stood silent behind him laughing as he continued to make a nuisance of himself.

“Yeah?  You want me to move?  I’m not moving.  I’m standing right here until you give me my money.”

“Well, you’re going to have to move when people want to pay, just telling you right now.  This is a business not a hangout,” I said.

“Yeah?  This is a business eh?  Do you like it when I push these buttons?  Or how about this, do you like when I play with your computer?”  He reached over the counter and started hammering keys on my keyboard, and buttons on our VISA machine.  The VISA machine beeped in protest as he continued to hit buttons, and windows began popping up on my computer screen.

“If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to have to call the cops.”

“Yeah?  You’d like that wouldn’t you?  Go ahead and call them.  Go ahead.”  He grabbed my phone.  “Call them.  Go ahead.”

“I just did,” I said as I hit the panic button.

Well next thing you know, him and his buddy were out the door without another word.  They bailed and they bailed fast.  The cops called to confirm the emergency and I told them that the two trouble makers had left.  They told me to call back if I had trouble with them again.  (I’m sure they would have been interested in the stereo equipment in their van!)

Of course after a confrontation like that, you worry about the person returning.  My buddy Shane Schedler, who is about 7 feet tall and 250 lbs, came in later that night and I told him how my day had gone.  I told him about the two dudes in the van and how I had to call the cops on them.

“Do you want me to stay until you close?  I don’t mind you know,” Shane said.  It was getting close to closing time anyway.

“Yeah!  That would be fine, I appreciate that man.  They wouldn’t mess with a guy your size.”

Shane laughed.  I’m sure he knew that.

A week later I did see the guys again, in the parking lot.  Incredibly, they apologized for their behaviour.  That part was a first!