Record Store Tales

Part 34: SPECIAL! “Bands That I Think Suck” FROM THE ARCHIVES!

I was cleaning out the closet two weeks ago.  I found a folder, full of old writing.  I found stuff that I had written with chums Danesh and Andy back in highschool.  But most interestingly, I found this.  This is not my first published work (that would be an article about turtles from grade 2 in the local newspaper).  This may be, however, my first published work along the lines of what I’m doing now.

Dating back to 1995, my second year at the store, I was already getting jaded!  This is my very first music article:  “Bands That I Think Suck”.  It was published in the University of Waterloo paper Scientific Notation as a comedy piece.  Thanks to Abbas Rizvi for doing so, wherever you are.

I still stand by most of this, but I have since grown to like Pink Floyd.  (See:  Part 28: The Boy Who Killed Pink Floyd). 

OK…ON WITH THE EMBARASSMENT!

Part 33: Special Orders

New CD special orders were something we did, but not frequently, because often the person wouldn’t pick the disc up. At one point in 1995/1996 though, we got this new distributer who had the most insane shit in his catalogue. Our own stock improved dramatically because of this. Suddenly we were carrying the Japanese import Hormoaning by Nirvana in our regular stock.  We were also getting in these UK-issued Iron Maiden imports with bonus discs of B-sides.  They are rare and highly coveted today.  Trevor and I oversaw the stocking of this stuff.  Trevor was made store manager of this first location in 1996, and I was given my own store a few months later.

For me personally these were the peak years, when Trevor and I had the most creative control over the store.  For example I remember we had a “forthcoming releases” board, that Trev and I updated every month.  As a joke, we always had Guns N’ Roses on the board as coming “in 6 months”.  This is because even back in 1996, the new GN’R album was constantly being announced and then delayed.

It came out for real in 2009.

We were also alble to use this new distributer to add to our own collections.  For myself, I ordered a complete set of the afforementioned Maiden collections, 10 albums altogether.  I also got all the new Maiden singles as they came out.  It was a great time to be a collector, and if Trev and I thought something was worth stocking, we had the freedom to do so.  We were starting to carry Oasis singles, where they had always avoided that kind of stock before.

Trevor had his finger on the pulse of what was coming out.  He tweaked onto Oasis very early.  He got me into it very quickly.  In a time when good new rock bands were few and far between, Oasis were a breath of fresh air to me.  For a change, a band inspired by the classics like the Beatles and Stones, not another punk or grunge band. 

One thing Trev and I tried to special order for ourselves, but never managed to get, were the Japanese imports of the first two Oasis discs.  They each contained bonus tracks:  “Sad Song”, and “Bonehead’s Bank Holiday” respectively, both great tracks.

Sometimes a customer would special order something, and you couldn’t wait to see it come in.  I remember a guy ordered Twisted Sister’s Live at Hammersmith, back in a time when it was absolutely impossible to find any Twisted Sister in any stores, let along a double live.  I couldn’t wait to check out the tracklisting.  My buddy Aaron special ordered the Sloan 2 CD edition of One Chord, but we failed to hook him up.  He bought it elsewhere.  No hard feelings Aaron.

I probably special ordered stuff for myself more than Trev did.  Trev had a saying:  “Don’t buy it new.  If you buy it new, it’ll come in used a week later.”  And he actually had a pretty good batting average with that saying.  I would say a good 75% of the time, when Trev or myself bought something new like a special order, we saw a used copy come in within the next 7 days.

It was almost like magic. 

Nowadays, there’s never a need to special order anything.  Amazon and eBay are both happy to do that for you.  New or used.  And the collection grows….

Part 32: Pranks 1.0 – Live in Japan

 

DP

RECORD STORE TALES Part 32:  Pranks 1.0 – Live in Japan

“Mike, do you have a Deep Purple live album that is three discs?”  I got this call from Trevor in early 1996.  I was at home and I wasn’t working that day.

“Is it called Live In Japan?” I asked.

“Yeah…sure is.  Three discs.  Looks cool man!  We just got it in, used!”

I told Trev to hold onto it, and I’d be there in 10 minutes.  I hopped into my Chrysler Sundance, threw a Deep Purple cassette in the deck, and turned the key.

I was collecting Deep Purple at the time.  My record collecting went in spurts.  I’d always meant to start collecting the Purple canon, but their most recent album Purpendicular totally re-ignited the fire.  In a few short months, I had already picked up When We Rock We Rock, Concerto for Group and Orchestra, King Biscuit Flower Hour, Shades Of, and The Book of Taleisyn.

I got to the store, only to see Trevor standing there with my buddy Rob V.  Rob V., who in my University days, had schooled me on the ins and outs of Deep Purple.  Rob V., who was the only other person in my circle of friends who knew about Live In Japan, by Deep Purple.  I had just been punked.

There was no CD in stock.  There was only my red face for falling for it!   Damn guys!  This wasn’t the only time that they pulled this one on me, but it was the only time I fell for it.

Part 31: Quest For Music Videos!

Back in 1985 or so, MuchMusic was the window through which we discovered the vast majority of heavy metal.  For a while there, my sister had good taste in music.  Her favourite band was Motley Crue.  She was obsessed with their tall, tall hair.  I taped her the first two albums, Too Fast For Love and Shout At The Devil on two sides of a 90 minute tape.

Together, we watched a shitload of videos.  Our favourites were often the ones where the band seemed to be on some sort of quest, or adventure!  Some of these videos I haven’t seen in years, so forgive me if the memories are hazy…

Motley Crue – “Too Young To Fall In Love”.  It seems like some little kid is telling Motley Crue something important, and then they kick some ass.  My sister used to say to me, “I think that kid is telling Nikki Sixx to stand up.” 

Lionheart – “Die For Love”. You gotta see this one. Dennis Stratton, ex Iron Maiden. This evil guy in a white suit and a wheelchair has a pretty blonde girl captive! The band must come to the rescue! I hope their hair doesn’t get mussed! Good song though. Great song, even. SERIOUSLY funny video though, like those poses…the singer jumps around…they kind of dance-fight with the bad guys….

Queensryche – “Queen of the Reich”.  The Queen turned them to stone!

Thor – “Knock ‘Em Down”.  Thor (Also known of Jon Mikel Thor) was this musclebound metal singer, and his video was hilarious.  This evil space-witch named Pantera enslaves the population of the world below!  Thor, riding in his space ship (which is obviously a Millenium Falcon model with some battleship parts glued to it, and crewed by nothing but big-breasted women), beams down!  The evil space-witch shoots him with her red eye lasers, but Thor reflects it back with his mighty hammer!  The space-witch is defeated!

Dio – “The Last In Line”.  That video actually scared me a little, with the monsters leaking fluid and stuff.  I’m glad the kid got out of hell, although it looks like Dio has to stay.

Dio – “Holy Diver”.  Always the hero, Dio awkwardly weilds a sword that is obviously too big for his tiny frame.  But he does slay an ugly dude who doesn’t put up much of a fight.  Is that Jimmy Bain?  George used to say Vinny Appice is the guy forging the sword.  Is this true?

Grim Reaper – “Fear No Evil”.  The band ride into action on an armored APC (Asskicking Personnel Carrier), with spikes and tusks!  They must free the slaves of the evil minotaur.  Steve Grimmitt breaks the chains of the slaves with his bare hands! 

Armored Saint – “Can U Deliver”.  At least the beginning part, they seem to be looking for a sword in a desert!  A techno-coloured desert!

And of course, Kiss – “All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose”.  Gene doesn’t seem too impressed with Paul’s swordplay.  Vinnie looks less like a chick than in the previous video.  The post-nuclear holocaust seems to have somehow increased the size of women’s breases, if this video is to be trusted.

Part 30: Sausagefest

I can’t believe we’re already at Part 30.  And we’re just getting started, folks.  Stories have been collected, going back a decade.

For Part 30, something of a milestone I guess, we’ll do something special.

SAUSAGEFEST

Much like a secret society, men today speak of Sausagefest in hushed tones.

Earlier, I mentioned Tom and Eric (“Uncle Meat”) and something called Sausagefest (in a previous chapter).  What happens at Sausagefest, stays at Sausagefest.  Mostly.  But here’s what I can tell you.

The heart and core of Sausagefest is the annual Top 100 list.  The format has varied slightly over the years, but it remains largely unchanged.  They take votes from all attendees, months in advance, of their top 100 song picks that year.  They tabulate them, and over two crazy nights in an undisclosed but vast outdoor location, they count them down one by one.

Beer is consumed.  Sausage is eaten.  There are no vegetarians at Sausagefest.  I have packed Froot Roll Ups in the past but that’s it for me.  The rest is all sausage, and succulent marinated lamb for me.

The top 100 list was started by Eric and his buddy Derek back in 1990.  It was New Year’s Eve, and he collected a top 100 list and put together the tapes (!) himself.  He often had to borrow a CD from somebody to do it, because there was no web.   An evening would typically run from 5pm to 3am, solid with tunes and the odd skit in between.

This went on for three years.  Much later, in 2002, the concept was reinvented as Sausagefest.  The setting was now a pristine scenic valley with a river running through it.  Awesome.  A generator powers the wall of sound, and there are no neighbors to complain about the noise.

The top 100 is usually epic in scale and scope.  You will hear everything from AC/DC to Zappa, as far out as Dixie Dregs, and as local as Helix.  You will hear Lightfoot, Cash, Nelson, and Kristofferson.  Maiden and Priest are regulars, and the thrash gets positively evil.  Mercyful Fate anyone?

The story goes like this:  Tom was frustrated one night and blurted out, “We need just an all-guys’ weekend. We can have it up at the farm.  Summer weekend  No chicks.  And it will be called Sausagefest…’cause if you dont have your own personal sausage…you can’t come!”

The “moment of clarity”, as they say, was instant.   They both knew they had to do this, and that the music would be the core of it.  Only these two guys could have cooked up and executed an idea like this at that moment.   The planets were aligned or something.  I bet if you knew the exact date that they invented Sausagefest, you would be able to find that a supernova happened that day too.

Again they did it on cassette.  Tom’s music collection was massive at that point, about 1500 discs and a growing collection of vinyl.   Only these guys had the resources to do it.  Finding these songs, on download, at the time?  Very difficult.

For the record, the very first #1 at the very first year was “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”!  Epic.

So Sausagefest was born, and the first one was a success.  Unfortunately I did not attend the first four.  In fact I didn’t attend a single one until I had quit the record store.  2006 was my first Sausagefest.  For many of them, I simply could not get the weekend off.  Everybody wants time off in the summer, and the actual date for Sausagefest wasn’t always known with enough notice.

The other factor in me not going was I was really stuck in a rut at the time with the store.   I was paranoid to leave town.  There were fuckups literally all the time that needed to be fixed, fires that needed to be put out, that I never felt comfortable leaving.  The very last vacation I ever took at the store was 2002.  No coincidence.

However once I was free of that fear, I drove up with no tent and just a cooler full of meat, water, and Roll Ups.  Actually no, that’s not true!  I was told there was no need to bring meat, because there was so much there, it wouldn’t be a problem.  So just water and Roll Ups, that first year!  I slept in my car.

At night, the music starts and the air guitars come out.  But the days have their own traditions.

An Iron Maiden loving guy named Zach brings the lamb.  He brings more every year and there is still not enough to satisfy my hunger.  It is incredible.  Zach is the lamb lord.  Some people put it on bread but I just eat it right with the fingers.  It’s an incredible meal, every year.

There is always beer and plenty of it.  A beer wagon was actually rented for two of the years.  Beer is consumed in massive quantities.  There is always one guy passed out before the top 100 really even gets going.  But that’s OK.  Nobody’s driving anywhere.  Sean often picks up coffee for the boys in the mornings but that’s about it.  We’re in it for the long haul.  And I mean long haul.  Music is often still playing at 3am.

My problem is I can’t sleep in at all, so I’m up by 7.  I’ll grab a book, a beer, and a chair and head down to the river.  My first Sausagefest, I was reading Dune.  It was incredible reading it in the river with nobody even awake yet.

The toilet is always a highlight.  I’m convinced that the boys rented a Porta-Potty for me specifically my first year, to keep me coming back.  Because there hasn’t been one since.  Why?  I don’t know.  We could easily collect for it, just like we do beer.  But they don’t do it!  I’m convinced it’s because part of the Sausagefest experience is shitting in the woods.

I won’t lie, I love peeing outdoors.  I’m not the only one either.  In a survey done at work, 3 out of 4 men enjoy peeing outdoors.  It’s just a natural expression of the animal side that is a part of nature, or something.  That’s what I tell my wife anyway.  What did our ancestors do?  Pee outside.  It’s social.  I’ll be at Sausagefest peeing, and another guy will pee next to me, and be like, “Hey man, how’s it going?  Good tunes eh?”  Anyway, I’m getting off topic again.

There’s a chair with a hole in the seat that you’re supposed to shit in, and the tree next to it has toilet paper hanging from the branch.  Personally I don’t want to see someone else’s shit.  Just a thing I have, I guess.  So I shit in the river.  Yes, I shit in the river.  The river is fast-flowing, like a toilet, but it’s cold.  You turtle right up stepping in.  But it’s also like a combo toilet/bidet.  You’re clean when you’re all done.  And I’ve seen dogs shit in it, so….

The worst thing about Sausagefest is, in fact, the shits.  You’re eating nothing but greasy (but delicious!) meat (not Meat!).  Every year, it is up early on Sunday morning (always by 6:00 am) on on the road, as fast as possible, to an actual bathroom!

Unfortunately, as stated, what happens at Sausagefest stays at Sausagefest, so I really can’t get too much into the stories.  I will say this.  It’s something that I look forward to every summer.  All of those guys do.  We talk about it when we arrive, how this event can be the best weekend of your entire year.  It’s also strange how time stands still up at the farm.  “Wow, just doing that drive up here, it’s so familiar like I was just here last week.”  It happens every year.  You get there and it feels like you never really left.

The music, combined with the fellowship, and of course the sweet joy of swimming in the river when it gets hot, makes this almost a spiritual place.  A Mecca for those about to rock, so to speak.  It is a secret society that I am proud to be a member of.

Part 29: Klassic Kwotes V!

1.  “LARS!  Stop that!”  Said by a long-haired dad, to his rat-tailed little brat kid. The dad was wearing a Metallica shirt.

2. “Can you fix this CD?”  We were presented a copy of disc 4 of the Led Zeppelin box set, almost snapped completely in half, so massive was the crack.  For the record, if anyone’s curious:  NO!  You can’t fix a CD with a crack in it! 

3. “Do you want to see a picture of me, dressed up as Snake Eyes, from G.I. Joe?”  I really wish I could remember the context of this one!

4. “Do you have any nice music for the kids?  Not that Backstreet Boys shit.  We don’t like that black music.”  Do I really need to comment?

5. I was buying a large quantity of discs from a lady, but she really wasn’t happy with the offer.  The CD that I was paying the highest for happened to be an Elton John disc, Yellow Brick Road.  One of the lady’s kids asked, “Mommy, why is he paying the most for that one?”  The mother points at me and says, “Probably because he’s a fruit.”

6. Little known fact:  4 out of every 5 parents shopping in CD stores don’t watch their kids.  Surprised?  I bet you’re not!  This one bad parent wasn’t watching as his kid systematically pulled every CD down from an entire section and threw them in a big pile on the floor.  I was at the register and the section was not visible to me, and with the kid being so small I didn’t see anybody over there.  When I saw him, I said, “Oh, no!”  The dad looked over and said, “No big deal, it’s only a couple of discs.  You’ll have them back up there in no time.”  Perhaps, but doing it in alphabetical order took 4 hours.

7. “Can I light up in here?”  Again, no comment required.

8. “What the fuck did you do to your head?” Said to me by a guy after I bleached my hair blonde the first time.  (Can’t actually blame him on this one.  It was memorable.)

9. “How much would it cost to buy every CD in here?”  This very odd question was asked numerous times over the years by curious children.  Why?  I’m not really sure.

10. “Do you want to buy a picture of me with Phil Donahue?”  Said to me, once again, by Snake the Tattoo Man.

HELIX VIDEO featuring SNAKE THE TATTOO MAN!

Part 28: The Boy Who Killed Pink Floyd

Hiring a regular customer almost never worked out.  The first time we did it, we hired this kid…we’ll call him Todd.  Yeah.  Todd was just getting into Pink Floyd at the time we hired him.  He was also getting into a couple other things that may have influenced that, but we won’t talk about that.

Todd lasted a few months.  During those months, he played Floyd on every single shift.  Every.  Fucking.  Shift.

I didn’t own any Floyd back then, but before Todd, I was enjoying their tunes such as “Learning To Fly” and “Keep Talking”.  I could have become a Floyd fan officially, at any time, if not for Todd.

I burned out on Floyd in a matter of  days.  We worked together every weekday and a couple weekends for a month setting up that store.  The first two weeks were manageable, but after that, I could have strangled lil’ Todd.  I asked him to cut down the Floyd, it didn’t have much effect.  I guess I could have given him a direct order to cut the Floyd, since I was his boss.  However I was a much nicer person back then, and I had been subjecting Todd to Deep Purple something fierce.

The Floyd though, it reached such levels that I could not bear.  I fucking hated Pink Floyd!  I couldn’t listen to Floyd again for seven years!   Girls would come over to the house.  “Don’t you have any Floyd?”  No!  I don’t have any fucking Floyd!

I have quite a bit of Floyd now, the scars from those days have completely healed.  But I will let you in on a little secret.

Todd reinvented himself as a Game of Thrones fan — no Floyd in sight anywhere — and I find that hilarious.

Part 27: Store Play

Another suggestion from Tommy Morais, my Amazon rock buddy from the east!  He wants to read about glam rock bands, and Canadian bands!  I played a lot of each at the store, especially in the earliest days.  I’m gonna throw some prog and metal in here too.  Here’s some of my fondest memories.

LeBRAIN’S STORE-PLAY CLASSICS!

1996.  We had just opened our flagship store, and I was selected as manager.  This meant I’d be working alone for most of the day, and I could play what I wanted.  In the earliest days there were fewer rules.  The boss might make fun of me for playing Poison, but in the old days, he never told me to take it off as long as it was only once in a while.

I remember playing glam metal stuff like:

Poison – Native Tongue.  I enjoyed trying to turn kids onto music they’d like, but would never touch if they knew who it was.  It sometimes worked!  I think I sold one copy of Native Tongue that way, anyway.

Motley Crue – self titled.  This is in my top three Motley records of all time.  The one without Vince Neil.  A guy from the HMV store in Waterloo gave me props for playing it.  I once sold it to a guy who hated the latest Crue, Generation Swine.  I turned him onto self titled instead.  Instant fan.

David Lee Roth – Your Filthy Little Mouth.  I played this a shit-ton in the spring of 1995 too.  I don’t know why I like it so much, it’s so cheesey.  Dave does country!  Dave does reggae!  Dave does jazzy loungy stuff!  Dave does VH!  But Dave does write hilarious lyrics, and I did like that.

Van Halen – Any time, any where, any how.   But any time we had a copy of 1984?  Hell yeah!  And you couldn’t keep Best Of Volume I in stock for very long.  Certainly not if you played it.  The first year or two it was out, I probably sold it every time I played it!

Def Leppard – Slang.  Again, much like the Poison and Crue, I was trying to turn new kids onto these classic bands that had explored new directions.  Unfortunately, Slang sold like shit.  I think it was too different for the old fans, and too old for the new fans.

And now let’s talk about Prog rock.  Ashleigh used to call prog music “smart-guy rock”.   That’s one reason why I wanted to play it every shift we shared.  I was trying to show her I was a smart guy, see?

Marillion – Misplaced Childhood.  I played Marillion so frequently, that my co-workers Matty K and Ashleigh knew the words to some songs.  Unfortunately, they didn’t consider that a good thing.

Fish – Kettle of Fish.  See above!

Dream Theater – Images and Words.  This came in so rarely, that when it did you had to play it.  It always sold if you played it.  We had so many musicians and wanna be’s (like me) coming into the store, they inevitably would ask what the fuck is this?  This one kid, a drummer named Curtis, loved Dream Theater.  I sold him his first Dream Theater.  Do you know how cool that is, selling somebody their first Dream Theater?  Curtis is a fantastic musician.  He’s jammed with my sister, actually.

Rush – Moving Pictures.  Like nails on a chalkboard to the girls in the Operations staff.  Could not play this if they were in the city, let alone the store.  But my fuck, what an album.  I remember Tom put a sticker on it that said, “Best album of the 80’s!”.  I thought to myself, “Then I need to hear the whole thing!”  I had never heard “Vital Signs” before.  I am sure Matty K remembers to this day, “Everybody got to evelate from the norm”.

And speaking of Rush!  I did a lot of Canadian themes.  We had a 5 disc changer.  A lot of the time, I would specifically pick 5 Canadian artists to take up a shift.  You’d often hear:

Sloan – 4 Nights at the Palais Royale.  In my opinion one of the top five live albums of all time.  It is also my favourite Sloan album.

Stompin’ Tom Connors – Anything we had in the store would work, as he didn’t come in frequently.  Unfortunately, Stompin’ Tom didn’t fare too well for store play in Kitchener.  Nobody seems to like him in this town.

Rush – duh?

Triumph – ditto.

Kim Mitchell / Max Webster – Another artist our Operations people hated.  I did one entire 5 disc shuffle of nothing but Kim and Max.  Kim was playing in town that day so I was hoping to drum up some sales.  I failed to do so, but I did try.  I was told to remove the Kim and Max from the player.

Helix / Brian Vollmer – I’d play Helix when it was in, which was infrequent.  I remember playing the Brian Vollmer solo album for Kevin, one of the guys that ended up in my wedding party.  I played the song “Good Times Don’t Get Better Than This” in the store.  I thought he would enjoy it.  Unfortunately, he did not.  I believe the words he used were, “This is not good.”  Kevin, I kindly submit that I strongly disagree to this day.

Even more rarely though came the opportunity to play the early stuff, the stuff with Brent Doerner singing lead.  Once — just once — Breaking Loose and White Lace & Black Leather came in.  I’m kicking myself for not buying them.  But when they were in store, I played “Billy Oxygen” on repeat for about 20 minutes.

Oscar Peterson – I only had the opportunity to do that once though.

Voivod – self titled.  The first one with Newsted.  Metallica had come out with St. Anger and a lot of fans didn’t like it.  I tried to sell this, which was more traditionally prog metal like old Metallica.

Incidentally, at the same time,  I was training a new franchisee around that time.  He was amused by how excited I was that the album Angel Rat, by Voivod, had come in, with 3D glasses intact.  I explained that usually these would be missing, but the CD was mint!  And “Clouds In My House” sounded great in-store!

Voivod crosses the boundary from prog into metal (or is it vice versa?), but I certainly did play a lot of metal in the store.

Bruce Dickinson – Balls To Picasso.  I played this virtually every shift during the fall of 1994.  At the time, I thought “Tears of the Dragon” and “Change of Heart” were among the deepest songs I’d ever heard.  Yeah, well.

Iron Maiden – Brave New World.  I love this album.  Matty K knows every word of “Blood Brothers”.

G//Z/R – Plastic Planet.  Easily the heavist thing I have ever played in store.  Even I was uncomfortable!

sHeavy – The Electric Sleep.  Incidentally, the greatest Black Sabbath album that was not made by Black Sabbath.  Every time, people would ask, “Is this the new Ozzy?”  Every time.  You could put money on it.

Judas Priest – Turbo.  It was the only one I could get away with!

Man, those were good times!   I am sure I could write another dozen of these.  I mean, we played a lot of music.  From Esquivel to Brushy One-String to Pansy Division to Jaymz Bee & the Royal Jelly Orchestra, we tried and sampled everything.

Part 26: You Wanted the Best, You Got the Best…

My Amazon reviewing buddy Tommy Morais suggested that we talk a bit about 80’s Kiss.  And why not?  I think 80’s Kiss is an under appreciated era.  Sure, some of those albums are under par.  But some of those albums are also among the best that Kiss have ever done.

It’s a good suggestion, so I’ll go with it.  Here ya go, Tommy.  80’s Kiss.  My take. In the order I got heard the music.

80’s KISS

I grew up in the 80’s.  While I knew “Rock and Roll All Nite”, my real introduction to Kiss was essentially “Heaven’s On Fire” and “Thrill’s in the Night”.  I saw the videos on Much and was surprised to discover that Kiss were not wearing makeup anymore.  And the songs were rocking and good.  Later on, a buddy brought over Lick It Up, and played, “And On The 8th Day”.  I said, “That doesn’t sound like the same guy singing,” and they said it wasn’t; they explained it was Gene Simmons (the scary looking one).

I was curious and started taping the music videos. 

Asylum (1985)

This wasn’t my first Kiss album, but it was my first 80’s Kiss album.  I had already acquired Hotter Than Hell and Alive (See Part 3: My First Kiss.)

My dad bought it for me at HiWay Market, in Kitchener, where the Zehrs is now.  It didn’t come with lyrics so I had to try and figure out what they were singing, a task I found very difficult. 

I knew “Tears Are Falling” already from the video, and very quickly my next favourite song became “Uh! All Night”.  I thought that the title was embarassingly bad even then, but the riff was so damn catchy.  Much to my surprise, “Uh! All Night” became the next video, loaded with girls.  I had no problem with that.  My next favourite song, “Who Wants to Be Lonely” became the next video.  I realized I had a knack for predicting the next Kiss singles, something I did without fail for the next three albums in a row.

The other two strongest songs on this album are Paul’s “King of the Mountain”, with Eric Carr’s thunderous drum intro, and Gene’s “Secretly Cruel”.  The rest of the songs are in my opinion pretty much filler, although “Radar for Love” isn’t bad.

Animalize (1984)

I taped Animalize off George, next door.  I taped it on a crappy 120 minute Scotch, it was all I had.  It sounded awful, and I think that might be part of the reason why I consider Animalize to be Kiss’ weakest. 

I love the two singles, “Heaven’s on Fire”, and especially “Thrills in the Night”.  My next favourite song is “Get All You Can Take”.  (I had no idea as a kid that the chorus went, “What fucking difference does it make?”  Like I said, I couldn’t really make out Kiss lyrics that well, and I had no lyric sheets.)  I think the rest of the album is very weak, especially when it comes to Gene songs.  “Let me put my log in your fireplace.”  Yow!

Lick It Up (1983)

This was the next 80’s Kiss album I acquired, on cassette, for Christmas of 1985.  My parents bought me a brand new duel tape deck, a Sanyo, and this was the first thing played in it.  I loved Lick It Up.  By now, I knew a lot of these songs from the Kiss Animalize Live Uncensored home video that I taped off George.  Yes this was my first time hearing the studio versions of “Young and Wasted” and “Fits Like A Glove”.   I quickly grew to love “Dance All Over Your Face” and of course “And On The 8th Day”.  Unlike the previous two 80’s Kiss albums, this one was loaded with excellent Gene material.  Finally, I grew to love two Paul songs:  “Exciter” and “A Million To One”.  Only the filler song “Gimme More” really fails to excite me today.

Lick It Up is the first Kiss album featuring their bare faces, played up by Kiss appearing on the front cover in just their every day street clothes of jeans and jackets.  The guitars are performed by Vinnie Vincent, a brilliant player.  When Vinnie is restrained, like he was with Kiss, his tones and solos are absolutely stunning and perfect.  When left to his own devices, he comes up with stuff like Vinnie Vincent Invasion.

This is, to me, tied for best Kiss album of the 80’s.  It is tied with.,.

Creatures of the Night (1982)

I taped this one off George as well.  It swiftly became a favourite.  Chock full of solid rockers, I swiftly found myself drawn to “War Machine” and “Rock and Roll Hell”, both angry and rebellious Gene songs.  There are really no weak tracks off this one.  I think “I Love It Loud” gets pretty boring after a while, but it’s still a classic Kiss song.  The drum sound on the original mix of this album is insane.  If you have the CD with the non-makeup cover, then you have a remixed version.  The drums are toned down.  The original is the superior version, and the one to own (if you only own one.  I don’t, I have both).

Although Ace Frehley was on the original album cover and in the video, we all knew that Ace was essentially out of the band by this time and didn’t play on Creatures. 

Unmasked (1980)

This, the second of the “Kissco” albums, is not particularly one of my favourites.  Even as kids, we found it pretty poppy, with not enough rock and roll.  We liked “Is That You?”, “Talk To Me”, and “Torpedo Girl”, but we found the rest of the album to be incredibly weak.  Much like Creatures, we knew that Peter Criss did not play on Unmasked, even though he was in the video.  The drums are ably performed by Anton Fig, who had previously played on Ace Frehley and Dynasty.

I loved the cover.  I know Gene and Paul don’t think much of the cover now, but you have to get this one on vinyl.  Playing off their comic book excesses, the cover are panels from a comic book, involving Kiss finally unmasking.  (Get it?)  And then they remove their masks, only to reveal that underneath, they still look exactly the same!  Which played into the face that although fans were begging to see Kiss’ faces, they weren’t going to take off the makeup just yet.

Music From “The Elder” (1981)

As the Kiss collection started to complete itself, I realized I eventually needed The Elder.  George dutifully taped Bob and I both copies.  He wrote the titles on virtually illegibly, and we ended up phoning him to ask him what the hell the songs were called!  “George, what does this say?  ‘Escape from the Ish’?  What is that?!”  And why did he write the album title as Music From?

George straightened us out, it was a concept album and that was the title on the actual cover.  “Escape From the Island” was an Ace Frehley instrumental and one of the only songs we liked.  We found the album pretty weak, but there were songs we kept coming back to, such as “The Oath”.  It was a pretty weird sounding album, then and now.  I mean, not too many three chord rock bands make ambitious concept albums, and the result is a blocky, awkward but intriguing mess of songs.  Yet I love this album!  Weird, eh?  Hated it then, though!

Incidentally, if you owned this album, and the concept made no sense, there’s a possible reason:  On the original American releases, the songs are in the wrong order.  The record company felt you needed to start with a rocker like “The Oath”, but the “correct” tracklisting (now available remastered) has “Fanfare” and “Just A Boy” as the start of the story.

Killers (1982)

Bob brought this German LP with the backwards “KIZZ” logo back with him from his summer vacation in 1986.  He returned with Killers and Alive II, which I recorded from him.  I eventually bought his copy of Killers, so this very copy I’m talking about is the one I own today.

Killers was a Europeans hits disc, pink cover, with the band in their Elder-era outfits, headbands andf ponytails.  However it represents a return to the rocking Kiss sounds of old, as it contained four new songs, all sung by Paul:  “I’m a Legend Tonight” (love it!), “Partners In Crime” (meh), “Nowhere To Run” (fave!), and “Down On Your Knees” (pretty decent uptempo Paul rocker). 

Bob and I especially loved “I’m A Legend Tonight”, but “Nowhere To Run” became a close second, and eventually overtook it. 

As a compilation, it’s a good one.  It has all the hits, including the live version of “Rock N’ Roll All Nite” from Alive!  The CD I have is from Japan, and has two extra songs not on the European one:  “Shandi” and “Escape From The Island”, which was edited off their version of The Elder.

 

Crazy Nights (1987)

For the first time, there was a two-year gap between Kiss albums.  Crazy Nights was a unique album experience for me.  It was the first time I had waited patiently for a Kiss album.  Asylum, which had come out in 1985, was already out when I first started seriously getting into Kiss.  George kept me up to date on all the Kiss news.  That summer, he told me that the album title was Crazy Nights, and that Paul had been writing on keyboards.  Keyboards, in Kiss?

The day the album came out, George got it on LP, and I recorded it as usual.  We listened to it at his place.  I wasn’t sure what to think.  These were all new songs and it didn’t really sound great.  The title track and first single was a lot more pop, we noticed.  Some of the Gene songs were just awful, and some Paul songs, not better.  “I’ll Fight Hell To Hold You” is one that I felt never sounded quite right. 

Little did I know as a fan that Gene Simmons had pretty much clocked out by this time.  He had gone Hollywood and Paul was steering the ship.  As a result, Crazy Nights is pretty Paul heavy, with only a couple decent Gene songs.  “Good Girl Gone Bad” is the best one, a slow burner about a young girl that Gene claims is the “best love I ever had”.  “No No No” is…well, I won’t go as far as to call it a good song, but it was one of the few fast rockers, and featured a smoking hot solo from Bruce.

Once again I predicted the next single, the ballad “Reason To Live”.  Ballads were huge at the time, but that one was not.  It failed to rocket up the charts, maybe because it was too light.  Too many keyboards.  Paul was no longer playing his guitar in videos, he was just wearing it.  This bugged me to no end.  It really, really bugged me.  Not to mention Kiss’ new outfits were anything but cool. 

For the first time, there was a third video, the much better “Turn On The Night”, a Bon Jovi-esque pop rocker with a very catchy chorus and Bruce solo.  Paul wore his guitar again in the video, but at least it was a rocker.  And my favourite song on the album.

Smashes, Thrashes & Hits (1988)

Rumours of breakup swirled in 1988, after the less-than-successful Crazy Nights tour and album.  I hoped and prayed for Kiss to return to rock.  Then, Gene Simmons co-hosted the Pepsi Power Hour in 1988.  He talked mostly about his new label, Simmons Records.  He was promoting his first two singings:  A “funk-urban” singer name Laz Netto (sp?) and a rock band from the ashes of Giuffria and Quiet Riot called House of Lords.  This worried me.  Clearly, Gene’s focus was not on Kiss.

He also announced the forthcoming release of a new hits album called Smashes, Thrashes & Hits.  It was to feature two new songs produced by Paul Stanley, he said, “You Put the X in Sex” (sic), and “(You Make Me) Rock Hard”.  He also said there was to be a new version of Beth, with Eric Carr singing.  At the time, to me, this didn’t bother me as a concept.  I liked Eric’s voice, but he had never sung lead on an album before, so this should be cool.  Unfortunately, Eric put no rasp in his voice, which I think sank his version.

As for the two new singles/videos?  Not only was “Let’s Put the X in Sex” pure pop again, but Paul wasn’t even wearing his guitar in the video!  He was just…dancing!  Dancing!!  “Rock Hard” was a better song, but once again, Paul was dancing.  And Gene?  He was completely clocked out.  Not only did he look like a transvestite, but he couldn’t even lip sync the lyrics correctly.  Watch the video.  Check it out.  At around 1:50, the lyric, “You turn me ’round”.  You can clearly see Gene mouth the words as “You turn me up”.  You doesn’t even know the words to the damn song, he was so clocked out at that point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQj1LuY5b8M

Hot In The Shade (1989)

Paul did a brief solo tour with Bob Kulick and Eric Singer, and promised Kiss would be back later that year with a new album.  Paul’s promise was true, and in the fall I sat and watched the new Kiss video, “Hide Your Heart”.  I hoped it would not suck.

It didn’t!

Paul was playing a guitar again!  And it wasn’t some candy-coloured modern guitar, it was a vintage one.  The song was catchy with a good chorus, but was not overtly pop.  The video wasn’t about hot girls anymore, but had a story to it.  Perfect!  Kiss had finally started to catch up with where I thought they should have been going.

I picked up the album on cassette in Pickering, Ontario while on school field trip to the nuclear plant, of all things.  We stopped at a mall for lunch, and I picked it up at an A&A.  It was long and it took a while to absorb, but I immediately loved the pedal steel solo that opened the album.  That’s what I’m talking about!  It might not have been anything vintage Kiss would have done, but at least it was about the roots of rock again, not keyboards and ballads.

Once again I predicted the singles:  “Forever”, the acoustic ballad, was a great song with yet another killer Bruce solo.   You had to have at least one ballad back then, and Kiss gave us just one out of the 15 songs.  And it was an acoustic ballad, not a keyboard one.  Bonus.

The third and final and most confusing single was “Rise To It”.  Confusing because Gene and Paul put the makeup back on in the video.   In a flashback scene, Paul and Gene sit in a dressing room putting on their makeup, discussing the future of the band.  Could they survive without makeup?  Paul says yes, Gene says he’s nut.  Eric and Bruce, backs turned to the camera, “play” Ace and Peter.  Flash to the present day, Kiss kicking ass without makeup at a live show, then back to the dressing room.  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Gene concedes, as they walk out together, fully suited up.

What were they trying to tell us?

It is known now that Kiss were attempting to woo Ace back into the band.  It would be a return to makeup, and the Elder lineup of Stanley/Simmons/Carr/Frehley for a tour.  For the first time, Kiss did not tour to support the album when it was released, but waited until 1990.  By then, the album had petered out, and Ace had declined.  The co-headlining tour with Whitesnake culminated in a disasterours show in Toronto where Paul trashed Whitesnake to the crowd for not letting Kiss use their full stage gear.  The crowd in turn booed Whitesnake, the first time, according to Steve Vai, he had ever been booed on stage.  He had walked onto the stage in front of a crowd cheering, “Yngwie, Yngwie, Yngwie…”, but had never been booed, until Paul trashed Whitesnake on stage.  Kiss did return later that year with their full Sphynx stage show.

Anyway, that was the 90’s.  As far as the 80’s ended, I thought and still think that Hot In the Shade was a step back in the right direction.  At 15 songs, it was too bogged down with filler, and I don’t think it sounded that great.  I never liked Bruce’s guitar sound on it, I felt it was unappealling.  I liked that Eric Carr had a proper lead vocal on his own song (“Little Caesar”) and I liked that the album ended with a seriously heavy rocker, Gene’s thrash-like “Boomerang”.  I was no longer embarassed by the band.

When they would finally return again in the 90’s, they had lost Eric Carr.  But they had also righted the good ship Kiss, with the excellent Revenge. 

But that, dear friends, is another story….

Part 25: Applicants

Everybody wants to work in a record store.  Kids, adults, seniors, I had applications from everybody.  I had one retiree apply who had this really impressive resume.  He was an engineer at one point.  He taught at a university.  He designed airplane tires, for passenger jets.  His resume was designed for an engineering  job.

At the top of the resume, for the job he was looking for, he had scratched out (in pen) “Engineer” and written in, “CD Store Clerk”.

Back then, we had the internet, but we didn’t even have it in the store yet.  We relied on pure musical knowledge.  That’s the way a music shopping experience should be.  For example, I walked into an HMV one time in a mischievous mood, and asked for a Led Zeppelin bootleg called Sweet Jelly Roll.  That HMV guy typed and typed and typed trying to find a CD that for all intents and purposes did not exist.  If the same question was asked of our people, we’d know without having to look that wasn’t the name of anything Zeppelin ever officially released.

To work in a record store in the 90’s, you had to know your shit.  People would come in and ask the most obscure questions.  “There was a Black Sabbath album I used to have, it had a red baby on the cover.  What was it?”  BAM!  Born Again.  Real question, real answer.

We were buying, and selling.  We were like the Pawn Stars, before we had the internet, we had to know our shit.  If we didn’t, somebody at one of the downtown stores, would.

So, people applying for jobs really had to know music, all kinds.  We had a written test.  It had different types of questions, matching names to bands, etc.  Who’s this band, who’s that band, name five jazz artists, etc.  It would have been hard for anybody to get 100% on it, but we weren’t looking for that.  We were just looking for broad musical knowledge.

Some of the more entertaining things that were said and/or written during tests:

“This test is whack, man, I only know about rap.”

“Pink Floyd:  He is a singer from the 60’s”

“Can I take this test home and bring it back tomorrow?”

“The Cranberries:  crap”

“The Beatles:  really, really old music”

“Classical music:  Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, The Who, Buddy Holly”

A few kids…more than a few…ducked out of the store mid-test because they knew they were in way over their heads.  Some looked it and didn’t even try, they just left.  It got so bad that we actually had to make sure we spoke to everyone who applied not to worry and not to get freaked out by the test, it wasn’t the be all and end all.   We had so many applicants one year, I ran out of pens in the afternoon while everyone was writing!

It’s pretty funky walking into a record store and seeing a bunch of kids writing tests on any horizontal surface available.

There was a guy who had a resume that included “super powers”.  I’ll never forget that one super power he had was “the power to heat soup by looking at it.”  That’s a pretty neat super power.  I could use that one.  I don’t know if it would help against Magneto, or the Green Goblin, but it would mean I don’t have to use the microwave when I’m hungry for some soup.

There was a guy in another store who applied, wrote the test, got an interview, got hired, and never showed up.

There was a guy who came in with his resume, tucked in his pants pocket, because he had no shirt.

There were guys that dropped off a resume, wrote the test, shopping around, and acted like total dicks the whole time.  Swearing up and down, treating me like shit.  Why the hell would we hire you? 

But, it takes all types, I guess.  A record store was a unique place in the universe.  The customers are unique, so the staff had to be unique.  I think, for a while in the mid 90’s, we had that.  We had the girl who knew about Motown, we had Trev, who knew about Brit-pop and all the new shit coming out, we had me, specializing in metal and classic rock.  And of course we had Tom, who seemed to know everything about everything that had any sort of…integrity to it.  Tom wouldn’t have been bothered with Oasis, or Bon Jovi, or Puff Daddy. But ask him about Captain Beefheart.  (He’d still be professional enough to know the names  of every album by everybody…we all were.  We had to be.)

Authentic record store folks are among the most odd, interesting, and eccentric people you’d ever meet, and I’m proud to say, for 12 years, I was one of ’em.  And I’d like to think I’m still pretty eccentric.